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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi

Organizing and Reorganizing Markets


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi

Organizing and Reorganizing


Markets

Edited by
Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

1
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3
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United Kingdom
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© Oxford University Press 2018
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi

Preface

Markets and formal organizations constitute the fundamental forms of the


economy. For a long time, research on these forms has largely been divided
among academic disciplines, each with its own perspective. Scholars in the
field of economics have concentrated on the study of markets and have been
fascinated by processes of mutual adaptions among market actors, but they
have had less to say about organizational aspects of markets. Scholars in
organization theory have devoted almost all their efforts towards an under-
standing of formal organizations, whereas markets have been seen as part of
the unorganized environment of organizations.
In this book, we argue that organization happens not only inside but
also outside formal organizations and that markets provide one example of
such organization. Together with our co-authors, we demonstrate and discuss
how markets are organized and show that concepts and theories from orga-
nization studies can be useful for advancing our knowledge about markets.
In this way, we aim to supplement knowledge about mutual adaptation
and institutions in markets and add to an understanding of how these phe-
nomena are interrelated with organization. We also compare the organization
of markets with the organization of formal organizations, discussing both
similarities and differences.
Our common interest in market organization and reorganization led us to
the investigation of a large spectrum of markets—for computer software,
pension funds, taxi services, and healthcare, for example. What happened in
the markets we studied was often surprising, not only to market organizers but
also to us! Moreover, the organization of markets is a less well developed area
of research than is the organization of formal organizations. Hence, it is an
intriguing area of study, not least because it provides the opportunity for
revisiting fundamental issues about organization in general.
The studies in this book relied on the availability and the time of many
informants. During our process of writing this book, we and our co-authors
had the opportunity to benefit from the wise comments of our colleagues
at Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (Score) and other places.
Later, Nina Colwill, our highly devoted and skillful language editor, made a
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi

Preface

great job turning the texts into proper and readable English. Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences)
has generously provided resources for a large research program at Score on
Organizing markets (Grant M2007-0244:1-PK). Mats Jutterström received a
grant from Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research Council) for research on
organizing markets, and Anders Forssell and Lars Norén received a grant from
Handelsbankens Forskningsstiftelser (Handelsbanken Research Foundations).
Our warm thanks to all!

Uppsala and Stockholm December 2017

Nils Brunsson Mats Jutterström


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi

Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
List of Contributors xiii

1. Markets, Organizations, and Organization 1

2. The Organization of Markets 17

3. Creating a Market Bureaucracy: The Case of a Railway Market 32

4. Primary Healthcare: What Type of Market and What Level


of Organization? 46

5. Experience-Based Learning and Market Change 64

6. When Sellers Create Markets: Dilemmas and Challenges


in Markets for Professional Services 82

7. ‘The Most Regulated Deregulated Market in the World’? Sellers


Organizing across Markets 101

8. Markets as Open Systems: Organizing and Reorganizing


a Financial Market 115

9. Markets, Trust, and the Construction of Macro-Organizations 136

10. Shaping the Consumer: A Century of Consumer Guidance 153

11. When Market Organization Does Not Help: High Ambitions


and Challenges in the Market for Eldercare 167

12. Dealing with Asymmetric Information: Organizing and


Reorganizing a Market for Child Insurance 181

13. Reform and Rescue: International Organizations and the


Organization of Markets 199

14. Organizing Marketplaces: The Constitution of Trade Shows


in a Cutting-Edge Industry 210
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Contents

15. Handling Opposing Market Logics: Public Procurement


in Practice 221

16. From a Free Market to a Pure Market: The History


of Organizing the Swedish Pipe and Tube Market 232

17. Multiplicity, Complexity, and Recurrent Change 249

18. Organizing and Reorganizing Markets and Formal Organizations:


A Comparison 264

Index 279
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List of Figures

4.1 The organization–market continuum. Source: Walsh 1995: 46. 60


4.2 Market continuum: High to low level of organization. 61
5.1 Market organization forms. 77
12.1 Number of child accident insurance policies sold in the Swedish
market, 1914–1981. Sources: Enskilda försäkringsanstalter 1914–1981;
Statistisk Årsbok 1953–1958. 183
12.2 Premium income for Skandia’s child and youth insurance, 1980–2009.
Source: Unpublished data from actuary Daniel Höök, Skandia Liv,
15 December 2010. 185
12.3 Search results for ‘child insurance’ in Mediearkivet. Number
of hits for the publication period 1982–2011 (n = 1,257).
Source: Mediearkivet—a digital archive covering all the big
dailies, local newspapers, and journals in Sweden—5 March 2012. 185
15.1 Purchase situations in different markets. Source: Axelsson 1998. 224
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List of Tables

4.1 The marketing process and tools according to the textbooks contrasted
with what the rulebooks say. Differences in italics 55
4.2 A comparison between franchises and chains according to Bradach (1998)
and the county councils as ‘mother’ of a chain of HCCs. Differences
marked in italics 58
4.3 Two examples of market organization 61
5.1 Number of companies in the market in 2001. Source: Brandén, 2004 69
12.1 Comparison of reformers’ criticisms and the final law 2011 193
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List of Contributors

Nils Brunsson is professor of management and affiliated to Uppsala University and


Score (Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research).
Mats Jutterström holds a PhD in business administration, lectures at Stockholm School
of Economics, and is a researcher at Score.
Göran Ahrne is professor of sociology and affiliated to Stockholm University and Score.
Susanna Alexius is associate professor in business administration at Stockholm Uni-
versity and is a researcher at Score.
Patrik Aspers is professor of sociology at Uppsala University.
Daniel Castillo is assistant professor in sociology at Södertörn University College.
Matilda Dahl holds a PhD in management and is a lecturer at Uppsala University.
Asaf Darr is associate professor in behaviour and organization at the University
of Haifa.
Anders Forssell is associate professor in management at Uppsala University.
Staffan Furusten is associate professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the
director of Score.
Ingrid Gustafsson holds a PhD in public management and is a researcher at Score.
Martin Gustavsson is associate professor in economic history at Stockholm University
and a director of research at Score.
Eva Hagbjer holds a PhD in business administration and is a senior analyst at the
Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis.
Anna Krohwinkel holds a PhD in business administration and is a research leader at
Leading Health Care, Stockholm.
Leina Löwenberg, MSc, works at the Swedish Tax Authority.
Lars Norén is associate professor in management at Gothenburg University.
Kristoffer Strandqvist holds a PhD in business administration, is affiliated to the
Institute for Economic History Research in Stockholm, and is a researcher at Score.
Kristina Tamm Hallström is associate professor in management at the Stockholm
School of Economics and a director of research at Score.
Anna Tyllström holds a PhD in management and is a researcher at the Institute for
Future Studies, Stockholm.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 12/2/2018, SPi
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Markets, Organizations, and Organization


Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

Markets have become popular in recent decades—more popular than


organizations. Politicians, management experts, and other opinion builders
have emphasized the advantages of ‘market solutions’, which they have
contrasted with activities within large, allegedly bureaucratic and inflexible
organizations. Large corporations have outsourced functions: former depart-
ments such as IT operations, for instance, have become independent companies
that compete with other vendors to sell their services to the corporation.
Equivalent changes within states are termed privatization: instead of being
government-run, operations have been farmed out, with many companies
bidding for contracts or competing directly for the public’s choice. New
markets have been organized for such previous state monopolies as schools,
eldercare, motor vehicle inspections, and the rail service. Relationships
among people and departments within large organizations have been
replaced by relationships among multiple smaller organizations or people
in various markets.
Markets have not always been this popular. They were less beloved after the
financial and economic crisis of the 1930s, whereas the World War II years and
following decades saw an upturn in support for the idea of the organization
over the market. Myriad activities were incorporated into burgeoning states.
Large corporations grew by subsuming often unrelated businesses into their
organizations—the conglomerate was a popular model.
Attempts to put lofty ideas into practice often constitute the most serious
threat to those ideas. Recent developments may be seen partly as a reaction to
long-standing experience with the problems of inefficiency, inadaptability,
and governability, to which large organizations are prone and which many
people hoped could be averted in markets. Likewise, many people are now
gaining extensive experience with the difficulties of market solutions, which
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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

has led to many requests for and attempts at reform. And in the perhaps
not-so-distant future, organizations may once again appear to be the more
attractive solution.
On the other hand, proponents of markets can withstand criticism
because their idea is embedded in wider notions. With their imagery of
sovereign market ‘actors’ freely choosing what to buy and sell, markets fit
contemporary images of individuals and organizations. At the same time,
such contemporary individuals and organizations are not likely to accept
passively any feature or outcome of market processes. Rather, they tend to
air opinions, to intervene, or to suggest that others should intervene in order
to organize markets in ways that protect social values or special interests.
In this respect, markets do not differ from contemporary organizations that
are also objects of extensive interventions (Meyer and Bromley 2013). Such
interventions from sellers, buyers, and others constitute the theme of this
book, both when they are attempts to create markets and when the purpose
is to change them.

Markets or Organizations

Fluctuations in the popularity of markets and organizations are facilitated by


the idea that markets and organizations are different social forms with very
different characteristics—which makes it seem likely that the problems dis-
covered in one of them will be solved by exchanging it for the other.
The distinction between markets and formal organizations such as states
or firms finds a great deal of support in social science. Economist Alfred
Marshall (1920) argued nearly a hundred years ago that markets and organ-
izations constitute the two fundamental social forms of an economy. In
contemporary social science, the differentiation between markets and organ-
izations has been a sharp one. Traditionally, markets and organizations
have even been analysed within different disciplines. Markets have been
the primary subject for studies in the discipline of economics, whereas the
study of organizations has expanded enormously since the early 1960s in
other disciplines and now constitutes almost a discipline in itself.
Economists have often treated the organization as an exception to the more
or less natural markets, a last resort solution when markets do not function
well enough. Oliver Williamson (1975) believed that ‘In the beginning there
were markets’ (p. 20). The organization is seen, at most, as ‘the means of
achieving the benefits of collective action in situations in which the price
system fails’ (Arrow 1974, 33). The idea of a sharp difference between markets
and organizations is also at the core of so-called transaction cost theory, by

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Markets, Organizations, and Organization

which one tries to explain the conditions for the appearance of organizations
(in the theory called ‘hierarchies’) rather than markets, as well as the other way
round (Coase 1937; Williamson 1975).
In organization studies, on the other hand, markets have most often been
treated as the environment of organizations and therefore only indirectly
relevant. And markets have generally been seen as a phenomenon outside
the scope of theories of organization, to be handled by theories and concepts
other than those used for analysing formal organizations.
In short, there has been a great deal of discussion about markets or organ-
izations. It is rarely useful, however, to regard markets and organizations
as very different, or as opposites. This perspective may even be misleading.
The sharp distinction between markets and organizations common in social
science seems exaggerated. We argue that markets and organizations share at
least one characteristic: they are both organized. In this book, we discuss the
organization of markets.
We see organizing as an activity that need not result in or take place in a
formal organization. Furthermore, we believe that the view of the market and
the formal organization as two ready-made forms of coordination is inaccur-
ate. Like formal organizations, markets can be more organized, less organized,
or differentially organized. And the organization of markets may change over
time: Reorganization is not typical merely of large organizations (Brunsson
2009); as we demonstrate in this book, it is also common in markets. Reorgan-
ization offers a less radical solution to practical problems in both forms than
does a shift from one to the other.
The similarities between markets and organizations make it likely that
theories, concepts, and experiences from the study of organizations are useful
for analysing markets. Expanding the field of organization studies to include
the study of markets seems to be a promising project. Economists have some-
times used market theories and concepts originally developed for markets for
analysing formal organizations. In the same spirit, we do the opposite in this
book. We investigate how and to what extent markets can fruitfully be ana-
lysed with the same concepts that students of organization use for analysing
formal organizations.

Markets and Organizations: Definitions, Connections,


and Similarities

Rather than further discussing markets or organizations, we now turn to the


issue of markets and organizations, how they connect to each other and what
similarities they have. We start by defining these two forms.

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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

Definitions
What do we mean by organization and market? These are broad concepts, the
meanings of which are far from self-evident. Of the two, it seems easier to
agree on the meaning of organization: an organization is a strong and well
developed institution, not only in people’s minds but also in law. There is
conspicuous agreement within organizational research about what constitutes
an organization, and there is little difference between this scholarly definition
and the popular notion of organization (Strang 2017). It is telling that in one
of the most influential classic books in organization theory, Organizations
(March and Simon 1958), the authors did not define the concept of organiza-
tion, counting instead upon the readers’ understanding, by merely enumerat-
ing a couple of empirical examples of formal organizations.
Uncertainty and discussion about what constitutes an organization are
relatively rare in organization studies. One uncertainty concerns states.
There are strong arguments that states are a form of organization just like
firms and associations are; yet scholars in the organization field have seldom
analysed states as organizations. Furthermore, there are sometimes doubts
about what an organization is and what constitutes part of an organization.
Should business groups with many subsidiaries or states with many adminis-
trative units be considered as one or several organizations? And as for units
without legal status, it is sometimes unclear for both practitioners and scholars
whether they should be classified as organizations or not (Taylor 2011;
Dobusch and Schöneborn 2015). But these uncertainties are exceptions rather
than the rule.
The concept of market assumes more meanings. Journalists often refer to a
group of buyers and sellers in stock markets and describe markets as persons:
the market can be optimistic, pessimistic, depressive, or ambivalent. In other
cases, the concept of market is confused with competition or with people’s
freedom of choice—much broader phenomena than markets. Situations in
which either one of these phenomena exists are called markets, irrespective of
other characteristics. People talk about the ‘marriage market’, even in cultures
where neither brides nor grooms are bought or sold. Or one refers to a
university market, even in countries where higher education is free of charge.
Many scholars take the opposite stance, defining market in an extremely
narrow way, as something that works according to a highly stylized model
(Williamson 1975; Powell 1990; Walsh 1995; Håkansson and Johanson 1993).
The term ‘market’ is then used to describe an ideal type in close correspond-
ence with what economists have called ‘highly organized markets’ (Marshall
1920; Walras 1954) or ‘perfectly competitive markets’ (Samuelson 1969): an
exchange system with characteristics such as clear and homogeneous prod-
ucts and transitory contacts among buyers and sellers, limited to exchange in

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Markets, Organizations, and Organization

which each party is immediately willing to change partners when better offers
appear. This ideal type is often compared to another ideal type—‘the hier-
archy’—that is assumed to mirror some aspects of formal organizations. As is
usual when comparing ideal types with empirical data, one finds that a large
part of social reality falls between the forms, calling for new concepts for
describing reality: ‘hybrids’ (Williamson 1991), ‘networks’ (Powell 1990;
Håkansson and Johanson 1993), and ‘quasi-markets’ (Walsh 1995), for
instance. If the term ‘market’ were to be defined in this way there would be
few markets: primarily certain stock exchanges and exchanges of standardized
raw material. And because market studies using this definition would cover
few empirical phenomena, they would be of relatively limited interest to
social scientists in general.
In this book, we define ‘markets’ not as an ideal type but as an empirical
phenomenon having only two defining characteristics: markets involve the
exchange of goods or services that occurs under competition, meaning that
sellers or buyers or both can choose among more than one counterpart.
A market is a social structure that can be defined and delimited by the products
exchanged (such as the market for shoes or steel) or by the place where
products are exchanged (such as the town market or a market on the Web,
such as eBay). With this definition in mind, it is clear that whereas there is a
great deal of competition outside of markets (to say the least), there are no
markets without competition. We have no prejudices that a market must be
like an elaborate ideal type in order to be called a market. There are markets
with some similarities to the common ideal type. But there are many markets
in which the products are not homogeneous and are less clear—where
sellers and buyers have long-lasting relationships that include much more
than exchange, and in which they seldom and unwillingly change partners
(Håkansson 2009).

Connections
Even if organizations and markets represent different social forms, they
coexist and are closely interrelated. Although it is common to talk about
most contemporary, developed economies as ‘market economies’, they
could equally well be called ‘organization economies’. Interactions within
markets are common, but interactions within organizations are even more
so; individuals spend much more time as employees than they do as market
actors, and most of a firm’s activities do not revolve around selling or buying
(Simon 1991).
Modern markets do not exclude organizations; rather, they presume their
existence, a fact that can be demonstrated in at least four ways. Organizations
are key market actors, market reorganization typically involves attempts at

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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

reorganizing formal organizations, formal organizations are the main organizers


of markets, and formal organizations and markets are often combined.
First, organizations are key market actors. Only individuals and organizations
can buy and sell in markets. It is they who are equipped with the identity,
rights of ownership, autonomy, and responsibility that market actors must
have. When firms in the 19th century were ascribed traits similar to those of
individuals and were defined as legal persons, one purpose was to make them
capable of performing the role of a market actor (Djelic 2013). In contempor-
ary markets in developed countries, organizations serve as both buyers and
sellers, whereas in almost all markets other than the labour market, individ-
uals are merely buyers. In an overwhelming majority of market relationships,
organizations are present on at least one side.
The creation of virtually all markets is thus predicated on either the pre-
existence of organizations or the potential to create them. The recent forma-
tion of markets through outsourcing and privatization has been accomplished
through the formation of more organizations. The fundamental idea of the
New Public Management movement to transform units in the public sector
into more complete and autonomous organizations was necessary for achiev-
ing its preference for markets. Different from former administrative units,
these new organizations had the autonomy, local responsibility, clear bound-
aries, and ownership rights that enabled them to act as buyers and sellers in
internal and external markets (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson 2000).
Second, the significance of organizations in markets is demonstrated by the
fact that market reorganization typically involves attempts at reorganizing formal
organizations. People who are intent on reorganizing markets cannot do so
directly; markets are not actors that can change. The market reorganizer must
induce one or more individuals or organizations to change, whether directly or
indirectly, and more often than not it is organizations that must change their
behaviour. Reorganizers try to make firms act in new ways as sellers or buyers,
or influence what products they sell and buy, or arrange their production
or accounting systems in new ways, to make them cooperate with each other
more, less, or in different ways. Or organizations setting rules for monitoring or
sanctioning sellers and buyers have to be formed or be given new tasks.
Third, as demonstrated in this book, formal organizations are the main organizers
of markets.
Fourth, formal organizations and markets are often combined. Stock exchanges
and other exchanges constitute obvious examples; they are formal organiza-
tions within which markets are organized. So-called internal markets arranged
within large firms or states constitute another example. The inclusion of
markets within formal organizations is not a threat to either form. Indeed, as
described in the next chapter, it seems difficult to achieve anything like a
‘perfect’ market without subsuming it within a formal organization.

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Markets, Organizations, and Organization

Similarities: Mutual Adaptation, Institutions, and Organization


Formal organizations and markets represent different social forms, and as ideal
types they have been described as very different. But a closer look at how they
work in practice reveals similarities as well. Markets and organizations are
ordered by the same fundamental processes: mutual adaptation, institutions,
and organization.
The question of how markets come into existence and change is an old one.
Economists commonly emphasize spontaneity and gradual emergence when
describing markets, often citing Adam Smith’s (1779/1981) formulation of the
‘invisible hand’ guiding the market. A seller offers a good for exchange, which
then attracts customers and competitors, and a market arises. Markets and
how they develop are described as a natural consequence of people’s mutual
adjustment (Lindblom 2001). In markets, economic men and women signal
their preferences through prices, and there will be supply-and-demand equi-
librium in each market (Hayek 1973, 1988). Market order—oligopolies, for
instance—can arise as a result of such adaptations (Tirole 1988). The idea that
markets are spontaneously ordered as a consequence of mutual adjustment is
not merely a standard theme in economics; many sociologists share the
emphasis on spontaneity and mutual adjustment (e.g. Luhmann 1982;
Smith 2007; White 2008).
In research on formal organizations, on the other hand, there is a long
tradition of emphasizing the opposite of mutual adaptation and spontaneity:
planning, management, and decision making. Formal organizations have
been defined as systems of decisions (Luhmann 2000). An organization is
created by decisions, and more decisions are necessary in order for the organ-
ization to persist. A network or spontaneous collaboration is sometimes
reshaped into an organization, but this reshaping requires a decision. And
new decisions are made about how the organization shall be structured and
how it shall function. When differentiating organizations from other social
systems, such early theorists as March and Simon (1958) highlighted the
importance of decisions in organizations. But seeing individual organizations
and their design as the outcome of decisions is also an everyday, institution-
alized notion of organizations.
More recent research on organizations and markets has produced a more
complex picture, however—a picture in which the differences between mar-
kets and organizations are less dramatic.
The early emphasis on organizational order as created by decisions has
given way to a more complex view of organizational life. Scholars noted
early on that decisions do not necessarily create an intended order. Decisions
are merely attempts to create an order—attempts that often do not succeed.
Early research in this tradition demonstrated problems of implementing

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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

decisions in organizational action and unintended consequences of decisions


that have actually been implemented (Merton 1936; Pressman and Wildavsky
1973). Furthermore, more than 50 years of studying organizational practice
demonstrates that organizational order results, to a considerable extent, from
more spontaneous processes of mutual adaptation among organization mem-
bers (Czarniawska 2008; Weick 1979).
Furthermore, shared beliefs and norms may gradually emerge among
the members of organizations—institutions that are difficult to overcome
through central decision making (Selznick 1949). Also, much organiza-
tional order is not the result of local decisions, but rather of wider societal
institutions (Meyer and Rowan 1977). Processes of mutual adaptation and
institutions may form an obstacle to decisions and their implementation,
but they can also make decisions unnecessary; a high degree of order and
coordination may be created without decisions. In fact, it is difficult to
imagine how a large organization could function without all these types
of ordering processes.
Likewise, in the case of markets, more recent work in economic sociology
has stressed the fact that behaviour is formed not only by mutual adaptation;
it is also formed partly by shared beliefs and norms among market actors. Such
institutions include not only property rights, but also the very conception of
what a market is and what market actors are supposed to do—ideas that are
part of the early socialization of young people in advanced market economies
and that make people behave similarly in various markets. But there are also
institutions that emerge in specific markets and make different markets func-
tion differently (Aspers 2011).
Finally, markets are formed by processes of organization. They are the objects
of decisions. There are people and organizations that decide not only on their
own actions in markets, but also on the actions of others. In the next chapter
we suggest a definition of organization that allows us to discuss organization
not as the opposite of markets, but as something that exists both within
markets and within formal organizations. Organization involves decisions
about how others shall behave. The most fundamental organizational decisions
are those about membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions.
Many types of organizations are involved in making such decisions; they can
be directed at both sellers and buyers and can concern such different aspects of
markets as goods, transactions, prices, and competition.

The Intricacies of Market Organization

Although organization is an elemental source of market order, the study of


market organization is less developed and less well recognized than are

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Markets, Organizations, and Organization

approaches building on mutual adjustment and institutions. In this book


we develop an organization perspective on markets by investigating an
extensive number of empirical cases of market organization and reorgani-
zation. We raise four fundamental questions about the organization and
reorganization of markets and a fifth question regarding the specificity of
market organization.
The first question concerns the drivers of market organizing. What problems
and solutions motivate and can be used as justification for more, less, or
different market organization? We have seen that the relevant perceived
problems may be existing ones, such as uninformed and irrational consumers,
or future problems, such as the risk of future power imbalances between sellers
and buyers. A common problem justifying reorganization is subtler: a per-
ceived difference between idealistic models of markets and how they work in
practice. Throughout the empirical cases, the expansion of organization has
been viewed as a solution to perceived market problems; in some cases, the
amount and other characteristics of market organization increased radically
over time.
The second question concerns the organizations that intervene in markets as
organizers. Which organizations intervene and why? We demonstrate how
industry associations, state authorities, local governments, civil society
associations, and sellers and buyers are active in market organization—the
opposite picture of occasional ‘state’ interventions in markets only. It is not
uncommon for organizations to be created with the sole purpose of organiz-
ing one or several markets. Sellers may become active organizers of markets
other than the one in which they have their own businesses. We also demon-
strate how organization may be used as an attempt at limiting the number of
organizations in a market.
The third question concerns the content of market organization: What
decisions are made and how can they be explained? One explanation is
the organizers’ source of inspiration. Sometimes abstract ideas about markets
in general determine the choice of organization content, whereas the organ-
izers’ experiences with a specific market sometimes play a larger role. We
demonstrate that such experience may imply significant change in the
content of market organization—in the organizational elements used, and in
the market aspects targeted. Recurrent, almost perpetual change in market
organization was a common phenomenon in the empirical cases.
The fourth question concerns the effects of market organization. From studies
of formal organizations, we know that daily practice tends to deviate from the
decided order of management—often considerably (Meyer and Rowan 1977).
But what are the effects of market organization? We provide examples of the
intricate relationship between market organization and market practice. In
several cases, market actors did not behave as expected; they were less

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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

interested in seeking personal benefits and less rational than the organizers
had assumed, for example. Those organized could also actively resist or quietly
avoid attempts at organizing. Market problems were often difficult to solve
with organization. This was a driver for new reorganizations, but also
an incentive to support organization efforts with information activities or
new technology.
The answers to these four questions provide the basis for a fifth question
about similarities and differences between the organizing of markets and
formal organizations. To what extent can we use insights from the organizing
of organizations to understand the organizing of markets, and in what
respects are the conditions and processes so different that the study of market
organization can produce new insights for those interested in organization in
general? We find similarities as well as differences. The differences prove to be
matters of degree rather than fundamental. And in some respects, the differ-
ences among markets and among organizations are as prominent as they are
between these two forms.

Studying the Organization of Markets

A period of marketization offers an excellent opportunity for conducting


empirical studies of the organization and reorganization of markets. In this
book, we report on 14 such studies. As argued by Mises (1963, 257), we believe
that an empirical analysis of markets must be oriented to processes rather than
end states. The current order in a market can be partially explained with
reference to organizers who have appeared and met with resistance and
support and by the fact that one organization has succeeded and another
has failed. And the current organization is unlikely to represent a stable
state: New organizers can challenge it. Therefore the empirical studies in this
book exemplify and analyse processes—how markets become organized and
reorganized.
By studying processes, we can see changes over time in many respects: how
constellations of active organizers change, for instance, because initiatives by
some organizers activate other organizers to intervene. Further, we see
changes in the kind and amount of organization used and the market aspects
dealt with. And we see whether the effects of organization change over time.
The following six criteria helped us in our selection of case studies.
First, we have chosen markets outside formal organizations. Given our
approach, markets within formal organizations such as exchanges of various
sorts are less interesting because it is obvious that these markets can be fruit-
fully analysed using theories of organization. Furthermore, because markets

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outside organizations are far more common than markets within them, their
organization is of greatest practical interest.
Second, the cases represent a variety of markets, ranging through and beyond
markets for computer software and financial instruments for pension savers,
railway passenger transportation, public relation consultancy services, child
insurance, and snow clearance. We thereby avoid the development of results
based on studies of one type of market, thus averting the criticism that general
conclusions about markets are often drawn from a significant overrepresenta-
tion of financial market studies (Aspers 2011).
Third, at this stage of the research we gave priority to differences over similar-
ities. The cases were chosen in order to illustrate a wide variety of organizers,
problems, solutions, and processes.
Fourth, whereas many of the studies cover longitudinal processes of con-
temporary market organization, some of the authors went further by taking a
historical perspective. In the historical studies, so-called formative phases have
been sought—phases of significant relevance to the characteristics of individ-
ual markets. The processes of market organization featured a great deal of
action, with many changing conditions and reorganizations. Studying these
processes with primarily qualitative methods allowed us to develop a nuanced
understanding of the intriguing and often surprising aspects of organizing and
reorganizing markets.
Fifth, although we have included cases from other countries and from the
international scene, most of our cases are taken from the Swedish context. This
choice has methodological advantages. Sweden is known for its comprehen-
sive welfare state, but it is perhaps less well known that it is a society with high
tolerance and understanding of markets and market solutions, perhaps
because of a combination of its high scores on individualism (Berggren and
Trägårdh 2006) and the fact that the economy has been extremely dependent
for centuries on international markets for its products. The ideas of market-
ization have been relatively easily and widely adopted, thus providing many
cases of organization and reorganization of markets. Furthermore, Swedish
organizations are generally easier to access than are organizations in many
other countries, thus facilitating the kind of qualitative case studies that
constitute our reports. We do not believe (although we cannot fully exclude
the possibility) that there are Swedish idiosyncrasies with theoretical implica-
tions for the issues of interest to us. These concerns require more studies of the
organization of markets than we can provide in this book, but hopefully we
can inspire many future such studies.
Finally, the changefulness of market organization and the changefulness
and interrelatedness of products render it difficult to make a clear distinction
between times when a market is first organized and when an existing market
is being reorganized. We started this book project with an interest in

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Nils Brunsson and Mats Jutterström

reorganization, but later realized that whether we are talking about organizing
or reorganizing is a matter of perspective—an issue that is less interesting from
an analytical point of view than from an empirical one. Some organizers are
anxious to broadcast the notion that they are organizing a new market (see
Chapter 6 for an example). Others argue that they are reorganizing an existing
market. We give examples of both cases, along with cases in which the
organizers were unclear on this issue.

Overview of the Book

In Chapter 2, Göran Ahrne, Patrik Aspers and Nils Brunsson describe the
concept of organization and how it applies to markets both within and outside
formal organizations. They describe why and how organization matters—how
an organized order differs from orders produced by mutual adjustment or
institutions. They argue that organization is likely to have a significant effect
on the dynamics of markets. Many of the concepts presented in this chapter
are used in the analyses throughout the book.
In Chapter 3, ‘Creating a Market Bureaucracy: The Case of a Railway Mar-
ket’, Daniel Castillo illustrates the complexity of market organization through
the organizing of a market for railway traffic in Sweden. It was a process that
took almost two decades and involved the creation of a large number of sellers
and several side markets. All in all, it resulted in a ‘market bureaucracy’
involving more organization than the former state monopoly.
The sharp distinction often made between markets and organizations typ-
ically refers to simple ideal types. In Chapter 4, ‘Primary Healthcare: What
Type of Market and What Type of Organization?’, Anders Forssell and Lars
Norén show that the distinction may be more difficult to uphold when
analysing practical situations. They use established theory from the field of
marketing to analyse a case of outsourcing that can be seen as the creation of
both a new market and a new organization.
In Chapter 5, ‘Experience-Based Learning and Market Change’, Mats Jutterström
illustrates how the content of market organization may change significantly
over time and discusses why such change occurs. He argues that the shifts
from relatively little to much organization, eventually adopting more
unorthodox forms in relation to the hegemonic ‘perfect’ market ideal, is an
effect of levels of experience-based learning. The chapter is based on the study
of a market for snow clearance.
When sellers try to launch a product that they define as new, they face the
task of creating and organizing a new market. In Chapter 6, ‘When Sellers
Create Markets: Dilemmas in Markets for Professional Services’, Nils Brunsson
and Anna Tyllström analyse a number of dilemmas and challenges that sellers

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Markets, Organizations, and Organization

of professional services face, using markets for public relations and coaching
services as illustrations.
Markets are intertwined. If a certain market is organized in a way that is
inappropriate for adjacent markets, sellers or buyers in these markets may
intervene. In Chapter 7, ‘ “The Most Regulated Deregulated Market in the
World”?: Sellers Organizing across Markets’, Susanna Alexius describes how
the taxi market in large Swedish cities has been organized by sellers in other
markets, and how they have been able to enforce strong rules, monitoring,
and sanctions directed at sellers of taxi services.
In Chapter 8, ‘Markets as Open Systems: Organizing and Reorganizing a
Financial Market’, Mats Jutterström analyses contextual drivers of market
reorganization. The chapter highlights three generic drivers of reorganization
that made the lives of the organizers both unpredictable and difficult: intru-
sive side markets, general market ideas diverging from practice, and new ideas
of appropriate market characteristics. Moreover, the question of market
reform frequency is addressed; the study illustrates how it may be propelled
by contextual dynamics and unrealistic ideas still hoped for.
In Chapter 9, ‘Markets, Trust, and the Construction of Macro-Organizations’,
Nils Brunsson, Ingrid Gustafsson, and Kristina Tamm Hallström use an empir-
ical case to describe how the problem of trust in markets has led to the creation
of a ‘macro-organization’, an extremely complex system of interrelated new
markets and new interrelated organizations organizing these markets and each
other. The attempts to create trust by organization produced distrust that
stimulated further organization. The complexity of the system makes it highly
questionable whether it can fulfil its purpose.
There is a long tradition of trying to influence markets via consumers, who
have been the targets of education and information campaigns by many types of
organizations. In Chapter 10, ‘Shaping the Consumer: A Century of Consumer
Guidance’, Susanna Alexius and Leina Löwenberg illustrate how various goals
and methods have been used in various periods—from attempts to reduce
‘unnecessary’ consumption at the end of the 19th century to the publishing of
guides about guides: which guides to use when making purchase decisions.
In Chapter 11, ‘When Market Organization Does Not Help: High Ambitions
and Challenges in the Market for Eldercare’, Eva Hagbjer and Anna Krohwinkel
discuss the limits for market organization. They draw from empirical cases of
attempts to organize markets in a way that would make it possible for elderly
people to make informed choices about care providers. Although this possibility
was seen as a prerequisite for the market to function as planned, it turned out
to be very difficult to achieve.
In many markets, sellers want to know as much as possible about buyers,
whereas buyers are far less inclined to share that information with sellers—not
least for privacy reasons. In Chapter 12, ‘Dealing with Asymmetric Information:

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Organizing and Reorganizing a Market for Child Insurance’, Martin Gustavs-


son deals with the dilemma of buyer privacy versus seller information, and
describes how market organization was used and changed in the processes of
conflicting interests.
International government organizations play a key role in the organization
of markets in many countries. In Chapter 13, ‘Reform and Rescue: Inter-
national Organizations and the Organization of Markets’, Matilda Dahl
describes how the Baltic states were the object of much intervention by
international organizations, both when they moved from socialism to capit-
alism and when the 2008 financial crisis struck them. International organiza-
tions not only offered advice, but also used membership in their organizations
as a promise, and the lack of membership as a threat.
In Chapter 14, ‘Organizing Marketplaces: The Constitution of Trade Shows
in a Cutting-Edge Industry’, Patrik Aspers and Asaf Darr turn to the problem of
potential buyers not knowing that a market exists. The solution they describe
is a seller-organized travelling marketplace for computer software in the USA,
nicknamed the ‘Travelling Circus’. Outcomes of this organization other
than the intended ones surfaced, however, including seller collaboration
and industrial espionage.
In Chapter 15, ‘Handling Opposing Market Logics: Public Procurement in
Practice’, Staffan Furusten describes the subtle ways in which buyers can avoid
complying with market organization, using the case of the public procure-
ment of management consulting services. Buyers and sellers generally
favoured a market logic in conflict with the one inherent in the public
procurement rules, and various forms of avoidance constituted a common
way of dealing with the clash.
In Chapter 16, ‘From a Free to a Pure Market: The History of Organizing the
Swedish Pipe and Tube Market’, Kristoffer Strandqvist provides an historical
analysis of the changing organization of a market. He describes how the
market around 1900 was organized by sellers forming cartels as a way of
avoiding the chaos of a ‘free’ market. Over time, representatives of the state
looked upon these cartels with more and more suspicion and wanted to
intervene with their own ideas about proper market organization. But the
sellers and their cartels did not give in easily.
In Chapter 17, ‘Multiplicity, Complexity, and Recurrent Change’, we use
the studies presented in this book to characterize the various organizations
involved in market organization and report on the elements and amount of
organization used. We describe how organization was sometimes supported
with information or artefacts. Moreover, the processes of market organization
are analysed, highlighting both the causes and effects of organization. We
describe how the content of market organization often changed significantly
and discuss the reasons.

14
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
forts, and our pursuit and final rescue by the thousand Andromedan
ships. Then, as our final plea, I showed the vast hordes of serpent-
ships and their irresistible mighty death-beam cone sailing out from
the dying universe toward our own, rushing upon our galaxy and
wiping out all its races. The great globe then went dark, as I released
my hold upon its studs and stepped back from it. Our mission was
ended, and its success or failure lay in the hands of the massed
Andromedans about us.
There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which, I knew, the
fate of our universe and of all in it was being decided, a moment in
which the silence of the mighty hall seemed thunderous to our
strained nerves. Then I saw each of the thousands of Andromedans
in the hall reach down toward two smaller metal studs that projected
from the floor before each, and as the great globe beside me glowed
again with light, I sensed quickly that upon it would be registered the
decision of the majority of the great council about me, the method
used by them in reaching and registering a decision. Tensely we
watched the great glowing globe, and then in it appeared another
scene.
It was a scene of countless ships, gleaming flat Andromedan ships,
gathering from all the suns and worlds of their universe, upon the
giant central world where we were now, tens of thousands of great
ships that rose from that world, slanting up and outward. Among
them were a hundred ships quite different from the rest, great
hemispheres of gleaming metal that rose as smoothly and swiftly as
the rest, domed side uppermost; and as though in explanation there
flashed in the globe a swift picture of those same hundred domed
craft hanging above great suns in the Andromeda universe,
projecting down beside and around them great walls and sheaths of
the dark-purple glowing force that neutralized gravity, so that those
suns, screened from the pull of the suns on their right by a great wall
of that glowing purple force, would move away to the left in answer
to the pull of the suns there, or vice versa. These, I realized swiftly,
were the great sun-swinging ships by means of which the
Andromedans had placed their suns in ordered circles, and now in the
globe with all the tens of thousands of ordinary flat Andromedan
ships they were flashing out into space. Then came a brief scene of
the whole vast Andromedan fleet flashing down out of space upon
the dying universe, bursting through the opening in the great blue-
force wall around it and attacking all the serpent-creatures' suns and
worlds!
The next instant the globe had gone dark again, but I knew now
what the decision of the council was, and I whirled around to my
friends with excitement flaming up in me. "They're going to help us!"
I cried. "They're going to mass all their great fleet and with it and
their sun-swinging ships sail to attack the serpent-universe!"
I can not remember now the moments that followed that momentous
decision, so overwhelming to us then was the consciousness that we
had succeeded in our mission, had dared the awful void and the
perils of three universes and had procured the help that might save
our galaxy. I remember being led by our Andromedan guides into and
through other rooms off the great hall; of the thousands of gaseous
figures of the council crowding up the shaft toward the surface
above, to speed to every quarter of their universe and summon all
their fighting-ships; of Jhul Din noisy with exultation and Korus Kan
quiet as ever, but with gleaming eyes. Then all about me seemed
dissolving and darkening as the utter fatigue of our strenuous last
hours overcame me, a fatigue through which only my knowledge of
our mission's importance had so far borne me, and beneath which
now I sank into dreamless sleep.

When I awoke I sensed that hours had passed, though Jhul Din and
our followers lay still unconscious about me. Leaving them there, I
strode out of the room and into the great Council Hall, whose
stupendous circle lay empty now and bare, seeming immeasurably
more vast in its white-lit emptiness than when filled with the
thousands of gaseous Andromedans. I moved across it to the raised
section at the center, stepped upon the purple-glowing disk beneath
the ascending shaft, and then, thrust upward by the force of that
disk, was moving smoothly toward the round opening in that ceiling
and on up the shaft until I had burst out into the unceasing light of
the belt of suns above, stepping sidewise onto the ground as I did so.
And now I saw that Korus Kan, not a dozen feet away, had turned
and was coming toward me.
"Their ships are gathering, Dur Nal!" he exclaimed, eyes alight.
"You've slept for nearly a day, there below, and their ships have been
coming in those hours from every sun and world in their universe!"
I swept my gaze about, a certain awe filling me as I saw now the
tremendous forces that had gathered and were gathering here on the
surface of this giant central world. A tremendous circular area of
miles in diameter around us, around the shafts that led down to the
hall of the council, had been cleared of all else and was now a single
vast gathering-point for the thousands of ships that were massing
here. Even while we gazed, the air above was being darkened by the
swarms of those ships that shot ceaselessly downward, landing in this
great circular area, drawing up in regular rows and masses. In tens of
thousands they were grouped about us, a tremendous plain of
gleaming metal ships that stretched as far as the eye could reach.
At the center of this vast plain of ships, though, there lay a round
clearing, in which we ourselves stood, a clearing in which there
rested only a hundred other ships, different far from the thousands
around them, a hundred domed, gleaming craft like giant
hemispheres of metal. Not a thousand feet from us lay these great,
strange craft, their space-doors open and their Andromedan crews
busy among the masses of strange mechanisms inside, and I
recognized them instantly as the great craft I had seen in the
thought-pictures in the Council Hall below, the mighty ships whose
projected sheaths and walls of dark-purple force could move giant
suns at will.
"The sun-swinging ships!" I exclaimed, and Korus Kan nodded, his
eyes upon them also.
"Yes," he said, "they'll be the most powerful weapons of the whole
great fleet—with them we can crash the suns and worlds of the
serpent-universe together at will."
Now, though, we turned our attention from them to the tens of
thousands of ships that lay about us. In and out of those ships, too,
were moving countless masses of Andromedans, swift-gliding
gaseous figures who were inspecting and testing the mechanisms of
their craft and the cylinders in their sides that shot forth the
crumpling shafts of force. They were making all ready for our start,
we knew, for the battle that must ensue when we poured down on
the serpent-universe, and we strode over toward them. Already we
had learned that the controls and mechanisms of the Andromedan
ships were much like those of the serpent-ships, their speed being
fully as great, but some features of them were still strange to me. A
dozen steps only we took toward them, though, and then stopped
short.
For down out of the sunlight above was slanting toward us a close-
massed swarm of ships that seemed different from the masses of
ships that were landing ceaselessly about us, that moved more
slowly, more deliberately. Down it came while we watched it, standing
there, seeing it change from a far swarm of black dots in the sunlight
above to a mass of long dark shapes, that were becoming clearer to
our eyes each moment—shapes that, I saw with a sudden great leap
of my heart, were not long and flat, but oval!
"They're serpent-ships!" Korus Kan's great cry stabbed like a sword-
blade of sound toward me. "They're the serpent-ships that pursued
us to this universe—the three hundred that escaped when we were
rescued—they've seen this great fleet gathering and have come to
strike a blow at it!"
Serpent-ships! My mind was racing with superhuman speed in that
instant as they drove down toward us, and I saw that the Antarian
was right, that these were the three hundred that had escaped when
we were rescued by the Andromedans, and that we thought had fled
back to their own universe. Instead they had turned and followed us,
knowing that we meant to gather forces to attack their universe, had
flashed into the Andromeda universe toward this central world,
unseen among the swarms of other ships that were gathering here,
and now were swooping down with their score of great disk
attraction-ships lowermost, driving down toward us in a fierce,
reckless attack! In a single instant it all flashed plain in my mind, and
then Korus Kan and I had whirled around, and he was racing back
toward the hundred domed sun-swinging ships behind us.
"I'll warn these hundred ships!" he yelled, as I turned too and raced
toward the nearest of the thousands of fighting-ships about us.
Even as I ran toward those thousands of ships, though, their
Andromedan crews still unaware of their peril, I saw the massed
serpent-ships above slanting straight down toward the hundred
domed craft behind me, their attraction-ships hanging motionless
above those craft for a moment. I had reached the Andromedan
fighting-ships, now, and as the crews of the nearest glided forth to
meet me I cried out, pointing upward. They saw the serpent-ships
swooping down from above, and then were throwing themselves into
their own ships. I raced into one with them, up to the pilot room set
near the stem on its long flat upper surface. The Andromedans
beside me flung back the controls, then, and our ship and the ships
about us were leaping up like light toward the down-rushing serpent-
ships.
At the same moment I saw Korus Kan racing into one of the domed
sun-swinging ships above which hovered the score of attraction-
ships, saw the doors of those domed ships clanging shut as they
prepared to escape from the menace above, since they could project
their mighty purple force downward only, and would thus be helpless
if caught in the attraction-grip of the disk-ships above. A moment
more and those hundred domed craft, the most powerful weapon of
the great Andromedan fleet, would be safe, I knew. But in that
moment, as the three hundred serpent fighting-ships dashed down
toward us, I saw the score of hovering attraction-ships glow suddenly
with flickering light; the hundred sun-swinging ships beneath were
pulled smoothly upward by that tremendous attractive force; and
then the attraction-ships, grasping the hundred domed craft that
were the heart of our fleet, were racing straight up and outward into
space!

13. The Sailing of the Fleet


As that score of glowing disk-ships, with our own hundred sun-
swinging craft in their grip, flashed up and out of sight, our fighting-
ships were flashing upward with the three hundred fighting-ships of
the serpent-creatures racing down to meet us. Then, before we could
swerve aside from their mad downward charge to pursue the
attraction-ships, they had met us, and in all the world about us there
was nothing for the moment but crashing and striking ships. Even as
they had flashed down upon us, and we up to meet them, the
invisible shafts of force from our cylinders had stabbed up and
crossed their downward-reaching death-beams, so that scores of
their own ships had crumpled and collapsed in the instant before we
met them, scores of ours in turn driving crazily forward and sidewise
as the pale beams wiped all life from them in that same moment. As
we met them, though, it seemed that our ships and theirs were all to
perish alike in crashes in mid-air, without further need of weapons, so
terrific was the impact.
All about us in that moment I glimpsed ships smashing squarely into
down-rushing serpent-ships, while our own craft spun and whirled as
racing ships grazed along its sides. Then, hanging in the air there a
scant mile above the ground, we whirled and grappled with the
serpent-craft in a fierce, wild struggle. Their whole aim, we knew,
was to keep us occupied long enough to permit the escape of their
attraction-ships with our own sun-swinging craft in their grasp, while
our object, in turn, was to brush aside these serpent-ships before us
and race in pursuit of the attraction-ships. Charge and struggle as we
might, though, in the moments following we could not break loose
from the fury of the serpent-creatures' attack, who drove toward us
with death-beams whirling in all the mad recklessness of despair.
I saw Andromedan ships all about us driving aimlessly away as those
pale beams struck them, saw others destroyed by serpent-ships that
crashed deliberately into them, and then pouring up from beneath
came the masses of the great fleet beneath, thousands of ships that
raced up and around the struggling serpent-ships, crumpling and
destroying them with countless invisible shafts of force from their
cylinders. Within another moment the last of the enemy craft had
vanished, but by that time our own ship and a half-thousand others
were flashing up in pursuit of the attraction-ships.
Up, up we raced—up until the giant world was but a tiny ball
beneath, hanging at the center of the great ring of suns—but then
we stopped, and hung motionless. For we were, we saw, too late.
About us there stretched only the far-reaching circles of flaming suns
that made up the Andromeda universe, with no sign of the attraction-
ships or their prey. In those moments that the struggling serpent-
craft had held us back, the attraction-ships had flashed out from this
universe into the boundless gulf of space, with the hundred sun-
swinging craft in their grasp, with Korus Kan himself in one of those
ships. On none of our space-charts were they visible, safe from our
pursuit out in the void, and we knew that somewhere in that void our
sun-swinging craft and all in them were meeting their end, held in
the relentless grasp of the attraction-ships and destroyed by them,
since the sun-swinging craft could project their own terrific forces
only downward. We were too late. Silently, slowly, we slanted back
down toward the great central world.
As we came to rest there, among the tens of thousands of other
gathered ships, I saw Jhul Din and our followers, aroused from
beneath by the battle, running forward to meet me. I saw him glance
about as he came toward me, inquiry in his glance, and then I shook
my head.
"We've lost the most powerful weapon of the whole Andromedan
fleet," I told him, slowly. "And we've lost, too, Korus Kan."
I think that in the hours that followed, while the last thousands of
ships swept in from all quarters of the Andromeda universe to gather
around us, it was the loss of our friend that lay heavier on the minds
of both myself and the Spican than that of the hundred sun-swinging
ships. Those hundred ships, we knew, would have enabled us to
wreck all the serpent-universe, whereas now we must meet them
ship to ship, and trust to courage and fighting-power alone to win for
us. Yet even their loss seemed small to us beside that of the friend
with whom we two had roved all the ways of our galaxy in the
cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol, with whom we had dared across the
void and through the serpent-universe and its perils, toward this
Andromeda universe. Silent, though, we remained, watching the
thousands of long, flat ships massing about us, and it was still in
silence that I received from the Andromedan leaders the knowledge
that I had been chosen to command their vast fleet in its great
attack, since I was familiar with the serpent-universe which we were
to attack.

A half-dozen hours after the raid of the serpent-ships, the last of the
Andromedan craft had sped in from the farthest suns of their
universe, and a full hundred thousand mighty ships covered the
surface of the great world as far as the eye could reach, gleaming
there beneath the light of the belted suns above. Long, grim and
ready they waited, their gaseous Andromedan crews alert at the
controls, while before us lay in the central clearing our own long, flat
flag-ship. In it, too, the Andromedan crew stood ready, the scant
score of my own strange followers among them, its space-door open
and waiting for our start. Standing beside it, though, Jhul Din and I
paused; then I turned back to where the score or more of
Andromedans that were their leaders, the chiefs of their great
council, stood.
Tall, steady figures of strange, thick green gas they stood there,
regarding me, I knew. They had gathered all their forces to save a
universe alien to themselves, to crush the serpent-peoples, and had
placed all those forces under the command of myself, an alien to
them. The greatness of their spirit, the calm, vast magnanimity of
them, struck home to me in that moment, and impulsively I reached
a hand out toward them once more, felt it grasped and gripped as
though by solid flesh by a score of gaseous arms; a moment in
which, across all the differences of mind and shape, the beings of
two universes gripped hands in kinship of spirit. Then I had turned
from them, and with Jhul Din was moving into our great ship, up to
the pilot room, where the Spican took his position at the controls.
The space-door below slammed shut, our generators throbbed
suddenly, and then we were slanting smoothly upward.
Before me stood a tall, square instrument bearing a bank of black
keys—keys that transmitted to the ships of our vast fleet my
formation and speed orders, as I pressed them. I pressed one now,
as we shot upward, glimpsed a long rank of ships on the ground
behind and beneath us rising smoothly after us in answer, pressed
another and saw another rank rising and following, until within a few
moments more the whole of the vast fleet, a hundred thousand
gleaming ships, had risen and was driving up and outward, with our
flag-ship in the van. Up we moved, until we were slanting up over the
ring of mighty suns that encircled the great central worlds and the
swarms of smaller planets, that central world vanishing behind us as
we flashed on, and the great circle of suns about it, and the suns
beside us, all dropping smoothly behind.
Out between those great circles of suns we moved, our great fleet in
a long, streaming line to avoid all danger of collisions with the suns
and worlds about us. I saw the Andromedans in the pilot room with
me standing motionless by its windows as we flashed on past the
circled suns and swarming worlds of their universe, knew that they
were watching those suns and worlds drop behind as they moved out
to the great struggle that would decide the fate of their universe as
well as of my own. Then at last we were racing out between the last
great circles of suns, out over the edge of the Andromeda universe
into the blackness and emptiness of outer space once more.
Now as the great darkness of the void lay before us, I pressed the
keys before me in swift succession, and at once the thousands of
ships behind me leapt into a new formation, that of a colossal hollow
pyramid that flashed through space with my flag-ship at its apex.
Faster and faster our great fleet shot out into the void, the
tremendous mass of ships behind me uniformly increasing their
speed, until at last at our utmost velocity we were racing on toward
the faint, wraith-like glow of the serpent-universe ahead.
Outward, into the darkness and silence of the eternal void, we were
flashing once more, but as I stood with Jhul Din there in the pilot
room, watching the great Andromeda universe dwindling in the
darkness behind us, no exultation filled me. We had done what none
in our galaxy ever before had done, had crossed the gulf and
procured the aid with which we were racing to crush our enemies
before they could pour down upon us, but my thoughts were not on
these things but on the friends we were leaving behind us.
Somewhere out in the void from that Andromeda universe, Korus Kan
had gone to his death with the sun-swinging ships, and as we sped
on through the void toward the serpent-universe it was the thought
of that that held our minds rather than that of the great battle before
us.
Hour upon hour of swift flight was dropping behind us as we raced
steadily and smoothly on, detouring far around the great heat-
regions and radio-active regions that we encountered, heading on
toward the serpent-universe that was glowing ever broader before
us. Smooth, immeasurable and endless they seemed, those hours of
swift and steady flight, but at last we became aware that they were
coming to an end, the dying universe ahead a great dim glow across
all the blackness of the firmament. Ever our eyes hung upon that
misty region of light as we flashed nearer and nearer to it, and ever
the same doubt, the same wonder, rose and grew in our minds.
Could we, really, crush and destroy the serpent-peoples in this
strange universe? What would be the outcome of the tremendous
battle we must fight in it to prevent the serpent-hordes from pouring
across space toward our own universe?
Before us now the somber splendor of the dying universe filled the
heavens, a vast mass of dead and dying suns, black and burned-out
stars and suns of smoky crimson, glowing in the blackness of space
like the embers of a mighty, dying fire. Around that great, dim-
glowing mass we could make out the gigantic shell of flickering blue
light, all but invisible, that surrounded it, the titanic and impenetrable
wall of vibrations that enclosed it. In toward that wall our vast fleet
was racing, moving at slackening speed as I touched a key before
me, until at last the mighty flickering barrier loomed close ahead, the
single opening in it, guarded by the huge space-forts on each side,
lying straight before us. And as we drew within sight of that opening
we saw, hanging in space just inside it, massed solidly across it, a
thousand oval ships!
"The serpent-ships!" I exclaimed. "They're going to hold the gate of
their universe against us!"
Jhul Din was staring at them as though puzzled. "But why only a
thousand ships?" he said. "Why haven't they massed all their great
fleet there at the gate——"
But I had turned, had pressed the keys before me in swift succession,
and at once our tremendous fleet had slowed and smoothly halted,
hanging there in space. Then, as I depressed still other keys, our vast
mass of ships split smoothly into three separate masses, my flag-ship
at the van of the central mass, the others moving to right and to left
of us. A moment our three great masses of ships hung there, and
then those on either side of us had flashed toward the great space-
forts that guarded each side of the great opening, while our own
central mass, my ship at its head, drove straight in toward the great
opening itself!
Straight toward and into the opening raced our close-massed ships
and then the next moment it seemed that all the universe about was
transformed into a single awful mass of pale beams that stabbed
toward and through us from the space-forts on each side and from
the close-massed ships ahead. How our own ship escaped
annihilation in that first moment of terrific, reeling shock, I can not
guess; since behind and about us scores of our ships were driving
crazily away, their occupants annihilated by the deadly beams. Yet
from all our own craft, reeling blindly as they were there in the
opening, our cylinders were loosing their shafts of invisible force
upon the space-forts to each side and upon the serpent-ships that
leapt toward us from ahead.
Then as those ships met ours, there in the narrow opening with the
huge towering space-forts at each side, there ensued a moment of
battle so terrific—battle more awful in its concentrated fury than any
I had ever yet experienced—that it seemed impossible that ships and
living beings could fight thus and live. Terrific was the scene about us
—the vast black vault of infinite outer space behind us, the far-flung,
dim-glowing mass of the dying universe before us, the gigantic wall
of pale blue flickering light that separated the two, the single opening
in that wall, flanked by the titanic metal space-forts, in which our
thousands of close-massed ships charged forward toward the
onrushing serpent-ships.

Ships were crashing and smashing as we met them, death-beams


were whirling thick from their ships and from the huge space-forts,
serpent-craft were crumpling and collapsing beneath our shafts of
force—and still our own ships were reeling away in scores as the
death-beams found them. I knew that not for long could we continue
this suicidal combat, since though the serpent-ships before us were
being swiftly wiped out, the space-forts on each side still played their
beams upon us with deadly effect. The other two divisions of our
great fleet, dashing to attack the space-forts from outside while we
battled there in the opening between them, had been thrust back, I
saw, from each attack by the masses of pale beams that sprang from
the forts.
But as the whole struggle hung thus in doubt, as our ships fell in
fierce battle there in the opening beneath the beams of the forts, I
saw a score of ships among those attacking the right-hand fort drive
suddenly toward that fort with all their terrific utmost speed, leaping
toward it like great thunderbolts of metal. From the great castle the
death-beams sprang toward that score of ships, sweeping through
them and wiping all life instantly from them, but before the ships had
time to swerve or reel aside from that mad onward flight their terrific
speed had carried them onward, and with a mighty, shattering
collision they had crashed straight into the great fort's side.
I saw the great metal walls of the space-fort buckling and collapsing
beneath that awful impact, and then all the space-fort had collapsed
also, like a thing of paper, crushing within itself the serpent-creatures
and generators and death-beam tubes it had held. To our left,
another score of ships were leaping toward the left-hand fort in the
same manner, and as they crashed into it, racing on through a storm
of death-beams that swept through them, the left-hand space-fort
too had buckled and crumpled and collapsed. At the same moment
the last of the thousand serpent-ships before us was falling beneath
our force-shafts, and then the great opening lay clear before us, with
neither serpent-ships nor space-forts now in sight. We had forced the
gates of the serpent-universe!
Then, our vast fleet massing together once more, we swept in
through the opening, in a long column, into the dying universe. A full
two thousand of our hundred thousand ships we had lost in that mad
attack on the great gates, but heeded that but little as we flashed
now into the serpent-creatures' universe. Through the dead and
dying suns we sped, holding to a close-massed formation and moving
slowly and cautiously forward. At every moment I expected the great
serpent-fleet to burst out upon us from behind some dead or dying
sun, for I knew that their allowing us to advance through their
universe thus unhindered meant only that they had prepared some
ambush for us. Yet as we sped in toward the center of the dying
universe, there appeared no single enemy craft about us or on our
space-charts, a total absence of all serpent-ships that began to affect
our nerves as we drove ever more tensely forward.
At last there appeared far ahead the majestic trio of giant, crimson
suns that swung at this universe's heart, and as we moved down
toward these we knew that at last the final struggle was at hand,
since between those suns turned the great world that was the heart
of the serpent-civilization. Down toward that world we slanted
smoothly, expecting every moment the uprush from it of the great
serpent-fleet; yet still were we unchallenged and unattacked as we
moved downward. Upon us there leapt no serpent-ships; in space
about us, as we sank lower and lower, were no craft other than our
own. In breathless silence we watched, sinking down toward the
great sphere's surface, until at last we hung at a bare thousand feet
above that surface, the mighty city of blue force stretching from
horizon to horizon beneath us. And at sight of that city there burst
from us wild, stunned cries.
For the mighty city was—empty! Empty, lifeless, its streets deserted
and bare, its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations
without occupant of any kind! No single serpent-shape moved in all
that tremendous city, and I saw that upon the great clearing where
the vast serpent-fleet and the colossal death-beam cone had rested
there was now nothing. The world beneath us, the universe about us,
were a world, universe—deserted!
"Its vast mass of towering structures of blue vibrations was
without occupants of any kind."

"Too late!" Jhul Din's cry came to my ears like the voice of doom.
"The defense of the gate was only to delay us, and the serpent-races
have gone—they've struck! They've massed all their hordes in their
great fleet and with their giant death-beam cone have sailed out
across the void to attack our universe! We're too late!"
Too late! The thought beat upon my brain like drum-beats of horror
as we stood there, in utter silence. All had been in vain—our
tremendous journey, our fierce struggles, the loss of Korus Kan—
since already far across the void the serpent-hordes in their countless
ships were rushing toward our universe, where their vanguard had
prepared a foothold for them. They had known that we were
summoning help from the Andromeda universe, had swiftly gathered
and sailed on their great attack, leaving only a force at the great gate
to delay us. Too late! Then suddenly resolution flamed again inside
me, and I pressed swiftly the keys before me, sent our whole fleet
turning and speeding outward again—out through the dying universe
away from the great trio of suns at its center—out toward the great
opening in the vibration-wall.
"Too late—no!" I shouted. "We'll follow them across the void toward
our own universe! They could not have completed that great death-
beam cone yet—they've taken it with them to our own universe to
complete it there—and if we can reach them and attack them before
they have time to complete it, we yet may save our universe!"
Now our great fleet was rushing toward and through the opening in
the vibration-wall, out into the void of outer space once more. There
we halted, massed again in our pyramidal flight-formation, and then
were turning slowly toward the left, toward the far little patch of
glowing light that was our universe. Then we were moving toward it,
with swiftly gathering speed, faster and faster, until at our utmost
velocity we were racing through the infinite immensities of space
toward it; flashing on toward the last act of the vast, cosmic drama
that was rising now to its climax; rushing on through the void toward
the final great battle in which the destinies of three mighty universes
and all their suns and worlds and peoples were to be decided for all
time!
14. Back to the Galaxy
Standing once more in the pilot room, with Jhul Din at the controls
beside me, I stared out through the room's fore-windows, straining
my vision out through the cosmic darkness that lay about our
onward-rushing ships. Far ahead, in that darkness, lay a great,
glowing mass of light, lay a radiant, disk-like mass that was resolving
itself into a great swarm of brilliant stars as we rushed ever on
toward it. In silence we two gazed toward it, for it was our own great
galaxy that lay before us, toward which for day upon dragging day,
hour upon slow hour, our mighty fleet had rushed on and on.
Now, as we gazed toward it, waxing there in splendor before us in
the lightless heavens, I could not but reflect upon how infinitely
strange and far a journey had been ours since we had left it, across
what infinities of trackless space and upon what alien suns and
worlds we had gone. Out into the infinite we had gone for the help
that might save our universe, and now out of the infinite we were
coming with that help, but two returning where three had gone out.
Yet would the help we brought be in time to save our galaxy? Already
the great serpent-hordes, we knew, would have reached that galaxy,
would have settled upon the suns and worlds of the great Cancer
cluster where their vanguard had made for them a base, and there
they would be laboring to complete the colossal death-beam cone
with which they could wipe out all the life on all the galaxy's worlds,
and all our own great fleet. Could we reach them and conquer them
before they completed that great cone of death?
We were within a few score hours of the galaxy ahead, I knew, and
as we raced on toward it at the same unvarying velocity, its individual
greater stars were burning out more clearly, and the great Cancer
cluster was a tiny ball of light at the glowing swarm's edge. Countless
billions of miles of space lay between us and that cluster still, I knew,
yet it was with something of hope that I watched it as we flashed on.
For though inside it the gigantic death-cone might be approaching
completion, it would not be long before our vast fleet would be
pouring down upon that cluster and upon the serpent-hordes within
it, before the great cone could be finished.
As I mused thus, though, there came a low exclamation from Jhul
Din, and I turned to find him peering forward into the void with a
gaze suddenly tense. Then he had turned toward me and was
pointing ahead and to the left into the darkness before us.
"One of the great heat-regions!" he exclaimed.
I gazed out toward it and in a moment I, too, had seen it—a dim,
faint little glow of red light, flickering there in the darkness of space
before us and to the left. Steadily that little glow was broadening,
deepening, though, while our temperature-dials were recording
swiftly rising heat outside as we neared it. There was no need to
change the course of our fleet, though, since the heat-region lay
toward the left and our present course would take us safely past its
right edge. It was, perhaps, the same region into which we had
blundered on our outward flight, and with interest we watched it as
our great fleet shot forward and along its outer edge. It was a vast
area of glowing crimson light to our left, now. A terrific furnace of
heat-vibrations loosed by the collision of the great ether-currents
through which we were plunging. Then, just as our fleet was
speeding directly past the mighty, glowing region, along its outer
edge, our prow turned slowly toward the left, toward the heat-region,
and then we were racing straight inward toward the region's fiery
heart!
For an instant I stared in stunned amazement as our ship shifted
thus, then whirled around to the Spican. "Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "The
controls! The ship's heading into the heat-region!"
But already he was twisting frantically at the controls, and now he
looked up wildly toward me. "The ship doesn't answer the controls!"
he cried. "It's heading straight inward—and the ships behind us—!"
And he pointed up toward the space-chart, where I saw now that as
they rushed on, the thousands of ships behind us were shifting their
course like our own and racing into the heat-region after us—racing
in like us toward a fiery death! Then, as I gazed stupefied up toward
the space-chart, I saw something else, saw that inches to the left of
our fleet on the chart, away on the other side of the glowing heat-
region from us, there hung a half-thousand ships, that showed on the
chart as a close-massed swarm of dots, hanging there motionless.
And as I saw them I understood, and with understanding a great
shout broke from me.
"Attraction-ships!" I cried. "It's an ambush the serpent-fleet left for us
if we followed them! Attraction-ships hanging there on the other side
of the heat-region and pulling our ships toward themselves, and
toward and into that region!"
With that cry I leapt forward, pressing swiftly a half-dozen of the keys
before me, flashing an order for all ships behind to turn at right-
angles immediately. Watching the chart, though, I saw that nearly all
our mighty fleet was now moving into the heat-region, caught in the
grip of the attraction-ships beyond it. As my order flashed, though,
the last ships of our fleet, not more than a thousand in number, had
turned immediately, just before they too had raced into the deadly
grip, and were rushing clear. Then, as their occupants, too, saw upon
the space-charts the attraction-ships hovering beyond the heat-
region, I saw them race away and around the great glowing region's
edge toward those attraction-ships, while the rest of all our mighty
fleet was drawn farther and farther in toward its fiery heart.
All about us now was the faint red glow of the heat-region's outer
portions, while swiftly the heat inside our ship was increasing, the air
in the pilot room being already almost too warm to breathe. Onward
we were being pulled, irresistibly, our walls beginning already to warp
and crack beneath the terrific temperatures outside. Gazing forward
through the glare of the great region's fiery heart, even as we were
swept in toward it, I could make out through our distance-windows a
swarm of great, disk-shaped craft hanging beyond the heat-region,
the attraction-ships that were pulling us on to doom. Around the
great region's edge toward those disk-craft our own thousand
escaped ships were flashing, but before ever they could reach them,
it seemed, we must perish, so awful had the heat about us become.
Then I saw our thousand ships, racing about the great region's edge,
pouring down on the five hundred attraction-ships, rushing down
upon them in a mad swooping charge. About ourselves the crimson
glare had become all but blinding, and our walls were glowing dull
red, the air about us stifling. Already Jhul Din was swaying at the
controls beneath that overpowering heat, and as our walls wrenched
and cracked again I knew that a moment more of the terrific heat
into which we were being pulled would mean the end. But even with
that realization I shouted with sudden hope, since through our tele-
magnifier I had glimpsed one after another of the attraction-ships, far
on the other side of the heat-region, reeling and crumpling beneath
the force-shafts of our thousand attacking ships!
With every one of those attraction-ships destroyed, the pull that was
drawing us into the fiery maelstrom of light and heat was lessening in
strength, drawing us ever more slowly forward. But forward still we
were moving, pulled by the remaining attraction-ships that fought still
desperately against the thousand attacking craft, fighting to the end
in their great effort to destroy all our fleet. Into the very inmost
flaming heart of the great region we were plunging, now, the whole
universe about us seeming but a single thunderous inferno of blood-
like light and burning heat. Then, as choking and reeling I felt the
ship quiver violently with the approaching end, I saw our thousand or
less attacking ships beyond crashing down upon the resisting
attraction-ships in one irresistible, headlong charge, and as those
great disk-ships, flickering with attractive force, crumpled and
vanished beneath that last wild swoop, the pull upon us suddenly
relaxed, vanished also. The next moment we had shot the controls
sharply over, and our ship and all the ships behind it were shooting
out of that hell of heat and light into empty space once more.
Now, as we sped out into the clean cold void of space again, our
ships again taking up their formation and heading toward the galaxy,
I turned to Jhul Din.
"It's their last attempt to stop us!" I cried. "But we've won clear—
nothing can keep us from reaching them now!"
And as our great fleet again shot forward at full speed through the
void I stood now no longer tense or anxious but with the old lust for
battle burning up in me stood grimly silent with eyes upon the
universe ahead as its glowing mass of stars broadened across the
heavens before us. For now, I knew, we had plunged through the last
trap, the last delay, by which the serpent-creatures had planned to
hold back and destroy us, and now nothing could prevent the final
attack toward which we were racing. Our great flight outward from
our galaxy for help, our terrible captivity in the dying universe, our
mad flight to the Andromeda universe, and our struggle there in
which one of us had gone to his end, our sailing for the dying
universe with the great Andromedan fleet—all these things were
drawing now toward their climax, when we were to pour down on the
Cancer cluster and the serpent-creatures there in our great attack.
Humming, throbbing, droning, on through the void our great fleet
shot, force-shaft cylinders and other mechanisms clanging now
beneath us as our Andromedan crew cleared the decks below for
action. With every hour, every moment, the galaxy's stars were
shining in greater splendor ahead, a giant belt of suns across the
firmament before us. My eyes roved across them, from the yellow
splendor of Capella to the white brilliance of Rigel, and then
something of emotion rose in me as they shifted to Antares, the
great crimson star that had been Korus Kan's home sun. But my eyes
hardened again as they turned toward the Cancer cluster, a great ball
of suns glowing in resplendent glory at the galaxy's edge before us;
for well I knew that upon the thronging worlds of its clustered suns
the countless races of the serpent-creatures were gathered now,
completing the gigantic death-beam cone with which they would
sweep out to annihilate all life in our galaxy save themselves. Straight
toward that ball of suns our fleet was leaping, and now Jhul Din
turned toward me.
"You're going to drive with our fleet straight into the cluster itself?"
he asked, and I nodded grimly.
"It's our only chance," I said. "All the serpent-hordes are on the
worlds inside it, and we've got to reach it to destroy that great cone
before they finish it."
Now the galaxy's flaring suns filled the heavens before us as our
mighty armada raced in through the outer void toward them, the
Cancer cluster flaming ahead in all the blinding glory of its gathered
suns, those suns appearing on the upper part of our space-chart as a
mass of glowing little circles, toward which our vast swarm of ship-
dots was speeding. Minutes more of our terrific speed would see us
reaching that cluster, I knew, and I turned toward the bank of keys
before me to shift our great fleet's mass into a formation that would
allow us to pour down into that ball of suns in our great attack. But
as I did so, as I reached toward those keys, there came from Jhul Din
a cry that held me rigid. He was gazing up toward the space-chart,
and pointing.
"Look—in the cluster!" he cried. "Those dots—those ships——!"
I looked swiftly up, saw that among the massed sun-circles of the
Cancer cluster, on the chart, were moving a countless number of tiny
dots of black, dots that were sweeping outward from and between
those sun-circles, ships that were rising from the worlds around
them! Out between the cluster's glowing circles they moved, toward
us, in thousands, in tens of thousands, until all hung just outside it, a
huge swarm of dots as large or larger than our own, a full hundred
thousand mighty ships! There in space outside the cluster that vast
fleet hung, and then was moving out toward us, a tremendous swarm
of dots that was creeping down across the space-chart toward our
own up-moving swarm, a mighty armada that was rushing out
through the void toward our own inrushing armada! And as I gazed
up at the great chart, stunned, there came from beside me the
Spican's cry again.
"It's the serpent-creatures' fleet! They've seen us coming—know we
mean to attack the cluster and destroy the cone—and they've massed
all their ships and are coming out to meet us!"

15. An Armageddon of Universes


As Jhul Din's cry rang out I stood for an instant quite still, my eyes
fixed on the chart upon which that great, outrushing swarm was
drawing nearer to our own each moment. It was the vast fleet we
had seen building in the dying universe, I knew, that had carried all
their hordes across the void to our galaxy, to the Cancer cluster, and
that they were flinging out now to meet and halt us here in outer
space while in that cluster they labored to complete their giant cone
of death. Before ever we could attack the cluster, now, we must come
to death-grips with the titanic fleet rushing out toward us, a fleet that
in size and power was at least as great as our own, and for that
instant hope sank within me. Then, as the two fleets rushed ever
closer, my doubts dissolved into a fierce determination.
"They've come out for battle," I cried, "and battle we'll give them! A
battle this time to the end!"
At the same moment I turned swiftly toward the bank of keys before
me. On the space-chart I saw that the serpent-fleet was driving
toward us in a long, rectangular formation, our own fleet racing in its
pyramid-formation to meet it. Both tremendous armadas were
moving at their utmost speeds, toward each other, but as I pressed a
key that slackened the speed of our own fleet I saw the other slowing
also. Then, in swift succession, I touched other keys, and out from
the great mass of our fleet behind me sprang two thousand of our
swiftest ships, driving out from our fleet in a great fringe, ahead of us
and to each side and above and below; and in a few moments more
there leapt from the approaching serpent-armada a similar line of
scouts.
Tensely I gazed out into the void as our two fleets neared each other,
the scouts of each driving far ahead and to the sides, while steadily
our own speed was slowing as I touched one after another of the
keys before me. On the space-chart I could see the foremost scout-
ships of each fleet almost meeting, now, but even in that moment of
suspense the strangeness of my position and of all about me struck
home to me—the tremendous gloom of space about us, the blazing
suns of our galaxy stretched across the firmament ahead, the Cancer
cluster a brilliant ball of close-massed suns among them, the two
tremendous fleets that were rushing through the void toward each
other. With every moment the speed of the oncoming serpent-fleet
was slackening, though, and smoothly that of our own was lessening
as my fingers moved upon the bank of keys before me that held the
control of all our hundred thousand ships. Surely never in any
struggle in all time had any commander directed thus, with swift-
changing finger-touches, such a colossal force as moved now behind
my flag-ship, responding swiftly to every touch upon the keys before
me. As I stood alone there in the little pilot room, save for Jhul Din at
the controls, the tremendous responsibility that was mine seemed
weighing down upon me tangibly, crushing me, but I gripped myself,
peered tensely ahead.
Smoothly still our great fleet shot through the void of darkness, and
then upon the space-chart I saw our most advanced scout-ships
creeping toward the advancing serpent-scouts and meeting them,
touching them. At the same moment, in the darkness far ahead,
there glowed out here and there long, pale shafts of misty white
light, appearing and disappearing, hardly to be seen against the
flaring suns of the galaxy beyond. All along a broad, thin line ahead
those little beams of pale light were showing, like ghostly, questing
fingers of death, and as they glowed and vanished there far ahead,
soundlessly, the big Spican beside me twitched with eagerness.
"The scouts!" he exclaimed. "They've met—they're fighting!"
I nodded, without speaking, straining my gaze into the void ahead,
where our scouting-ships and those of the serpent-fleet were, I
knew, already whirling and stabbing at each other, while in toward
them were moving the main masses of the two vast armadas. Hardly
more than an inch's gap lay between those two fleets on the space-
chart, now, and as I gazed ahead I saw the fighting scout-ships
coming into view before us, a long, thin line of battle extending
across the void before us and made up of gleaming oval serpent-craft
and flat Andromedan ships, dipping and striking and soaring there
before us. Fiercely those advance-ships of the two mighty fleets were
grappling there, scores of them reeling aimlessly away as the pale
beams swept them or crumpling suddenly up as the invisible but
deadly force-shafts struck them. But I was looking beyond them,
now, looking beyond them to where, between them and the galaxy's
suns, a gigantic, far-flung swarm of shining light-points was rushing
toward us.
"The serpent-fleet!" I whispered.
On it was coming toward us, even as we moved toward it, the long
line of struggling, raging scout-ships between our advancing fleets.
Swiftly it was changing from a swarm of innumerable light-points to a
swarm of vaguely glimpsed shapes that grew larger, clearer, with
every moment that they neared us, thousands upon tens of
thousands of great oval ships, flashing toward us in a mighty
rectangle! Toward it our own vast pyramid of ships was rushing in
turn, and then the struggling scouts ahead had flashed back to rejoin
their respective fleets, and with only empty space between them now
the two titanic armadas were thundering toward each other! The
Armageddon of our universes had begun!

Swiftly, as our vast fleet leapt forward through the void, my fingers
were pressing the keys before me, and instantly our massed
thousands of ships had shifted from their pyramidal formation into
one of two long and mighty columns, racing forward side by side.
Nearer the colossal rectangle of the serpent-fleet was rushing toward
us—nearer with each instant, until it seemed that the two vast
armadas must crash into each other and destroy each other. Bending
tensely over my keys I saw their huge fleet looming before us, an
enormous, close-massed swarm of great oval hulls rushing lightning-
like toward us. Then, just before they reached us, I pressed a single
key.
Instantly our two great racing columns of ships divided, one to the
right, our own ship at its head, and one to the left, splitting from
each other and flashing past the great mass of the serpent-fleet on
each side! And as we thus flashed past there leapt from the cylinders
of our ships toward the serpent-fleet between our columns countless
deadly shafts of invisible force, shafts that in the instant that we
flashed past had crumpled and smashed to twisted wrecks of metal a
full three thousand or more of the great mass of the serpent-ships!
From their fleet's edge the pale beams sprang out in answer to us,
wiping the life from scores of our racing ships; but caught as they
thus were between our flashing columns they could not loose those
beams effectively, and in a moment we were past them. Then with
the galaxy's suns before us our great fleet was halting, turning, its
columns closing again together, while toward those distant suns were
drifting all about us the crumpled wrecks of the serpent-ships that
had fallen before us.
"First blood!" cried Jhul Din, and I nodded without speaking, bending
again over my keys as our fleet raced forward again toward the
enemy.
The serpent-fleet, too, had turned, and was moving cautiously back
toward us, and I knew that not again could we execute upon them
the maneuver which we had just used. As we rushed again upon
them, though, their fleet racing again to meet us, my fingers pressed
swiftly again on the keys and our long columns of ships shifted
swiftly into another formation, a long wedge with our own flag-ship
at its point. Just before we again raced into the serpent-ships our
fleet assumed this formation, for it was my plan this time to tear by
main force through the serpent-fleet, shattering it before us. But in
the instant before we could do so, before our mighty wedge's point
could crash into them, their own fleet had divided suddenly, some
fifteen hundred ships from its center driving upward and far above us
while the remaining gigantic mass drove down under and beneath us.
And in the next moment I saw that five hundred of the fifteen
hundred ships above were great disk-ships, and that they were
glowing with sudden, flickering radiance!
"Attraction-ships!" Jhul Din was shouting, but already our own ships
and all those behind us were turning upward, pulled resistlessly up,
while from beneath with death-beams whirling thick the mass of the
great serpent-fleet was leaping up toward us.
With the first sight of the attraction-ships, though—a sight which I
had been expecting—I had pressed quickly on two of the keys before
me, and at once the great line of scout-ships that had hung high
above us and on each side during all the battle so far, awaiting this
emergency, were gathering swiftly high above and then leaping
toward the attraction-ships! Out toward them sprang the thousand
serpent-craft that had risen with the attraction-ships to guard them,
and then as they met our charging scouts there was a fierce, wild
struggle high above us, a struggle that was a tiny replica of the
gigantic combat that was going on below. For now, as we were pulled
helplessly upward, the thousands upon tens of thousands of serpent-
ships beneath were rushing up to attack us, undeterred by the
crumpling shafts of force that shot down to meet them, charging up
with death-beams sweeping through us in great shafts of ghostly
light!
Swiftly, I saw, the crews of scores of ships about us were being
annihilated by the whirling beams, that wiped all life from those
ships, though still they drove unguided upward, pulled by the
relentless grip of the attraction-ships high above. Down toward those
glowing disk-ships were racing our gathered scouts but ever as they
charged down the serpent-ships that guarded the attraction-craft
leapt to meet them, fighting with blind courage to hold them back
long enough to encompass the destruction of our main fleet below.
Not for much longer could we continue in that deadly grip if we were
to escape, I knew, since through ever more of our ships were
sweeping the deadly beams from beneath!
Then I saw one of the scout-ships high above charge down through
the opposing serpent-craft in a terrific, headlong plunge, saw it
smash squarely down onto one of the hovering disk-ships, and then
both had buckled and collapsed, were drifting away toward the
galaxy in twisted wrecks of metal. And down in the same way were
plunging others of the scout-ships, a deliberate and awful self-
sacrifice of their Andromedan crews; diving down with all their terrific
speed and tearing through the guarding serpent-ships to crash into
and destroy the glowing attraction-ships that had gripped our main
fleet. A moment more and the last of the attraction-ships and the last
of the serpent-ships also had vanished above us, our scout-ships
perishing almost to the last one, too. But they had saved us for the
moment, since now, released from that deadly grip above, our fleet
was massing and swooping down in turn upon the main body of the
serpent-fleet beneath us, whose beams had been slicing through us!
Down—down—black gloom of space and blazing suns and whirling
ships, all spun about me as our fleet rushed giddily down through the
void toward the massed serpent-fleet beneath; then we were upon
them, were shifting into a long, slender line of ships as my fingers on
the keys flashed another signal, were driving in that line past them,
raking them with all the force-shafts of our cylinders. But as we did
so their own great mass of ships shifted swiftly into a similar long,
slender column, and then they were racing through space beside us,
two tremendously long lines of thousands upon thousands of ships,
rushing through the void toward the galaxy, with pale death-beams
and invisible force-shafts clashing and crossing from line to line as
they flashed on!

For the moment, as the two fleets rushed thus side by side toward
the galaxy's suns, so narrow was the gap between their flashing two
lines that it seemed they must needs annihilate each other with their
mighty weapons. Plainly visible in space beside us raced the line of
the serpent-fleet, its beams stabbing thick toward our own ships, and
in that wild moment ships behind and about our own were reeling
unguided away by scores as the pale beams swept through them.
Into one another and into untouched ships about them they crashed,
whirling crazily in all directions; but in the same moments the deadly
shafts from our own cylinders were leaping across the gap between
the racing lines also, and serpent-ships all along their tremendous
line were crumpling and collapsing, the racing ships behind them
often crashing into those twisted wrecks before they could swerve
aside from them. On—on—in a tremendous running fight the vast
fleets leapt, a fight that was annihilating the ships of both fleets by
scores and hundreds with each moment, but which neither of us
would turn away from, hanging to each other and stabbing furiously
with our beams and shafts toward each other as we raced madly on!
On—on—far ahead the galaxy's suns were flaming out in greater
splendor each moment as at all our terrific utmost velocity our ships
and the enemy ships beside us reeled on. Blazing, glorious, those
suns filled the heavens before us, now. We had reeled sidewise in our
first mad struggle and now the Cancer cluster lay to our left ahead, a
stupendous ball of swarming stars at the galaxy's edge, while directly
before us at that edge burned a great star of brilliant green, a mighty
sun toward which at awful speed our two struggling, tremendous
lines of ships were leaping. All about us still the ghostly beams were
sweeping from the great lines of ships to our left, but swiftly the
controls clicked beneath Jhul Din's grasp as he sent our ship racing
forward on a corkscrew, twisting course, evading with miraculous
swiftness and skill the deadly beams; while at the same time from
beneath there came to our ears over the roaring drone of the
generators the slap and clang of the great cylinders as our
Andromedan crew shifted their aim, sending crumpling, devastating
shafts of unseen force across the gap toward the serpent-ships!
But now ahead the great green sun toward which our long, strung-
out fleets were flashing was growing to dazzling size and splendor as
we neared it, neared the galaxy's edge. Like a giant globe of dazzling
green fire it flamed before us, with all about and behind it the awful
blaze of the galaxy's thundering suns, in toward which at terrific and
unabated speed we were racing. Countless thousands upon
thousands of ships, stretched far out in long lines there in space, we
were reeling on at our utmost velocity of millions of light-speeds,
stabbing and striking and falling in wild battle as we plunged madly
on. Toward the right our two flashing lines of ships shifted, as we
neared the giant green sun ahead, for now it was flaming across the
firmament before us like a titanic wall of blinding emerald flame. Still
farther to the right we veered, and then we had reached that sun and
it was flaming in stupendous glory just to our left as we raced along
its side!
"We're racing straight into the galaxy!" cried Jhul Din hoarsely as we
thundered on. "It means death to carry this battle in there—our ships
will crash into the suns and worlds at this terrific speed!"
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