lured to destruction, were speeding out into the great void after us. Moments they had been delayed, apparently, by the confusion and chaos there in the opening between the space-forts, but though in those moments we had flashed far ahead their close-massed ships came on after us at their topmost speed—a great pursuit that they were carrying out into the void between the universes!
"They'll pursue us to the bitter end!" I exclaimed, my eyes on the chart. "They'll go to any length rather than let us get to the Andromeda universe!"
I wheeled about, my eyes seeking our speed-dials. Already we were traveling through the void at our own highest velocity, a full ten million light-speeds, but the shining mass of the Andromeda universe seemed in- finitely distant in the blackness ahead, with that swift, relentless pursuit behind us. A moment more and Jhul Din strode out of the pilot room down to the great, throbbing generators beneath, striving to gain from them a fraction more of speed. For now was beginning, we knew, the most bitter of all chases, a stem chase with vast abysses of space lying between us and the universe that was our goal, and with the five hundred flying craft of the serpent-creatures close behind.
On—on—moment after moment, hour after dragging hour, our ship hummed through the awful void, flashing with each moment through countless millions of miles of the infinity of blackness and emptiness that lay about us, with the half-thousand ships of the serpent-creatures coming grimly on behind. The far-flung, dim-glowing dying universe behind us glowed even dimmer, diminishing in extent, too, as we shot onward, while before us the shining disk-mass of the Andromeda universe shone ever more brightly; yet it was with a terrifying slowness that that disk largened as we flawed toward it. Tensely I stood with Korus Kan in the pilot room, gazing toward it, and even then could not but reflect upon what a strange spectacle it would all have presented to any observer who could have seen it: a spectacle of one mighty ship pursued by a half-thousand, as it raced through the void from one universe to another, manned by a score of dissimilar beings drawn from the stars of still a third universe, and carrying with them its fate.
But it was with dark enough thoughts, as our ship flashed on for hour upon hour, that I myself contemplated the three universes that lay before and behind and beside us. Before us the Andromeda universe was shining in ever-increasing size and brilliance with each hour that we raced toward it; but what, I wondered, would we find in that universe even were we able to escape the swift and terrible pursuit behind? Was there any chance of finding in it, in the race that held sway over its suns and worlds, the help that could save our galaxy? Was it not possible that even were we able to reach it we would be treated by that race as merely other strangers and invaders from an alien universe?
My eyes swung, too, toward the far little glow of light in the blackness to our left, a patch of misty light that seemed very tiny in the stupendous blackness and emptiness of space that lay about it. Yet my mind’s eye, leaping out across the terrific abysses that separated us from it, could see that little light-patch as it was, could make out the throngs of blazing stars that formed it—our galaxy, the giant suns and smaller stars and thronging, far-swinging worlds through which we had roamed with the ships of the Interstellar Patrol. And I could see it as it would be now, convulsed with panic fear, as from their great base of the Cancer cluster the vanguard of the serpent-invaders spread terror and destruction out over the neigh-
