My heart leapt at the thought, for if it were so it would mean the first success of our mission across the void. Silently we watched, as our ship's single dot on the chart raced closer and closer toward the half-hundred dots above it, they moving now at a speed almost equal to our own. Within moments we would be able to glimpse them, we knew, and gazed tensely into the blackness of space ahead, toward the Andromeda universe's flaring suns, as our craft raced on. Moments were passing, tense moments of silence and watchfulness, and then far ahead we glimpsed in the void, hardly to be seen against the great glow of the Andromeda universe, a little mass of light-points that steadily were largening as we gradually overtook them. A full fifty of them in sight, they were flashing on in a close formation, allowing us to overhaul them, changing from mere light-points into dark, vaguely glimpsed shapes as we drove nearer toward them. Then at last we had reached them, were driving in among them as they moved now at the same speed as ourselves, could see their shapes more clearly as long and _oval_, their front ends white-lit transparent-walled rooms like our own. Nearer we were flashing to those before us and about us, and then in those white-lit control rooms I glimpsed their occupants, slender, writhing pale shapes at sight of which I cried aloud. "Serpent-ships!" I cried. "Serpent-ships from the dying universe ahead! Those back in our galaxy from whom we escaped have warned them of our coming, by the means of etheric communication their records mentioned--they know our mission and they've come out to intercept us here in space!" Even as I cried out, Korus Kan's hands flashed out to the controls, but he was an instant too late. For at that same moment the ships just before us had turned and circled in one swift movement, and were rushing straight back toward us. I had a flashing glimpse of their white-lit prows racing toward us through the intense darkness, and saw with photographic clearness the slender serpent-shapes in those brilliantly lit pilot rooms, and then the foremost ship loomed suddenly enormous as it flashed straight toward us. With a sharp cry Korus Kan drove the controls sidewise to swerve our ship, but before we could avoid the onrushing craft ahead it was upon us and with a terrific, thunderous shock had crashed straight into our own racing ship! 7. _The Gates of a Universe_