Adventure stories; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
On--on--far ahead the galaxy's suns were flaming out in greater
splendor each moment as at all our terrific utmost velocity our ships
and the enemy ships beside us reeled on. Blazing, glorious, those
suns filled the heavens before us, now. We had reeled sidewise in our
first mad struggle and now the Cancer cluster lay to our left ahead, a
stupendous ball of swarming stars at the galaxy's edge, while directly
before us at that edge burned a great star of brilliant green, a mighty
sun toward which at awful speed our two struggling, tremendous lines of
ships were leaping. All about us still the ghostly beams were sweeping
from the great lines of ships to our left, but swiftly the controls
clicked beneath Jhul Din's grasp as he sent our ship racing forward
on a corkscrew, twisting course, evading with miraculous swiftness
and skill the deadly beams; while at the same time from beneath there
came to our ears over the roaring drone of the generators the slap and
clang of the great cylinders as our Andromedan crew shifted their aim,
sending crumpling, devastating shafts of unseen force across the gap
toward the serpent-ships!
But now ahead the great green sun toward which our long, strung-out
fleets were flashing was growing to dazzling size and splendor as we
neared it, neared the galaxy's edge. Like a giant globe of dazzling
green fire it flamed before us, with all about and behind it the awful
blaze of the galaxy's thundering suns, in toward which at terrific and
unabated speed we were racing. Countless thousands upon thousands of
ships, stretched far out in long lines there in space, we were reeling
on at our utmost velocity of millions of light-speeds, stabbing and
striking and falling in wild battle as we plunged madly on. Toward the
right our two flashing lines of ships shifted, as we neared the giant
green sun ahead, for now it was flaming across the firmament before us
like a titanic wall of blinding emerald flame. Still farther to the
right we veered, and then we had reached that sun and it was flaming in
stupendous glory just to our left as we raced along its side!
"We're racing straight into the galaxy!" cried Jhul Din hoarsely as we
thundered on. "It means death to carry this battle in there--our ships
will crash into the suns and worlds at this terrific speed!"
"The serpent-ships will crash then too!" I screamed back to him, above
the roar of the generators and the hissing of beams and force-shafts
about us. "We'll carry this battle to a finish!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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