Outside the Universe by Edmond Hamilton

As the mighty swarm of Andromeda ships from behind us drove down upon the half-thousand serpent-craft ahead, I could only stare for a moment in stupefied surprize, so stunning had been our sudden transition from death to deliverance. I saw the long, flat craft of the Andromedans, a full thousand in number, flashing down on the serpent-ships in one great swoop, saw the latter, in groups, in dozens, in scores, crumpling and constricting as the deadly cylinders of the Andromedan ships were turned toward them. Within an instant, it seemed, a full two hundred of the half-thousand serpent-ships had crumpled and whirled away beneath the terrible, invisible force of the cylinders, though death-beams were raging out thickly all about the swooping Andromedan ships. Then, with almost half their fleet wiped out, the remaining three hundred serpent-ships, including their score of great disk-attraction-ships, had whirled around and were racing back into space toward their own dying universe, fleeing from the terrific blows of the attacking ships that had come out from the Andromeda universe ahead, just in time to save us.

Now, as the serpent-fleet flashed from sight, into the void toward its own universe, the thousand Andromedan ships massed swiftly and moved toward our own, that hung still motionless there in the gulf of space. In tense silence we watched them come, hoping that they might not set us down, too, as enemies because of our serpent-ship, but they turned none of their deadly cylinders toward us. Those cylinders, as I was later to learn, were in reality projectors that shot forth a shaft of invisible force, one that caused the ether about any ship it struck to compress about that ship instantly with terrific force, compressing thus into small compass the ether-vibrations that were the matter of the ship, and thus crumpling that matter itself, in an instant. It was a weapon fully as terrible as the crimson destruction-rays of our galaxy's ships or the pale death-beams of the serpent-creatures, a shaft of crumpling force that we knew could destroy us instantly. Instead of loosing it upon us, though, they slanted down until one of their foremost ships was hanging just above our own.