The Sun People

"Nort Norus, Chairman of the Council of Suns!"

As my name rang forth, I was stepping up onto the great dais at the center of the Hall of Suns. The roar of dissimilar voices that had filled that hall a moment before died instantly, and from all the thousands of differing forms gathered here in the great Council of Suns of which I was head there came no sound. Great plant-men of Capella, strange faceless hairy beings from Mizar, big, green-bodied amphibians from Aldebaran—these and all the countless other unlike forms about them were silent in that moment as I stood upon the dais, facing them. And as silent were the two great forms that stood behind me: J'han Jal, Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, of the bird-like races of Sirius, his tall body covered with short feathers, his arms and legs ending in great talons, with a great beak between his two dark keen eyes; and Mirk En, Chief of the Science Bureau, a big octopus-bodied Vegan, his round, single-eyed body-mass the center of his nine great tentacle-limbs.

But though all these stood silent in that moment, there came through the hall's tall windows an unceasing roar of tumultuous activity from outside. Through those windows I could look out across the tumult, across the distant strange black cities towering into the brilliant white light of great Canopus overhead. And in their streets, I could see, swarmed great-headed and bodiless Canopans, their thin, piping voices coming to my ears in a dull roar. Over those shouting, wildly swirling throngs there soared countless great ships, darting up and out from Canopus into space or slanting down out of space toward the great sun's worlds. Only a moment I gazed out over that mighty tumult, and then turned back to the members of the great Council, who stood in silence before me.

"Members of the Council," I addressed them, "each one of you knows what peril to our galaxy it is that has gathered you all here. Each one of you knows what tremendous panic has gripped all the galaxy's suns and worlds. Each of you knows, in short, what terrible doom is even at this moment destroying our universe!"

They were silent before me as I paused, listening to me in an utter tension of body and spirit, while from outside there came still the distant roar of the panic-driven crowds. Then I was speaking on.

"Our galaxy, our universe, consists as you all know of thousands of suns, great and small, gathered together in a roughly disk-shaped mass, floating here in infinite space. Upon the worlds of almost all these suns exist our races, races of dissimilar beings who yet combined long ago into our great Federation of Suns, with its capital here at Canopus, the mightiest and most central of all the galaxy's suns. For eons our ships have plied the ways of our universe from sun to sun; for eons the cruisers of our mighty Interstellar Patrol have watched and warded the ways between those suns. Banded thus into this mighty Federation, indeed; our races, our suns, have come to be more and more dependent upon each other for continued existence. And now that great Federation of Suns, our great galaxy itself, is being broken up, destroyed!

"It was but two days ago that the first warning of the thing came to us. Great Deneb, at the galaxy's edge, was beginning, its astronomers reported, to move outward into space with ever-increasing speed! Deneb, like almost all our suns, had moved always through space yet had kept always inside the galaxy's mass, just as countless bees can each be moving yet can hold together steadily in a compact swarm. But now, it was clear, Deneb was doing what never a sun in our universe had done before, was leaving that universe, was moving out from the galaxy!

"Hardly had that astounding news been received by us, indeed, when there came from Spica, far around the galaxy's edge from Deneb, the same startling news. Spica also, its astronomers flashed word, was moving outward into the void of space. And swiftly from other of the outer-most and inner suns, from Rigel and Mira and Betelgeuse and Altair, came the same amazing news, that they also were beginning to move outward, to separate! Report after swift report we received in the next hours, from the astronomers of sun after sun, from Sirius and Algol and Saiph and Arcturus and Procyon, from myriads upon myriads of others, until by now it is known definitely that practically every sun in the galaxy, save great Canopus which lies motionless here at the galaxy's center, is moving away from its swarming fellow-suns; that the galaxy's great swarm of stars is breaking up as its stars move away in all directions!

"But what caused this outward movement of all the galaxy's suns? That is what we sought first to learn, since it might be that this movement was but a temporary phenomenon. You know that the galaxy's suns have been held together by their gravitational attraction toward each other. It is that attraction of sun for sun that has held them always in the galaxy's disk-like mass, regardless of their own movements, in the same way that chips floating in water will gather in a mass despite their own movements. If that gravitational attraction between the galaxy's suns did not exist, they would no longer be held together, the swarm would disintegrate; since besides their movements the unopposed light-pressure of one sun upon another would cause them to spread out in all directions. If that gravitational attraction between the suns of the galaxy did not exist, that was what would happen, we knew, and since that was happening, we knew that in some way the gravitational attraction had been nullified.

"That, indeed, was what our Science Bureau soon found to be the case. They found that there were radiating out through our galaxy unceasing vibrations of immense force which were destroying the gravitational pull of our suns upon each other. You know that long ago we found gravitational attraction to be a vibratory force, whose wave-length or frequency depends upon the size of the gravitational body. Thus gravitation, like any other vibratory force, can be destroyed by opposing to its vibrations other dampening vibrations of equal wave-length and frequency. And that, we found, is what this strange force, this strange vibration radiating out through our galaxy, is doing: it is annihilating the pull of our great suns upon each other. The gravitational force of their worlds is so much lower in frequency by reason of their far smaller size that it is unaffected by the strange vibrations which are destroying the attraction of our suns for each other. Thus the worlds of each sun cling to that sun by their own attraction for it, move with that sun still, but the suns themselves no longer attract each other and thus are spreading outward from the galaxy in all directions.

"And that outward movement marks the end of our galaxy's mighty swarm of suns. Already its countless stars are spreading outward, farther and farther from each other, in all directions. Slowly now they are moving outward, but ever faster, and within twenty hours more, we have calculated, the great outer suns will be so far out that even were this destroying vibration removed and the attraction of our suns for each other restored, it would be too late to draw them back into the galaxy's swarm. Outward—outward—all are moving outward save great Canopus here at the center, which soon will be left alone in space where once floated the great universe of which it was capital. For by then each of the great suns of that universe will be pursuing its own way into the great void, separated for all time from its fellow-suns of our galaxy, and that it is that has sent blind terror rolling across all the peoples of our suns and worlds. For it means the end forever of our mighty Federation of Suns, the end forever of our galaxy, our universe!"

I paused for a moment, and a death-like silence greeted me, a silence more terrible than any shout of fear. And I saw that all eyes were upon me in an utter tenseness of fear and hope.

We of the Council of Suns have gathered here to stand against that doom even now while it separates forever our swarming suns. Whence is coming that great radiating vibration that is breaking up our universe? That is the question that we sought first to solve. Working unceasingly on that question in the first hours after the alarm, our scientists strove to locate the source of those vibrations, using directional-ray apparatus to test them from a score of different suns. By charting and combining their findings, they have managed to locate the source of those great vibrations. And that source, they found, lies at the very center of the galaxy's mightiest and most central sun, lies at the center of great Canopus! From far within Canopus' fires are coming these vibrations that are wrecking our galaxy. The fact is beyond dispute. Whether these are being loosed, as our scientists think, by some chance combination of atomic forces at Canopus' heart, or whether they are loosed from some other source, it is certain that it is from the great sun's center that those vibrations are coming. And so, to save our universe, there is but one thing that must be done, that can be done. And that is to penetrate down to Canopus' center and destroy if possible whatever great centers of atomic force have formed there that are loosing these radiating vibrations that are destroying our galaxy!

"To penetrate down to Canopus' center! That may seem to you impossible, insane, to penetrate through the awful white fires of the galaxy's greatest sun, that titanic ball of fire whose terrific heat is such as to break up the atomic structures of even the gases of which it is composed, whose radiated heat alone warms scores of circling worlds. To penetrate to the great sun's center—what cruiser, you will say, could do it? We have heat-resistant cruisers, indeed, cruisers that can resist high temperatures, can dare the glowing nebulæ, but these would be annihilated instantly in the gigantic sun's terrific temperatures. Yet down into the heart of Canopus a cruiser must go if the galaxy is to be saved! And knowing that, the Chief of the Science Bureau has in the last two days turned all its energies upon the equipment of such a cruiser, and has succeeded but now in equipping one of the cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol to enable it to plunge unharmed into the great sun's boiling fires!

"In that cruiser has been set a mechanism which radiates vibrations tuned to meet and destroy the vibrations of radiant heat for a considerable distance around the ship. Great projectors have also been set in rows along the cruiser's sides and at its stem and stern, projectors which when turned on will project broad fan-like rays, the matter-destroying rays used as weapons by the Interstellar Patrol. Now when this cruiser plunges toward great Canopus it will turn on both the projectors and the generator of the heat-destroying vibrations, which will keep any smallest degree of the mighty sun's awful heat from ever reaching the cruiser. And when the cruiser plunges into the boiling seas of flaming gases, the matter-destroying rays from the projectors will keep all those gases from ever touching the cruiser.

"With that vacuum-sheath created by the projectors about it, the cruiser can plunge into the mighty sun's fires without being ever touched by its flaming gases. And the terrific, unthinkable heat can not harm it, can not even reach it, since the vibrations of that radiant heat will be dampened, nullified, destroyed all around it by the opposing vibrations from the generator inside the ship. Thus this cruiser can plunge into Canopus' fires and can, unless it encounters perils of which we know nothing, make its way to the center of the great sun, to those regions of atomic force which have formed there and are apparently loosing these gravity-destroying vibrations outward upon our universe. With its great matter-destroying rays this cruiser can, if it finds them, break up and destroy these centers or regions of atomic force, and so save our galaxy from destruction.

"But one cruiser we have that can do that, and in that cruiser J'han Jal and Mirk En and I are starting toward the great sun at once. We three—the Chairman of the Council of Suns, the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, and the Chief of the Science Bureau—we three are going in this great hour of peril to penetrate into great Canopus' fires and if possible destroy whatever source there is loosing these vibrations of doom upon us. For unless the attraction of our galaxy's suns toward each other is restored within twenty hours its outer-most suns will have moved too far away to be ever pulled backward into its swarm. So that it is only by finding the source of those vibrations at the heart of great Canopus and by stopping their radiation outward that we have any last chance of lifting this doom that even now is disintegrating our universe!"

2

"Canopus' edge will be before us in minutes!" J'han Jal said, turning toward me. "Already we are well inside the corona."

I nodded. "Hold straight ahead at the same speed," I told him. "We'll turn on our protective generator and projectors in a moment."

J'han Jal's talon-hands held the cruiser's controls steady at my words, keeping it racing straight forward. Though the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, he himself had stood at those controls from the start of our cruiser from the Hall of Suns an hour before, knowing as we all did what mighty destinies hung upon this single cruiser of ours. Now, as he stood there gazing ahead through the little control room's great windows, Mirk En and I stood to right and left of him. Silent now, in a silence that reigned complete in the control room save for the never-ceasing throb of the great mechanisms beneath whose propulsion-vibrations our cruiser flung on through space, and the strange half-heard voices of the crew busy about those mechanisms, we three gazed together toward the stupendous and appalling spectacle before us.

For there before us burned in space the colossal blinding sphere of mighty Canopus, greatest and most central of all the galaxy's suns. A huge globe of intensely brilliant white fire, to our stunned eyes it seemed a gigantic wall of light across all the heavens, its supernal brilliance beating in upon us dazzlingly despite the great light-repellent shields which had been fitted over all our cruisers windows to protect us from that terrific glare. Familiar enough to us had been the great sun always, but now it was as though we saw it for the first time in all its stupefying splendor. For never before had we or any others approached so near to it as now we were, our little cruiser having moved at cautious speed in toward it from the great world of the Hall of Suns, and now penetrating into the stupendous glowing region of the mighty sun's corona.

That corona was like a colossal halo of glowing light that surrounded all the giant sun and into which our moving little cruiser was penetrating, seeming no more than some dark, tiny insect in size. Gazing ahead through the corona's great glow, we could make out the clearer features of the huge sun's surface before us, our window-shields allowing us to inspect them though at the expense even then of dazzled eyes. A tremendous sphere of boiling white fire, of incandescent white gases of unthinkable heat, the mighty sun loomed before us. Out from that sphere we could see vast prominences leaping, titanic uprushing jets of incandescent gas capable each of licking up hundreds of worlds. And upon the sun's surface, the photosphere, we could see here and there darker regions, great sun-spots which were each, we knew, gigantic whirlpools or maelstroms of the incandescent gases that composed the colossal sun.

"Those gases—and those awful fires——" said J'han Jal. "To penetrate into them—into a sun—it's something never dreamed of in all the galaxy before!"

"But we can do it—must do it," I said. "Somewhere inside that sun is the source of the vibrations that are breaking up the galaxy, and they must be halted."

"But our protective equipment—our generator and projectors—hadn't we best turn them on now?" asked Mirk En. "This corona's heat is growing every moment, Nort Norus."

I nodded, glancing at a dial which recorded the fact that the temperature about us had become indeed dangerous to our cruiser. Then I swiftly clicked over the series of switches that controlled the generator beneath and the projectors about our ship. At once the peculiar loud throbbing of the generator became audible, radiating out the vibrations which were meeting and destroying the vibrations of radiant heat directly about us. And as I glanced now at the dial, our cruiser still racing onward, it was to see the temperature that it recorded swiftly decreasing, until in a moment the temperature just outside our cruiser was the absolute cold of space, even as we raced in toward the mighty sun!

From our ship's sides came the low hissing of the matter-destroying rays being shot forth unceasingly in broad fans that sheathed all our ship. These were not being used, really, since there was no matter in the great sun's corona, but at every moment we were drawing nearer toward the boiling white sea of the sun's photosphere. Onward we were racing, J'han Jal's great talons steady on the controls, Mirk En and I beside him; and now through our window-shields it seemed that the colossal sphere was only one tremendous sea of blinding white thundering flame that walled the firmament before us. Outward, around and near to us, as we shot on, the mighty prominences of the huge sun were leaping, and we saw that dead ahead in the giant sun's surface there spun one of the gigantic maelstroms or whirlpools that are called sun-spots.

I pointed toward it. "Veer left, J'han Jal," I told the big Sirian. "We daren't be caught in one of those sun-spot maelstroms—even with our protective vacuum-sheath it would whirl us about in its great currents and possibly wreck us."

He swerved the ship to the left of the great sun-spot's maelstrom of unthinkable fires, a whirlpool of flaming gases that extended far beneath the surface, we knew, and that could have engulfed countless worlds. And now there were whirling about us great masses of glowing vapors, vapors that were themselves of tremendous heat and that were composed of iron and calcium and sodium and many other metals, existing in vapor form only, here in the tremendous temperatures of great Canopus. Through those vapor-masses our cruiser was shooting on unharmed, though, its protective rays keeping its vacuum always about it, its generators vibrations repelling and nullifying the terrible radiant heat from all about it. Onward we shot until I saw with pounding heart that within minutes we would be plunging into the terrible fires of the mighty sun itself.

Nearer—nearer—we were racing toward the surface, a titanic upright sea of boiling white flame, and then Mirk En cried out suddenly, pointed ahead. From that surface a giant prominence was shooting, was rushing in an instant all about us. No sound came from it to us across our vacuum-sheath, but as it caught our cruiser it whirled it this way and that with wild, terrified power. For though the gases of that prominence did not touch the cruiser itself by reason of its vacuum-sheath, their swift rush of tremendous matter-masses exerted a gravitational attraction upon our little ship and tossed it this way and that in their grip. I heard hoarse cries from the crew beneath, glimpsed great J'han Jal holding our ship's stem grimly ahead even in the grip of that colossal out-rushing prominence, and then it had receded and we were humming on toward the surface of mighty Canopus. But now it lay just before us, an awful ocean of dazzling white fire, the terrible and gigantic sun-spot maelstrom away to our right. And then our ship had shot into that boiling white sea of flame, was plunging into Canopus' awful fires toward its heart!

Stunned, blinded, overwhelmed, it was in that moment as though all about us was only a titanic rushing of colossal masses of fire, a wild and ceaseless fluxing of awful floods of flame about our cruiser. Gripped and tossed this way and that by rushing masses of incandescent gases, I was aware in a moment that J'han Jal had kept the cruiser's stem still forward, and that we were plunging farther and farther into those flames, swaying and pitching from side to side but racing steadily onward! Steady around our ship there hung the vacuum-sheath that kept from us the destroying fires, and steady beneath throbbed the generator whose vibrations repelled the terrible heat from all about us. Were either of those protections to fail suddenly, I knew, our cruiser and all within it would vanish in a split-second in one single blast of fire, changed into vapors by the awful heat of the incandescent masses into which we were plunging!

On—on—still we were plunging toward the great sun's center, Mirk En and I steadying ourselves beside J'han Jal as our cruiser rushed on into Canopus' thundering fires. Great feathered Sirian, octopus-like Vegan, erect earth-man—surely trio strange enough did we make as we plunged on in that fearful journey the like of which none in the galaxy had ever made before. On—on—and now it seemed that the wild rush of awful flame-masses became suddenly swifter, more awful, in their thunderous rush about us, became even more blinding, even more unthinkable in heat.

"The photosphere!" cried J'han Jal beside me, "We've passed through the photosphere!"

"Hold straight on!" I shouted. "We've got to reach the center!"

Now we were reeling on into the wild fires of the interior, whose temperature all about us now, I knew, was countless thousands of degrees! On into that interior we were rushing, plunging through Canopus' titanic inferno with only our immaterial heat-destroying vibrations and the slender vacuum-sheath about our ship to protect it from annihilation in those awful fires!

On and on—all things in the universe seemed to have dissolved into a single mighty flood of rushing flame through which our ship was endlessly battling. Beside me J'han Jal was braced strongly against the controls, holding them in a grasp of iron with his great talons, keeping our cruiser heading onward despite all the rushing currents of fire that surged about us and made our ship pitch and sway crazily. To his right Mirk En held with his great octopus-tentacles to the control standards, gazing ahead steadfastly at the awful seas of fire through which we rushed; while I, braced beside J'han Jal, watched tensely the dials before us, with loud in my ears now the steady throbbing of our generator and the hissing of our rays which were alone preserving us from a fearful death, and the cries of our crew beneath.

By now, I knew, we were deep beneath the surface, and since our protective equipment seemed functioning perfectly my hopes that we might attain the great sun's center grew stronger. But in the very next moment panic stabbed lightning-like across those hopes; for our cruiser was suddenly gripped as though by a gigantic hand, was whirled away blindly through the fires as though by colossal forces, J'han Jal and Mirk En and myself being flung to the control room's end by that wild swift reclining of our ship. And as the ship spun crazily in the grasp of the colossal currents of fire, as the control room's walls and floor and ceiling seemed revolving lightning-like around us as we clutched in vain for holds upon it, I heard J'han Jal's deep, despairing cry.

"A sun-spot!" he cried. "We've run into one of the titanic maelstroms beneath the surface!"

Even in that terrible instant the meaning of the Sirian's cry passed through my ears to my brain in a revealing flash of terror. A sun-spot's mighty maelstrom—and we had blundered into it here far beneath the surface! For we knew that the giant whirlpools of the great sun-spots did extend far into the sun's interior, and plunging into those interior fires we had blundered into the terrific whirling currents of that awful maelstrom of boiling gases. Now, gripped gravitationally by the titanic currents of the whirling maelstrom, our cruiser was spun about like a chip spinning in a maelstrom of water, whirled about by those colossal currents with terrific speed and force.

Flung against the control room's walls by the cruiser's terrible gyrations, I heard from beneath the wild cries of our crew's dissimilar members, the hoarse shouts of J'han Jal and Mirk En beside me, the metallic straining and drawing of the cruiser's walls as they yielded a little to the terrific forces which were whirling the ship about. With every moment the cruiser was being whirled at greater and greater speed, around and downward, and I guessed that it was nearing the narrowing bottom of the gigantic maelstrom, far beneath the surface. Not for long could our ship spin thus in the grip of that colossal maelstrom, I knew, and resist its terrific forces; for though our generator's heat-destroying vibrations throbbed forth still, though the hissing rays kept about our ship still its vacuum-sheath, it seemed to my ears in that wild moment that the generator's throbbing had faltered a little beneath this wild whirling. Were that generator to halt for but a fractional instant, I knew, that instant would see us resolved into vapors. And unless we won free of the terrible sun-spot's whirling depths the generator could not much longer function, it was clear.

The thought spurred me to wild efforts to reach the controls as we were tossed about the control room. Twice I gripped them and was torn from my hold, and then as for the third time I grasped them I reached back, caught J'han Jal who was rolling beside me, pulled him to me; and then he caught the levers in his grasp, and with my hands and Mirk En's great tentacles bracing him, strove to bring our ship to a level keel in the whirling fires, to win out of the awful whirlpool. Slowly, foot by foot, we fought those whirling currents, and foot by foot edged out of them, until at last, with the last of the cruiser's power, it seemed, we had won clear and were plunging onward again into the interior of mighty Canopus.

We drew great breaths as we won out of that perilous maelstrom, and I found myself trembling from the reaction. But now, as we plunged still on and on, I estimated that we were already far in great Canopus' interior. It was from somewhere at the center, we knew, from whatever strange regions of atomic force might lie there, that there were radiating the vibrations that were breaking up our galaxy, and now J'han Jal and Mirk En and I began to watch for the appearance of such regions. Set up before me were three of those directional-ray instruments with which our scientists had determined the origin of the great vibrations, and I saw now from those instruments that the point of origin lay not far ahead, that we must be already almost in toward Canopus' center. The mighty sun-spot maelstrom had whirled us far in, I knew, and so we watched excitedly as we plunged through the rushing fires, Mirk En keeping his gaze upon the radio-active recording-instruments which would register the nearness of any such atomic force regions as those for which we searched.

Upon those instruments, though, showed no sign of the existence of such regions, yet my own instruments showed unmistakably that with every moment we were approaching the strange vibration's origin. The thing was inexplicable, and as we shot on and on, already almost to the center of the mighty sun, as I guessed, it became even stranger to us, for still there were no indications of atomic force regions ahead. Had our terrible journey into Canopus' central fires been in vain? It could not be, I tried to reassure myself, since my dials showed the vibration's origin close ahead. And suddenly a still stranger thing obtruded itself upon our attention, and that was the fact that around us the fires were becoming denser, slower-moving, our temperature dials showing them to be growing also somewhat cooler. Those fires around us were like the surface-layer or photosphere of Canopus into which we had first plunged!

A photosphere here at the great sun's heart! Even as we stared stupefiedly at those fires through which we rushed, I saw from the direction dials that the origin of the vibrations that we sought was directly ahead now. Tensely I gazed forward as we shot through the white fires, hoping to glimpse the atomic regions from which those vibrations came. Then suddenly, breath-takingly, our ship had rushed out of its white fires and into space—a great space that stretched before us, a tremendous white-lit space encircled on all sides by the rushing fires of colossal Canopus around it!

A tremendous space here at Canopus' center! But even as we stared in stupefaction we saw a thing more stunning, saw that within this space there revolved a great ring of a score of spherical worlds! That ring of worlds moved almost at the edge of the mighty globular space, almost touching, it seemed, the encircling white fires of Canopus. And as I saw that now the direction-arrows of the dials pointed toward those worlds, I uttered a great cry of sudden understanding.

"These worlds!" I cried. "These worlds at Canopus' center! It's from them that the gravitation-destroying vibrations are radiating—the vibrations that are breaking up our universe!"

3

"These worlds the source of the great vibrations?" cried J'han Jal. "But how can this great space—these worlds—exist here at Canopus' center?"

"And what upon those worlds is radiating those vibrations?" exclaimed Mirk En. "Here at the heart of Canopus, it seems, are space, and worlds, and—peoples of those worlds?"

We stared toward the Vegan, startled by that suggestion, and then I motioned toward the nearest of the great ring of worlds. "There is but one thing to do—to reconnoiter them. Whatever is upon them, it is certain that they are the origin of the vibrations."

J'han Jal swerved over the controls, sending our ship humming toward the nearest of that great ring of circling planets. Those worlds, we saw, moved around always in that same ring-formation inside this hollow space, very close to the mighty walls of white fire that encircled them, so close indeed that they seemed almost on the point of plunging inside those fires. All of the score of worlds seemed of the same approximate size, and it was toward the whole ring of them, and not any one, that the direction-dials pointed, which thus indicated all of them as the source of the vibrations that were breaking up our whole galaxy.

As we hummed through the white-lit space toward that nearest world I was gazing about, and could see that this tremendous hollow at Canopus' heart, while of great size and able to hold hundreds of worlds like those that moved within it, was yet not large when compared to the fiery mass of the great sun about it. Down through that titanic mass of fires we had penetrated to this hollow with our cruiser, the first in all the galaxy ever to dream of its existence here at the great sun's heart. And now I reached forth and turned off the generator and the hissing ray-sheath, turning then to the mouthpiece before me and briefly apprising the crew beneath to keep watchfully to their stations at the cruiser's propulsion-mechanisms and ray-tubes.

By that time the world toward which we were heading was looming large before us, a great sphere gleaming oddly in the light of the encircling white fires beside it, moving along just inside those rushing fires, it seemed, with the great ring of its fellow worlds. High above it we soared, circled once or twice, and then were dropping smoothly down in watchful, broad spirals. J'han Jal and Mirk En and I gazed watchfully toward its surface, and then suddenly the big Sirian uttered a low exclamation and his talons upon the controls brought our cruiser abruptly to a halt. At the same moment as he, Mirk En and I had glimpsed clearly the features of the gleaming world's surface, a few thousand feet below, and as we gazed down now with him Mirk En's voice was echoing our thoughts.

"A peopled world, as I suspected!" the great Vegan exclaimed. "A peopled world—here at Canopus' heart!"

A peopled world it was, indeed, that lay beneath us, a world whose surface gleamed so oddly because almost every square yard of it was paved with white metal, that reflected back brightly the intense brilliance of the white fires that encircled these worlds. And here and there rose structures of the same white metal, great white-gleaming cubes of giant dimensions. Not crowded together, but set here and there at regular intervals over this world's surface with great open spaces between them were those white-gleaming cubes. Here and there through the air—for air it was now into which our cruiser had dropped—there moved from building to building what seemed square platforms of the same white metal, flitting smoothly above this world. And upon those squares, and upon the metal paving beneath, we could glimpse the race that peopled this world.

And that race, those creatures, were themselves cube-creatures! Each of them was a great cube of white flesh the height of a tall man, a cube supported by four powerful flesh-limbs, one at each corner of its cube-like body! From the four upper corners, in the same way, there branched four powerful arms, while in each of the four sides of the cube-like body was set a single eye, and in one of those sides also a small mouth-opening! Cube-creatures! I saw, even as we stared in amazement at them, that it must have been because of the cube-shape of their own bodies that these creatures had constructed their buildings and almost all else upon their world in the same shape, unconsciously following the design of their own strange bodies. And in ceaseless streams and groups, they were moving there beneath our hovering cruiser!

"But that square of green force!" cried Mirk En, pointing across the strange world's gleaming metal surface. "You see it—that square of green light there?"

"Green force!" I exclaimed, gazing toward where he pointed. "And it's toward that square, and toward the other worlds, that our direction dials point! That green force it is, then, that is radiating the vibrations out into our galaxy!"

For there, far across that world's surface from us, there was set flush into the metal paving between the great cube-buildings a giant square of glowing green light. Unceasingly it glowed, a deep strange glow that even to our eyes seemed more force than light, and we saw that it faced out toward and through the encircling fires, that the gravitation-destroying vibrations were thus penetrating through the fires of colossal Canopus all about these worlds and destroying the attraction of all the galaxy's suns for each other! It was the strange cube-creatures of these worlds at Canopus' heart, therefore, and not any regions of atomic force, that were sending out the vibrations that already were wrecking our galaxy!

But why? I think that was the question that throbbed most intensely through our brains as we stared appalled down toward that significant square of glowing green force. Why should these cube-creatures, here at the center of Canopus and separated forever by its fires from the outer galaxy, never even dreamed of by the peoples of the galaxy—why should they want to break up the galaxy around Canopus? What strange, dark plan had caused them to send forth the vibrations that were causing the suns to leave our universe, to break up that swarm forever as they moved into outer space? The thing was incomprehensible, and J'han Jal was turning toward me as perplexed as myself.

"That great square of green force it is that is releasing part of the vibrations out upon our galaxy!" he said. "But then there must be more of them—on the others of these worlds, Nort Norus!"

I nodded swiftly. "There must be," I said, "a great square of glowing force upon each world, possibly, though I see no control for them. But the next world—we'll go on to it and see——"

In a moment our cruiser had shot up again and was rocketing out from the atmosphere of that world toward the next, through the space that separated them. Swiftly that next world in the ring was looming in view as we hummed toward it, seeming as its gleaming surface largened before us to be exactly like the first. The great white-gleaming cube-buildings, the squares moving to and fro from building to building, the strange cube-creatures that moved here and there on squares and on the metal paving—all were the same as on the first world. The same too was the great square of glowing green force set in the metal paving, and we saw that this green force-square, by reason of its world's altered position in the great ring, pointed out through Canopus' fires in a slightly different direction, releasing its vibrations out over the galaxy at a different angle.

Stupefied, almost unbelieving, we stared, and then were moving on toward the third world in the great ring, spiraling down through its atmosphere toward it in the same way. At first glance all seemed the same there as on the first two worlds, cube-creatures and buildings and flying squares and giant square of green force appearing a replica of the others. But as we gazed down from our cruiser's control room Mirk En pointed suddenly toward something beside the great square of green force, something small and gleaming which we could but vaguely glimpse. At once J'han Jal was sending the cruiser lower toward it, lower with our eyes riveted upon it until we had halted but a few hundred feet above the flying squares below. And from that height we saw that it was a small white-metal cube-structure beside the giant inset square of green force. A small gleaming cube-structure raised on four slender metal limbs above the level of the force-square, and filled, we could see through its open door, with panel upon panel of strange-appearing instruments and switches among which moved a half-dozen watching cube-creatures!

"The central control!" I cried. "It can only be the central switch-box of the great squares of radiating green force on all this ring of worlds—the switches that control the radiation outward through the galaxy of the great gravitation-destroying wave!"

"But look beneath, Nort Norus! The squares—the cube-creatures—they've seen us, they're coming up toward us!"

J'han Jal's cry drove through my brain like a stiletto of sound, and as I glanced away from the central switch I saw that beneath us the swarming squares were swiftly rising, the eyes of their cube-creature occupants turned up toward us! From far away over the gleaming surface those squares were leaping up through the air, in scores and hundreds! And as they sped upward, from the foremost of them, from bulges near the edges of those metal squares, there shot toward us slender beams of green light, that seemed the same as those great glowing squares of green force which radiated the gravitation-destroying vibrations.

"Up, J'han Jal!" I cried. "They're coming from the side too—they're trying to get above us!"

For even as J'han Jal flung open the controls and sent our cruiser whirling steeply upward I saw that the squares rushing toward us from the sides were whirling up in a sharp slant in an effort to cut off our escape, to catch us between themselves and the uprushing squares from below. Up we flashed, and then from the squares beneath that had leaped to within striking distance there stabbed toward us a score or more of the glowing green beams. But at that moment J'han Jal jerked our ship over in a wild reel sidewise through the air, and the green beams drove by us to strike the squares rushing above us.

As they struck we saw those squares crumble as though compressed suddenly from all around by a gigantic grasp, and fall suddenly to the surface of the world below. Even in that wild instant as our cruiser reeled away I realized what had happened, realized that those green beams were of the same gravitation-destroying power as the great green squares of force that were disintegrating all our galaxy. Striking those squares above us, they had instantly cut off from them all gravitational forces from about them, and since those squares, like all other things in this world and in any world, had been constructed to meet the gravitational pull of the world beneath it, the sudden complete removal of that pull so affected them as to make them collapse and crumple merely from their own interior stresses.

Now, though, as our cruiser shot sidewise and upward, the green beams of the squares beneath were leaping up again. And as we dodged them again by jerking to one side, I shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before me. The next moment there stabbed down from our cruiser's ray-tubes the deadly crimson rays of the Interstellar Patrol, those terrific rays which wipe from existence all matter they touch by changing it from a matter-vibration in the ether to a light-vibration. They shot down like stabbing swords of crimson light among the swarms of upwhirling squares beneath us, and as there broke and burst across those swarms flare upon flare of fountaining red brilliance, dozens of those squares were flashed into annihilation. I heard the hoarse shouts of J'han Jal and Mirk En beside me, at that, and the high-pitched cries of our ray-crews beneath, but swiftly the uprushing squares, despite our lightning-leaping crimson rays, were coming up after us, overtaking us.

"Straight up!" I cried to J'han Jal. "We're almost out of this world's atmosphere and they can't leave it on those squares!"

Already we were shooting up through the last of that atmosphere, and now as we flashed up into empty space, the thundering wall of white flame of great Canopus encircling us, ahead and above us, we saw the pursuing hordes of squares slowing, halting beneath. But even as we seemed safe from pursuit the cube-creatures upon those squares were swiftly donning gleaming metallic and flexible suits. In another moment the cube-creatures were rushing up once more after us, rushing up from their world's atmosphere into the emptiness of space.

"They've put on metal suits that protect them from the cold and airlessness of space!" exclaimed Mirk En. "They're coming after us!"

"On into Canopus' fires, then!" I cried. "It's the one way to escape them!"

And with its utmost speed our cruiser shot onward toward those roaring white encircling flames from which an hour ago we had emerged into this great space. Close behind us were the pursuing squares once more, now, and again their green-glowing beams and our crimson rays were crossing and clashing as they shot up after us. Pursuit and flight of inexpressible strangeness was that, pursuit by strange cube-creatures who were wrecking our galaxy, and flight on our part into the awful fires of the mighty sun. Already I had turned on our generator of heat-nullifying vibrations, our ray-projectors that kept the vacuum sheath about our ship, but now, though those white fires were close ahead, the pursuing squares were closer behind. A last burst of speed, a last blast of green beams loosed from just behind us, and then we had plunged once more into great Canopus' rushing fires.

"We'll wait here inside the sun until they've given up the pursuit," I told the others as our ship plunged on. "Then we can make our way back to that world—to the central switch-cube!"

So, bringing the cruiser to a halt, we hung motionless in the swirling seas of fire, our generator and vacuum-sheath protecting us perfectly from the awful heat and flame. For minute after long minute we hung there, knowing that if we emerged too soon the cube-creatures' squares would still be awaiting us. Time was precious to us, we knew, for already had passed almost half of the twenty hours that had remained to us before the galaxy's outmost suns would have passed outside its swarm forever, and we must destroy that great vibration which was loosing those suns before the twentieth hour ended if the galaxy's break-up was to be halted.

J'han Jal remained grimly silent at the controls, Mirk En and I going down now through the cruiser's ray-rooms and motor-rooms, inspecting the propulsion-mechanisms and especially the generator and ray-projectors that kept us from annihilation in the fires that thundered about us. At last we returned to the control room, and having hung for two hours inside the sun's fires, began to move in again toward the central great space.

On we plunged and then broke out into that space again, its great ring of worlds before us. No cube-creatures on their squares were in sight before us, though, and J'han Jal and Mirk En and I breathed with heartfelt relief at the sight. But abruptly, at that moment, something hissed and swung around our cruiser from behind! We whirled about. Behind us had crept upon us three great squares, close to the wall of fires, one of which had thrown around our ship a great band of flexible metal that pinioned our cruiser to that square, while from right and left the other two great squares, crowded with cube-creatures, were rushing upon us!

4

"Captured!" I cried wildly. "They've lain in wait for us—have captured us and our cruiser!"

"Not yet!" shouted J'han Jal. "Those other two squares—look!"

For at the very moment that we became first aware of the rush of those two squares from either side upon us, there had come a swift hissing from beneath and then out from our cruiser's sides there had driven to right and left a half-dozen brilliant crimson beams, the rays of our ray-crews beneath who were not to be taken unawares even by such a surprize as this! In the next moment those onrushing squares were mere bursting flares of crimson light. But the square that held us by the great flexible metal band had drawn us against itself, and we dared not loose our rays upon it, for they would have annihilated our own ship. And as we realized that fact there came upon our ship's side, upon the space-door in its hull, a terrific hammering and clanging.

"The cube-creatures on that square!" yelled Mirk En. "They're trying to break inside—to board us!"

"Try to break loose from them, J'han Jal!" I cried. "Try to break the band that holds us to them!"

But already the great Sirian had flung open the controls to their utmost, had sent our ship leaping forward with all the forte of its throbbing mechanisms. But it could not break thus from the hold of the great square beside us, the thick broad metal band that it had flung around us holding our cruiser to it as though in the grip of a giant. And out on that square, massed against the space-door of our cruiser, were crowding the cube-creatures in their strange metal suits, hammering with metal tools upon our space-door, striving with all their power to break or pry it open, to pour in upon us. They dared not use their green beams any more than we dared use our crimson rays, but once inside the cruiser they meant to sweep us from existence, it was clear. A moment more and they would have battered through the great door—and then I shouted into the mouthpiece to my two friends.

"To the hull space-door, quick," I shouted. "We'll use our own space-suits to hold them out—to fight it out with them!"

And with Mirk En and J'han Jal racing beside me, the big Sirian laughing a little from sheer joy of battle, we were rushing down from the control room into the ray-room from which the big space-door opened. The clangor inside that room from the creatures beating against it outside was terrific, but in that moment we paid it but small attention, all our crew rushing into the room and throwing themselves into the space-suits which were in every cruiser of the Interstellar Patrol. For each of our dissimilar forms a specially shaped space-suit was provided, and instantly we were donning those suits. They were of flexible metal, much like those used by the cube-creatures, but having transparent-metal vision-plates near the head of each, each suit providing a perfect insulation against the cold and airlessness of space. Another moment and we were almost all in our suits, great Mirk En struggling last of all into his big nine-tentacled suit, and then I flung suddenly open the great space-door against which the things outside hammered. As the air of the ray-room rushed out into space our scores of followers, with J'han Jal and Mirk En and me at their head, were rushing out upon the hordes of cube-creatures on the square fastened to our cruiser.

The next instant we were whirling across that square with those creatures in the wildest hand-to-hand battle that I have ever experienced. Cube-creatures in scores, and scores of dissimilar beings drawn from every peopled star in the galaxy, almost, we struggled in mad combat on the slippery metal surface of the great square, hanging there in empty space. Away to the right there spun the nearest of the great ring of worlds, and to our left and all about us flamed the awful barrier of flame that was the giant sun itself. And we creatures there on the square's surface, each in his space-suit, were engaged in a wild battle whose intensity was such as to make us forget utterly in that moment the cosmic and awful panorama about us.

Gripped on first rushing forth by two of the cube-creatures, I felt their eight great arms swiftly grasping me as I endeavored with wild blows to thrust them back. Beneath those blows their cube-like bodies flinched, but as we whirled they gripped me tighter, and I saw that they were trying to tear open the space-suit I wore—were trying to annihilate me instantly by allowing the air generated automatically inside it to rush out into space, causing me to perish instantly. But even as they grasped it I had gripped a metal tool that was knocking about on the square's surface beneath me in the wild mêlée of combat that surrounded us, and brought that sharp-edged tool down upon their own flexible metal suits in two swift great blows. As its sharp end pierced through those suits, I felt their grasp on me relax, vanish, saw them crumple to the square's surface dead, slain instantly by the cold of space as their suits were penetrated!

But about me now were rushing a half-dozen more of the cube-creatures, three of whom had grasped me again, and as I struggled fiercely against those in turn I saw that all about me was still raging furiously this strange and fearful battle. Great J'han Jal, I saw, was towering erect in his metal suit at the center of a half-dozen of the cube-creatures, sending them reeling back from him with swift raking blows of his great taloned arms. But most terrible of all in that grim combat was Mirk En. The great octopus-like Vegan had gripped the square's edge firmly with two of his mighty tentacles, and now with the other seven of those tentacle-arms was gripping cube-creature after cube-creature in the scores that whirled about him, was slamming them down upon the square's surface with terrific force, his mighty arms cutting paths of death through the throngs that swirled about him.

"The great octopus-like Vegan had gripped the square's edge firmly with his mighty tentacles."

And over all the surface of the square the scores of our crew, out-numbered almost two to one as they were, were battling furiously with the great cube-creatures. The strange, unlike forms of our crew's members in their metal space-suits, the masses of great cube-creatures—these whirled around me in a mad mêlée in which the only things clear to me were the three great monsters with whom I was battling, and who had borne me down now to my knees as I struck furiously at them with fast-waning strength. One of them crumpled and dropped dead as my metal tool-weapon pierced through his suit, but the other two had gripped me firmly about the body now, and for minutes—minutes in which I was conscious only of the wild roar of combat about us, the swaying to and fro of battling forms around me—I struggled with those two great creatures. They gradually bore me down, and then both, gripping my body, were endeavoring with all their strength to tear the round head-case loose from my space-suit.

I felt the metal of that suit giving, knew that another moment would see instant death for me as the suit was torn open, and then there was a rush of movement beyond the two things and they were gripped abruptly by swift-coiling metal-clad tentacles that raised them high and slammed them down upon the square with terrible force, where they lay broken and dead. I staggered to my feet, then, and saw that it was Mirk En who had saved me. And I saw, too, that about us on the square the combat with the cube-creatures was almost over, nearly all of them having been killed, while but half of our crew was left around us.

It was Mirk En's great fighting-power that more than aught else had turned the scale for us against the great odds we had faced, and now with Mirk En and J'han Jal I was leaping with our crew's remaining members upon the dozen remaining cube-creatures. Fiercely they fought us still, but we gave them no quarter, and in a few moments all of them but one had been slain by us, Mirk En raising that one cube-creature upward to whirl him down to death also. As he did so, though, a sudden idea flashed across my mind and I grasped the great Vegan's tentacle-arm, motioned to him to take the cube-creature into our cruiser. He paused, then did so, J'han Jal and I and the remaining members of our crew, still in our space-suits, following him into the cruiser. The square was littered now with the tumbled dead of our crew and of the cube-creatures alike, all still in their metal suits.

As we entered our cruiser, slamming shut the space-door and turning on the air-control that filled the ray-room again with air, we swiftly doffed our heavy space-suits, and I spoke swiftly to J'han Jal and Mirk En. "This captured cube-creature!" I told them. "From him we can learn, maybe, how best to halt this vibration his race is loosing outward through the galaxy."

Mirk En nodded, glancing at the cube-creature, whose own metal suit had been ripped off and who stood guarded now beside us. "We should be able to communicate with him with the thought-speech machine, Nort Norus," he said. "At least we'll try it."

The great Vegan Science Chief uttered an order and in a moment one of our crew had brought from another of the cruiser's rooms the thought-speech machine, a compact metal cabinet from which five flat metal bands led, ending in shining little clips. It was this mechanism that had been used always among the galaxy's races for communication with those races who were without audible speech, since this mechanism was one that mechanically converted thought into clear speech in our own language, by catching and amplifying the brain's thought-currents and causing them to actuate a corresponding series of word-speakers. Whether it would work with a creature so alien to us as the cube-creature we did not know, but there was a chance that it might; and so Mirk En swiftly attached the mechanism's bands to the creature's body, making five small incisions in that body after some study of it, and attaching the clips of the bands to the nerve-centers inside. Then, reversing the machine's control so that speech into it was reproduced in the creature's brain as thought, I spoke clearly into the cabinet's opening.

"You are captured and have but one chance for life," I said, "and that is to tell us your race's purpose in loosing those gravitation-destroying vibrations, and to tell us how best they can be turned off."

The cube-creature's strange dark eyes, one in each side of him, widened as I spoke thus, and I knew from that that the machine had reproduced my speech as thought in his brain. I reversed the mechanism's control, and in a moment the answer came in the clear metallic tones of the mechanism, the cube-creature's thought translated by the mechanism into our speech.

"You will spare me if I tell you that?" he asked, and quickly I replied in the affirmative. Then for a moment the cube-creature surveyed us with his inscrutable, strange eyes, while Mirk En and J'han Jal and I watched him, and then he was speaking, or rather the mechanism connected to him was speaking to us his thoughts. And as from time to time that mechanism went silent for a brief instant we knew it was because certain thoughts of this alien creature had no equivalent in our speech.

"It is to ward off doom from ourselves," the metallic voice was saying, "that we have loosed doom upon your galaxy. For during all the ages that you peoples of the outer universe have existed on the worlds around your stars, the stars around this mighty central sun, we cube-creatures, we sun-peoples, have existed here inside it. This mighty sun of Canopus"—the thought-speech machine so rendered his own name for the great sun—"this great sun of Canopus has always had this tremendous hollow here at its heart. It was when the mighty sun formed first out of the condensing nebulæ that this hollow at its heart formed, because the light-pressure inward of the colossal sun around it would allow it to condense no further. And so this great hollow here, a small one compared to the colossal sun's mass but large in itself, has existed always unknown to you of the outer universe.

"In this hollow there swirled at first the chance fragments of great incandescent gases that had broken into it from the condensing sun around it, and these gases because of their comparatively small quantity soon cooled, hardened into molten masses of matter, which in turn were drawn by their own gravitational attraction for each other into worlds, into a score of worlds turning in a compact ring at the very center of this hollow.

"These inner planets of Canopus being of the same physical constitution as its outer ones, it is not surprizing that at last upon them even as upon the outer ones there arose life. For even as the outer planets, these inner worlds had air and water. And though they received great heat from Canopus' terrible fires all around them, that heat was not too great. For you know that a photosphere will form over a great sun's surface, a denser layer that impedes somewhat the interior light and heat from radiating outward; and in the same way a photosphere layer had formed at Canopus' inner surface, around the great hollow it enclosed. This kept the heat radiated into that hollow from being so great as to scorch life from its worlds, and so life flourished and came at last to its culminating species in us cube-creatures. We races, with our greater knowledge and science came at last to hold unchallenged all the score of Canopus' inner worlds.

"We built our great metal cube-buildings, paving even the surface of our worlds between those buildings with metal. We devised the squares on which we can fly through air or space, and the metal suits that protect us in moving through space and that allow us to move easily from one of our worlds to another. Through the colossal fires about us we could not pierce, but we did find a way to send a light-ray unbent and unchanged through the great sun's terrific light and heat and force. And by means of that way we were able to look out upon the galaxy of suns that was gathered about our own. We saw the inhabitants of those suns rising in civilization, saw their great interstellar wars giving way to a confederation of all their peoples, saw them fighting back the vast perils that crowded from time to time upon them. But never, we saw, did they ever dream of the existence of our worlds and races here at the center of their greatest sun, and never did we desire to leave our home here where we were safe, we thought, from all dangers.

"But at last we cube-creatures realized that there was one danger from which we were not safe, a danger that had crept gradually upon us for eons. As I told you, when our inner worlds had first formed here at Canopus' heart they had moved in a small ring at the very center of this hollow space. But though they would have moved there always, their centrifugal force of motion just balancing the outward pull of Canopus around them, there was another force acting upon them. That was the additional pull of all the thousands of mighty suns that had formed also around Canopus, whose distant gravitational attraction, acting upon us through the encircling fires, was enough to cause our ring of worlds to expand, so that as time went on the ring was moving just inside the encircling fires. And very soon, we realized, the unceasing pull of the galaxy's many suns would cause our ring of worlds to spread into the encircling fires, our worlds plunging to death inside those fires.

"It was a mighty danger indeed that confronted us, and we gathered all our power and craft to meet it. We could not leave this space at Canopus' center and migrate outward in all our hordes, yet death faced our worlds swiftly here. So we made at last our great decision to meet that danger by radiating outward a great gravitation-destroying vibration that would nullify the attraction of all the galaxy's suns. That would halt their pull upon us and save our worlds from death, but at the same time it would break up the whole galaxy! That, however, was of but small import to us, for we were determined to save our own worlds, even though in doing so we destroyed your universe.

5

"So we set to work upon the apparatus that was to radiate that gravitation-destroying vibration outward. In each of our worlds was placed a great square mechanism whose top alone showed, set flush in each world's surface, and which glowed with green force as it radiated those tremendous vibrations. Each green force-square was pointed out in a different direction, by reason of the ring-formation of our worlds, and so their vibrations would reach through all the galaxy. And upon my own world was placed the central control, its super-intricate switches and recorders being located in a small upheld cube-building just beside the force-square of that world.

"Our work was finished, but only just in time! For while we had been toiling upon it, our ring of worlds had been spread still farther, and they now were so close inside the encircling fires of Canopus that minutes more of that pull of the galaxy's suns would drag us into those fires! Like mad beings we had worked toward the last, so that it was but a few moments before our worlds were to take their final plunge to doom in the fires about them that we could turn on the vibrations. At once, though, those vibrations halted our plunge, since they instantly annihilated the pull of all the galaxy's suns upon our worlds and upon each other!

"With that pull destroyed, our ring of worlds halted at the very edge of doom. Were the pull of those suns restored, they would jerk us into those fires at once we knew, but we know too that with their attraction upon each other nullified the galaxy's suns were already separating and moving out of its great swarm. Even now, indeed, the outer-most of your galaxy's suns are almost out of their fellows' grip forever, and soon all the stars of your universe will have separated for all time, each plunging out into space alone, with great Canopus alone remaining here. So you see how useless, how amusing even, it is to ask me how to turn off the vibration that is disintegrating your galaxy. Your single ship could never get near the central control of the vibrations, through the swarms of squares and of my cube-creature races that have answered the alarm by now, that guard it. And even at this moment those great vibrations are breaking up your universe, forever!"

The mechanical, metallic voice from the cabinet ceased, and the cube-creature whose thoughts it had spoken contemplated us with cool contempt and amusement flickering in his alien eyes. J'han Jal, Mirk En, myself and all our crew-members about us were silent for the moment. Then J'han Jal pointed slowly toward the time-dial on the wall.

"Those vibrations that we can't halt—and it's the twentieth hour!" he said. "Less than an hour left now before the galaxy's suns start to pass forever out of the reach of its swarm. The twentieth hour—and never can we reach the cube of controls through the swarms of squares that guard it! We've failed!"

"Not failed!" I cried. "There's a chance yet to halt those vibrations—a chance to get down through those guarding squares, with this square of the cube-creatures bound to our cruiser——"

Swiftly I explained to J'han Jal and Mirk En the plan that had suggested itself to me, and their eyes gleamed with sudden hope. Our crew rushing to its stations, Mirk En and I guarding for the moment the cube-creature, J'han Jal raced up to the control room and sent our cruiser and the square bound to it humming back toward the world from which we had fled. Just inside its atmosphere we halted, and though we could see great swarms of squares crowded with cube-creatures, they did not glimpse us high above them. And then Mirk En and I with the crew's help swiftly made ready for our wild feat. Opening the space-door, we gathered the dead of our own crew on the square beside our cruiser and brought them inside the ship. The cube-creature dead we stripped of their space-suits, and arranged them in natural positions here and there on the surface of the square. When we had finished, it seemed to all appearances that the square beside our ship was crowded with living cube-creatures like those below, since they had died for the most part by the piercing of their space-suits and bore but few marks of battle. They seemed crouching there on the square's surface as when living.

And now Mirk En and I with the captured little cube-creature walked out onto the surface of the square, toward the bulge that held its simple button-controls. I held a thick metal bar sharpened at one end and Mirk En held in his tentacles four of the same bars. We had shown these bars to the cube-creature before leaving the cruiser, and through the thought-speech machine had told him that if he followed our orders his life would be spared, but that if he attempted to discover to the other squares and cube-creatures our stratagem, instant death would be his. Then, crouching before that bulge's buttons, the cube-creature seemed to all eyes the operator of the great square, the dozens of posed dead creatures behind him his fellows, and Mirk En and I our bars hidden, two captives!

The great band of metal that secured our cruiser to the square we left in place, but beside us was the device by which a thrown lever would release that band instantly. So now, with J'han Jal making a final gesture toward us from the cruiser's transparent-walled control room, we started downward, our propulsion-mechanisms silent now, the cube-creature beside us operating the great square's propulsion-mechanism and sending it smoothly downward. With our cruiser attached to it, with Mirk En and me apparently captives among the dozens of cube-men on the square, it seemed that our cruiser had been captured by the square and its cube-creatures, and that they were returning with their prize! It was upon that appearance, at least, that we were depending to prevent the break-up of the galaxy, to turn off the great vibrations before the last minutes of the twentieth hour had passed.

Downward toward the surface of the gleaming world we shot, the cruiser pulled down with the sinking square, none inside that cruiser showing, its space-door open. With pounding heart I crouched there, gazing across the metal-burnished surface of the world beneath, across the giant cube-buildings and the great masses of squares loaded with cube-creatures that came and went still above them. Those squares, we saw, had collected in great swirling masses above and around the green-glowing square of force and the cube of controls beside that glowing square. Could we penetrate down through them to that control-cube? Already scores of those squares were rushing up toward us, and I turned to Mirk En as the cube-creature beside us sent square and cruiser dropping still lower.

"Kill him instantly if he tries to signal to the cube-creatures on these squares!" I muttered to the Vegan, and he nodded.

"Now's the moment!" he breathed. "If we can pass these squares we'll have a chance; if not——"

But now those uprushing squares were flashing all around us, their cube-creature occupants gazing intently toward us as they saw square and cruiser come down thus toward their world together. For a moment I held my breath, a moment in which they gazed down and across our square, its dead cube-creatures posed behind us, its cube-creature operator and Mirk En and I crouching as though helpless beside him—and in that moment a single eye that discovered our deception would send a blast of green crumpling force toward us, I knew. But no green beam came. Deceived by the life-like appearance of the dead things behind us, by the lifeless and captured appearance of our cruiser, they never doubted apparently that their fellow-square had captured our ship. We sank swiftly among them, and they dropped down in great swarms all about us.

Down—down—for tense seconds we shot through their great masses of flying squares, down toward the green force-square and the cube of controls, above which swarmed still greater masses of guarding squares. Moments more and we would be within striking distance of that cube, I knew; moments more and the crimson rays of our cruiser would whiff it from existence. From the time-dial on my arm I saw that the last few minutes of our last hour were fleeting now, but even those minutes would be enough, I knew, if we were not discovered. And still we were dropping lower through the swarms of squares that swirled as though in exultation at our capture about and beneath us. I saw the hope in my own eyes reflected in Mirk En's, and at that moment came the catastrophe. One of the squares about us brushed close for a moment to the edge of our own, and as it did so, the cube-creature between Mirk En and me leaped upward and uttered a strange, throaty cry.

Even as that cry left the cube-creature's mouth-aperture Mirk En's metal bars had crashed down through its body, and he whirled toward me. "It's all up, Nort Norus!" he yelled. "The thing's given us away!"

But in that same instant, as the cube-creatures on the squares all about us gazed stupefiedly toward us, I flung loose the great band that held our cruiser to the square, and then with my hands on that square's buttons I sent it whirling downward. "The cube-control!" I cried. "We'll fight our way down to it or die trying!"

In that moment our square was crashing through the swarming squares about it, whose cubic-creatures seemed stunned by the sudden revelation of our stratagem, but in the next moment a hundred green beams were cleaving toward our square and toward the cruiser a little above. With a wild sidewise swoop of the square I sought to avoid those beams in that crazy moment, and at the same time saw Mirk En's tentacles flashing over the little levers beside me, and from our own square's bulges similar green deadly shafts were stabbing back in answer. Outward they drove from us in blind destruction through the masses of squares about and beneath us. As those squares crumpled and fell in scores, as a mighty waxing roar of alarm went over the surface of the world beneath, I glimpsed our cruiser above with J'han Jal at its controls stabbing out lightning-like to right and left with its crimson rays as it plunged down above us.

Down through the wildly whirling masses of squares, laden with cube-creatures, our own square shot as I pressed upon the buttons that controlled it, as Mirk En sent its green beams driving outward. My only memory of the next moments is of a wild confusion of tossing, rushing squares, a sea of metal shapes covered with crowding cube-creatures, of other squares rushing from far away as the great alarm went forth. It seemed incredible to me even in that moment of awful action that we could escape the beams that drove thick about us, but it was the very numbers of the squares about us that saved us from annihilation. Impeded as they were by the rushing numbers behind them, the squares on all sides of us could hardly in that wild moment distinguish between our own square and those about us; so that for the moment it seemed almost that all the rushing squares about us were loosing their beams at each other in a wild panic of confusion.

Crash!—crash!—crash!—down through the mass of squares I drove, crashing into and through them like a mighty battering-ram of metal, down toward the cube of controls that loomed close now beneath us, the great green force of the square glowing beside it! Through the opening in the side of that upraised cube I could glimpse the myriad intricate switches and instruments inside it, the half-dozen cube-creatures in it. And then as Mirk En sent our beams smashing through the squares beneath us, I drove down through the opening the beams had made for us, until we hung for a split-second beside the cube of controls.

A hundred green rays darted down toward our square as we hung there, but in the instant before they reached us Mirk En and I had leaped, great bars in our grasp, into the cube beside us. And as the square from which we leaped crumpled and fell, as the cube-creatures on the ground ran madly toward the ladder that led up to the raised cube, not daring to loose their rays upon their great control, the half-dozen creatures inside leapt toward us. But as they did so there towered before them the terrific spectacle of Mirk En, the fighting Vegan's great octopus-tentacles upraised in air, and then his bars and my own crashed down upon those creatures and left them dead. Up the ladder were springing other creatures, but Mirk En beat them down with terrific blows of his great arms, while our cruiser above fought and whirled still with the down-rushing squares, and I turned toward the switches about me.

Scores upon scores in numbers those switches were, unthinkably intricate combinations of levers and buttons and dials, and for the moment I gazed at them in despair, then raising my great bar sent it smashing through them. Blow after blow I let fall upon them, wrecking the cube-control's interior, but still the green force of the great square was glowing, and now in despair at sight of what I was doing the swarming cube-creatures on the ladder were pressing Mirk En back upward, had jerked the bars from two of his tentacles and were pouring in upon us. But as they did so I sent a final great blow smashing through the last of the intricate switches, and the green force in the great square abruptly vanished. And at sight of that the cube-creatures on the ladder, those on the crowding squares above, over all this world, seemed to stop, stunned, stupefied!

The great vibration that had been disintegrating our galaxy was halted, at last!

In that instant, down through the motionless, stupefied creatures on the squares above, our cruiser was rushing, down beside the opening of our cube for a second, and in that second Mirk En and I flung ourselves through the cruiser's open space-door, and it was stabbing upward! Was flashing away from that world's surface through the hordes of stunned cube-creatures, as they stared motionless toward the cube whose glowing force had been so suddenly snapped out! Were staring uncomprehendingly as now, at last, the gravitational attraction of the galaxy's suns was restored to them; as those suns exerted again their pull upon each other and upon this ring of worlds inside Canopus; as they pulled back into the galaxy's swarm those outer-most moving suns that but now had hovered on the verge in space; as they exerted again their pull upon this ring of worlds within Canopus, and as that ring began to spread still farther toward Canopus' encircling fires!

For as our cruiser shot up, the great ring of worlds was spreading! One by one, slowly, majestically, the great worlds of that ring were moving off from its circle in a tangent toward the fires of Canopus, and one by one as we watched we saw them go to that stunning, stupefying doom that had gripped them once more with the halting of the vibration, saw them vanishing with all their cube-creatures and squares and works in great bursts of flaming vapor as they passed into the mighty encircling fires! And in the great hollow at Canopus' center our cruiser was left alone!

Stunned ourselves in that moment, J'han Jal and Mirk En and I there in the cruiser stared out incredulously into that tremendous space at Canopus' center that lay empty now forever, empty of those inner planets whose cube-creatures had been annihilated before our eyes. We could not speak, could not move, in that moment, swaying there in the control room, until at last J'han Jal sent our ship racing toward those fires in turn, until my hands opened again the control of its heat-nullifying generators, of its protective ray-sheath. And then we were rushing again into great Canopus' colossal mass of white flame, even as there sounded beside us the twentieth hour's ending; were rushing outward through those fires with all the cruiser's power in that hour that was to have been the cube-creatures' highest hour of triumph, and that had been instead for them their hour of death.

6

"Nort Norus, Chairman of the Council of Suns!"

Once again that cry was ringing forth from the attendants on the great dais, and once again, with J'han Jal and Mirk En behind me, I was stepping up onto that dais, facing the thousands of members of the Council about us. But now it was not with silence that those members greeted us but with a wild roar of cheers that reverberated thunderously through the great hall, and that seemed echoed by the distant cheers that came to us from the rejoicing crowds in the cities outside. Earthman, Sirian and Vegan, we three stood there facing those shouting thousands of dissimilar forms, and then slowly and reluctantly their wild cheers died as I raised a hand for silence.

"Members of the Council of Suns," I spoke to them, "again we gather here, not this time to consider a doom hanging over us, but to celebrate a doom lifted from us. There at the center of Canopus, J'han Jal and Mirk En and I, with our cruiser and its crew, found the cube-creatures who had loosed that doom upon our galaxy, who were even then breaking up our galaxy with their great vibrations. And we were able at the last to thrust back that doom, to pull back into the galaxy its farthest out-wandering suns, even as a more terrible doom was loosed upon the cube-creatures themselves. This we were able to do, and for it you give us your cheers and gratitude now. Yet it is not to us that you should give them, but to those who, ages ago, laid the foundations of our great Federation of Suns.

"For it is through our Federation of Suns alone that we have thrust back this doom, and every doom that has menaced our universe. Around this galaxy of ours, which our ancestors of the far past thought so mighty and which we know to be so small, there stretch all the mysteries of space, and out of those mysteries there have come upon us once and again terrors of which we dreamed nothing, great dooms that have taken all our power and our wisdom to withstand. But we have withstood them always, and though none can doubt that out of the eternal vastnesses of the void in which we move there will come other dooms as mighty, other horrors as terrible, by massing their power and knowledge our galaxy's unlike races shall meet and withstand those also. For if our races but hold to that great compact sworn by them ages ago, if our mighty Federation of Suns but continues to reign, we shall hold against all comers till the end of time this, our universe!"