Now ahead I could see the cube-ships we pursued struggling toward
that opening slower and slower, fighting the currents which were most
powerful here where they issued from the mighty coma ahead. A moment
more, though, and they had reached it, and vanished inside, while we
in turn were fighting through the titanic sweep of those currents
toward it. On--on--the currents that raged against us had become
awful in strength, seeming to clutch at us with supreme power at this
last moment. The opening loomed larger ahead, now, a dark circular
passageway remaining miraculously open and unchanged through that
electrical sea whose deadly crimson mass formed its walls. On--on--it
seemed that never could we reach it, so terribly did the currents sweep
about us. Yard by yard, foot by foot, we crept forward toward it, were
on its brink, seemed to hesitate there for an instant before being
swept backward and away, and then with a supreme last effort of our
throbbing generators we crept forward out of the grip of those gigantic
currents and into the open passageway!
Now all about us there raged the glowing electrical sea of the colossal
coma, into the deadly mass of which the passage led, a straight passage
which I knew could only be artificially made and maintained. Far ahead
in that light-walled passage we could glimpse the dark shapes of the
cubes, fleeing still before us, and now with humming generators our
cruisers leapt forward, through that tunnel of the deadly coma! Above,
below, on each side, there raged the coma's electrical sea, which it
were annihilation to touch, and the circular passage down which we fled
was hardly wide enough to admit three of our ships abreast, yet down
it at reckless speed we sped, all thought leaving us now save the wild
excitement of the pursuit.
Crimson light from the hell of glowing death that raged all about
us beat blood-like upon us as we drove on, yet the cries of Gor Han
and Najus Nar and even the cool Jurt Tul mingled with my own from
the speech-instrument, as we shot forward in pursuit of the fleeing
cubes. Never, surely, was pursuit stranger than that one, the galaxy's
hundreds of cruisers, manned by every dissimilar shape to be found
upon its myriad worlds, leaping forward in the narrow opening that
led through a comet's deadly mass into its unglimpsed heart, after
the strange cube-craft that fled on before us. A single slip of the
controls for a fraction of an inch was enough to send any cruiser into
the incandescent walls to death, and indeed I glimpsed cruisers among
those that followed me blundering into those walls in our wild flight
onward and vanishing in wild spurts of light!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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