The cosmic cloud
inches from us, and unutterably strange and terrifying it was to stand
silent there in the violet-lit street with those creatures flopping
past. It took an effort to remember that when we made no sound they
could not perceive us.
As we moved on I glanced ahead and back and saw that over all the
city as far as the eye could reach, in the violet light which was in
reality not light, streams of the creatures were pouring toward great
square open spaces in the city where rested the thousands of captured
interstellar ships. The last pieces of mechanism were being loaded into
these, it seemed, and the monsters themselves were pouring into them.
They were on the point of making their start out through the cloud to
fall upon the galaxy's worlds!
The sight spurred us forward. Halting now and then and freezing
motionless as statues to allow some of the darkness creatures to pass
around or near us, we made our way through the streets until we were
nearing the great building of the rulers. By then the greater part of
the city's hordes had poured toward and into the massed interstellar
ships, and because of that we went forward more quickly.
Zat Zanat turned now and then to whisper caution, though, and the third
time that he did so I saw his eyes widen suddenly in terror behind his
glasses, saw him racing back toward me with arms outstretched. With
swift sense of panic I made to whirl around but before I could do so
two great flap-arms had closed on me from behind, and in grasping my
head knocked loose the glasses from my eyes.
Instantly I was plunged into the most profound darkness, and then as
there came a rush of feet was released by the creature that had held me
and sent staggering off into the darkness. I heard a terrific struggle
going on in the darkness beside me, knew that Zat Zanat and the monster
were locked in death-grips, but was helpless to aid my friend in the
blindness that was upon me.
Rushing toward the sound of battle I was knocked back and down by a
great blow that caught my face. I pawed frantically along the street in
search of the glasses I had lost, heard over the scuffle in the dark
the sound of Zat Zanat's gasps for breath and a smothered flute-like
cry from his antagonist.
Abruptly the sounds of struggle ceased, and somewhere in the darkness
a heavy weight thudded against the paving. Which of the two had won? I
waited statue-like for the answer until I was grasped by the shoulders,
and whirled around in sudden terror. But as I did so a hand was again
pressing the eye-disks against my eyes and as the whole scene sprang
from deep darkness into violet light once more I saw that it was Zat
Zanat, disheveled and panting for breath, and that the other lay dead
upon the paving.
"On to the building!" Zat Zanat gasped. "We've but minutes left, I
think!"
We sprang forward, running now along the street, for along its whole
length we could see none of the eyeless monsters, and were aware with
sinking hearts that all or almost all must be already in the waiting
ships. Minutes more would see them pouring out of the cloud to spread
darkness and doom over the galaxy!
Down the street we ran, careless now of any that might hear, until
there loomed at its end before and above us the vast box-like building
of the rulers. None of the creatures of darkness could be seen around
it, and we sprang toward the great square open door, then halted for an
instant despite ourselves.
Far away across the city was sounding a humming as of a gigantic swarm
of bees. It was a sound that I knew well and one that drove the blood
from my heart. It was the sound of the generators of great space-ships
throbbing, and as it sounded there was lifting over the city a mass of
hundreds of the gleaming ships!
Away to our right another mass of equal size was rising, and far behind
us in the strange city another, and still others at a greater distance
from us, thousands of huge interstellar ships loaded with all the
eyeless hordes! They were starting out from their world and from the
cloud on their career of dread conquest!
"They're starting!" I cried to Zat Zanat. "We're too late!"
"Not yet!" he cried. "Look, there's still a ship waiting on the roof!
They must be slaying their prisoners now!"
For on the roof of the great building before us we glimpsed a waiting
cruiser that had not yet risen. The significance of it and of Zat
Zanat's cry drove home to my brain at the same instant. It was waiting
for those in the building, those who were killing the prisoners they
had kept there. And Jhul Din and Korus Kan----!
I uttered a cry of rage, leapt forward and through the door with Zat
Zanat close behind me. I vaguely glimpsed great halls through which
we raced, queer seats and desks and instruments, and then with my
companion beside me was leaping up the broad flight of curving steps
ahead.
Up it and up another stair we raced, and then my face blanched and
I threw myself on at greater speed as from somewhere in the great
building over us came shriek on shriek of the most dreadful agony,
ending in each case in quick silence but taken up at once by other
voices.
"The pain-producers!" Zat Zanat sobbed. "They're slaying the prisoners
with them!"
"Jhul Din! Korus Kan!" I cried, madly, and then cried out again as
there came to me from above somewhere a faint answering shout. We
rushed up into the next level, along a broad corridor, and halted
before a solid door from behind which came the cries of my friends.
I threw myself frantically at the door but the secret of its lock
defied me, and it was diamond-hard in material. Other shrieks came now
from the floor above us, and then as they ended came the flopping steps
of the eyeless creatures coming down the stair to finish these their
last prisoners.
Zat Zanat jerked me swiftly aside from the door. "Wait!" he commanded,
and as I understood his purpose I froze instantly silent and motionless
with him.
Down the stair and into the corridor came a half-dozen great eyeless
monsters who carried with them funnel-like instruments of metal that
I knew were the pain-producers. Their flute-voices sounded as they
hastened along the hall toward the door by which we stood. We saw one
finger with his flap-hands the mechanism on the door, and then as it
swung open two had raised their funnel-like weapons toward the two
inside. But it was then that Zat Zanat and I leaped.
A wild chorus of flute-cries went up as we crashed into them, and two
sprawled motionless beneath our striking arms before the others could
comprehend what was happening. And at the same moment there rushed
through the open door Korus Kan and Jhul Din, the Antarian's powerful
arms striking right and left and Jhul Din's great voice booming in rage
as he laid about him.
Both Korus Kan and Jhul Din, though, were fighting in darkness
absolute, not having the ultra-violet light disks that enabled Zat
Zanat and me to see, and though five of the eyeless monsters had gone
down in the first frenzied moment of the battle the others were turning
with incredible speed, perceiving all our movements by hearing, to
strike back at us.
* * * * *
In a moment Korus Kan was down, drawing another of the eyeless things
with him. Jhul Din had blindly gripped two of them and was squeezing
the life from them with his immense arms. Before either Zat Zanat or
I could throw ourselves upon the remaining creature, though, he had
leaped back from the battle and had raised his funnel-like weapon. A
buzzing sound came from it and instantly through all of us in every
nerve seared a white-hot agony that seemed to rive our brains asunder.
I was staggering against the wall in that awful torture, and Korus Kan
and Jhul Din, though they had killed their opponents, were writhing in
agony. I saw the creature holding the weapon coming closer toward us
with it, knew that an instant more of that agony meant the death they
had dealt their prisoners. But at that moment there took place before
my eyes one of the bravest things that ever was looked upon.
Zat Zanat had been nearest the creature when it had turned its weapon
on us, and had staggered in that awful agony as we had, but as the
thing came closer he straightened as with a terrible effort, summoned
by a supreme command of his reeling brain all the power of his tortured
muscles, and bounded forward in a single agonized leap that sent him
crashing against the monster.
As he struck the creature its weapon was knocked from its grasp, and
as the pain that was killing us abruptly ceased we rushed to where the
two struggled and in a moment the creature lay dead with the others.
We staggered up unsteadily, Zat Zanat handing from his belt pouch
ultra-violet glasses to my two friends.
"To the roof!" he cried.
"The roof--that cruiser on it is our one chance to get out of the cloud
and warn the galaxy before the attack comes!"
Even as we cried out that, we were bounding up the curving stairs from
floor to floor until in a moment more we were bursting out onto the
broad flat roof of the great building. In a single glance we took in
the whole scene. At the roof's center rose a square block that was
the center of innumerable branching electrical connections and that
bore upon it a great lever-switch or control now open, the control Zat
Zanat had described which made of this world a colossal-powered magnet
when closed. To one side of the roof rested a long cruiser with no
occupants, the ship that had been awaiting the half-dozen creatures who
had tarried to slay the prisoners.
But as we burst out into the roof's violet light it was not at these
things we were looking but at what was around and above us. The whole
city, the whole world around us, were deserted! High above us we made
out a tremendous swarm of black spots, which were rapidly diminishing
in size as they moved away. _They were the thousands of interstellar
ships and they were going forth with all the eyeless hordes inside them
to the conquest of the galaxy!_
"They've started--started out of the cloud! We're too late!"
"Too late!"
The words seemed like tocsins of doom in our ears as we stood there
motionless, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and Zat Zanat and I, gazing at
that vast armada going out to spread death and destruction across our
universe. Never could the galaxy's peoples of light stand against those
dread people of darkness who would spread darkness before them. Never
could we outdistance them even to warn the galaxy of the coming attack.
As though petrified we stared after those receding swarms of ships. Too
late!
Abruptly our dazed brains became conscious of a strange sound beside
us. Zat Zanat was laughing. High and mirthless and hysterical laughter
it was; half choking and with his whole body trembling he reeled
sidewise across the roof toward the great block at its center. And in
the next moment, with the same strange high laughter upon his lips, he
had reached up to the big control-switch on the block and with a single
motion had closed it, a deep throbbing coming from beneath somewhere as
he did so.
We stared at Zat Zanat in frozen silence, saw him swaying toward
us, saw him pointing upward with face suddenly twisted, intense. We
looked up. The great swarms of diminishing black dots that were the
space-ships were still above but they were receding no longer! They
seemed growing larger! Something, memory of thought, crashed like
thunder through my brain. The control that Zat Zanat had closed!
The control that made of this world a magnet of colossal power, and
that the creatures of darkness had used to draw into the cloud those
thousands of ships! And it was closed now!
"_The ships!_" Jhul Din cried madly. "_They're being drawn back to this
world!_"