Standing outside the mighty tower of the Council of Suns, with the light of great Canopus brilliant on all about us, Jhul Din, Korus Kan and I watched, days later, as our Andromedan allies bade us farewell. Behind us were grouped the massed thousands of the Council, with its Chief, Serk Haj, beside us, while in close-ranked rows on the ground before us rested the five thousand Andromedan ships that were all that remained of the mighty fleet of a hundred thousand that had come across the void to our universe. From those ships the dozen of the Andromedan leaders were coming toward us, while in them their crews awaited the start. In the intervening days those crews, those thousands of gaseous Andromedans, had been the recipients of the galaxy's frantic gratitude at having lifted from it the shadow of doom that had hung upon it, in all that time when the serpent-creatures, in the Cancer cluster, had prepared to spread out in their great conquest. Sun had vied with sun, and world with world, to do the Andromedans honor, for they it was, as all in the galaxy knew, who had gathered the mighty fleet that had rushed across the void to our universe's aid. They it was who, with the galaxy's fleet, had smashed the serpent-armada in such a battle as had never been known before. And they it was, too, whose great sun-swinging ships had saved us at the last, had annihilated all the serpent-hordes and their cone of doom. And if the galaxy had given to the Andromedans for their aid its highest honors, it had given no less to us and our followers who had dared cross the void to seek that aid; to me, who had led that wild expedition across the gulf and had led the great Andromedan fleet back to our galaxy and into the colossal battle of universes; to Jhul Din, who had saved us all, and with us the galaxy's chance of life, in the serpent-universe; and to Korus Kan, who when captured with the sun-swinging craft by the attraction-ships had managed to escape them in the void far out from the Andromeda universe by replacing in an upward position some of the purple-force projectors of the sun-swinging ships, blasting the disk-ships that held them with the force of those projectors and racing back to find our great fleet gone, speeding across the void after us and flashing in to save us at the last moment. So great was the gratitude of our galaxy for what we had done that no reward had been offered, either to us or to the Andromedans. For what save our universe itself could reward those who had saved that universe?