The cosmic cloud
us inside them like peas in a box. There were hoarse cries from the
generator rooms and a wild uproar through all the cruiser as with awful
speed and force it was whirled over and over.
Bruised and half dazed, I retained enough presence of mind to clutch
at the rail of the pilot room stair as I was thrown against it, and as
Jhul Din was flung past me a moment later I grasped and held his arm.
Together we struggled up into the pilot room, where we glimpsed Korus
Kan clinging to the wheel-standard as the room gyrated about him.
"_The cloud!_" he cried. "_It's the force they told us of--it's drawing
us into the cloud!_"
"_Into the cloud!_"
The cold of outside space seemed about us in the fear that for a moment
held us, for as we looked from the windows of the whirling pilot room
we saw instantly that the Antarian was right. Our cruiser was hurtling
at tremendous speed straight toward the vast region of darkness we had
been coasting.
"Turn on full power!" I cried. "Try to bring the ship out of this,
Korus Kan!"
"I can't!" he shouted back. "I've got every generator on full but the
cruiser doesn't obey its wheel! It's some colossal magnet or magnetic
force inside the cloud that's drawing us!"
With every instant the tremendous wall of blackness, as sharply
defined as though material, was looming closer before our whirling
ship. While Korus Kan worked frantically with the controls, and while
the cries of our astounded crew came up to us from beneath, I seized
the distance-phone, in the hope of flashing word at least to others
in the galaxy of the nature of the force that had seized us. But the
distance-phone was going dead, affected by the magnetic force that was
drawing us to doom!
By then the great cloud was an appalling sight ahead of us, a vast maw
of darkness into which our cruiser was racing at tremendous velocity.
The ship's whirling had subsided somewhat and I yelled to Korus Kan
to make a last trial of its power. He strained the generators to the
breaking-point in the next moment, but it was useless, for nothing
could escape the relentless grip of the power that was drawing us on.
Another moment and the blackness was walling the firmament directly
before our plunging ship. Something made me turn round at that moment
to glance back toward the galaxy's shining suns as though for a last
look, and then even as I turned round again we were plunged into a
darkness to which the darkest night would have been as noonday, an
utter blackness in which no faintest ray of light existed!
I groped in the darkness for the switch of the cruiser's inside lights
but though it clicked beneath my fingers there came no answering
illumination. Light could not exist in this terrible region! And the
quivering of the cruiser about us told us that still at immense speed
we were being drawn in toward the cosmic cloud's heart.
On and on we rushed through that shrouding night, Jhul Din and Korus
Kan and I bracing ourselves in the pilot room with our hands upon each
other's shoulders, facing ahead as though to look through this utter
blackness which no eye could pierce. I think now that in those terrible
moments the three of us were but waiting in tacit silence for the end.
Even were the cruiser to free itself of the deadly force that gripped
it we could never now win out of this lightless region in which we
would wander blindly.
Still on toward the mighty cloud's heart raced the ship, and to me it
seemed that we must be very near its center. A tense expectation of the
end held all of us now. But abruptly we cried out together as there
came a mounting, hissing sound from outside the cruiser. Our craft was
rushing now through air, through an atmosphere!
At the same moment we were aware that it was slowing its tremendous
speed, that the mighty magnetic force that had drawn us inward appeared
to have vanished. The stunning wonder of the two things occupied us for
the moment to the exclusion of all else. Was there a world then here
at the cosmic cloud's heart, through whose atmosphere our ship was now
moving?
Suddenly my heart stood still as there came a slight jar against our
cruiser's side, followed by a succession of flopping sounds upon the
ship's top. There was silence for a brief instant while we listened
tensely in the utter darkness of the pilot room, and then came a clang
of metal against the cruiser's top, and the hiss of some strange force.
"It's some other ship outside!" I cried. "And they're trying to get
in--they're boarding us!"
"The top space-door!" Jhul Din shouted. "They're getting in there!" For
the clang of the door opening came to our ears at that moment and a
flood of cold air from outside rushed through the cruiser.
"Up to the space-door, then!" I yelled. "Hold it against them, whoever
they are!"
As we cried out we were bursting out of the pilot room, bumping against
walls and doors in the unrelieved darkness, rushing toward the corridor
into which that upper space-door opened. I heard the shouts of the
crew as they too blindly hastened upward, and then as I burst into the
corridor I sought I collided squarely in the darkness with something.
Something that was tall and bulky and that felt like cold flesh to
my touch. Instantly two great flap-like limbs or arms from it were
grasping me.
I struck out in the dark with sudden frenzied horror, but as I knocked
the unearthly thing from me others were about me, pouring down into the
corridor from the space-door above, from outside the ship. They were
all about us, in groups, scores, gripping me and Korus Kan and Jhul Din
and all our crew, while we struck out blindly against them.
* * * * *
I have fought the dread serpent-creatures in the hall of the living
dead, and I have had a part in the tremendous combat of three
universes, but never yet did I take part in a more terrible struggle
than that one. For it was a struggle in a darkness so absolute that we
could have no slightest glimpse of the creatures we fought, knowing by
touch only that they were things such as we had never come into contact
with before.
They were calling in flute-like tones to one another as their powerful
flap-arms caught and held us, tones oddly incongruous with the wild
uproar of the battle. They seemed to move as easily in the utter
darkness as we might do in light, and this fact gave them a tremendous
advantage over us. Because of that our wild struggle had in moments
been quelled, and as I was held tightly by two of the things I heard
the calls of my friends to me and realized that all of us had been
overpowered. These creatures of darkness had captured our ship!
Still holding us, they herded us toward one end of the corridor, and
then released us. Amazed, I took a step through the darkness toward one
of the corridor's doors. But in an instant I had halted, for through
the darkness a buzzing sound came to me and at the same time fiery,
tearing pain ran through every nerve in my body. I staggered back, and
the buzzing ceasing, the pain ended. Jhul Din and Korus Kan, who had
thought to escape also in the darkness, had experienced the same thing,
staggering back with me.
It was evident that our strange captors were aware in some way of
every move we made in the darkness, and that the buzzing was of some
pain-producing weapon of theirs. Later we were to learn that it was one
that set up electrical pain-currents in the nervous system. Pain is but
a sensation or electrical current in a certain nerve, and this strange
weapon was one that by induction set up pain-currents of more or less
intensity in every nerve in the body.
It was evident that we could not escape them in the darkness, so we
remained grouped at the corridor's end. We heard the flute-like voices
of the things calling to one another through the cruiser, and in a
moment of so more came the throbbing of its generators again and the
hiss of air outside as it began to move. In awe we listened.
"What can they be?" whispered Korus Kan. "Creatures of
darkness--creatures of the cosmic cloud who move in its darkness as
though in light!"
"There must be a world here," I answered, "through whose atmosphere
we're moving now. They've come up from it to capture our ship and must
be taking us down to its surface now."
"But a world in this perpetual darkness? How are they able to live--to
move?"
"Who can say? Whatever they are, it is clear that they have pulled the
thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud as they did ours, for
their own reasons. I wonder what fate the other ships met."
* * * * *
Minutes passed while the cruiser throbbed through the darkness;
then its speed decreased quickly and with a slight jar it landed
upon a solid surface. At once the doors that had been closed were
clanging open again and the flute-voiced creatures of darkness, using
their pain-producing weapons to control us, were herding us out of
the corridor and through the space-door to emerge upon a solid,
smooth-paved surface. All about us was still darkness absolute but
we felt ourselves in open air, on the surface of a world of unending
darkness here at the cosmic cloud's heart.
Our captors began to march us forward. We moved blindly, controlled
by their couches or pushes. We heard a great babel of flute-voices,
of innumerable creatures coming and going around us. Reaching my hand
forth occasionally I ascertained that we were marching along a series
of smooth-walled and wide-doored buildings. From their doors came
sometimes the clash and clang of machinery operating inside, while in
and out of others were swarming hordes of flute-voiced creatures, their
flopping steps sounding all around us.
It was evident that we were being taken through a city--a city of
darkness absolute in which these creatures of darkness came and went as
we of light would do in our own sunlit cities.
I began to understand, though, as we marched along, how these creatures
could move so surely in darkness, and whispered to Korus Kan and Jhul
Din that it was by their sense of hearing that they must do so, since
it seemed to be entirely by the sound of our footsteps that they
controlled and guided us. Yet was it possible that any race of beings
could live and flourish thus and raise their cities in the cosmic
cloud's darkness with only hearing to aid them?
Twice our captors wheeled our group to right or to left as though
following a definite course through the streets of the lightless
city. In a few moments more, though, when they touched us with their
flap-arms to make us again turn, I misunderstood the touch and took a
step to the right instead of the left. Instantly agony shot through my
every nerve as a buzzing sounded directly beside me. That agony was so
terrible and so unexpected that it made me do what never else would I
have done, whirl around and strike through the darkness at the thing
behind me with all my frenzied strength.
My clenched fist drove into the cold, bulky body of the thing and I
felt it knocked backward by the blow, heard the buzzing cease and
felt the pain stop as whatever weapon the thing had held rattled upon
the paving. Instantly from the other guards came flute-like cries and
the sound of flopping steps rushing toward me through the darkness. I
yielded to the first instinct as I heard them and threw myself away
from them, running blindly through the darkness as their cries sounded
behind me.
There came scuffling sounds and then the buzz of many of their weapons,
and as I heard cries of pain I realized that my friends and crew had
attempted to break loose also but had been halted by their captors.
Then after me through the darkness they were racing with quick,
flopping steps.