Edmond Hamilton

“ With the words our cruiser began to sink smoothly downward, still holding its forward flight above the comet, the massed ships behind following steadily in our course. Down—down—by thousands of miles a moment we sank, down until the giant coma beneath seemed the only thing in all the universe, glowing from horizon to horizon like an awful aurora of crimson death. An inconceivably colossal sea of lurid electrical energy, a giant deadly sphere of glowing force which it were annihilation for anything to touch, it stretched beneath us, broadening still as we came closer toward it. ”

“ The galaxy—our suns—our myriad peopled worlds—all lost, all doomed to annihilation by the gigantic comet about us that was thundering on now irrevocably! It seemed, in that instant, that all things in existence, the cruisers about us, the cube-ships beneath us, the comet-creature hordes on the surface of the white-lit world below, had paused for one moment breathless, a moment that marked a galaxy's doom. ”

“ For this gigantic comet, greater by far than any of the galaxy's greatest suns, will crash through the galaxy's swarm of stars like a meteor through a swarm of fireflies, annihilating those in its path by absorbing them and their worlds into the terrific electrical energy of its mighty coma; disrupting all the finely balanced celestial mechanism of our universe and sucking its whirling stars into its deadly self as it smashes on ”

“ Worlds there at the comet's heart, worlds that were disk-shaped instead of spherical, a dozen or more of which revolved in a great ring about a single world that was larger than any of the others, and that hung motionless! Over those revolving worlds, down toward that central disk-world the cube-ships ahead of us were fleeing, and as we shot down after them I saw that it and the rim of other disks, though not illuminated by the dusky crimson glow of the encompassing comet, were bathed in light, pure white light that seemed to emanate from themselves! ”

“ When Gor Han's deep whisper had ceased we were silent a moment, and surely never did stranger trio crouch in stranger place than we three, earth-man and amphibian Aldebaranian and great fur-clad Betelgeusan, there in the crimson dusk of the comet-city, all about us the pits that held its countless liquid-creatures and above us the glowing red coma which encompassed this world and was driving on toward our galaxy's doom. ”

“ Swiftly we moved forward, now, down the street through the dusk toward the great clearing. Mighty machines looming in the red dusk on each side of us, dark pits yawning between them in which the comet-hordes lay silent, glowing crimson coma that swung above—these made an inconceivably weird scene about us through which we three, a weird and dissimilar enough trio in that lurid dusk, moved rapidly on. Once we saw a few of the liquid-creatures flowing across one of the streets ahead, shrank back until they had disappeared, then moved swiftly on. ”

“ The surface of that world was looming clearer beneath us, bathed in white revealing light, as the giant battle swung lower down toward it. I glimpsed the great circular clearing, the pyramid with the mechanism and comet-guards on its summit, knew by the dial before me that but minutes still remained to turn aside with it the colossal on-thundering comet. Lower we swung toward the clearing, and as we did so the cubes beneath stiffened against us, their uprushing hail of deadly red bolts stabbing like an upward-falling rain of crimson death! ”

“ I told him. "We've only a few score hours left to get inside and bring our force-beams to bear on the nucleus."
The Aldebaranian's voice came slowly in answer. "That coma," he said; "it seems impossible that we can ever get inside it——"
There was silence as I gazed ahead toward the great comet, whose coma was now indeed a terrific spectacle. An immense lurid sea of crimson light, it seemed to fill all the universe, shifting slowly downward and beneath us as our thousand cruisers hummed up at a steep slant over it. ”

“ They had used the coma's electrical energy for their own weapons, and had used it to produce light-vibrations, a white light which they turned on and off for their day and night. The coma's energy, indeed, was the source of all their world's activities, but as their giant comet plunged on through space, that energy, ever shot backward in the tail that drove the comet on, was dissipated faster and faster, the coma waning and dying as all comets wane and die in time. ”

“ Even as the bolts had blasted the pyramid's top our cruisers had shot with the velocity of thousands of light-speeds out from the central world and those about it, out across the comet's heart toward the circular opening through the coma, through that passage of crimson death at awful speed and out into space behind the comet as the passage closed behind us, as the tail behind the comet waned swiftly! ”

“ The chasm outside, the world and worlds about us, lay now in dusk, their only illumination the lurid, dark crimson light of the comet's glowing coma, a red disk that gave to the barren rocky world about us an inconceivably weird appearance. ”

“ This giant comet of outer space, though, I knew, moved in no orbit whatever through the empty immensities of the outer void, and so would always race through space in a direction opposite to that of its tail, the energy of the mighty coma shot forth in the tail like the powder of a great rocket, propelling it irresistibly forward with terrific momentum and force. ”

“ Swift as were the great cubes ahead, though, our great cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol, speediest of all the galaxy's ships, were proving now to be swifter, since slowly, steadily, we had begun to overhaul those fleeing shapes. I heard Gor Han's deep voice, excited as always in battle, from the speech-instruments, heard Jurt Tul's calm comments as we drove nearer the flying cubes, heard Najus Nar's eager cries. The cubes were passing out now from over the great coma, on over the vast tail, to my puzzlement. ”

“ If we can reach the great oncoming comet, can penetrate through its deadly coma to the solid nucleus at its center, can deflect that nucleus with our force-beams before the twelfth day ends, we will have turned the great comet aside, will have saved the galaxy itself from death. If we can not, the galaxy perishes and we perish with it. For we of the Interstellar Patrol, who have defended and guarded the ways of that galaxy for thousands upon tens of thousands of years, go out to the oncoming comet now not to return unless we can turn that comet aside and save our universe from doom! ”

“ Onward toward our universe this mighty comet is thundering, and but one chance remains for us to turn it aside. The center of this comet, of any comet, is the nucleus at the heart of its coma, which is the only solid matter in it. If we could penetrate through the coma to the great hollow inside it, could turn upon that nucleus the powerful force-beams used by our Patrol cruisers to sweep up meteor-swarms, we could possibly push it aside enough to change its course, to send it past our galaxy's edge instead of through it. ”

“ Then suddenly Gor Han was pointing downward, eyes starting, pointing to the comet-creature hordes on that world below, which were suddenly rushing crazily toward the pyramid beneath us, the cube-ships also racing wildly down toward the pyramid's summit! For on that summit from the stair on the pyramid's side a dark, erect figure had suddenly rushed, and before the comet-guards had glimpsed him had rushed to the great disk-dial and pointer of the comet-control! An erect, many-limbed dark figure who had seized the pointer in his grasp! ”

“ In the blackness before us, too, there shone a single great point of crimson light, burning through the blackness of the outer void like a great red eye. It was toward this crimson point that I and the great-headed, bodiless Canopan pilot beside me were gazing, somberly and silently, as our cruiser hummed on. Then as he shifted his gaze there came from him a low exclamation, and I turned to see that a great swarm of gleaming points had appeared in the blackness close before us, resolving as we flashed on toward them into a far-flung, motionless swarm of long, gleaming cruisers like our own. ”

“ All space outside seemed a single giant mass of struggling cubes and cruisers, cut across by blasting crimson bolt and ebon beam, yet ever we were forcing the cube-ships back, back over their ring of revolving disk-worlds, back over their mighty central world, and then down toward it as they fought fiercely against our black beams which drove great paths of destruction through them! ”

“ I was silent, for I knew that it was so, and broodingly I considered that light, whose white illumination filled all the great chasm outside, beating faintly even into the cavern, yet seeming to have no visible source whatever. And then, even as I gazed upon it, that light died! It seemed to gray, to darken, and then had vanished altogether, within a moment, while at the same moment there beat faintly through the air from far away a great clanging note like that of a giant gong. ”

“ Far above we could see the crimson coma, against which there came and went now and then divisions of cube-ships, still searching, searching for the fugitives who had escaped them. My thoughts turned to Gor Han and to Najus Nar, prisoned in the comet-city, and then to our own predicament. But hours remained now in which the comet might be turned aside, and unless we could escape from it, could meet the five thousand cruisers that were racing toward it from the galaxy and lead them inside, no power in all space and time could turn the comet aside from the galaxy. ”

“ The next instant there were shooting downward from all our cruisers the great force-beams, broad beams, not of light but of darkness, of utter blackness and absence of light, of great force that was invisible itself but whose terrific power drove even the light-vibrations from its path and so made the force-beams seem beams of utter blackness. Down toward the uprushing cube-ships the black force-beams stabbed, and as they smote among those cubes those that were struck by them were driven suddenly downward with inconceivable power. ”

“ 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, however, our astronomers have found that this crimson spot of light that has appeared in the outer void and has puzzled us for days is in reality a giant crimson comet of size and speed unthinkable, which is racing straight toward our galaxy and will reach it within a few more weeks. ”

“ The nucleus is all the comet's solid matter, a mass of meteoric and other material hanging in the hollow at the coma's center. The great coma blows from its own electrical energy, and is driven through space by the release of some of that energy backward, through the vast tail, which is simply released energy from the coma. It is the great coma that makes a comet deadly to approach, since any matter that enters its terrific sea of electrical energy is converted instantly into electrical energy likewise, changed from matter-vibrations to electrical-vibrations, annihilated. ”

“ Behind us the Patrol will be massing another five thousand cruisers to send out after us, but these can hardly reach the comet before it is too late. It is on us, and on our thousand cruisers, that the galaxy's fate now hangs. ”

“ Comets there are in our galaxy, as you know, comets that revolve in irregular orbits about various of our stars, and which have been familiar to us always. A comet, as you know, consists of the coma or head, the nucleus, and the tail. The coma is simply a great globe of electrical energy, with a hollow space at its center. ”

“ Gazing forward into those black depths our eyes could make out, faint and inconceivably far, the few little patches of misty light that we knew were remote galaxies of suns like the one behind us, unthinkably distant universes like our own. ”

“ If they turned the pointer to the left the tail would shoot from the coma's left, driving the comet to the right. They could thus, by means of the comet-control and the great projectors which controlled the tail's position, drive the comet in any direction at will. The only thing they could not do with it was to reverse the comet-control, to shoot out a new tail opposite to the old one, since the momentum of the old one and the opposite momentum or pressure of the new one would crush and annihilate the coma and its worlds between their great pressures. ”

“ Gor Han's deep voice sounded from the instrument before me. "There seems no opening in the coma at all, Khel Ken," he said. "And it is instant annihilation for anything to venture into that coma's electrical energy!"
"We'll have to drop lower and cruise about the coma's surface," I told the Betelgeusan. "We must get inside, somehow!" ”