Download the full version of the ebook now at ebookgrade.

com

Talking to Strangers Malcolm Gladwell

https://ebookgrade.com/product/talking-to-
strangers-malcolm-gladwell/

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookgrade.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Inside Outside From the Basics to the Practice of Design

Second Edition Malcolm Grear Malcolm Grear

https://ebookgrade.com/product/inside-outside-from-the-basics-to-the-
practice-of-design-second-edition-malcolm-grear-malcolm-grear/

ebookgrade.com

Inside Outside From the Basics to the Practice of Design

Second Edition Malcolm Grear Malcolm Grear

https://ebookgrade.com/product/inside-outside-from-the-basics-to-the-
practice-of-design-second-edition-malcolm-grear-malcolm-grear-2/

ebookgrade.com

Strangers to Ourselves Discovering the Adaptive

Unconscious Timothy D Wilson

https://ebookgrade.com/product/strangers-to-ourselves-discovering-the-
adaptive-unconscious-timothy-d-wilson/

ebookgrade.com

Talking to Humans Success starts with understanding your

customers Unknown

https://ebookgrade.com/product/talking-to-humans-success-starts-with-
understanding-your-customers-unknown/

ebookgrade.com
Graphic Design as Communication 1st Edition By Malcolm
Barnard Malcolm Barnard

https://ebookgrade.com/product/graphic-design-as-communication-1st-
edition-by-malcolm-barnard-malcolm-barnard/

ebookgrade.com

Modern Social Work Theory 4th Edition by Malcolm Payne

Malcolm Payne

https://ebookgrade.com/product/modern-social-work-theory-4th-edition-
by-malcolm-payne-malcolm-payne/

ebookgrade.com

International Law 7th Edition by Shaw Malcolm N Malcolm N.

Shaw

https://ebookgrade.com/product/international-law-7th-edition-by-shaw-
malcolm-n-malcolm-n-shaw/

ebookgrade.com

International Law 8th Edition by Malcolm N. Shaw Malcolm

N. Shaw

https://ebookgrade.com/product/international-law-8th-edition-by-
malcolm-n-shaw-malcolm-n-shaw/

ebookgrade.com
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Outside the
universe
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Outside the universe

Author: Edmond Hamilton

Illustrator: C. C. Senf

Release date: July 11, 2024 [eBook #74020]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing

Company, 1929

Credits: dGreg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTSIDE THE

UNIVERSE ***
 Outside the Universe

By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Weird Tales July, August, September, October 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 "Around we swept in one great lightning curve, and then
were rushing straight back upon the three racing ships."

1. The Swarm From Space

The floor beneath me, slanting swiftly downward, flung me across
the room and against its metal wall as our whole ship suddenly spun
crazily in mid-space. For the moment following I had only a swift
vision of walls and floor and ceiling gyrating insanely about me while
I clutched in vain for some hold upon them, and at the same moment
I glimpsed through the window the other ships of my little squadron
plunging helplessly about behind us. Then as our craft's wild whirling
slackened I stumbled to my feet, out of the room and up the narrow
stair outside it, bursting into the transparent-walled little pilot room
where my two strange lieutenants stood at the ship's controls.
"Korus Kan! Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "Are you trying to wreck us all?"
The two turned toward me, saluting. Korus Kan, of Antares, was of
the metal-bodied races of that star's countless worlds, his brain and
heart and nervous system and vital organs encased in an upright
body of gleaming metal whose powerful triple arms and triple legs
were immune from all fatigue, and from whose ball-like upper brain-
chamber or head his triangle of three keen eyes looked forth. Jhul
Din, too, was as patently of Spica, of the crustacean peoples of that
sun's planets, with his big, erect body armored in hard black shell, his
two mighty upper arms and two lower legs short and thick and stiff,
while from his shiny black conical head protruded his twin round
eyes. Drawn as the members of our crews were, from every peopled
star in the galaxy, there were yet no stranger or more dissimilar
shapes among them than these two, who confronted me for a
moment now in silence before Korus Kan made answer.
"Sorry, sir," he said; "it was another uncharted ether-current."
"Another!" I repeated, and they nodded.
"This squadron is supposed to have the easiest section of the whole
Interstellar Patrol, out here along the galaxy's edge," said Jhul Din,
"but we're no sooner clear of one cursed current than we're into
another."
"Well, currents or no currents, we'll have to hold our course," I told
them. "The Patrol has to be kept up, even out here." And as Korus
Kan's hands on the controls brought our long, slender ship back into
its proper path I stepped over beside him. Standing between the
Antarian and the Spican and glancing back through our rear
telescopic distance-windows I could make out in a moment the other
ships of our squadron, falling again into formation far behind us.
Then I had turned, and with my two friends was gazing forth into the
great vista of light and darkness that lay before us.
It was toward our left that the light lay, for to the right and in front
and behind us the eye met only blackness, the utter, unimaginable
blackness of outer space. Left of us, though, there stretched along
the ebon heavens a colossal belt of countless brilliant stars, the
gathered suns of our galaxy. A stupendous, disk-like mass of stars, it
floated there in the black void of space like a little island of light, and
hundreds of billions of miles outward from the outermost suns of this
island-universe our little squadron flashed through space, parallel to
its edge. Looking toward the great galaxy from that distance, its
countless thousands of glittering suns seemed merged almost in one
mighty flaming mass; yet even among those thousands there burned
out distinctly the clearer glory of the greater suns, the blue radiance
of Vega, or the yellow splendor of Altair, or the white fire of great
Canopus itself. Here and there among the fiery thousands, too, there
glowed the strange, misty luminescence of the galaxy's mighty
comets, while at the galaxy's edge directly to our left there flamed
among the more loosely scattered stars the great Cancer cluster, a
close-packed, ball-like mass of hundreds of shining suns, gathered
together there like a great hive of swarming stars.
On our right, though, sharply contrasted with the galaxy's far-flung
splendor, there stretched only blackness, the deep, utter blackness of
that titanic void that lies outside our universe. Black, deep black, it
stretched away in unthinkable reaches of eternal emptiness and
night. Far away in that blackness the eye could in time make out,
hardly to be seen, a few faint little patches of misty light, glowing
feebly to our eyes across the mighty gloom of space; faint patches of
light that were, I knew, galaxies of stars, island-universes like our
own, separated from our own by a titanic void of millions of light-
years of space, an immensity of emptiness into which even the
swiftest of our ships could not venture, and beside which the
distances between our own stars seemed tiny and insignificant.
In silence we gazed into that mighty panorama of thronging stars and
cosmic void, standing there together as we three had stood for many
an hour, Antarian and Spican and human. From the ship's hull,
stretched beneath the little pilot room in which we stood, there came
dimly to our ears the strangely differing voices of our crew. Over
these occasional voices, too, there beat unceasingly the deep,
droning hum of the great mechanisms whose tremendously powerful
force-vibrations were propelling us on through space at almost a
thousand light-speeds. Except for these familiar half-heard sounds,
though, there was only silence in the pilot room, and in silence we
three gazed as our ship and the ships behind it flashed on and on.
Then, abruptly, Korus Kan uttered a sharp cry, pointing upward.
"Look!" he cried. "That swarm on the space-chart!"

Startled, our eyes lifted to where the Antarian pointed, toward the
big space-chart on the wall above the window. A great rectangle of
smooth, burnished metal, upon its flat surface were represented all in
the heavens immediately about us. On the chart's left side there
shone scores of little circles of glowing light, extending outward from
the left edge for several inches, representing the outmost suns of the
great galaxy to our left. Inches outward from the outermost of those
glowing circles there moved upon the blank metal, creeping upward
in a course parallel to the galaxy's edge, a formation of a dozen tiny
black dots, the dots that were our squadron of ships, holding to our
regular patrol far out from the galaxy's edge. And inches outward
from our ship-dots, in turn, out in the blank metal at the chart's right,
there moved inward toward us and toward the galaxy a great swarm
of other black dots, a close-massed cluster of thousands of dots there
on the chart that represented, we knew, a mighty swarm of matter
moving in out of the void of outer space toward our ships and toward
the galaxy to our left!
"A swarm of meteors!" I exclaimed. It could be nothing else, I knew,
that was approaching our galaxy out of the unplumbed, awful void.
"A swarm of meteors from outer space! And moving at unthinkable
speed!"
"A swarm of meteors from outer space," repeated Korus Kan,
thoughtfully. "It's unprecedented—and yet the space-chart doesn't
lie."
I glanced again at the big chart. "The swarm's heading almost
straight toward us," I said, watching the close-massed dots creeping
across the big chart. "But it's traveling at thousands of light-speeds,
and must be caught in an ether-current of inconceivable velocity."
"Its speed seems to be steadily slackening, though," said Jhul Din as
we gazed up at the space-chart in silent awe.
I nodded. "Yes, but it ought to reach us within a few more hours.
We'll halt our ships here until it reaches us, and as it passes we can
ascertain its extent and report to General Patrol Headquarters at
Canopus. They can send out meteor-sweeps then to destroy the
swarm before it can enter the galaxy and menace interstellar
navigation."
Even while I spoke Korus Kan had swiftly shifted the levers in his
grasp, quickly reducing our craft's great speed, while the half-score of
ships behind us slowed their own flight at the same moment in
answer to his signal. The humming drone of our great propulsion-
vibration generators waned to a thin whine and then died altogether
as our ships came to a halt, while at the same moment the dozen
ship-dots on the space-chart ceased to move also, hanging
motionless on that chart as we were hanging motionless in space.
Inches to the right of them, though, the close-massed dots of the
mighty swarm were still creeping steadily across the chart, though
now their unheard-of speed was fast slackening. In silent awe we
regarded them. Out there in the awful void beside us, we knew, the
great swarm was rushing ever closer toward us even as those
thousands of close-massed dots crept toward our own ship-dots, and
a strange tension held us as we watched them moving nearer.
To any of our comrades in the Interstellar Patrol it would have
seemed strange enough, no doubt, the tense silence in which we
watched the approach of the swarm, for surely a meteor-swarm more
or less was nothing new to us. We had met with many a one in our
patrols inside the galaxy, and many a time had aided in the work of
the great star-cruising meteor-sweeps which keep free of them the
space-lanes between the galaxy's suns. But this swarm, rushing
toward us out of the mighty depths of outer space, was different.
Never in all our history had any such mighty swarm of matter as this
come toward our galaxy from the unplumbed outer void, and at such
a speed as this one. For though it was moving slower and slower
there on the space-chart, the great swarm was still flashing through
space toward the galaxy at more than a thousand light-speeds, a
velocity greater than that of any of our ships.
Silently we watched, there in the pilot room, while the swarm of
close-massed dots crept across the big space-chart, toward the
galaxy and toward the dozen dots that were our ships. Slower and
slower still it was moving, its speed smoothly and steadily decreasing
as it swept in toward the galaxy from outer space. Such a decrease in
speed was strange enough, we knew, but knew too that if the swarm
was being borne on toward us by a terrific ether-current its speed
would slacken as the speed of the current slackened.
The minutes dragged past, forming into an hour, and another, and
another, while we watched and waited there, and steadily still the
swarm crept on toward us, moving on now at a steady velocity of five
to six hundred light-speeds. Our ships hung silent and motionless still
in space, with away to our left the flaming torches of the galaxy's
thronging suns, and to our right the great vault of blackness out of
which that mighty swarm of matter was rushing toward us.
Straight toward us almost it was heading on the space-chart, and
now, as it crept over the last half-inch that separated it on the chart
from our ships, I gave an order that sent our ships and those behind
it slanting steeply upward. In swift, great spirals our squadron
climbed, and within a moment more was hanging thousands of miles
higher in space than before, our prows pointed now toward the
galaxy. Tensely I watched the space-chart and then, just as the great
swarm of black dots reached the dozen dots that were our ships, I
uttered a single word, and instantly our squadron was racing toward
the galaxy at a full five-hundred light-speeds, moving now at the
same speed as the great swarm and hanging thousands of miles
above it as it rushed on through space toward the galaxy. It was the
familiar maneuver of the Interstellar Patrol in reconnoitering a
meteor-swarm, to hang above it and race at the same speed with it
through space, but never yet had we essayed it on such a swarm as
this one, moving as it was at an incredible speed for inanimate
matter, and without any signs about it of the ether-current which we
had thought was the reason for that speed.
Now, as our ships hummed swiftly on, I stood with Jhul Din at the
projecting distance-windows, gazing down into the mighty abyss of
space that lay beneath us. Somewhere in that abyss, I knew, the
great swarm was racing on at the same speed as ourselves, but as
we gazed tensely down our eyes met nothing but an impenetrable
darkness, the cold, empty blackness of the infinite void. I turned,
signaled with my hand to Korus Kan at the controls, and then our
ship began to drop smoothly to a lower level as it raced on, following
a downward-slanting course now with the ships of our squadron
behind close on our track. Down we slanted, still racing onward at
the same terrific speed, while the Spican and I searched the darkness
beneath with our eyes through the thick-lensed protecting windows,
yet still was nothing visible in the tenebrous void below. Lower, still
lower, our ships slanted, and then suddenly Jhul Din gave utterance
to a short exclamation.
"Down there!" he cried, pointing down through the little window.
"Those shining points—you see them?"

I gazed tensely down in the direction in which he pointed, and for a

time could see nothing still but the infinite unlit blackness. Then
suddenly my eyes too made out a few gleaming little points of light in
the darkness far beneath us, points of light far separated from each
other and driving on through space toward the galaxy far ahead, at
the same speed as ourselves. And now, as our ships slanted still
down over and toward them, they became more and more numerous
to my eyes, a vast, far-flung swarm of fully five thousand gleaming
points, spaced a thousand miles from one another, and racing on
through space in a great triangular or wedge-shaped formation, the
triangle's apex toward the galaxy ahead. The light with which each
gleamed made the whole vast swarm seem like a throng of tiny
ghosts of stars, driving through the void, though I knew that metallic
meteors sometimes shone so with light reflected from the stars.
Never yet, though, had I seen a swarm gathered in such a precise
formation as this one, or one that flashed onward at such vast and
uniform speed. It was like a scene out of some strange dream, lying
there in the black void beneath us, the mighty, silent swarm of light-
points whirling on through space at that awful speed toward the
massed, burning suns of the galaxy far ahead, out of the mysteries of
outer space. Held still silent by the strangeness of it we gazed down
upon it, as our ships slanted lower still. Then, as our squadron drove
down at last to within a few hundred miles of the great swarm, the
nature of those driving points of light became suddenly visible, and
we gasped aloud.
For these were no meteors that drove through space in that mighty
swarm beneath us! These were no fragments of cosmic wreckage out
of the flotsam of smashed worlds and stars! These were mighty,
symmetrical shapes of smooth metal, each an elongated oval in form
and with rounded ends, each a great ship as large or larger than our
own! The front end of each of these great oval ships glowed with
white light, the light-points we had glimpsed from above, since the
front end of each was transparent-walled like our own pilot room,
and brilliantly lit inside. In those white-lit pilot rooms we could half
glimpse, as we flashed along, masses of strange machinery and
switches, and stranger beings that seemed to move about them,
apparently directing the course and speed of their great ships as the
whole mighty swarm of them rushed on through space, toward the
galaxy's suns ahead!
"Space-ships!" My exclamation held all the stunned amazement that
had gripped us all. "Space-ships in thousands from the outer void
——"
Before I could complete the thought that was flashing across my
mind there was a cry from Jhul Din, beside me, and I wheeled about
to find him pointing downward, gazed swiftly down to see that a
score or more of the great, strange ships beneath were suddenly
slanting up toward us, as we raced along above them. With the
swiftness of thought they flashed up toward us, and I had a lightning
vision of the white-lit pilot rooms at the nose of each, rushing toward
us like blurs of brilliant light. Then, as I shouted aloud, Korus Kan
swung the controls in his grasp with lightning speed, and instantly
our ship flashed sidewise in a twisting turn.
Even as we swerved, though, there leapt from the foremost of the
uprushing craft a pale broad beam of ghostly white light that stabbed
up toward and past us, grazing our ship, and that struck the foremost
of the ships of our squadron behind us. I saw the broad beam strike
that ship squarely, saw it playing on and through it, and for a
moment could see no effect apparent. Then, as the great pale beam
played across the ship in a swift slicing sweep, I saw that as it shone
through that ship's pilot room the figures inside it suddenly vanished!
The next moment the ship had suddenly driven crazily off into space,
whirling blindly away without occupant or crew, all life in it wiped
instantly from existence by that terrible death-beam that had played
through it! Now the attacking ships were leaping up toward us,
flashing up lightning-like with ghostly beams of death whirling and
stabbing about and toward us, and now, over the wild clamor of
sudden battle in the hull beneath, I heard the great cry of Jhul Din,
beside me.
"Space-ships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come
from somewhere toward our galaxy—have come out of outer space
itself to attack our universe!"

2. Chased Through the Void

The moment of swift, terrific battle that followed was to me then only
a wild uproar of flashing action and hoarse shouts, as the mighty
ships beneath leapt up toward us. It was only another sudden
twisting turn of our ship by Korus Kan that saved us from annihilation
in that wild first moment of combat, since the score or more of pale,
deadly beams from beneath, stabbing past us as we twisted, struck
the ships of our squadron behind and in another moment had sent
half of them reeling blindly and aimlessly out of sight, driving
haphazardly off into space as the ghostly beams annihilated all the
life inside them. Then, as we raced still through space above the
mighty swarm, the score of attacking ships suddenly divided, a dozen
of them driving up toward the ships behind us while the remainder
flashed toward us, their great, pale rays still stabbing and slicing as
they leapt on.
Even as our ship swerved from the pale beams leaping up toward us,
though, I had shouted an order into the tube beside me, and now
from our own craft there stabbed down toward the upward-rushing
ships a half-dozen long, narrow rays of brilliant red light. Four of the
ships below were struck squarely by those brilliant rays, and from our
crew came shouts of triumph as those four vanished in blinding flares
of crimson light. It was the deadly ray of the Interstellar Patrol,
destroying all matter it touched by raising its frequency of vibration,
since matter itself is but a certain frequency vibration of the ether,
and when that frequency is raised to that of light-vibrations the
matter is changed in that moment from solid matter to light.
Even in the moment that the four ships vanished beneath our rays,
though, I had glanced backward and had seen the last of the ships of
our squadron behind vanishing in a wild chaos of whirling death-
beam and crimson ray, since scores of other ships were leaping up to
attack us from the mighty swarm far beneath. Toward us now, it
seemed, ships were flashing from every direction, and I heard the
hissing of the ray-tubes below as our crimson rays burned out to
meet them, saw three more of them flare and vanish, glimpsed a
dozen shafts of the death-beam graze past us as Korus Kan twisted
our ship in an erratic, corkscrew course. Not for moments longer,
though, I knew, could we keep up this wild and unequal battle, since
the mass of ships behind that had annihilated our squadron were
now leaping after us. Our only chance was in flight.
I shouted to Korus Kan, and then, as scores of the ghostly beams
swept through the void toward us, I saw him swerve the control-
levers in his hands sharply sidewise, so that our ship abruptly turned
squarely to the right, away from the great swarm and the attacking
ships about us. It was a maneuver that caught those ships off their
guard, and traveling as we were at the terrific velocity of five
hundred light-speeds, it put millions of miles of space between us
and the great swarm before the attacking ships could realize what we
had done. In a split-second they had vanished from sight about us
and we were again rushing on through black and empty space,
turning now and again heading toward the galaxy's far-flung suns.
But, as I gazed anxiously at the big space-chart, I saw that now the
great swarm of black dots upon it had slanted from their former
course and was heading straight after the single dot that was our
ship. By means of their own space-charts, which I knew they must
have, they had discovered our trick and were in pursuit!
"Let her out to full speed!" I cried to Korus Kan. "They're after us and
our only chance is to get to the galaxy ahead of them!"
Instantly Korus Kan opened wide the power-controls, and with a
mounting humming roar our great ship went rapidly into its highest
speed, its great generators flinging it on through the ether at a
thousand times the velocity of light, propelling it headlong onward
toward the galaxy that lay still far ahead, its mighty disk-like mass of
shining suns stretched across the blackness of space before us. And
behind us rushed the great swarm, too, racing on after us and toward
the galaxy still. I knew that the speed of that mighty swarm of ships
must be inconceivably greater than that of our own, since we
ourselves had seen them on our charts racing in toward the galaxy
from outer space with velocity unthinkable, a velocity which we had
thought could only be due to some great ether-current, and which
they had only slackened as they drew near the galaxy. There was a
slender chance, though, that we might yet escape, and now as we
rushed on toward the galaxy in headlong flight I turned quickly to the
speech-projection instrument beside me, pressing a button in its
base. A moment later there came from it a clear, twanging voice.
"General Patrol Headquarters at Canopus," it announced, and swiftly
I responded.
"Dur Nal, Captain of Patrol Squadron 598-77, speaking," I said. "I
desire to report the discovery of a swarm of some five thousand
strange space-ships which have appeared out of outer space,
heading toward the galaxy. These ships are apparently capable of
immense speeds and are armed with a form of death-beam
unfamiliar to us, but extremely deadly in operation. On discovering
these ships we were attacked by them and all of my squadron except
my own ship destroyed. Our own ship is now being chased inward
toward the galaxy, heading in the general direction of the Cancer
cluster, and though the swarm is gradually overhauling us we may be
able to escape. From the size, number and deadly armament of these
alien ships it is apparent that they contemplate a general attack upon
our universe."
There was a moment's pause when I had finished, and then from the
speech-instrument there came the metallic voice again, as calm as
though I had made only a routine report of position and progress.
"Order of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, to Dur Nal. You
will make every effort to elude the pursuing swarm, and if you can do
so will endeavor to draw it into the Cancer cluster. All the cruisers of
the Interstellar Patrol will be assembled inside the cluster as swiftly
as possible, and if you are successful in drawing the pursuing swarm
inside it will be possible for our fleet to fall upon it in an unexpected
attack, and destroy these invaders, whatever their source or purpose,
before they can obtain a foothold in the galaxy. You have the order?"
"I have the order," I replied, as calmly as possible, and with a word of
acknowledgment the twanging voice ceased.
I wheeled around to Korus Kan and Jhul Din, a flame of excitement
leaping within me. "It's a chance to destroy them all!" I exclaimed. "If
we can hold out until we reach the galaxy—can lead them into that
cluster——"
Their own eyes were afire now as they saw the chance, and now
Korus Kan tightened his grasp on the controls, gazing grimly ahead
with power open to the last notch, while Jhul Din strode swiftly out of
the pilot room and down to the ship's hull beneath, where, in a
moment more, I heard his deep voice booming out orders to the
crew as they labored to wring from our throbbing generators the last
ounce of speed. Yet now, too, looking up at the big space-chart, I
saw that the gap on it between our single little ship-dot and the great
swarm of dots behind was terrifyingly small, a gap of less than a half-
inch which represented no more than a few billion miles of space.
And slowly, steadily, that gap was closing, as the great swarm slowly
overhauled us. With their immense potential speed they could have
flashed past us in a moment, had they so desired, yet I knew too
that they dared not use such terrific speed so near the galaxy, and
that even did they use it we would be able to turn and double before
they could slow down enough to catch us. Their plan, it was obvious,
was simply to overhaul us slowly until they had just reached us, and
then sweep down on us with the death-beams while we strove in vain
to escape them.
So at our utmost speed we flashed on through the void toward the
galaxy, a mighty belt of burning suns across the blackness before us,
and toward the close-massed cluster of suns at its edge that shone
among the scattered stars around it like a solid ball of light, while
there rushed after us through space at the same mighty speed the
great swarm of strange craft which we were attempting to lead into
that cluster.

Surely in all time was never so strange a flight, a pursuit, as this one
—a flight inward through the void with unimaginable beings from the
mysteries of infinite outer space as our pursuers, flashing on in
thousands on our track, toward us and toward the galaxy they meant
to attack.
Far ahead in that galaxy, too, I knew, its forces would be preparing to
meet that attack, and from the central sun of Canopus the alarm
would be flashing out across our universe from star to star, from
world to whirling world, flashing in warning from end to end of the
galaxy, to all the stars and worlds and races of the Federated Suns.
And even while that warning flashed, the great star-cruisers of the
Interstellar Patrol would be gathering in answer, would be rushing
headlong between the suns across the galaxy from every quarter of it
to mass in force inside the Cancer cluster. Could we escape the
pursuing swarm and lead it into that cluster it would still be hours, I
knew, before we reached it, even at our tremendous speed, and in
those hours all the fighting-ships of the galaxy would be racing
toward the rendezvous there and massing to meet this mighty
invading fleet.
Could we escape? The thought beat monotonously through my brain
as I stood there with Korus Kan, silent as the Antarian as we watched
the great swarm of dots creep closer and closer to us on the space-
chart. On and on our ship was racing, the throbbing generators now
making the whole ship vibrate with their vast power, and visibly the
galaxy's shining suns were largening ahead as we flashed on toward
them; yet as the minutes passed, forming into an hour, and then
another, the great swarm behind crept ever remorselessly closer.
Rocking and swaying as we plunged through great ether-currents, we
held still straight toward the ball of swarming suns that was the
Cancer cluster, at the galaxy's edge ahead; yet still we had covered
no more than two-thirds of the distance that had separated us from
it, and now the great swarm was no more than a few million miles
behind, a mere fraction of an inch on the space-chart.
It was as though our pursuers were but playing with us, so calmly
and steadily did they overtake us, and in despair I turned from the
galaxy's mighty rampart of stars, ahead, to the rear distance-
windows. A moment more, I knew, and the thousands of ships
behind would be drawing into sight in those windows, would be
speeding down upon us even as we sought to flee and would
annihilate us with an attack which we could not hope to escape a
second time. Hopelessly I gazed back into the blackness of space
behind, but then wheeled back suddenly as there came a sudden
exclamation from Korus Kan. He had swerved our flying ship's course
a little and was pointing up toward the space-chart now, his strange
eyes agleam with excitement.
"If we can make it, it's a chance to throw them off our track," he
exclaimed, and as I gazed up toward the space-chart I suddenly
understood.
On that chart our single ship-dot was rushing on toward the glowing
circles of the galaxy's suns, with the mighty swarm of black dots that
were our pursuers close behind, and now I saw that a little ahead of
our own ship-dot there hung stationary on the chart another dot, one
not of black but of red. Instantly I recognized it as one of the great
space-buoys hung in space to mark the positions of the mighty ether-
maelstroms which were the most perilous of all the menaces to
interstellar navigation. Formed by the meeting of vast ether-currents,
these maelstroms had been marked for all space-navigators by
placing near each a special space-ship, or buoy, which automatically
and without crew kept its position, showing as a red dot on all space-
charts to warn passing ships of the maelstrom's position. The great
maelstrom ahead, I knew, was one of the mightiest of all in and
around our galaxy, and now as our ship sped straight through space
toward it I saw Korus Kan's plan and caught my breath with sudden
hope.
"We'll head straight toward the maelstrom, and then swerve aside
just before we reach it," he was saying. "The swarm behind can have
no knowledge of its existence, and if they run into it before they can
change their course it'll delay them, at least."
Tensely I watched now as our ship raced on, the humming roar of its
generators rising a half-pitch still higher as Jhul Din, beneath, drove
the crew to their last strength to win another light-speed. A scant few
million miles ahead the great maelstrom lay, marked only by the red
dot on the chart, and as we sped straight on toward that dot our ship
already was rocking and bucking as we drove through the mighty
ether-currents whose meeting formed the maelstrom. Braced against
the room's wall we stood, eyes straining ahead through the darkness
and against the glare of the galaxy's suns in the distance, and then,
as I turned to glance back, I saw that behind us now there gleamed
in the blackness points of shining light, points that were swiftly
largening and nearing us, countless in number and driving through
space straight on our track. With each fleeting moment they were
flashing nearer toward us, and now were so near that through the
distance-window I could plainly make out their white-lit pilot rooms
as they drove after us. A moment more, I knew, would see them
close enough to loose the death-beams upon us, but at that moment
there was a half-breathed exclamation from Korus Kan, and I turned
swiftly about.
He was gripping the controls tensely, gazing forward into the
blackness that lay between us and the galaxy, and even as I turned I
saw that our ship-dot had flashed past the red danger-dot on the
space-chart. Instantly then Korus Kan twisted the controls sharply to
the left, and immediately our craft was flashing off in a great curve
from the path it had been following, veering suddenly toward the left
while the great swarm just behind us raced still for the moment
straight ahead. Then, before they could swerve aside to follow us, I
had a single flashing glimpse through the window of the whole
mighty swarm suddenly disintegrating, shattering, the thousands of
ships that made it up suddenly whirling away in all directions in blind
chaos of aimless movement as they rushed straight into the mighty
ether-maelstrom into which we had led them. Then they had
vanished, whirling blindly about, as we flashed on out of sight, our
own craft swaying wildly as we drove on through the great currents
about the maelstrom. On the space-chart, though, I saw the great
swarm's pursuit for the moment had ceased, the myriad dots that
made it up milling aimlessly about in the mighty maelstrom's grip
while our single ship-dot raced straight on.
"A chance!" I cried, as our ship flashed on toward the galaxy's suns.
"A chance yet—if we can get to the Cancer cluster before them!"

Now our cruiser was again flashing on at its very highest speed,
straight toward that cluster, while behind us the great swarm whirled
chaotically about. Before us the galaxy's suns were burning out in
waxing splendor as we shot through space toward them, the cluster
of closer-packed suns that was our goal changing now from a ball of
solid light into a ball-like mass of thronging, flaming stars as we drew
nearer it. But as Jhul Din came back into the pilot room from
beneath, as we three contemplated the space-chart and then the
great wall of suns in the blackness ahead, our faces set again after
our brief triumph, for we knew that billions of miles of space lay still
between us and those suns. And now, too, we saw on the chart that
the great swarm of ships behind had escaped from the maelstrom's
grip at last and was racing after us once more in swift pursuit, a
hundred of their ships in the van now of that pursuit with the main
body of the swarm behind.
"It's the last stretch!" I exclaimed, as we gazed tensely at the chart
and into the void ahead. "Unless we get to the Cancer cluster ahead
of them now it's the end."
Our ship was leaping forward still at its uttermost speed, its strained
generators functioning nobly, but the great swarm behind was again
picking up speed itself, the hundred ships massed together a few
million miles ahead of the main swarm hardly more than an inch
behind our own ship-dot on the space-chart. On—on—straight toward
the fiery mass of the Cancer cluster we fled, while behind us, in cruel
repetition of the first part of this wild chase the pursuing ships slowly
cut down the gap between us, the hundred foremost ones leaping
every moment closer toward us, while behind them the main swarm
came on more deliberately. Ahead now the galaxy filled the heavens
before us, myriads of burning stars that gemmed the infinite night
with their flaming brilliance, but of all in the stupendous scene
around and before us we had eyes only for the thronging suns of the
Cancer cluster, and for the space-chart above us.
On—on—the minutes of that mad onward flight were passing each
like an eternity as we leapt forward, tensely braced there in the pilot
room, peering forward, with behind us the hundred pursuing ships
close on our track, remorselessly overtaking us, with behind them the
great swarm of thousands of ships that were driving to attack our
universe. Ahead of us, I knew, there somewhere in the flaming
cluster of suns before us, the cruisers of the great Interstellar Patrol,
the war-ships of our universe, would be gathering and massing to
meet that great invading fleet, but unless we could escape and lead it
into the cluster where they waited they would have no chance for a
surprize attack. Before us by now the great cluster lay in waxing,
flaming splendor, only a scant few billion miles ahead, its thronging,
gathered suns burning out in supreme glory amid the galaxy's looser-
swarming suns, but now the hundred foremost ships of the mighty
swarm behind were almost upon us.
Even as I turned, now, toward the distance-window behind me, I
heard a deep exclamation from Jhul Din, who had turned to gaze
back also, and as I too gazed through that window a chill seemed to
creep through my very blood, for light-points were showing there in
the blackness behind, and drawing swiftly nearer. It was the hundred
foremost ships! Ever closer they were racing toward us, overtaking us
again with every moment, while far behind them the main swarm
raced on after them. With each passing moment the light-points
behind were broadening, brightening, as the ships came closer, but
now the great cluster ahead loomed full before us, its myriads of
flaming, thundering suns drenching all in our pilot room in their
fierce, terrific glare. Straight ahead of us, at the mighty cluster's
outmost edge, flamed a great double star among all the other
thronging stars that made it up, two giant white suns separated only
by a comparatively narrow gap. And straight toward that narrow gap
our fleeing ship was heading!
Behind us now the hundred long oval ships were drawing into plain
sight, their white-lit pilot rooms giving us brief glimpses inside of
massed machinery and slender beings we could but half-glimpse that
moved inside. From the foremost of those ships, now, there stabbed
out toward us the broad, pale, ghostly beam of death, but as yet the
gap between us was too wide for the beam to bridge, and we flashed
onward still, the gleaming shapes of our pursuers leaping still closer.
Before us now the whole firmament seemed a wild chaos of gigantic
suns, as we raced straight in toward the mighty cluster, with ahead
the narrow gap that separated the two giant white suns toward which
we were heading.
Jhul Din gripped my shoulder, pointed ahead, shouted to me over the
roar of our generators. "Unless we slacken speed we'll never make it
through that gap without driving into one of the suns," he cried.
I shook my head. "It's death either way!" I yelled to him. "Our only
chance is to drive between them at full speed!"
Now before us the whole heavens seemed a single vast sheet of
boiling white flame as we drove in toward the two mighty thundering
suns, the gap between them seeming no more than a narrow black
cleft at the terrific velocity at which we were moving. At our topmost
speed we rushed toward that narrow gap, the ships behind still
leaping full upon our track, closing swiftly down upon us now. And
now, as Korus Kan braced himself and held our controls still steady,
we were flashing squarely in between the two gigantic suns. On
either side of us they towered, thundering, boiling upright oceans of
devouring, brilliant white flame, whose awful glare all but blinded us,
seeming to fill all the universe about us with one great mass of
raging fires. Out toward our onward-flashing ship there licked from
the great suns on either side titanic tongues of flame bursting out
toward us for millions of miles, huge prominences that could have
licked up worlds like midges, but straight on between the walling fires
our throbbing ship still flashed.
Now the hundred ships behind, still after us through that hell of light
and flame, were racing down upon us even as we sped between the
giant flaming suns, and now from behind shot shaft upon shaft of the
pale death-beams, hardly to be seen in the awful blinding glare. As
the beams sprang toward us, though, Korus Kan swerved to the left,
and for a moment it seemed that we had swerved from death in one
form only to meet it in another, since at our terrific speed we veered
millions of miles in that moment toward the left gigantic sun. Its
boiling fires were all about us, seemed to encompass us, and then
just as it seemed that we were racing into the mighty glowing corona
to our deaths Korus Kan had swerved our ship backward into the
center of the narrow gap. And now we were reaching that gap's end,
were passing from between the giant suns, and out into more open
space inside the great cluster, with the pursuing ships again leaping
forward to loose their deadly beams.
Out from between the two great suns we flashed, before us now the
interior of the mighty cluster, a great swarm of flaming suns that
thronged space all about us, and about many of which swung great
families of planets, dozens of whirling worlds. Even as we shot into
the interior of the great cluster, though, from between the two giant
suns, the hundred pursuing craft had leaped forward upon us with
one great burst of sudden speed, were behind us, on each side, all
about us. It was the end, we knew, and there was an instant of sheer
silence as we waited for that end, waited for the pale beams of death
from the ships about us. But before they could loose those beams
there flashed suddenly upon them from each side other ships, two
mighty masses of ships like our own, that burst suddenly out upon
our pursuers from behind the two great suns between which we had
just come. Ships like our own! Ships long and slender and gleaming!
Ships of the Interstellar Patrol, striking at the vanguard of the
invaders in defense of our universe!

3. Death-Beam and Crimson Ray

Even as the great masses of ships on each side leapt out upon our
pursuers, Korus Kan had glimpsed them, and had swung our own
ship instantly around in a great curve. On each side of us, now, were
the thousands of cruisers of the great patrol, and before us were the
hundred ships that had chased us in toward the galaxy through
space. Before those ships could recover from their surprize, before
their occupants could realize the trap into which they had ventured,
our whole vast fleet was leaping upon them from both sides, flashing
down upon the hundred invading craft before they could turn from
their onward flight.
Down with them swooped our own ship now, and we shouted aloud
as we saw from all the swooping ships about us, as from our own,
myriad brilliant shafts of the brilliant red ray flashing down and
striking the enemy ships ahead and below. Within an instant, it
seemed, half those racing ships had flared and vanished in brilliant
bursts of crimson light, while the rest had dipped and turned in a wild
effort to escape. Back toward the two great white suns they raced,
seeking to escape between them into outer space again, to rejoin the
oncoming main swarm of their great fleet, but down before and
ahead of them leapt our Patrol cruisers, the red rays again whirling
and cutting in great circles of death. And now as they vanished one
by one beneath those rays, struggling still through space toward the
two great suns, the death beams of the remaining ships sprang
savagely up toward us, and I saw cruisers here and there in our own
fleet driving aimlessly off, smashing into one another and whirling
blindly away as the beams wiped out all life in them.
But now we were leaping after the fleeing ships between the great
suns again, and as we shot after them through those terrific walls of
flame our rays again took toll of them; so that as we flashed out from
between the two mighty suns and into outer space once more but a
scant half-dozen of them remained, and these leapt instantly forward
and out into the blackness of outer space to rejoin the main body of
their approaching fleet, while we in turn sprang after them in hot
pursuit, though our ships were not capable of the tremendous speeds
of those invading ones.
"Score for us!" cried Jhul Din as our ships flashed on. "We've all but
wiped out those hundred!"
"Wait!" I told him. "The main body of their fleet's coming on toward
us——"
Even as I spoke I saw the ship of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol, the
flag-ship of our fleet, slackening its speed ahead of us, and a
moment later there came from the speech-instrument beside me his
clear, unruffled voice.
"All ships halt and mass in battle formation!" he ordered; and at
once, in answer to that command, our flashing ships slowed and
stopped, forming instantly into three thick, short columns and
hanging motionless in space.
On the space-chart above, now, we could see the mass of thousands
of dots that was our fleet hanging motionless a little out from the
galaxy's edge, and could see, too, a little outward from that mass of
dots, another and equally large mass, that moved slowly in toward
us, the great swarm that was the invading fleet. Already the few
fleeing survivors of our hundred pursuers had raced back into that
main swarm, and now, moving ever more slowly but coming steadily
forward, it was driving through space toward us. The great swarm
was moving still in a triangular formation, the triangle's apex toward
us, and now at last, as we stared forward into the blackness, we
made out light-points ahead, a vast swarm of them in that steady
triangular formation, moving deliberately toward us.
Slowly now those light-points were largening, were changing into
great, gleaming ships as their fleet came on toward us. Ever more
slowly it moved, now at but a fraction of a light-speed, for it was
evident that they, like us, sought no fight-and-run skirmish but a
battle to the finish. At last they had stopped, had halted just out of
ray-reach ahead and were hanging motionless in space like ourselves,
facing us. And then, for a moment, it seemed as though about us
was an unbroken stillness and silence, as the two mighty fleets,
numbering each fully five thousand ships, faced each other there in
space.
I think that never in all space and time could there have been a
moment as strange as that one, when the mighty fleet of our galaxy
lay prow to prow with this other mighty fleet from the dark,
unguessed mysteries of outer space. All about us lay the cold,
lightless blackness of the eternal void, with the great galaxy's colossal
rampart of flaming suns stretched across the heavens behind us
alone blazing in that blackness, the great Cancer cluster at its edge,
just behind us, flaming with all the glory of its mass of gathered
suns. A single instant that silence and stillness reigned in the
stupendous scene about us, an instant that to our strained nerves
seemed endless, and then a sharp order rang from the speech-
instrument beside me, and as one our great fleet leapt forward while
the opposing fleet sprang to meet us. The battle was on.
I saw the enemy fleet flashing straight toward us, the apex of its
triangle pointed full at our center, and knew instinctively that it meant
to cut us into halves with the great wedge that was itself. But as it
flashed straight toward us and upon us there rang another order
from the instrument at my side, and instantly our three short columns
of ships veered to the right, changing in a moment into one long
column, which instead of meeting the onrushing triangle flashed
along its side. As we shot past thus I had a lightning glimpse of the
masses of countless oval ships racing by, glimpsed too a score or
more of ships at the center of their fleet that seemed not oval but
round and disk-like in shape, and then forgot all else as from all our
ships there burst the brilliant red rays, raking the side of their fleet
with a deadly fire as we flashed past it. Then scores upon scores of
their ships were vanishing in crimson flares of light as those rays
found them, and though their death-beams found our own ships here
and there as we flashed by, the great mass of their ships dared not
loose their beams upon us lest they destroy their own ships, so skilful
had been our maneuver.
Only a moment did it last, that passing of the two fleets with red ray
and death-beam crossing, and then we were past them, were turning
and circling and racing back upon them to deliver another blow.
Ahead we could see the enemy fleet turning and racing back to meet
us, with beyond them the great suns of the galaxy flaming in the
blackness of space, and again we leapt straight toward them there in
the abysmal void; but this time they had anticipated our maneuver
and as we swerved to the right of them their whole great fleet
swerved right also, so that in order to avoid a head-on collision with
their fleet we were forced to swerve still farther to the right, our long
column racing along through space now parallel to the galaxy's edge,
with the enemy ships strung in a similar column between us and the
galaxy, racing along with us through space at the same speed as
ourselves, their pale ghostly beams whirling toward us even as our
crimson shafts cut through the void toward them.
Ships on each side were vanishing, now, some flaring in wild
explosions of red light and disappearing as the scarlet rays found
them, others driving crazily and aimlessly away as the pale beams
wiped out in an instant all the crews inside them. But now we found
ourselves at a disadvantage, for our enemy's gleaming ships could
hardly be made out against the flaring suns of the galaxy, beyond
them, while our own glittering cruisers stood out clearly against the
darkness of outer space. It was an advantage of which they took
swift use, for now the broad pale beams were reaching toward us in
increasing numbers as we flashed along, while our own rays were all
but ineffective, since, blinded as we were by the flaring suns behind
the opposing ships, we could only loose the rays at random.
On still we raced, along the galaxy's edge, the great Cancer cluster
dropping behind us now as we sped on, our two great fleets striking
and grappling with each other even as they flashed on. Black space
and flaming suns, pale ray and red, oval ships and long cruisers, all
mingled and whirled in that wild scene like the features of some
tortured dream, but dream it was none to us, flashing on with our
fleet while in the hull beneath our crew loosed their red rays of death
upon the chance-seen enemy ships that flashed between us and the
dazzling suns. At an order flashed from the Chief's flag-ship our
whole fleet increased to its utmost velocity, striving to pass the
enemy fleet and get between it and the galaxy again, but the
immeasurable speed of these great invaders from outer space
defeated our efforts. At the same speed as ourselves they raced
forward, keeping always between us and the suns, and when we