Adventure stories; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
I wheeled about, my eyes seeking our speed-dials. Already we were
traveling through the void at our own highest velocity, a full ten
million light-speeds, but the shining mass of the Andromeda universe
seemed infinitely distant in the blackness ahead, with that swift,
relentless pursuit behind us. A moment more and Jhul Din strode out
of the pilot room down to the great, throbbing generators beneath,
striving to gain from them a fraction more of speed. For now was
beginning, we knew, the most bitter of all chases, a stern chase with
vast abysses of space lying between us and the universe that was our
goal, and with the five hundred flying craft of the serpent-creatures
close behind.
On--on--moment after moment, hour after dragging hour, our ship hummed
through the awful void, flashing with each moment through countless
millions of miles of the infinity of blackness and emptiness that lay
about us, with the half-thousand ships of the serpent-creatures coming
grimly on behind. The far-flung, dim-glowing dying universe behind us
glowed even dimmer, diminishing in extent, too, as we shot onward,
while before us the shining disk-mass of the Andromeda universe shone
ever more brightly; yet it was with a terrifying slowness that that
disk largened as we flashed toward it. Tensely I stood with Korus
Kan in the pilot room, gazing toward it, and even then could not but
reflect upon what a strange spectacle it would all have presented to
any observer who could have seen it: a spectacle of one mighty ship
pursued by a half-thousand, as it raced through the void from one
universe to another, manned by a score of dissimilar beings drawn from
the stars of still a third universe, and carrying with them its fate.
But it was with dark enough thoughts, as our ship flashed on for hour
upon hour, that I myself contemplated the three universes that lay
before and behind and beside us. Before us the Andromeda universe was
shining in ever-increasing size and brilliance with each hour that we
raced toward it; but what, I wondered, would we find in that universe
even were we able to escape the swift and terrible pursuit behind? Was
there any chance of finding in it, in the race that held sway over
its suns and worlds, the help that could save our galaxy? Was it not
possible that even were we able to reach it we would be treated by that
race as merely other strangers and invaders from an alien universe?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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