But already I had pressed swiftly on the keys before me, and about us our ships were massing again, the galaxy-ships with us now; and then close-massed together we were racing outward, too, out of the mighty sea of flame about us, bursting out of the titanic nebula into the open spaces of the galaxy once more, its thronging suns all about us. Through those suns, back toward the galaxy's edge in swift flight, the five thousand remaining serpent-ships were flashing, the only surviving remnant of their vast fleet, that our two armadas had conquered and all but destroyed. Back toward the Cancer cluster they were fleeing, upon whose thronging worlds all the hordes of the serpent-races were massed, and within which those hordes, we knew, would be laboring still to complete the great cone that now we could destroy. So on after them our own fleet leapt, a score of thousands of mighty ships in close formation thundering after our flying enemy. Past mighty, flaming suns we were racing, in pursuit, past slow-turning great worlds that moved about those suns and that we raced between and past, through the galaxy's giant stars toward its edge, toward the Cancer cluster. On--on--after the fleeing serpent-craft we raced, until far before us through the crowding suns there came into view the great cluster toward which they were heading, a gigantic, globular swarm of suns there at the galaxy's edge. The serpent-ships had reached it, now, were dropping swiftly down toward it, and as we too flashed above it we dropped after them in hot pursuit. Down--down--the great ball of flaming suns was growing swiftly in size as we neared it, the countless thronging worlds between those suns, packed now with the serpent-races, visible beneath--down--down--and then suddenly, in obedience to some unseen order, the serpent-ships fleeing downward beneath us had halted, had turned, and then were driving straight back up toward us! * * * * * So utterly unlooked for was that swift, fierce attack that before we could swerve aside our downward-rushing thousands of craft had crashed straight into the uprushing serpent-ships. Then the moment after that wild shock in which hundreds, thousands of ships had smashed head-on together, there was battle again there above that mighty ball of suns, with the giant splendor of our galaxy to one side and the infinite vault of outer space to the other, a battle such as in sheer, concentrated intensity none of us had ever yet experienced. Like senseless mechanisms, with the mad energy of despair, the serpent-ships drove toward us, flinging away their lives to hold us longer from the great cluster beneath and its crowded, serpent-peopled worlds, throwing themselves upon us with such awful fierceness that, outnumbering them as we did, our fleet reeled and staggered there beneath their blows.