Down--down--black gloom of space and blazing suns and whirling ships, all spun about me as our fleet rushed giddily down through the void toward the massed serpent-fleet beneath; then we were upon them, were shifting into a long, slender line of ships as my fingers on the keys flashed another signal, were driving in that line past them, raking them with all the force-shafts of our cylinders. But as we did so their own great mass of ships shifted swiftly into a similar long, slender column, and then they were racing through space beside us, two tremendously long lines of thousands upon thousands of ships, rushing through the void toward the galaxy, with pale death-beams and invisible force-shafts clashing and crossing from line to line as they flashed on! * * * * * For the moment, as the two fleets rushed thus side by side toward the galaxy's suns, so narrow was the gap between their flashing two lines that it seemed they must needs annihilate each other with their mighty weapons. Plainly visible in space beside us raced the line of the serpent-fleet, its beams stabbing thick toward our own ships, and in that wild moment ships behind and about our own were reeling unguided away by scores as the pale beams swept through them. Into one another and into untouched ships about them they crashed, whirling crazily in all directions; but in the same moments the deadly shafts from our own cylinders were leaping across the gap between the racing lines also, and serpent-ships all along their tremendous line were crumpling and collapsing, the racing ships behind them often crashing into those twisted wrecks before they could swerve aside from them. On--on--in a tremendous running fight the vast fleets leapt, a fight that was annihilating the ships of both fleets by scores and hundreds with each moment, but which neither of us would turn away from, hanging to each other and stabbing furiously with our beams and shafts toward each other as we raced madly on!