Part 3

The galaxy of the machine-people grew into a great cloud of stars across the firmament. With eager eyes we surveyed it.

"It seems about the same size as our own galaxy," Lacq Larus commented. "But it has far more dying suns than ours."

Yes, as the machines had told us, this galaxy of theirs contained hosts of dying suns, old, red and cold. They greatly outnumbered the suns still hot with life. Small wonder that the machines had sought for new, young suns to replenish their waning universe!

"I see some of our own suns in there!" Korus Kan exclaimed. "The ones they took from us."

"Yes, I see them," Lacq Larus said. "If all goes well, we'll soon be taking them back."

As we neared the galaxy of the machines, Lacq Larus gave one hundred dark stars their orders.

Thirty-nine of us were assigned to hook onto the stolen suns and tow them back at once toward our own galaxy. The other sixty-one, including Lacq Larus' dark star and my own also, were to wreak all the destruction in their power upon the machines' galaxy.

We drew steadily nearer and soon were very close to the galaxy ahead. There was no sign that any of the machines in it were aware of our approach.

"They can't have seen us coming," Jhul Din commented.

"They've no idea we could come at all," I responded. "They're probably busy placing the last suns they took from us. Our dark stars would be hardly visible to them."

Soon came the voice of Lacq Larus in final orders. "We are now about to enter this galaxy," he said. "Remember your duties and let nothing stop you."

Like rushing spheres of blackness our hundred dark stars raced into the galaxy of the machines. Once inside, we separated. The thirty-nine assigned to retrieve our thirty-nine stolen suns sped directly, each toward one of those suns. The rest of us darted forward on our dark stars after the leading one of Lacq Larus.

Our purpose was to destroy as many of that galaxy's suns as possible by dragging them into one another. Before the machines that peopled their worlds were aware of our presence we had begun.

Lacq Larus drove his dark star toward a small white sun at that galaxy's edge, hooked onto it with his attractive beam, and towed it quickly toward a blue sun off to the left.

When near the blue sun he released the one he towed and it rushed on of its own accord, crashed head-on into the blue star. The two colliding suns melted into a cloud of flame that whiffed away the worlds of both of them in an instant.

While Lacq Larus was thus employed, the rest of us were not idle. I had driven our own dark star toward a large red sun some distance inside, and now I yelled for Korus Kan to hook onto it with our attractive beam. He did so, and as I put on power we dragged the red sun after us toward a double star not far from it.

We cast loose just before we reached the double star. I shot our dark star past it, and the red sun, drifting after us, struck the twin star squarely. The cosmic outrush of flame from that collision almost reached our own hurtling world before we got out of reach.

* * * * *

Off to one side three of our dark stars had seized another double star, this one of huge dimensions, and were dragging it toward a great green sun. And further in, one of our forces had got hold of an aged red sun that was almost too big for it to handle, and was tugging it slowly toward its doom.

All around us this stupendous process of wreckage was going on and we were part of it. Space inside that galaxy seemed filled with booming dark stars and suns being dragged to flaming death. I glimpsed some of the thirty-nine of our force assigned to that duty seizing our stolen suns and towing them toward outer space.

From the worlds of the suns we were destroying came clouds of flying-mechanisms rushing to attack us. But the giant beam-batteries installed on our dark stars blasted them out of space as they came near. And still our smashing of suns went on.

Jhul Din and Korus Kan yelled with exultation as we towed still another sun to collision and doom. I saw Lacq Larus' dark star some distance away rapidly stripping the worlds from a sun and towing them into another sun.

Then Korus Kan cried out, pointed. "Look--the dark stars of the machines!"

I made out dim, huge shapes rushing toward us across that galaxy. "The machines' dark stars!"

Through the wild wreckage of crashing and flaring suns and worlds, nineteen dark stars were bearing down on us. They were the dark stars with which the machines had gone across space to steal our suns. Now they were rushing to battle us!

The scene that followed was beyond description. The machines meant to stop our wrecking activities at any cost to themselves and they drove their dark stars straight toward our own.

A half-dozen of them crashed into that many of our dark stars in the first rush. As they collided, dark star and dark star blazed up in hot new life.

Again and again they rushed at us headlong, as we dragged and wrecked their suns. They never hesitated to collide with us. They fought with magnificent, mindless courage to stop our wrecking activities.

But at last the last of them was gone, though more than twenty of our own dark stars had been destroyed in the collisions that had ensued when the machines rammed them. All space around us now seemed filled with the wild flare of collided suns.

"All dark stars retreat back into space!" came Lacq Larus' order. "Our work here is finished."

"Are all our own suns retrieved?" I asked him on the space-phone.

"Yes, our other dark stars towed them out into space and they're all clear."

Quickly I turned my dark star and sent it booming with the others after Lacq Larus, out of that ravaged galaxy.

Outside in space waited the thirty-nine dark stars that had retrieved our thirty-nine stolen suns.

"We got them all back!" cried Jhul Din. "Didn't I tell you that we would, that nothing could beat the Patrol?"

"Head toward our own galaxy," Lacq Larus ordered. "Keep at half-speed, as those of us towing suns can't go so fast."

Slowly, towing our thirty-nine suns with us, we headed away through space toward the dim light-patch of our own galaxy.

Looking back, we saw that the galaxy of the machines was lit in many places by the flaring fire of collided suns.

We stared back for a long time at the stupendous damage which we had done to that universe.

"It'll be a long time before _they_ will come buccaneering again for our suns!" predicted Jhul Din.

"And if they ever do come again we can defeat them now that we have powers equal to their own," I added. "We'd rather not war with the machines nor with any one else. But we have fought for our suns, and as long as the Patrol lasts we are going to keep them!"