"It is a universe in which the thronging stars have followed nature's inexorable laws and have darkened and died, one by one, a great universe passing into death and darkness and decay as our own and all others, some time in the far future, will pass. For eons upon it had dwelt the great masses of the serpent-people, thronging its countless worlds, and as their suns began to fail them, one by one, as their universe swept toward its final darkness and death, they saw that it was necessary for them to migrate to another universe unless they wished to pass also into death. So they constructed great space-ships which were able to travel at millions of light-speeds, by causing an ether-shift about the ship; space-ships in which it would be possible to do what never had another done, to cross the vast gulf between universes. Five thousand of these, when finished, they sent out with serpent-crews and death-beam armament as an advance party which was to locate a universe satisfactory for their races and then attack it, gaining a foothold upon it while the rest of the countless serpent-hordes would build a still mightier fleet of tens of thousands of ships, which would transport all their great hordes to the universe they meant to conquer. "So the five thousand ships drove out from the dying universe into the void, toward the Andromeda universe, the nearest to their own. Down they poured upon it in swift attack, but up to meet them rose the people of the Andromeda universe, a single race ruling all of it, whose science and power were so great that with mighty weapons they drove back and defeated the five thousand attacking ships, forcing them back into outer space again. It was clear that for the present the Andromeda universe could not be conquered, so they turned at a right angle, and after flashing a message by some means of etheric communication to the masses of their peoples in the dying universe, struck out through the infinite void in a new direction, toward our own universe. "Across the void they came, toward our universe, and rushed in upon it after the long days of their tremendous flight through space, met and annihilated our own great fleet at the galaxy's edge, and have settled upon the Cancer cluster, gaining the foothold they desired. Soon from their dying universe will come their vast main fleet with all their hordes, and with a mighty weapon which the records mention as now being constructed in the dying universe, a weapon to annihilate all life on our worlds with terrific swiftness. They will come, in all their masses, and when they have annihilated the races of the Federated Suns and hold all our galaxy in their grasp will then sail back with renewed power to pour down upon the Andromeda universe and conquer it also. A cosmic plague of conquest and destruction, creeping through the infinite void from universe to universe!"