Hour upon hour of swift flight was dropping behind us as we raced steadily and smoothly on, detouring far around the great heat-regions and radio-active regions that we encountered, heading on toward the serpent-universe that was glowing ever broader before us. Smooth, immeasurable and endless they seemed, those hours of swift and steady flight, but at last we became aware that they were coming to an end, the dying universe ahead a great dim glow across all the blackness of the firmament. Ever our eyes hung upon that misty region of light as we flashed nearer and nearer to it, and ever the same doubt, the same wonder, rose and grew in our minds. Could we, really, crush and destroy the serpent-peoples in this strange universe? What would be the outcome of the tremendous battle we must fight in it to prevent the serpent-hordes from pouring across space toward our own universe? Before us now the somber splendor of the dying universe filled the heavens, a vast mass of dead and dying suns, black and burned-out stars and suns of smoky crimson, glowing in the blackness of space like the embers of a mighty, dying fire. Around that great, dim-glowing mass we could make out the gigantic shell of flickering blue light, all but invisible, that surrounded it, the titanic and impenetrable wall of vibrations that enclosed it. In toward that wall our vast fleet was racing, moving at slackening speed as I touched a key before me, until at last the mighty flickering barrier loomed close ahead, the single opening in it, guarded by the huge space-forts on each side, lying straight before us. And as we drew within sight of that opening we saw, hanging in space just inside it, massed solidly across it, a thousand oval ships! "The serpent-ships!" I exclaimed. "They're going to hold the gate of their universe against us!" Jhul Din was staring at them as though puzzled. "But why only a thousand ships?" he said. "Why haven't they massed all their great fleet there at the gate----" But I had turned, had pressed the keys before me in swift succession, and at once our tremendous fleet had slowed and smoothly halted, hanging there in space. Then, as I depressed still other keys, our vast mass of ships split smoothly into three separate masses, my flag-ship at the van of the central mass, the others moving to right and to left of us. A moment our three great masses of ships hung there, and then those on either side of us had flashed toward the great space-forts that guarded each side of the great opening, while our own central mass, my ship at its head, drove straight in toward the great opening itself!