"Dead!" Randall's cry expressed in that instant the stupefaction of all of us. "A dead world!"
"Neptune—a dead world!"
A dead world! For truly it seemed a dead world that lay there in the dim pale light beneath us! A world whose strange contiguous compartments stretched away from horizon to horizon to form the colossal city above which we hovered, but a world, a city, in which was no single discernible thing of life! The endless black-walled compartments, the strange-shaped structures and mechanisms, the great enigmatic globes—all these things lay beneath us in a silence and a death that were stunning to our senses! Lay beneath us as though death had reached out of the unknown to annihilate suddenly all living things upon this alien world, leaving in it only the cold and the silence and the death that enwrapped it now! Neptune—we had flown across the awful void toward it for week upon week, prepared to find within it any strange beings, any alien and terrible form of life, but never had we been prepared to find it without any life whatever—an utterly lifeless world!
As we stared down toward it in utter silence it seemed to me that my brain was spinning from the stupefying shock of amazement that was ours. For if the world beneath us was truly a dead one, if Neptune lay now without life, its colossal compartment-city entirely lifeless, whence came that giant force-ray that was stabbing across the solar system from Neptune to turn the sun ever faster toward its division? Whence came that doom which was being loosed upon our Earth and upon all the solar system, almost, by that gigantic ray? Was that great ray, after all, only some incomprehensible freak of natural forces, impossible to withstand, and had Neptune, once the home of some alien, mighty civilization, lain for eons in silence and death? Had our desperate mission which alone held a chance for Earth, our terrific race out through the unthinkable reaches of the solar system's spaces toward its outermost planet, been in vain?
Marlin must have felt something of the same despair in that moment, but his strong face betrayed no trace of it as he turned to us. "It's evident that this vast compartment-city, this whole world, perhaps, is deserted," he said. "But where does the great ray come from?"
Whitely shook his head, glancing at his instruments. "Impossible to say," he said. "The recording-instruments here show only that we are close to the great ray's source, that that source is in the region around Neptune. But the emanations or reflections from it striking the instruments are so powerful as to make it impossible to determine the ray's source exactly."
"But the city beneath!" I cried. "Even if it is dead, deserted, we might be able to find in it some clue to what has happened here, some idea of what manner of creatures the Neptunians were, and perhaps some clue to the great ray's source!"
Marlin pondered, then nodded. "Hunt's right," he said. "If we explore this deserted compartment-city beneath we may find some suggestion that will lead us to the great ray's source. And wemustfind out soon, for only eighty-five days are left before the sun divides into a double star and dooms Earth!"
"But we shouldn't risk all of us on this venture," I said. "The safest way would be to keep the space-flier, with two of us inside, hovering here above the city while the other two go down to it and explore it in their space-walkers."
This we finally agreed to do, and Marlin and I insisted upon being the two to make the venture, Whitely and Randall reluctantly agreeing at last to remain within the space-flier, watching and waiting for us. So, bringing the space-flier down to a height of a thousand feet above the compartmented city, I set the force-ray to hold it motionless there, Randall taking my place at its controls. Then Marlin and I were quickly getting into our two cylindrical space-walkers. Once inside them, we each gripped in a great pincer-hand the pointed bars of steel that we were to take with us, and then unscrewed the inner door and passed into the vestibule-chamber. Another moment and with the inner door closed, the outer one was swinging open, and the denser and colder air from without was rushing into the vestibule-chamber. We did not feel its cold, however, snug in the insulated and heated cylinders of the space-walkers, but drew ourselves to the outer door, turning on the force-rays from the bottoms of our cylinders. Then as we drew ourselves out through the door and into empty air, we were both sinking gently downward, our fall slowed to a mere floating drop by the down-pressing power of our force-rays.
Down through the dim pale light of Neptune's day we sank, down until just beneath us lay one of the intersecting black walls. As I saw this I shot my supporting force-ray outward at a slant, and as this sent me down obliquely, I floated down past that wall, Marlin doing the same beside me, and in another moment we had come gently to rest just above the black smooth floor of one of the great compartments, the force-rays from the bottoms of our space-walkers holding us a foot or so above the floor. Resting there, Marlin and I looked up first. Beside us towered the black two-hundred foot wall of the compartment, and far above we could make out the hovering space-flier, its great gleaming polyhedron hanging motionless and watchful above. We waved the great metal arms of our space-walkers toward it, toward Whitely and Randall inside it, and then turned to examine the place in which we stood.
It was an oblong compartment some four hundred feet in length, and half that in width, its great black walls towering on all sides of us. Ranged around the compartment against those walls were rows of strange squat mechanisms of a roughly pear-like form, that loomed each a score of feet in height. Marlin and I shot our space-walkers toward the nearest of these mechanisms, to examine it. We saw that in the top of it was an odd cone-like opening, and that there ran out of the gleaming metal cover of the thing a thick pipe or tube that connected with a larger pipe that encircled the compartment, connected to each of the mechanisms. Then as we reached forward, swung aside the metal cover of the mechanism, exposing an intricate system of sections inside it through which ran slender tubes acted upon by what seemed projectors of electro-magnetic force about them, Marlin pointed toward them, leaned toward me until his space-walker touched mine and spoke to me through the touching metal.
"A water-making mechanism this seems to be, Hunt," he said. "In some way it must draw down ceaseless supplies of hydrogen and oxygen atoms from the great vapor-masses above the roof, and then recombine them here into water."
I nodded, gazing at the thing. "But it hasn't been used for years—for centuries, perhaps," I said. "Look—that dust upon it——"
For upon the pear-shaped mechanism before us, and on all those others and all other things about us, there rested a coating of fine dust that was inches thick, a dust-coating that we knew only a great period of time could have deposited there. A moment we stared at that, two grotesque figures there in the great cylinders of our space-walkers, and then were moving on, along the wall. That black smooth wall, we saw now, was composed of a material that looked much like a black seamless stone, but one that seemed diamond-hard. For our pointed steel bars could make not the slightest impression upon it, and it was evident, from the monolithic construction of the great walls about us and of the smooth black paving upon which we walked, that this diamond-like smooth stone had been artificially made. Later we were to learn that it was constructed by a building up of molecules into a deliberate crystalline formation that far exceeded the strength and stability of any other material's crystalline structure, and thus gave to the black artificial stone a diamond-like hardness and a tensile strength exceeding that of steel.
Around the great compartment we walked, our eyes ranging over the great pear-shaped mechanisms and the great pipes connecting them, and then Marlin and I stopped short. For there in the black wall before us was a door, an opening that connected with the adjoining compartment on that side. It was by means of doors like that, it was plain, that the necessity of streets in this compartment-city had been obviated, making it possible to pass across the city through the compartments themselves if needed. Yet it was in stupefying surprise that Marlin and I now gazed toward that door. For it was all of six feet in width, but hardly more than four feet in height! Its opening stretched there in the black wall as though an ordinary door-opening of one of Earth's buildings had been set in that wall sidewise! And as we looked stunnedly about we saw that all the doors set in the compartment's four walls were of the same size and shape!
"Those doors!" I cried to Marlin, leaning beside me. "Those were never made for human beings or for near-human beings!"
"Then these Neptunians that once were here—" Marlin began, and then stopped; we gazed in silence at each other through the vision-windows of our space-walkers.
And silence seemed oppressive all about us then, a silence that lay as thickly over the deserted compartment-city as the thick dust of unguessable years that covered it. A chill seemed to have struck home to us in some strange fashion with the discovery of those grotesque door-openings and their significance. I glanced upward, saw that the faceted ball of the space-flier was still hanging motionless high above, and then as I turned back saw that Marlin had moved toward the low door toward which we had been gazing. A moment he contemplated it, then motioned to me with the big metal arm of his space-walker, and as I came to his side, grasped that door's edge with his great arms and lowered his space-walker's big cylinder until it lay on its side on the smooth black paving. Then he was drawing it through the door, aiding himself with a force-ray shot from the opening in its bottom toward the compartment's opposite wall behind us. When he was through, he drew himself erect, and in a moment I had followed him and was standing with him in the next compartment.
That second compartment, we found, was a replica of the first, being of the same size and holding within it several dozen more of the pear-shaped water-manufacturing mechanisms. We passed through it, therefore, over the dust-strewn paving and through the low similar door on its opposite side, to find ourselves in still another compartment of water-manufacturers. Pressing on, rapidly becoming able to pass through the low strange doors easily in our cumbrous space-walkers, we passed through a half-score more of similar compartments all holding only the dust-covered, pear-shaped water-mechanisms, and then at last we passed into a different compartment, one that held a strange shelving that covered all its walls, at which we stared in perplexity for some time.
This shelving consisted of horizontal and perpendicular shelves of smooth black stone like that of the walls themselves, running along and up and down those walls and forming thus a continuous series of box-like openings, each some four feet in length and two in height. There were hundreds of these shelves in the compartment, we could see, yet all of them were quite empty, and in the compartment there seemed to be no other object. They suggested the equipment of a store-room, yet there was no faintest clue as to what had been stored in those shelf-tiers of openings, ranged one above the other all around the walls. Had Marlin and I been able to guess the astounding truth as to those tiers of compartments as to their significance and purpose, much would have been clear to us right then. As it was, after vainly endeavoring to fathom the purpose of the things, we gave it up and moved on out of the compartment, and through similar shelf-tiered compartments beyond it.
By this time we had passed some distance from beneath our hovering space-flier, but still could see its gleaming polyhedron hanging high in the air behind us. Reassured by the sight of it, we passed on, and in the next half-hour progressed through many more compartments. Some of these contained water-manufacturing mechanisms or tiers of strange shelf-openings such as we had already seen. But many others held mechanisms or objects strange to our eyes, before which Marlin and I stood entranced. We almost forgot, in the overpowering interest of the things that we found in those compartments, the object of our exploring search through the strange compartment-city, our search for clues as to the beings of Neptune and as to the great force-ray that was turning the sun ever faster.
Compartments we found in which were structures that puzzled us as completely as had the tiers of shelf-openings. These structures were great flat metal containers, each scores of feet in length and width but hardly more than a foot or two in depth. They were ranged one above the other in great supporting frameworks, and each container was filled with black fine soil. The compartments that held these had set in their walls great white disks which were connected to intricate apparatus that seemed generators of some kind of force, but more than that we could not ascertain from our inspection of them. The whole arrangement, the great shallow containers of soil, the disks in the walls, the generators connected to them—all was utterly enigmatic and perplexing to us, and we were forced to give up the riddles and pass on into other compartments, in which were other things almost as mysterious.
Some held giant globes of burnished metal, now dust-covered, which occupied almost a whole compartment each. These great gleaming globes were among the most puzzling things we had found, since there was, in the compartment of each one, no other object or indication of their purpose, save for a few switches mounted upon a panel, the combination of which we could not discover, opening and closing them in vain. We had seen these great globes from above, dotting the vast compartment-city here and there in great numbers, but we could learn no more of their purpose standing there beside them than we had been able to guess from above. And near these there were strange looming machines, many-cogged and with a great hopper above whose purpose we guessed, at least, guessing that these were the mechanisms that produced from some raw materials the artificial diamond-hard black stone-material that made up all the intersecting walls of this strange huge city-world.
Each of these machines had before it a very low, round metal seat, with in front of that seat the controls of the machine, a half-dozen burnished metal levers. As we saw them Marlin and I exchanged startled glances. Had the being who operated that machine, who sat before it, held and operatedallthose control-levers of the mechanism? Back to our minds flashed the strange low openings of the doors through which we had come, and for a moment the same strange sense of dread chilled me. But I shook off the feeling, followed Marlin on into another compartment, glancing back through to where our space-flier poised in the air now far across the city behind us.
It was into another long rectangular compartment that we passed, one that held, like that out of which we had just come, rows of strange many-cogged mechanisms. But one feature of that compartment caught our attention instantly, held us motionless and staring. And that was that those rows of great mechanisms were not complete! Here and there in those rows were gaps, as though machines had been removed from the compartment, and where those gaps were, where the missing machines had stood, were squares on the floor where their bases had rested,squares that were entirely free of the inch-thick dust that lay over all else! And even as we stared, as we comprehended the astounding significance of that, we saw that upon the dust-coated floor before us were many tracks, small round and strange tracks in the thick dust that were of great number and that had been made, it was apparent from their dust-free condition, but days or hours before!
"Marlin!" I whispered, grasping my companion's space-walker with the great metal arm of my own and touching head casing to head casing. "Marlin—those tracks—someone, something has been here—and but recently!"
"It can't be!" he exclaimed, his voice hushed strangely like my own. "Neptune—all this great compartment-city—it's all dead, deserted——"
"But those tracks!" I insisted. "Those squares in the dust—something's been here and has taken a half-dozen of these great machines away with them! And we know that something on Neptune is sending the great force-ray out to the sun!"
"It can't be," Marlin repeated. "We found no source of the great ray on Neptune's sunward side, and, too, how can that ray shoot always toward the sun from some spot on Neptune when Neptune itself is constantly turning? No, Hunt, I think that this means—but look up there!"
As he cried out he was gazing suddenly upward, his space-walker's great arms pointing up, and at that horror-stricken cry, I glanced up to see a sight that froze me motionless there in astonishment. For there, high above us and above the great compartment-city, a dozen strange great shapes were dropping down through the air toward us, were dropping down through one of the openings in the great roof! Long great cylinders of gleaming metal those shapes seemed, dropping silently and smoothly down from the opening, toward the compartment-city, but even as we looked in amazement and terror up toward them, they had halted in mid-air, as though seeing the faceted ball of our hovering space-flier hanging above the city far behind us. Then the next instant all the dozen great cylinders were flashing with unbelievable speed toward our space-flier, a half-score narrow, pencil-like rays of pale, almost invisible light or force stabbing ahead of them toward the space-flier!
Marlin and I cried out in the same instant as those great cylinders whirled through the air toward the space-flier, and in that moment it seemed to us that our wild cries had been heard, for we saw the space-flier whirl itself to one side suddenly, as though Randall and Whitely in it had caught sight suddenly of that onrushing menace. The pale, almost unseen stabbing little rays of force or light shot past them as they swerved thus, and then the next moment cylinders and space-flier seemed to be whirling in a wild melange of geometrical metal forms there in the pale dim light above the great compartment-city. We saw the slender, pencil-like shafts of force stabbing this way and that, saw one cylinder, struck by the shafts of its fellows, riven asunder by those shafts as though by swords of steel and then suddenly the gleaming polyhedron of the space-flier had plunged up out of the wild mêlée and was rocketing up toward one of the great openings in the vast roof above!
As Whitely and Randall thus whirled the space-flier up in an effort to escape their outnumbering, unknown attackers, we saw three of the great cylinders rushing up after them. In another moment the space-flier, closely followed by its three pursuers, had rushed up through the opening and disappeared above, and as they did so we saw that the remaining eight cylinders were dropping now again toward the compartment-city! Watching stupefied still in our amazement, Marlin and I saw that four of the cylinders were heading down toward a point in the great city somewhat to the right of us, while the other four were slanting down now almost straight toward the compartment in which we stood! And as I saw that, as I saw and understood the significance of the tracks and missing mechanisms in this compartment, I grasped Marlin's great metal arm with one of my own, again touching head-armors.
"They're coming down to this compartment!" I cried. "It was they who took the missing mechanisms from here—they've come for more!"
"Out of the compartment, then!" Marlin shouted. "They're after Whitely and Randall in the flier, and if they find us here——!"
With the words we were throwing ourselves, prisoned in our great cumbrous space-walkers as we were, toward the low door through which we had come. In a moment we were through that door, were in the adjoining compartment, but hardly had we gained it than there swept through the pale light from high above four great cylindrical shapes, slanting smoothly down toward the compartment we had just left! From above they could see us easily, whatever beings were inside those descending cylinders, so that as they shot down over our roofless great compartment, Marlin and I poised motionless, praying that our great gleaming space-walkers might be mistaken for mechanisms. Far across the compartment-city we could glimpse the four other cylinders dropping down toward a different point, also, and then in the next moment the four above us had shot down over us and with a throbbing sound coming clearly to us from those cylinders' interiors, were coming to rest in the compartment we had just left!
Glancing for a moment at each other through the vision-windows of our space-walkers, Marlin and I then softly moved in them toward the low door through which we had just come. For though our fear was great, our curiosity, our realization of the mission that had brought us out here to Neptune, was greater. In a moment we were at the door, were lowering ourselves awkwardly and silently to a position from which we could gaze through it into the adjoining compartment. In that compartment, we saw now, the four great cylinders had landed, and were resting upon the floor at its center. Each cylinder was of forty feet diameter and twice that in height, and their gleaming metal sides were broken here and there by small windows. They were broken too, we saw with a start, by ray-openings like those of our own space-flier, and it was evident from those that the cylinders were propelled through space by the same force-rays that moved our flier!
Before we could fully comprehend the meaning of that fact, though, there came a low clanking of metal and before our eyes a section in each of the curving sides of the cylinders, near the base of each, was abruptly sliding aside, leaving in the metal wall of each cylinder a low oblong door-opening like those of the compartments about us. Now we heard from inside that opening a stir of movement, and saw vaguely a shape or shapes that moved in the cylinder's dark interior. Then, as we gazed with tense nerves toward that opening, there moved out of the cylinder's dark interior through that opening, into the pale dim light of the Neptunian day, a creature at which Marlin and I stared in that moment with horror-stunned minds! A being so grotesque and so awful in appearance that for the moment it seemed to me that it needs must be a creation only of our over-strained nerves and brains!
It was a creature that bore no conceivable resemblance to the human form or to any other in our knowledge. The body was a great flat disk of pale-green flesh, five feet in diameter and hardly a foot in thickness. It was supported in a flat or horizontal position above the ground by seven short thick limbs of muscle or flesh, which were each three feet in length and which projected down from the big disk-body at equal intervals around its circle. The only visible features of the creature were the eyes and mouth. The eyes were two in number, and were set close together in theedgeof the disk-body. They were like the eyes of some insect, being each inches across and bulging outward, being composed each of a myriad smaller glistening lens-divisions, like the eye of a fly! And as I saw with shuddering horror those two bulging strange eyes gazing about, it came to me that it was only by means of such great, powerful eyes and their many lenses that any creature here in the dim light of Neptune could see clearly all things about it!
The mouth was a white-lipped circular opening, and was set at the very center of the horizontal disk-body's upper surface! No stranger combination can be imagined than that which presented itself thus in the appearance of that creature before us, with the two bulging glassy eyes staring forth from the edge of the great disk-body, and the round mouth gaping there in that disk-body's flat upper surface. Slung around the disk-body the creature wore a flexible armor or dress of connected straps of flexible metal. In a loop of this rested a metal tube formed by the joining together of two tubes of dissimilar thickness. And attached to the flexible straps in another position, at the disk-body's edge, was one of the strangest features of its appearance, a small metal ball that seemed glowing with unceasing radiant light!
The creature gazed about him, unaware of our awe-stricken gaze, and then half-turned and seemed to call to others in the cylinder from which he had emerged, a strange sound issuing from his mouth-opening. That sound was like a swift succession of staccato snaps of sound, as clear and sharp as the snap of metal on metal. From the variation in their utterance, though they were in a single pitch only, it was evident that they formed the speech of the strange creature, and as he gave utterance to them, others like him, other similar disk-bodied green beings, were emerging from the cylinder behind him and from the other cylinders. In a moment a score or more were gathered there, moving toward the great cogged mechanisms beside them, and as they did so the staccato snapping of their strange speech came loud to our ears. And as they did so, too, we saw that the seven strange limbs of each of them served him as arms as well as supporting legs, since some used some of those limbs to carry tools, holding them tightly in fingerless, muscled grasp!
"Neptunians!" whispered Marlin beside me. "Neptunians, Hunt—those squat, flat disk-bodies—those great eyes——!"
Neptunians! Yet I had seen myself that they must be so, that only on a great planet like Neptune, with far greater gravitational power than Earth, could those squat, flat bodies have evolved. For the greater the power of a planet's gravitation, the lower and the more squat will be the forms of life that evolve upon it. And just as these Neptunians had evolved in their strange disk-form here on the great planet, due to its greater gravitational power, so had their great light-gathering eyes been evolved by the dimness that reigned here always. And it was these beings, it was clear, who had built the vast compartment-city that covered all of the great planet's surface about us, since it was only beings like these who would have built such strange, low doors in it for their own flat disk-bodies, only such beings as these who, with their seven great limbs, could manipulate the controls of the mechanisms we had seen!
"Neptunians!" I whispered it, myself. "But if it's beings like these who inhabit Neptune, who have sent the great force-ray stabbing toward the sun to divide it, where are they all? Why have they left all this city, all this world, dead and deserted?"
Marlin, inside his space-walker, shook his head. "God knows, Hunt! If all these Neptunians have deserted their world, where have they gone? I know no more than you. But it's clear that they've come back for more of those great mechanisms."
It was, indeed, evident that that was the object of the Neptunians' visit to the compartment-city, for now the score or more in the adjoining compartment were busily working with their tools upon three or four of the great cogged mechanisms that loomed there. Swiftly they were taking down those mechanisms, were dissembling them into a myriad intricate parts which were stowed away in the four great cylinders. More than once some of them passed close to the low door through which Marlin and I were gazing, but none ventured through it into the compartment in which we hid, seeming all to be intent upon the business at hand. And as they worked on we began to understand some of the features about them that had puzzled us in our first horror-stricken sight of them.
We had been puzzled, indeed, that they were able thus to move about unheedingly without protection of any sort in the zero-cold that reigned about us. But now as one or two of them passed close to the door by which we crouched, I gazed closely at the glowing little ball that each had attached to his metal armor, and guessed then what I was later to learn was the truth, that that ball was glowing with radiant heat and had the power of heating to comfortable temperature the atmosphere for a few feet directly around its wearer. Thus the wearer of it moved always in a little volume of warm air, though the air outside that area might be at zero temperature. And thus it was that the Neptunians were able to withstand the bitter cold about us, from which we were protected by our space-walkers.
As we gazed toward the Neptunians, they were completing the process of dissembling and stowing away the great mechanisms, and now I moved closer to Marlin, my thoughts being on retreat from the dangerous position in which we were. Not only might we be discovered at any moment by the Neptunians before us, but somewhere in the compartment-city behind us were others, we knew, who had landed in their four cylinders at another point. Whatever had happened to Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, Marlin and myself were in the most perilous of positions. Even were we to escape the Neptunians we could not exist for long in our space-walkers in this dead and deserted city, in the cold of this strange and terrible world of death. Yet to escape from them was our first consideration, and I whispered as much to Marlin through our touching space-walkers.
"We've got to get clear of these Neptunians," I whispered to him. "Back farther in the city we can hide until they go."
He was gazing toward the strange creatures and their tools and mechanisms with intense scientific interest, but turned toward me at my whisper. "We'll get back, then," he whispered. "It may be that Whitely and Randall——"
It was a sentence that he never finished. For we had hardly turned to cross the compartment in which we crouched than we had to stop short in our space-walkers. There behind us a dozen or more great disk-creatures had been standing—a dozen or more great Neptunians! Even as we faced them there in that stunned moment, their bulging glassy eyes upon us, I saw the tracks in the thick dust at our feet, realized that these creatures were of the others who had landed in the compartment-city, and that finding our space-walkers' tracks here and there in the thick dust, they had followed them, had trailed us and stolen behind us while we watched their fellows! Then in the next moment had come a staccato cry from the foremost of the Neptunians, and in the instant following they had flung themselves straight forward upon us!
For in this atmosphere sound penetrated our cylinders.
CHAPTER VII
The Giant Ray
The minute that followed was a grotesque whirl of swift action, a desperate reeling struggle between Marlin and me cased in our great space-walkers, and the great disk-bodied Neptunians. Even as they had leaped upon us, we had shot to one side, had brought down upon the foremost of them the great steel bars carried in our pincer-like metal hands, and had sent two of them crumpling to the black paving with a thick green liquid oozing from their shattered bodies. The remainder, though, were upon us before we could strike again, and then as they gripped us I could see the Neptunians who had been working in the adjoining compartment come running toward the combat, to assist their fellows. So that though Marlin and I struck out with desperate fury at the monstrous creatures with the great metal jointed arms of our space-walkers, they had in a moment more with their numberless limbs fettered our arms and torn the bars from our grasp, holding us then motionless and helpless.
Thus held, part of the creatures stepped back from us, and then we heard one of them, who bore a single, crimson-circle device upon his metal dress or armor, utter a staccato order to the others. At once four of them drew from their armor the long tubes we had noted there, and trained them upon us. I knew, instinctively, that those tubes held some deadly force like that with which the cylinders had attacked our space-flier in the battle in mid-air. Later I was to learn that the tubes could release a force-ray similar to that used for propulsion by our space-flier and by the cylinders—a force-ray so concentrated into a pencil-like beam that, instead of merely pressing against whatever it struck, it pierced whatever it touched with terrific force, riving it asunder. Knowing the deadliness of the tubes, I looked for instant annihilation.
But it was evident in a moment that it was only as a precaution that the tubes were held upon us. For now, while a half-score of the Neptunians held Marlin and me firmly by the arms of our space-walkers, the one who had given the order came closer to us, clambered with his powerful multiple limbs upon the top of my space-walker, and gazed in through its vision-windows at me. To see those bulging, glassy and insect-like eyes outside the window so close to my own struck me through with a chilling horror greater than anything I had yet felt. I saw that the creature had discerned me inside the space-walker, had assured himself that creatures of life yet different from himself occupied the two cylinders. For in a moment he had clambered back down to the ground, and then as he uttered another sharp order, the creatures that held us were dragging us forward, toward the door of the compartment into which we had looked before.
Through that low door they dragged us in our space-walkers, and across the adjoining compartment toward one of the great upright cylinders resting there. In another moment the Neptunians had pulled us inside the door of that cylinder into its dark opening, and I saw the one who had given the orders following, with a half-dozen of his fellows. The others were dispersing to the other cylinders, and in a moment the door of our own slid clanging shut behind us. Then there was a hissing and throbbing of strange machinery in the dark interior of the cylinder about us, and at the same moment the leader of the Neptunians motioned to us to emerge from our space-walkers, having removed their own glowing ball-heaters.
I think that both Marlin and I hesitated for a long moment before complying with that command, yet we saw that upon us still were trained the tubes of the four Neptunians who guarded us, so reluctantly we threw open the lower doors of the space-walkers and emerged from them. As we did so, forgetful for the moment of the strange creatures about us, we gazed in amazed interest around us. The huge cylinder's interior, we saw, was divided into a half-dozen compartments by metal floors or ceilings set at intervals of ten or twelve feet from its bottom to its top. A light metal ladder ran up through openings in all of the those floors or divisions, and up that ladder now a few of the many-limbed Neptunians were hurrying toward the upper compartments. We ourselves were standing, with the Neptunian leader of the red-circle insignia, in the lowest or bottom compartment of the cylinder, his four tube-armed guards and a half-dozen green disk-bodied monsters about us.
That lowest compartment held great gleaming-cased mechanisms, from which came the throbbing that we had already heard, and that was so exactly similar to the throb of our space-flier's generators as to remove all doubt but that these were the similar generators of the cylinder. As our eyes roved about them the Neptunian leader uttered a staccato command, at the same time pointing with one of his seven limbs, up toward the ladder. His meaning was unmistakable, and at once Marlin and I stepped toward the ladder and began to climb upward on it, the tubes of the four watchful guards just beneath us as they followed. As we passed up that ladder, through the upper sections of the cylinder's interior, I saw vaguely the things within those sections.
One of them held the dissembled parts of the great cogged mechanisms we had seen them taking down and storing inside the cylinders. Another two or three sections held similar dissembled parts of differing machines that had evidently been taken from another part of the dead vast compartment-city beneath. We passed up through sections that held supplies and strange tank-like affairs, that seemed not unlike the batteries of our own space-flier, and then were climbing up into the topmost section of the cylinder. This was a section whose top and walls were set with so many windows as to make its sides seem quite transparent. And this topmost section, in which a pair of Neptunians already were standing, was quite apparently the control-section.
For at its center rose from its floor a thick metal pillar or standard, upon the top and sides of which were set a battery of dozens of small green studs, and around this were strange seats in which the two waiting Neptunians were now taking their places. As Marlin and I climbed into that uppermost section, the guards and the leader of the disk-bodied Neptunians behind us, we gazed wonderingly about, at the central control-standard and at the strange graduated scales with moving dots of light upon them, that were set here and there in the walls and that seemed recording instruments of one kind or another. Then the crimson-marked leader had given utterance to another sharp succession of snapping sounds, a swift command, at the same time motioning us to the side of the circular room, where were similar low, strange seats. In these we seated ourselves, the four Neptunians who watched us taking places on either side of us, and then as the leader took the remaining seat at the control-standard, we saw one of the other two seated there reach forth with strange quick limbs and touch a number of the studs in swift succession.
At once the great throbbing of the generators or mechanisms in the cylinder's lowest section intensified, and as Marlin and I gazed quickly outward through the windows about us we saw that now the other cylinders in the compartment were all closed and throbbing like this one. Then, as one of the Neptunians at the control-standard touched another stud, the cylinder in which we were rose swiftly upward and out of the great black-walled compartment, rose up smoothly over the dead compartment-city into the pale light of the Neptunian day, followed at once by the three other cylinders. The dim day about us was already waning, fading, as night crept across this huge world of silence and death, with its ceaseless rotation, but there remained still enough light for us to see far across the mighty maze of compartments that was the deserted and dead city. And now across that city the four cylinders were rushing, racing over it in horizontal position, the strange seats upon which we and the Neptunians were seated swinging in gimbal-like frameworks as the cylinder swung thus from vertical to horizontal.
Over the huge compartment-city our four cylinders flashed, then slowed and halted, as up from another point in it rose four more cylinders, the four that we had seen land in a different part of it, and whose occupants had discovered and captured us. Then all of the eight great cylinders, our own in the lead, were rising sharply upward, up toward the opening in the vast roof above, through which we had seen them come. As they shot up toward it, Marlin and I, glancing down and backward, could see, even as we had seen from our space-flier, the vast extent of the dead and deserted compartment-city, with its mechanisms and huge globes and high black intersecting walls lying now in such dusty silence and death. Yet it was only for a moment that we glanced back toward it, for now our eight cylinders were flashing up through the round opening in the huge roof, and out over that vast roof, seeming solid metal from above, that covered all of mighty Neptune. And as we flashed over it, now, I found for the first time opportunity to whisper to Marlin, beside me.
"They're leaving Neptune!" I whispered. "Where can they be going, Marlin? And what has happened to Whitely and Randall?"
He shook his head, answered in the same low tones. "Whitely and Randall have escaped, I hope. They had a small start on their pursuers—they may have eluded them here above Neptune——"
We were abruptly silent as the guards glanced suspiciously toward us with their bulging multiple eyes. And as the great cylinder and those behind shot on, the huge metal roof of Neptune below and the vast vapor-masses of its dense atmosphere stretched above us, I wondered if ever men had found themselves in the position that now was ours. Captured by monstrous disk-bodied beings of horror unutterable, flashing with them above the vast roof that sheathed Neptune and its dead, deserted and colossal compartment-city, to a destination of which we could not dream! And as that thought passed, another came, and I remembered the great mission that had brought us out here to the terrors of mighty Neptune, our great flight outward to find and put an end to the huge force-ray that was stabbing across the solar system and turning the sun ever faster, with every day bringing it nearer to the division that meant doom for almost all its universe. What chance was ours to accomplish that mission now, separated and captured as we were, not knowing even from what source the great ray was issuing, from what strange place these disk-bodied beings had come and to which they were now returning?
I was aroused from my silent despair, though, by a low exclamation from Marlin, and looked up to see that the cylinders of which our own was foremost had now halted, hanging midway between metal roof beneath and great vapor-masses above. Then down from above I saw, dropping quickly toward us, three other cylinders similar to the eight, three cylinders at sight of which my heart beat suddenly faster. For it had been three cylinders that had pursued Whitely and Randall in the space-flier! Tensely I watched as the three drove down among our eight, and then one of them had shot suddenly close to the cylinder in which we were, hanging beside it so that its low door-opening was directly touching the door-opening of our own. There was a clang of metal beneath as the doors of both cylinders slid aside. They fitted so closely against each other that no colder air from without could enter into the warmed interior of the two cylinders. Then from the other were coming into our own cylinder three Neptunians who climbed swiftly up into the top-section in which we were, while Marlin and I watched them in indescribable suspense.
As they came up into the uppermost section they spoke in their sharp, staccato talk to the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia, making report to him, it was apparent. But it was not to their snapping speech that Marlin and I gave our attention, but to the things they carried in their grip, and which they were showing to the leader. Those things, I saw with a start of horror, were some shattered and crumpled plates of metal, great flat metal plates that I recognized immediately as being of our space-flier's faceted sides! And they also held a broken, twisted metal thing that I recognized instantly as one of the space-flier's smaller liquid-oxygen tanks! I needed not to understand the strange speech of the Neptunians in that moment to understand what the three were reporting. For those shattered fragments of the space-flier told the tale with terrible clearness.
"Whitely and Randall!" It was Marlin's whisper of horror beside me. "They were caught by those pursuing cylinders—were annihilated by their rays——!"
"Whitely and Randall——" I felt my voice choke then, as I gazed at those last fragments of the space-flier's wreckage, mutely testifying to the end which our friends had met with beneath the shattering rays in their space-flier somewhere in the cold, vast vapor-masses above us.
Whitely—cool and detached and steady, stirred to passion by nothing save some unprecedented physical phenomenon, considering with curious, impersonal eyes each new peril that had confronted us; and Randall—with his sunny hair and eager young courage and unfailing sense of fun; it was as though they had risen before me in that moment, when we saw at last what death had overtaken them and our space-flier there in the chill clouds of mighty Neptune. I felt Marlin's steadying hand on my shoulder and knew that he was sounding similar depths of despair. For with Whitely and Randall gone, with our space-flier and with ourselves captured and held by these monstrous disk-bodied Neptunians who yet seemed not of Neptune, our chance to halt the great doom-ray that was radiating toward the sun, our chance even to return to Earth with word of the position and nature of that ray's source, was gone also!
Through the despair that had sunken upon me I was aware, in a moment, that the throbbing of the cylinder's great generators had waxed again in intensity. Already the three Neptunians, who had reported the destruction of the space-flier, had returned to their own cylinder, which had separated from ours, and now the whole eleven cylinders, our own in the lead, were racing forward once more, were shooting forward between the great vapor-masses above and the vast metal roof below. At immense and mounting speed they shot forward, a dull roar of whistling air coming to us from without, and in a moment the pale, dim light about us had begun to change to dusk, to darkness, as we shot on. For the eleven cylinders were racing around the surface of Neptune toward the side of itawayfrom the sun at the moment, and as they entered the shade of that side they were plunging through the eternal night. But as the cylinders shot on they seemed to need no light or star to guide them through the deep darkness, though all that was visible was an occasional glinting of the great metal roof below.
On we shot through that deep darkness and there rose in me a sudden thought that roused me a little from the despair that held Marlin and me. Could it be that upon that other side there still remained a remnant of their race? A remnant of the race, that once had built the mighty compartment-city that covered all Neptune and the vast roof that shielded it, but that now occupied but a small part of the huge city? Was it from Neptune's other side, then, that the giant force-ray had stabbed toward the sun? Yet howcouldthat be so, how could that great ray be shot out from any point of Neptune unceasingly as it was, when each twenty hours the great planet turned on its axis, when for half of that twenty hours whatever point that was the ray's source would be turnedawayfrom the sun instead oftowardit?
With tense interest Marlin and I gazed ahead into the darkness through which our cylinders were rushing, while at the control-standard the leader and the other two Neptunians manipulated the force-rays that were propelling onward the cylinder in which we were. At last, after some minutes of this rushing flight of immense velocity, the cylinders seemed to slow down, to pause. Looking out I could discern the surface of the gigantic metal roof below us, just showing itself to us by a little glint of light here and there from it, and in that moment Marlin and I waited in suspense for the cylinders to sink down toward and through it, to whatever place upon Neptune's other side it was that held the remainder of their strange races, since by then, we knew, we were at that side of Neptune almost exactly opposite the sun. Only a moment the cylinders slowed and paused, and then were leaping through the air again at mounting speed. But instead of flashing downward toward the great roof, they were flashingupward!
Upward they were shooting, up through the dense air and straight into the great vapor-masses that loomed above us! Through those great clouds they were racing then, driving upward through them as through a darker darkness, and then suddenly had shot up and out from them, up and out into the clear and thinner air of Neptune's atmosphere's outermost limits. Behind our cylinders thus lay the huge, vapor-wreathed planet, shutting out by its vast bulk all sight of the sun's distant little disk of fire, or of the greater planets. But before us there stretched once more the black vault of space, unfolding itself to our eyes for the first time since we had ventured down through those shrouding vapors to Neptune's surface.
Brightest in that black void there shone, before and somewhat above us, Triton, the moon of Neptune. It was almost white in color, tinged with the pale green of great Neptune, about which it moved, and seeming of the same size to our eyes as Earth's own moon. Beyond and all about it, though, there flamed the great stars, seeming the same to our eyes here at the solar system's outermost limits as they had seemed to us when far within it, at Earth. The great field of stars and star-clusters that was Sagittarius, straight ahead and upward, the irregular parallelogram of Capricorn's stars, to the left, the throbbing crimson heart and jeweled menacing claws of Scorpio, to the right—all seemed to our eyes as they had seemed when we had started—how long ago it seemed!—out from Earth toward great Neptune, that lay now behind us. Yet now, with Neptune behind us, our eleven cylinders were flashing forward with greater and greater speed, were flashing out apparently from the solar system's last outpost into the vast void of interstellar space!
"They're going on—going out from Neptune into outer space!" I exclaimed to Marlin, as we gazed ahead, transfixed.
But suddenly he shook his head, pointing ahead and upward, for now the cylinders were flashing upward as well as forward. "It's Triton they're heading toward!" he said. "Triton—Neptune's single moon!"
"Triton!" I exclaimed, thunderstruck with amazement. "Then—then—it must be on Triton that the remaining Neptunians now are!"
Triton! For it was up toward it, up toward the white, green-tinged moon of Neptune that shone dully in the black vault above and ahead of us, that the eleven cylinders, our own in the lead, were heading! And as they shot out of the last limits of the atmosphere of Neptune, as they flashed forward at swiftly mounting speed still toward the moon, I could but stare at it in amazement. Triton! It was from it, then, that there had come these strange disk-bodied Neptunians who had captured us, who had annihilated our space-flier and our friends. It was on Triton, then, that there must remain whatever Neptunians still were left of those who had built the vast compartment-city that covered all the surface of Neptune itself, who had shielded it with that gigantic floating roof that enclosed all the mighty planet. Yet why had they deserted their vast compartment-city, their great world of Neptune? Why had they left that world for the single moon of Neptune, so much smaller in size? And the giant force-ray that was shooting across space to the sun, turning it ever faster, was it from Neptune then or Triton that that colossal ray was radiating?
It seemed to me that these questions were spinning in my head in a kaleidoscopic whirl of enigmas, as our throbbing cylinder and the ten behind it shot on and upward at a great slant toward the dull-gleaming sphere of Triton. Marlin, beside me, was staring ahead obviously as much mystified as I was, while the four Neptunians ranged on either side of us kept their ceaseless watch upon us. The other three sat still at the central control-standard, directing the cylinder on its rush out from Neptune toward its moon. And now, that moon grew larger ahead of us and above us, a strangely-gleaming sphere that seemed still very small, in comparison with the huge pale-green disk of mighty Neptune that loomed behind us.
I knew, though, that Triton was of the same approximate size as Earth's own moon, and revolved around the great planet at the same approximate distance as Earth's own moon, roughly a quarter of a million miles. As we had noted from our space-flier in flashing out toward Neptune, its moon was now behind the great planet, that is on the other side of it from the sun, but due to the sharp inclination of the plane of Triton's orbit around Neptune, it was so much higher than its great planet in space as to make it possible to see the single moon, even from Neptune's sunward side. And now as our eleven cylinders shot toward it, it was spreading out across the black vault of the heavens before and above us, until at last we were within a few thousand miles of it and the speed of the cylinder was perceptibly decreasing beneath the controls of the three at the central standard.
Smoothly the cylinder, and the ten behind it, slowed, until they were racing forward at a comparatively low velocity. Triton's dull-gleaming sphere filled the heavens before us. Behind and a little below the great green disk of Neptune, belted with the vast cloud-masses of its immense atmosphere, loomed almost as great as ever to our eyes. And far beyond it there burned the sun's bright little disk, just above the huge sphere of Neptune, and visible to us through the thinner vapors of Neptune's uppermost atmosphere. We turned back toward the nearer world of Triton. As the cylinders rushed on toward it, all the suspense of expectation and mystery that had been ours since our first arrival at the strange dead world of Neptune gripped us now with renewed power. And as Marlin and I stared ahead we were aware that the cylinders were dropping, swinging about our pivoted seats and dropping toward the surface of Triton that seemed now to gleam beneath us.
Toward it we smoothly shot, and as Marlin and I gazed intently down we saw that there were below none of the great cloud-masses that wreathed the surface of mighty Neptune. Instead was only a smooth and strangely gleaming surface that we could but vaguely glimpse, and the sight of which made my heart pound in sudden anticipation. Could the thing be—could it be that here upon Triton as upon Neptune——? But my wondering speculations were cut abruptly short by reality as we shot lower toward the surface of Triton, as that surface came clearly at last to the eyes of Marlin and myself, bringing involuntary exclamations of amazement from us. For that surface was metal! Triton was shielded on all sides by a giant metal roof similar to that which enclosed great Neptune itself!
Down toward that mighty roof our eleven cylinders were rushing. When they seemed just above it, they halted their drop and raced along above it, around Triton's vastly curving surface. As they did so, Marlin and I, gazing downward, saw that the vast roof that shielded Triton appeared to be, from above, of the same dark metal as that which protected Neptune, and that it extended away without break or seam as far as we could see over the big moon's surface. And as our cylinders flashed above it, around the world's surface, we were aware that Triton had an atmosphere even as had its great parent-world, since from outside was coming the dull roar of air against the speeding cylinder. It was a fact startling enough, but at that moment it was driven from our minds by a thing more startling still.
For as we flashed thus around Triton's sunward side, Marlin suddenly uttered a hoarse exclamation, pointed ahead and to the left. I gazed in that direction instantly and for a moment saw nothing unusual, but then as the cylinders flashed on I saw that in that direction was what seemed a great round opening in the smooth, dark metal, a titanic circular opening that must be miles across. Up out of that opening was rising what seemed at first glance a vast cylinder of pale light that sprang straight up and outward from the gigantic opening, and that was only visible for a short distance above that opening, fading swiftly into invisibility as it shot out into the gulf of space from Triton. Instinctively my eyes followed the fading length of that mighty beam outward, and then as they did so I felt sudden, awed understanding descending upon me and stared with Marlin toward the giant pit and its great ray in stunned silence. For that giant ray was pointing straight into the great gulf of space, toward the tiny, fiery disk of the distant sun!
"The giant force-ray!" Marlin whispered. "The great force-ray that's turning the sun ever faster—and that we came out here to find!"
"And pointing straight toward the sun!" I exclaimed. "Pointing through Neptune's upper atmosphere toward the sun!"
For we could see now that the giant ray, visible only there at its source, must indeed be cleaving through the upper limits of great Neptune's atmosphere as it reached across the great gulf toward the sun. For since Triton was on the other side of Neptune from the sun, was on its outward side, the great green sphere of Neptune lay almost between the sun and Triton, the big moon being high enough above the great planet, though, due to the inclination of its orbital plane, to make the sun visible to it through the upper reaches of Neptune's vast atmosphere. Through that atmosphere, therefore, we knew, the giant force-ray must be driving on its path across the solar system toward the sun, hurtling across the gulf to strike against that spinning sun's edge with terrific pressure and to spin it ever faster toward that day of division and doom that was marching relentlessly upon it!
But as our cylinders now swept nearer toward the giant force-ray and the pit from which it stabbed up and outward, Marlin and I were staring obliquely down into that vast pit. Seen from the side as we saw it, the tremendous opening seemed only like a mighty well of metal, from which the colossal pale force-ray, almost as great in diameter as the huge pit, stabbed. We could see, however, that set near the great pit's top at regular intervals around its curving wall were what seemed metal cube-like rooms, which were set on the pit's smooth curving wall. They were a score in number, those out-jutting metal cubes, and from slits in their walls came light from within, and glimpses of stud-covered walls and Neptunians moving about them. We knew, without doubt, that those twenty cubes held within them the unthinkably complex controls of this mighty force-ray that was destroying the solar system!
But now our cylinder and the ten that drove close behind it were passing the vast pit, the huge force-ray. I noted that they took extreme care to pass pit and mighty ray at a respectable distance, and knew, too, the reason for it, knew that any luckless cylinder that blundered into that colossal out-stabbing ray would be driven instantly at terrific speed and force out through the solar system and into the sun that the ray was striking! So that it did not surprise us that the cylinders veered far to the side of the huge ray, picking up speed once more when they had passed it, and racing on around Triton's metal-shielded surface and through the cold, dense atmosphere outside it. But as the cylinders drove on the eyes of Marlin and myself now were turned backward, back toward that gigantic pale ray of awful force that shot ceaselessly up and out from that vast pit in Triton's metal side.
"We've found it—the great ray we came out here to find—the source of that ray," I exclaimed to Marlin, "but we've found it too late! Whitely and Randall and the space-flier annihilated—we captured——"
He bent toward me. "Keep your courage up, Hunt," he said. "We may have a chance yet to get free—to get away from this world of Triton before they take us down inside it."
"But what—?" I began, when with a gesture he cut me short. "No more now, Hunt—the guards are watching. But be ready to act if a chance shows itself, for once down in Triton, we'll probably have no chance."
I saw that the four disk-bodied Neptunians who sat about us and guarded us were indeed watching us closely now with their strange bulging eyes, so gave over for the moment our whispered conversation, though with a slight gleam of hope. Glancing back again toward the great force-ray that was almost invisible behind us as the eleven cylinders raced on around Triton's metal surface, I was aware that Marlin was staring back toward it also, intently, shaking his head a little, as though puzzled by something concerning that giant beam of force. In a moment he turned his attention ahead. Our cylinders now were flashing around Triton from its sunward side to its dark side, and as we rushed on Marlin and I could see that to all appearances Triton was not rotating, or at least not above a low rate of speed. Then as we entered into the deeper shadow of the dark side, the sun's little disk vanishing behind us as we shot around Triton's curving surface into the shadow, Marlin uttered a low exclamation once more, and as I turned to look in the same direction I saw that far ahead there was stabbing out and upward into the black void of outer space a second giant force-ray like that one we had already seen shooting toward the sun!
Stupefied, I gazed toward it. For the first giant force-ray, amazing as it was, had yet been expected by us, more or less, since we had known from the first that such a colossal force-beam was stabbing from the region of Neptune toward the sun. But this second mighty force-ray, which seemed exactly the same in size and appearance and which rose from a giant pit or well in the vast metal roof even as did the first, was not directed toward the sun. For it was on the other side of Triton from the first ray, was exactly half around Triton from the first and was going out into space in an exactly opposite direction! Thus while the first colossal force-ray, springing out from Triton's sunward side, shot straight toward the sun, this second huge force-ray, on Triton's dark or outer side, was radiating straight out into the vast void of interstellar space, was radiating straight out, to all appearances, toward the unthinkably distant stars of Sagittarius that burned in that mighty void!
What could be the meaning of this other colossal force-ray, of equal size and power, going out into the vast void outside the solar system? The first great ray that was shooting toward the sun and turning the sun ever faster—its purpose was at least comprehensible, but what purpose could there be in sending an opposite and equal ray out into the mighty void from Triton's other side? That was the question that whirled in my astounded brain in that moment as the eleven cylinders shot on toward that second great ray, over Triton's metal surface. Marlin, though, on seeing that second great ray, seemed to be less puzzled than before. It seemed to have solved for him some problem which the sight of the first huge ray had suggested. To me it was utterly incomprehensible, and perplexed and awed I watched that huge pale ray and the vast pit from which it sprang as we raced toward them. I saw that on that pit's curving walls there jutted forth a score of cube-like projections or control-rooms similar to those in the pit of the first ray. Then I forgot pit and rays alike as the cylinder in which we were and all those behind it slowed suddenly in mid-air and then dipped sharply downward.
Down and down they shot, toward the vast gleaming metal roof of great Triton; down, until we saw that just beneath us there was outlined in that roof a great circle, slightly sunken. Toward this the cylinders dropped, and then as they came to a pause just above it I saw that set beside that circle in the roof was a transparent section beneath which was a small cage-like room, brightly lit. In this were a half-dozen Neptunians, and as they saw the eleven cylinders dropping and pausing above the circle in the roof they turned swiftly, pressed what seemed a series of knobs in their cage-room, and at once the great sunken circle beneath us was sliding along beneath the roof to one side, sliding smoothly away and leaving thus beneath us a great circular opening in the roof.
Instantly up from that opening around our cylinders was rushing a torrent of air, a torrent of uprushing air that I understood well was caused by the warmer air beneath the roof rushing up into the colder outside atmosphere. But now down through that opening and through the air-currents the cylinders were swiftly dropping, and we could see far below in dim light a great compartment-city like the one we had found upon Neptune! In a moment more we would be below the roof, the opening closed above us, prisoned hopelessly in Triton to meet whatever fate our captors decreed. Already two of our four guards, and two of the Neptunians at the control-standard, had left the cylinder's upmost section and had clambered down the ladder to the lowest section in preparation for emerging. There was left with us in the upmost section of the cylinder only two guards and the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia at the control-standard. And as I saw that, I was leaning quietly toward Marlin.
"Now's our chance, Marlin!" I whispered tensely. "If we could overpower these three Neptunians and the rest beneath afterward we might yet get back to Earth!"
He glanced calmly around, then nodded. "We'll take it!" he whispered. "Once beneath this roof of Triton, there'll be no chance."
"Go for the guard beside you, then, when I cough as signal," I told him. "If we can dispose of them and the leader there we can hold the rest below for a time."
He met my eyes with his own, then turned and as though merely shifting a little in his seat moved nearer toward the guard on his side. I had already done the same toward the disk-bodied monster beside myself, both guards having slightly relaxed their first watchfulness. I glanced out, saw that even at that moment our cylinder was sinking with the others toward the great opening in the roof and knew that no moment was to be lost. So, with heart beating rapidly now, even as our cylinder prepared to sink down through the opening with the rest, I coughed slightly. In the next moment I had flung myself with a single motion upon the Neptunian guard beside me and had seen Marlin in the same instant throwing himself on the monster at his own side!
The moment following was of such swift action as to defy the memory. In my leap upon the Neptunian beside me it had been my first object to knock his tube from his grasp before he could loose its rays upon me, and so swift and sudden was my attack that I did so, as did Marlin with the other guard. With the same motion, even as the guard's seven great limbs reached toward me, I had grasped his big disk-body and then with a superhuman effort had raised it in my arms and had cast him from me, down through the opening in the section's floor to crumple against the floor of one of the sections below! I whirled, saw that the other guard had gripped Marlin and was bearing him down, and then even as there came from beneath and from the Neptunian leader at the controls staccato cries of alarm, I had gripped that other guard likewise and hurled him across the cylinder to strike with stunning force against its wall! Then Marlin and I were whirling toward the Neptunian leader at the control-standard, but in the moment that we turned toward him we stopped short. For that Neptunian had leaped aside from the controls of the cylinder and had swiftly drawn his own ray-tube!
CHAPTER VIII
Prisoned on Triton
Nothing, I know now, of our own doing could ever have saved us from the death that in that moment loomed dark and close above us. For, as the Neptunian leader raised the tube toward us, I knew that before ever a leap could take us across the cylinder to him, the pencil-like rays of force from his tube would be tearing through us. For that split-second, therefore, escape seemed impossible, and then before we could fully realize the situation there came an interruption. The currents of warmer air from the opening just beneath, down through which the cylinder had been dropping with the others, were sweeping still upward with great force around the cylinder. Only the Neptunian's grasp on the controls had kept the cylinder heading down through those currents, and now, as he leaped away from the controls for the moment and drew his tube, those currents immediately seized upon the unguided cylinder and in the next moment had whirled it over and sidewise with immense speed and power! And as it whirled thus over, Marlin and myself and the Neptunian before us were thrown instantly and indiscriminately to the cylinder's side!
For a moment we rolled helplessly about the whirling cylinder's interior, about the upmost section, and in that moment all thought of battle had left us. Then, as I felt Marlin and the Neptunian leader and the stunned guard rolling with me indiscriminately, I was aware, too, of cries from the cylinder's other sections and of Neptunians drawing themselves up to the upmost section on the ladder. Abruptly, in a moment more the cylinder steadied, hung poised and upright as before, and then as Marlin and I scrambled to our feet we saw that a trio of the Neptunians beneath had made their way up to the upmost section, despite the cylinder's whirling, by means of their multiple limbs, and that while one now held the controls the other two had their tubes trained once more full upon us!
Our wild attempt at escape had failed, it was evident, for now, as the Neptunian leader of the crimson circle rose, he was addressing to the others a sharp, snapping order, and at the same time motioning Marlin and me peremptorily to the seats we had formerly occupied. We took them with no further resistance, for we knew that our desperate outbreak had put the Neptunians upon their guard and that the slightest suspicious motion on our part might well mean instant death. And as we seated ourselves once more with the guards on either side, one from beneath replacing the one I had killed, the despair that formerly had filled us seemed immeasurably intensified. For now the cylinder was sinking down after the others, through the great opening in Triton's roof, and even as Marlin and I looked outward we saw the great opening in that roof closing again above us with a clang that to our ears was like the clang of doom.
Above our sinking cylinders now there stretched the great roof, and, even as Neptune's enclosing roof, this one was almost entirely transparent from below, though opaque from above. And here as on Neptune we could see no supporting pillars whatever for this vast spherical roof that enclosed all Triton. This world seemed, indeed, but a smaller replica of mighty Neptune. For, as our cylinders sank down through the shadows of its darker side and then leveled out and began to race back around its curving surface toward the sunward side once more, we saw that all of Triton's surface was covered, even like Neptune, with a great compartment-city whose intersecting black walls stretched in their vast checkerboard arrangement over all the great moon's surface. But as our cylinders shot over these, over the darkened portion of the surface of Triton and toward the sunward side, we saw that the compartment-city beneath was different, in some features, from that of Neptune.
For one thing, there were moving to and fro above it a number of great cylinders like that in which we were, and in the compartments of the darkened side moved, too, a few Neptunians here and there. And the great globes of metal that dotted this compartment-city of Triton, even as that of Neptune, were here glowing with radiant light; glowing, I knew, with radiant heat. For this was the secret of the Neptunians' existence on Triton, this heat that glowed from the numberless giant globes set in compartments here and there. Those great glowing globes kept the air beneath Triton's great roof warm and comfortable, the great roof itself preventing that warmer air from escaping into the moon's colder outer atmosphere. As we shot on over the darkened side of Triton, the side turned away from the sun, I could not but think that the remnants of the Neptunian race must be few indeed, so few of them moved in the shadowy compartments beneath.
At last, as Marlin and I gazed ahead, we could make out a brighter crescent of light at the edge of the strange moon-world, and as we shot on we saw that we were approaching the edge of the sunward or sunlit side. A moment more and we could see it clearly and as we did so Marlin and I gasped in utter amazement. For that part of the great compartment-city that lay on Triton's sunward side, in the pale sunlight, was swarming with incalculable millions upon tens of millions of Neptunians! Crowding, seething, pressing together, they were pouring to and fro through the compartments in the pale light of day, busy with the mechanisms that scarce had room in those compartments, so great were their crowds! And over this sunward side hundreds upon hundreds of cylinders swarmed, rushing to and fro!
"Neptunians! Neptunians in countless millions here on the sunward side of Triton! But why then are there so few upon the dark side?"
Marlin shook his head at my exclamation. "I can't guess," he said. "And I never dreamed that——"
Before he could finish the sentence there came an amazing interruption from beneath. As we gazed downward from our speeding cylinder we saw a giant band of intensely brilliant white light spring suddenly into being at the very line that marked where dark side and sunlit side of Triton met. A mile in width, that great brilliant band of light seemed to extend clear from Triton's north pole to its south, as far north and south of us as our eyes could reach. And then, even as we stared, astounded at it, that brilliant and immense band of light was moving around Triton's surface over the dark side! Swiftly it moved, like a great wave of brilliant light sweeping around Triton's surface, and in a moment had disappeared from view far around the horizon from us on the dark side!
And as that dazzling light-band moved around the big moon-world's dark side, around the almost empty compartment-city that covered that dark side, we saw emerging into that compartment-city of the dark side, as though from its walls themselves, millions on millions of disk-bodied Neptunians that matched in number the vast swarms on the sunlit side! And as we gazed down in utter amazement we saw from whence they came. There were in the dark compartment-city's extent many compartments like those we had seen upon Neptune, with nothing in them save shelving, which formed in their walls myriads of shelfed openings a few feet in height and some four feet in width, one above the other. And in these narrow, flat shelf-openings countless Neptunians had been sleeping! Their disk-bodies, with the flexible legs drawn up, fitted snugly into those flat, strange openings in the walls, and vast hordes of them, countless millions of them, had been sleeping in the shelf-compartments on Triton's dark side!
As that band of brilliant light swept swiftly across the dark side, though, they had awakened, were pouring forth in all their hordes into and through the compartments, all streaming toward the sunward side, while the more remote of them were heading toward the same side in flashing cylinders above. Then, as we gazed toward that sunward side, we saw the brilliant band of light reappearing there, moving swiftly still around Triton's surface, through the pale dim light of its sunward side, having in those moments moved completely around Triton! It moved on until in a moment more it had stopped where first it had formed, at the junction of the dark and sunward sides. There it hung for a moment, dazzling, and then had suddenly snapped out of being. And now we saw that all the crowding millions of Neptunians that had been busy upon the sunlit side were streaming through the compartments toward the dark side!