In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's edge and to the open outside door.
In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's edge and to the open outside door.
In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's edge and to the open outside door.
"Whitely—Randall—" we were babbling in our excitement, "we thought you dead—saw fragments of the space-flier and thought it destroyed——!"
"No time now to tell you, Marlin—Hunt—" Whitely was hurriedly saying. "Those cylinders are forming again. They're coming up toward us! Head out from Triton, Randall—full speed!"
But even as he had spoken, Randall, in the control-chair, had flashed his hands over the six control-switches, and as Marlin and I clambered with Whitely into the other three chairs, we felt ourselves pressed down with terrific force against them as the space-flier shot out from Triton with colossal speed! But at the same moment the cylinders that had formed again into their close-grouped mass, had leaped forward with us and the next moment saw space-flier and cylinders alike whirling out from the atmosphere of Triton into the empty void of space! I glanced back, saw that the cylinders were close behind our hurtling space-flier, flashing after it somewhat beneath it, so as to clear its great force-ray shooting back toward Triton and flinging it outward. And as I glanced back, I saw Triton's dull-gleaming sphere, with the pale giant force-ray that stabbed from its side toward the sun, growing each instant smaller! But dead ahead of us, though somewhat beneath our level, there loomed the colossal green sphere of Neptune, growing in size as we rushed on at immense speed from its moon!
On we went, and as Randall's hands flashed over the control-switches, Marlin and Whitely and I staring tensely forth with him, we were aware that from the mass of onracing cylinders behind slender force-rays were again questing toward us, though the range was too great for them to loose them accurately at this terrific speed. At any moment, though, one of those concentrated, pencil-like rays might cleave through our space-flier in a lucky hit, and unless we escaped from these relentless pursuers, the space-flier and ourselves were certain of destruction. This I saw, and saw too that Neptune's colossal cloudy sphere lay close before us, so awful was the speed of our flight and pursuit, and as it loomed gigantic before us, filling the heavens, it was apparent that we would pass close above its surface. Suddenly I turned to Randall, shouted in his ear above the thundering throbbing drone of our generators.
"Neptune!" I cried. "There's a chance to smash these pursuing cylinders there!"
"But how—?" he began. Shouting in his ear, I explained to him the desperate inspiration that had come to me. I saw his eyes and those of Marlin and Whitely widen as they heard, and then he nodded grimly, clutched the control-switches tighter.
And now about us was sounding again the roar of air as we shot through Neptune's atmosphere, shot above the surface of the huge planet with the cylinders rushing still at equal speed behind us, their deadly rays stabbing this way and that in slicing sweeps toward us. Through the cloudy mists of Neptune's upper atmosphere we flashed, straight onward, with the dark metal surface of the giant world's vast roof clear now to our eyes far beneath. And as we shot over it I saw Randall's grip tighten on the control-switches, saw him glance back toward the pursuing cylinders, behind and a little beneath us, and then abruptly he had flung open the switch of the great force-ray that was driving us on, our rear-ray! Instantly the speed of the space-flier slowed, and in a split-second the onrushing cylinders, racing on unslowing in that moment, were hurtling past beneath us. And as they did so, another switch had clicked under Randall's hands and straight down upon those cylinders from the space-flier's bottom was driving down another mighty force-ray!
In the next instant we had a glimpse of those massed cylinders that had been rushing thus beneath us driven down by the power of our great force-ray with inconceivable speed and force, driven down in a whirling, confused mass toward the vast metal roof of great Neptune below! And as our great ray, traveling across their mass, drove them thus downward with colossal power, we saw a moment later the cylinders of that mass crashing downward against that roof, shattering into crumpled, wrecked masses of metal upon the mighty structure, annihilated with all inside them on that roof as our great ray drove them down against it! Half at least of that mass of cylinders perished thus in the first crash downward and before the rest could gather again to whirl up to the attack, our great ray was playing upon them also, crashing them down upon the great roof of death, until in only a moment more but a half-dozen of the cylinders remained intact! And these, as their fellows crashed to death beneath us, were gathering and speeding away from this death that smote from above, were going back toward the dull-gleaming disk of Triton!
Marlin and Whitely and Randall and I were all crying out in that moment as the surviving cylinders flashed away in flight, and then Marlin and I had turned toward our two friends. "Whitely—Randall—!" Marlin was saying. "You escaped those Neptunians that first discovered us, then? We saw the fragments of wreckage your pursuers brought back, and Hunt and I never dreamed you might still live!"
"It was a trick that enabled us to escape," Whitely explained. "When they discovered us there beneath Neptune's roof—chased us up through that roof and up into the great cloud-belts, I saw that we could not long escape those pursuing cylinders. So, while Randall drove the flier through the mists and while they searched in those mists for us, I battered and broke with blows of a large tool some of the spare plates and instruments we carried. Then, as they came closer to us, their force-rays slicing through the mists in search of us, I cast those fragments loose from the flier, and when they struck against the pursuing cylinders in the mists, when those cylinders saw the wrecked fragments, they had no doubt but that their force-rays had struck us somewhere in the cloud-layer and annihilated us. We lay in the shrouding mists until we saw them returning toward Neptune's surface. We realized then that you two had been captured by whatever manner of creatures these Neptunians were, and saw the cylinders, with you in one of them, going down beneath Triton's roof. For days, therefore, Randall and I waited around Triton's surface, hoping against hope to get down inside in some way and find you, and had almost given up hope, when we saw the cylinder you had stolen racing up from Triton, and were able to save it and you from the pursuing cylinders."
"But you, Marlin—Hunt—" Whitely continued. "You have learned how and why these Neptunians are sending forth the great ray that is turning the sun faster? We saw that ray and another great ray on opposite sides of Triton—Is it not possible that we alone might be able to halt that ray?"
Marlin solemnly shook his head. "No chance, Whitely, for us," he said. "Perhaps no chance even for all the forces of Earth!" And quickly he told, while Whitely and Randall listened enthralled, of the captivity of us two in Triton's strange and swarming world; of the gigantic tale of Neptune's past and the purpose of its peoples, as it had been told us by the great globe of the Council of Thirty; of our desperate escape and flight across the dark side of Triton and our wild crashing upward through the roof and out from Triton. "We alone," Marlin concluded, "can never halt either of those great rays, for each has countless cylinders and Neptunians within to guard it, and each has twenty control-boxes of which one alone can keep it operating. No, our one chance is to get back to Earth, to gather there the great fleet of space-fliers which the World President and the World Congress planned to build in our absence, and to come out in that great fleet with the most powerful weapons available and endeavor to crush these strange Neptunians, to halt that great ray of doom that is turning the sun ever faster! For unless we can do that, unless we can bring Earth's fleet of space-fliers out here and halt the great sun-ray, that ray will in sixty days more have finished its work, will have split the sun and loosed doom upon all its planets except Neptune! And so it is back to Earth that we must race now at our utmost speed!"
Marlin's solemn voice ceased, and there was silence for a moment in the space-flier, we four gazing toward each other without speaking. By then the flier, with the tremendous impetus of its flight still driving it forward, had swept on and out over great Neptune now, out of the giant world's cloudy atmosphere and into empty space beyond it. And, with Neptune's giant globe filling the firmament behind us, Randall snapped on again our rear force-ray, sent that ray radiating back toward the vast disk of Neptune itself. And then again we were forced deep in our chairs as the flier's tremendous speed accelerated once more, the flier hurtling with greater and greater velocity through the gulf of space toward the far little disk of fire that was the sun, far ahead. For it was toward it, toward our Earth, that we were going from Neptune, from the solar system's edge, to carry back word to Earth of the nature of the doom that hung above it and to gather Earth's forces to forestall that doom!
CHAPTER XIII
The Gathering of Earth's Forces
Staring ahead into space from the control-chair of our racing flier, I heard Whitely's voice from beside me. "Seventeen days," he was saying. "And in two more days we ought to reach Earth."
I nodded abstractedly, gazing ahead. "Two days at the most," I said. "We're inside Jupiter's orbit now, and once through the asteroidal belt, there'll be nothing to delay us."
For as Whitely and I gazed outward, Marlin and Randall sleeping now in two of the space-flier's bunks, we could see that we were approaching, indeed, that belt of whirling asteroids that marked the division between the four inner and the four great outer planets of the solar system. To the left, dropping behind us, gleamed the gigantic cloud-belted sphere of Jupiter with its stately train of attendant moons, as great a mystery to us as when we first had passed it. A side force-ray was holding the flier out still from the mighty planet's attraction, while ahead and to the right from us now gleamed crimson Mars. Yet it was not these that held the eyes of Whitely and myself, nor even the increasing fiery circle of the sun before us, but the bluish-white little spot of light that was expanding slowly in size and brilliance as we shot on toward it, the little spot of bluish light that was our planet, Earth.
For days we had gazed toward that little light-spot as our space-flier went on and on through the solar system's vast reaches toward it. For seventeen days, now, even as Whitely had said, we had been racing inward from Neptune at utmost speed on our desperate journey back to our own world. The space-flier's great rear force-ray, pushing back against giant Neptune, had hurled the flier in through the outer reaches of our universe with an acceleration of velocity that was so great as to prove almost our undoing. For more than once that terrific pressure of that acceleration on us, despite our shock-absorbing apparatus, had so affected our bodies as to overcome us with successive fits of nausea and unconsciousness. And once, just after we had swept in past great Saturn and its mighty rings, fearful of those great rings after our former misadventure with them, I had awakened from my sleep-period to find Randall and Marlin, in the control-chairs, quite unconscious from the flier's terrific acceleration, the flier itself speeding onward without any guiding hand on its controls.
Yet despite this we had grimly driven the flier to the utmost acceleration possible, its speed steadily mounting toward the maximum in those succeeding days that we flashed inward from Neptune. For behind us Neptune's calm, green little disk of light, though diminishing steadily in size as we receded from it, seemed like a baleful signal of doom shining there behind us. For out from Neptune, or rather out from its moon, Triton, the giant force-ray of the Neptunians was still radiating toward the sun, thus shadowing all the solar system with the cataclysmic doom to come. For, as we flashed inward, Marlin had used his astronomical instruments to determine the fact that the sun's rotatory period had now decreased to a little over eight days, and was decreasing still by the same amount of four hours each day, its spin accelerated each day by the same amount as the colossal force-ray from Triton kept upon its side its unrelenting pressure. And within half a hundred days more, as we knew, that rotatory period of the sun would have decreased until its huge mass would be spinning once in every hour, would be spinning then so fast that it must inevitably be riven asunder into a new double star by its own centrifugal force, engulfing all its planets save Neptune alone!
So it was that we spared not ourselves but drove the space-flier in through the solar system toward Earth with a speed unthinkable, almost, using an acceleration that was all but death for us. For the one hope of preventing that colossal sun-cataclysm, as Marlin had said and as we all knew, was to reach Earth soon and then at once fly back out from Earth toward Neptune again with the great space-flier fleet, which, if the World President and the World Congress had not failed us, would be waiting on Earth for us. With that fleet we must sally back across the solar system once more to its outer edge, to great Neptune, and must fall upon Triton and the giant force-ray that was shooting from Triton to the sun, with all our power. If we could vanquish the Neptunians long enough to destroy the giant sun-ray's mechanism, to halt that ray, we would have halted the acceleration of the sun's spin, would have saved the sun and its planets from the cataclysmic doom that now threatened them. But if we could not, if the Neptunians with their countless cylinders and great weapons were too strong for us, then we could but perish there in struggling with them, since in that case nothing could halt the doom that they were loosing from Triton upon the sun and the solar system.
And as Whitely and I gazed out through the flashing flier's windows, we knew that scant enough was the time left for us in which to do these things. Even if we were safe on Earth in the next two days, as we hoped, there would remain but little more than forty days before the coming of the dread cataclysm that threatened, and it would require half that time for the space-fliers of Earth to make their way back out across the solar system to Neptune. So that now there lay over my mind that deepening shadow of impending colossal disaster that had hovered over all our minds during the strange days of our racing inward through the solar system, making me gaze somberly enough toward the bluish light-spot in the darkness of space far ahead that was our goal now. To the left, though, Jupiter's great globe had dropped far behind now, and as I saw that I cut out our side-ray, and turned toward Whitely.
"We're at the edge of the asteroidal belt now," I told him, "but I'm not going to slow our speed. We'll just flash on through it and take our chance."
He nodded gravely. "I'll wake Marlin and Randall now to help me keep watch," he said.
A moment later, having done so, Marlin and Randall freed themselves of the straps of the bunks and climbed across the flier to take their places beside Whitely in watching for the great menacing asteroids. And as we passed on through the belt of those whirling perils, Marlin and Whitely and Randall watched for hour on hour there beside me, though so vast was the maximum speed at which our flier was going now, more than eight million miles an hour, that before they could more than get a flashing glimpse of a nearby asteroid we would have passed it. We were relying almost wholly on blind chance to take us through the asteroidal belt at that lightning speed, yet so desperate was this grim race back to Earth from the solar system's edge, that we preferred to trust thus to chance, rather than to slow our speed or to delay by an hour our arrival on Earth. And chance, for the time, favored us, for some hours later we had won through the perils of the asteroidal belt without more than a few split-second glimpses of the great whirling spheres of peril. And then, as we shot across the orbit of Mars with the planet's dull red shield still farther to the right, I began to slow our terrific speed, for by this time the Earth was expanding rapidly before us.
And now, too, the sun was flaming before us, in all the halo-like glory of its great corona, with a brilliance blinding to our eyes after the dim shades of Neptune and its moon. Yet even with that brilliance dazzling us we could make out plainer and plainer the sphere of Earth, seeming to our eyes a thin silver-blue crescent as it spun there between our inrushing flier and the sun, its tiny moon-spot growing brighter too. Marlin and Whitely and Randall watching tensely beside me, I cut out altogether the great force-ray at the flier's rear, which, even when our speed had reached its maximum, drove us straight onward and kept that speed unvarying against the gravitational influences from either side which were not large enough to require an opposing side-ray. Snapping that rear-ray out, I sent another force-ray from the flier toward the Earth-sphere ahead, and as that ray struck and pushed us back with immense power, the space-flier's colossal speed was gradually decreasing.
Once more we felt terrific upward and forward pressure in our chairs as the flier's speed steadily slowed, dropped swiftly from eight million miles an hour to six and then to five and then to three. And as we shot in thus toward Earth, the millions of miles dropping slower behind as our flier's great faceted ball clicked through space at slower and slower speed, I knew the same question was in the minds of my three friends as in my own. It was reflected in the tensely anxious eyes of Marlin and the imperturbable eyes of Whitely and the unwontedly grave eyes of Randall as the three stared ahead with me. Would the space-fliers that the World President and the World Congress had promised to build be ready? If not, we knew we certainly could not venture out to Neptune and put an end to the great doom-ray that the Neptunians were stabbing toward the sun. So that it was in a growing suspense of spirit that we watched Earth's sphere, with its crescent of bluish-white light at one side, expanding before us.
At ever slower speed we were rushing in toward it, and at last, moving at but a few hundred thousand miles an hour by this time, were driving in out of the void and past Earth's shining moon, gleaming in space to our right, its great ranges and strange craters clear to our eyes from its airless surface. But now all our eyes were on Earth ahead, since now through the drifting cloud-masses that floated in its atmosphere we could make out the great bluish globe's surface features, could see that western Europe and North Africa lay in the sunlight in that crescent of light at Earth's side, but that the North and South Americas lay in the shade of Earth's outer side, in the darkness of night. It was toward the dark half-seen outline of North America that I was heading the flier, for by this time, traveling still more slowly, our velocity now being less than a thousand miles an hour, we were entering Earth's atmosphere, the rarefied air of its outer reaches roaring about the flier as it shot through it.
"Straight to New York—to the World Congress," Marlin was saying. "There's not a minute to lose."
I nodded silently, at the same time snapping out the front-ray of the flier that was slowing our speed as we shot toward Earth's surface, and as its gravitation gripped the flier we were turning until instead of rushing onward we were falling to its surface from high above, as it turned in space before us, falling down toward the surface of the North American continent, whose outline was visible from our great height through the shifting cloud-screen. I felt my heart beating rapidly as we shot thus downward, forgot almost the mighty import of the mission on which we were returning in the mere fact of our return; for we were first of all men to venture thus into the outer void and to return from that void to Earth! And as we shot downward I saw the same thought mirrored in the faces of the others, staring down with me.
Down—down—with an oblique ray I was making the space-flier fall slantingly, more and more slowly, toward the northeastern coast of the continent beneath, whose broad, brown surface stretched out greater and greater beneath us. Moments more and as the roar of air about us intensified, mingling with the throbbing of our generators, we shot down from the sun's light into the darkness of this dark side of Earth, this night of Earth's one side. But now its great surface was changing from convex to concave beneath us, and now as we shot lower still Randall pointed downward and northward with a low cry toward a spark of bright red light, the beam of the great air-beacon of the trans-Atlantic air-liners, at New York. Slower—slower—and in moments more the vast mass of its towering cylindrical buildings, ablaze with outlining lights, was coming into view, with midmost among them the greatest of all, the huge mass of the World Government building.
As our space-flier dropped slowly toward that mighty structure beneath my controlling hands, as it dropped toward the swarms of bright-lit aircraft that were moving to and fro over the great city, so familiar was the scene beneath to us four cosmic voyagers that almost did our great journey, our mighty flight out through the sun's planets through the countless leagues of space to great Neptune, and our grotesque and dream-like adventures upon Neptune and its moon, seem to us indeed no more than dreams. But as we shot lower we were startled from this strange state of mind by one of the aircraft beneath, showing the customary red and green position-lights along its hull, driving up through the darkness toward our smoothly falling space-flier. We saw the three men in the control-room of the craft gazing amazedly toward the gleaming, faceted metal ball of our flier as they circled us, and then from their craft had burst out a score of brilliant vari-colored signal-lights. And as these blazed out there came a moment later an answering blaze of lights from each of the swarming craft below, that shot up now in hundreds toward our falling flier, crowding crazily about it!
Down through the darkness we dropped still, those swarms of aircraft almost jostling us as they seethed thickly in terrific excitement about us. As we shot downward over New York's surface we saw that across all the vast city, and far across the great air-docks to the south even, signal-lights were blazing out, a wild panorama of bursting lights stretching out in all directions! From beneath, too, there came up to us now a terrific roar of mingled voices, the vast crowds in the streets of the huge city sending their cheering cries up to us in a great thunder-roll of sound as we fell toward them. And as I held the space-flier to its smooth drop downward amid the swarming aircraft, I saw that Marlin and Randall, and even Whitely, were gazing across those vast, shouting throngs and across the swarms of madly-darting aircraft that encircled us, with somber, thoughtful faces.
Now we were falling a few hundred feet above the roof of the World Government building, on which a little knot of figures awaited us, and as I gazed from it across the other roofs of the great city I uttered a low exclamation. "On the roofs—you see?" I asked. "Those things of metal—those space-fliers——!"
But they too were gazing toward the roofs, toward the innumerable crystal-like metal forms that we could half-recognize on those roofs in the darkness. But a glimpse only we had of them before the space-flier was sinking downward to the great roof itself, and as Marlin saw the knot of figures on that roof he half-turned. "The World President," he said, quietly, "waiting for us on the roof."
That roof's flat expanse was just beneath us, covered itself with other great crystal-like gleaming fliers, but with a clear space at its center where once had stood our space-flier's framework. There was no framework there now, but smoothly I brought the flier down upon that space, down to the roof, poised it a moment a foot above it, and then let it sink to the roof's surface and opened a half-dozen of the switches before me, the throbbing of the generators that had been enduring for so long ceasing and giving way to an unaccustomed silence that was strange to our ears. Then Marlin had turned, was opening the inner door, and in another moment the outer one had swung open also, a flood of cool, clean air rushing in upon us. Marlin leading, we stepped out, stood unsteadily for a moment on the great roof's surface beneath the brilliance of the lights that flared above it.
From beneath and above came still through the night the unceasing roar of the great crowds in the huge city's streets and the hum of its swarming, seething aircraft, and then we saw that the little group of men on the roof beside us were coming toward us, the World President at their head. His strong, keen eyes were steady upon us as he came forward, his hands outstretched, and then he had gripped our own hands, was holding them for a moment in silence. In that moment we were all four swaying a little as we stood there, gazing about us at the far-flung lights of the great city around us, at the men before us, at the strangely-dulled stars overhead, as though never had we seen them before. When the World President spoke, his human-sounding voice seemed strange even to our ears.
"Marlin—Randall—Whitely—Hunt—" he said. "You have come back then from your mission?"
"We've come back—from Neptune," Marlin said simply.
"The World Congress is already gathered—is waiting for you," said the other, as simply, and then with him and the officials about him we were walking toward the stair-opening in the great roof, were walking through ranks of the great looming faceted things of metal that I saw now clearly were replicas each of our own polyhedron-like space-flier!
Down through that opening we went, down stairs after stairs until we were emerging through a high door on the raised platform at the end of the great room in which the World Congress awaited us. Brilliant white light flooded that room and in it, in silent row upon row, were seated the twelve hundred members of the great Congress. As we four entered, with the World President and his officials, there was turned instantly toward us every eye, and a tense hush of utter silence settled in which our own steps seemed loud to our ears. There were no shouts or cheering cries from the Congress' members, in that moment, for all knew that what they were to hear now from us was the word of hope or hopelessness for Earth, the report of our great mission upon which rested Earth's single chance for life. And as I stared across the great, silent Congress in that moment, there flashed upon the screen of my mind, strangely enough, a picture of that other silent, solemn council before which Marlin and I had stood but a few days before, that Council of Thirty of the strange Neptunians whose great synthesizing globe-mechanism had spoken to us. Then, as we stood there, the World President was stepping forward to address the Congress.
"There is no need for me to tell you who are the four men standing here before you," he said. "Marlin—Whitely—Randall—Hunt—these four who went out to Neptune on the Earth's behalf, and whom Earth has tensely awaited now for weeks. I do not know, any more than you, what they found there, what chance for Earth they found or failed to find. And it is that that we, the representatives of the world's peoples, now wait to hear from Marlin, the leader of this great expedition." Utter silence held all present.
And as the World President stepped back, Marlin, unsteady still from our unaccustomedness to Earth's gravitation, and with face drawn, but eyes steady and bright, was stepping forward. Facing the great rank on rank of members of the World Congress he stood, while we others slipped into the seats behind him, facing them for a moment in tense silence as he summoned his energies to speak. In that moment, as my eyes roved across the great hall, I made out the faces of many there known to me, the face, just beneath our platform, was that of my chief at the Intelligence Bureau, Markham, the faces of many others, strange and yet familiar, all turned now toward Marlin. And then, in a voice low at first but gaining in power as he went on, Marlin was speaking to them, his words sounding out through the great room in a hushed, unnatural silence.
He began by reviewing in a few sentences the colossal peril that had threatened and was threatening us, the increased spin of the sun beneath Neptune's mighty ray that soon must result in its division and the solar system's doom. Then, with a reference to that other gathering of the World Congress at which our venture out to Neptune had been decided upon, he came to the start of that venture. While they listened in utter tenseness he told of our start, of our going out from Earth first of all men into the outer void, out past the mysteries of Mars with greater and greater speed. Our onward flight through the terrible dangers of the great asteroidal belt and our narrow escapes in it, our outward rush past mighty Jupiter—these he described in his steady voice, and we felt the tenseness that held all in the great room in dead silence. He told them of what doom had nearly been ours at Saturn, of our fall toward its great rings of death and our narrow escape from them.
Then, with a little pause, he was going on, was telling of our onward flashing flight beyond Saturn out through the vast outer reaches of the solar system, out past the orbit of Uranus toward Neptune itself. In utmost suspense they listened as he told of our arrival at last at Neptune, of our amazement at finding that giant world shielded with an enclosing roof of metal, and of our greater amazement at finding that world, the colossal city that covered it, utterly dead and deserted. Low exclamations of surprise broke from his listeners then as he narrated how he and I had been surprised in the dead city of Neptune by the coming of the Neptunians in their cylinders, their attack upon and pursuit upward of Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, their capture of ourselves and their taking us from Neptune out to the moon-world of Triton. And a low wave of uncontrollable excitement swept across the great room as Marlin told those in it of the roofed and warmed world of Triton and the countless millions of Neptunians on it, and above all of the giant force-ray that was stabbing from Triton's sunward side toward the sun and loosing doom upon us!
And that excitement intensified when he told of what else we had found at Triton, of the other giant force-ray stabbing out from its other side toward a distant star of Sagittarius, of our captivity there and our learning of the Neptunian tongue, our being brought before the great Council of thirty of the Neptunian races. I saw the hundreds before us listening with abated breath as he told them that gigantic epic of the solar system's past that had been told us by the great globe-mechanism of the Council, that story of the Neptunians' past history and of the great doom of increasing cold that had driven them from Neptune to Triton and that now had caused them to seek to split the sun itself to thwart that doom. How they had sent out toward that star in Sagittarius another great force-ray years before, to brace Triton against the back-pressure of the sun-ray and to keep it from being hurled out into the great void, how they had finally sent out the great force-ray toward the sun also, turning the sun ever faster toward the doom of all the other planets, planning to wreck the universe to save their own race. These things he told them through the hushed silence that again had replaced their stir and murmur of excitement.
But excitement held them again when he told how he and I, desperate at the doom we saw hanging thus over Earth, had made our wild attempt to escape from Triton, had dared to cross its surface and had stolen a cylinder, crashing up through the great roof and out from Triton in that cylinder with their pursuit close behind us, how we had been saved from that pursuit by Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, who, although we had thought them dead, had managed to elude their own attackers by a ruse and had hovered near Triton in hopes of saving us; how in the space-flier we had fled back from Triton over Neptune and had smashed our pursuers, while we and they were over Neptune; these things, his voice deep now, he told to the hundreds of his listeners. And then, swaying a little from sheer utter weariness of body and spirit, Marlin told them how we, knowing that never alone could we halt or even reach that giant ray driving from Triton toward the sun, had headed back for Earth at the utmost speed of which we were capable, had flashed back like some great messenger-meteor through the solar system to Earth to carry to the peoples of Earth word of what we had found, to gather the forces of Earth and head back to Neptune with them for a last gallant attempt to halt that mighty ray of doom!
When Marlin's voice had ceased, when he had stepped unsteadily back from the platform's edge, his words seemed reverberating still through the hushed silence that prevailed among the twelve hundred massed members of the World Congress. Then again the World President, his own face as set and strange now as those of the massed members before him, was stepping forward to face them.
"You have heard the report of Dr. Marlin and his three companions," he said, quietly, "and you, and I, and the peoples of Earth listening now, know what situation faces us, what last necessity, even as was foreseen, has arisen before us. That giant force-ray of which Marlin told you, that colossal ray which these Neptunians are stabbing toward the sun's edge from their far moon-world of Triton, is turning the sun ever faster, as all of you know, is decreasing its rotatory period by four hours each passing day. Within hardly more than forty days it will have decreased the sun's rotatory period to that fatal period of one hour, will have increased its spin to that critical fatal speed, at which the sun must inevitably divide into a double sun, a double star, engulfing our planet, and almost all others, in fiery death in that cosmic cataclysm. This is known to you and you know, too, that it is only by halting that giant force-ray from Triton that we can save our sun, our world, from that tremendous cataclysm.
"This much we have known, indeed, and now with what knowledge these four men have brought back from their unparalleled venture out through the gulf of space to the solar system's edge, to Neptune itself, you know also what lies before us. We have, indeed, built during the absence of Marlin and his three friends that great fleet of space-fliers, which we had decided to build. Using the plans of their original space-flier and applying all our efforts toward achieving a quantity production of space-fliers on those plans, we have been able, as you know, to construct in their absence no less than five thousand space-fliers exactly like their own, space-fliers that rest now upon the roofs of New York's great buildings around us, complete now with trained crews and ready to start! The gathering of Earth's forces has thus already taken place!
"And upon this great fleet of space-fliers rests now the fate of the solar system! For that fleet must go out through the solar system now to Neptune and halt the giant ray radiating from Triton's sunward side toward the sun, if the solar system is to live. What perils, what opposition that fleet will meet, Marlin has made clear to you. These Neptunians, most ancient and mighty of the solar system's peoples, are of colossal powers, such powers that they are scrupling not at splitting the sun itself! They have thousands of their great space-cylinders that can whirl through space as swiftly and as well as our own space-fliers. They have as weapons their concentrated force-rays, which we must provide for the fliers of our own fleet before it leaves. They have an ancient science and might that can produce we know not what weapons against us, and they know that our four first venturers escaped back to Earth, and will be expecting now an attack from us, will resist that attack with all their powers, undoubtedly, since they are fighting for the existence of their races, their world, even as we are fighting for ours!
"Thus this great fleet of five thousand space-fliers of ours goes out to battle, to battle between the races of Neptune and Earth that must decide the fate of the solar system for all time. There can be but one fit to lead this fleet out to such battle, and that is Marlin himself, who was the first to discover this peril that hangs over us, who was one of the first to suggest a means of struggling against that peril, and who has led this first daring venture out through a thousand perils to Neptune, and back again to Earth with the knowledge without which we could not act. So that it is he, with these three companions of his, Whitely and Hunt and Randall, who dared all with him and who have done for Earth what he has done, as his three lieutenants, who must command this great expedition of ours which we are sending out to halt the oncoming doom, these gathered forces of all the Earth!
"For it is this great fleet of space-fliers, with Marlin at its head, which alone can halt that doom now! If that fleet can win safely out through the perils of the interplanetary void to Neptune, can win to Triton's sunward side against the opposition of the Neptunians and can destroy the controls and generators of their great sun-ray, can halt that ray, the sun's spin will cease to accelerate and our planet and the other planets will have been saved. But if our fleet cannot do this, if the Neptunians prevent it from reaching the great sun-ray's source, and from halting that ray, then the sun will spin on ever faster and within two-score more days will split at last and engulf in the diverging fires of its two new suns, all the planets save Neptune. For it is this great space-fleet of ours, heading out now toward the last great battle of Earth's and Neptune's races, which alone now can prevent the accelerating speed of the sun and the consequent wrecking of our universe!"
CHAPTER XIV
An Ambush in Space
"Mars ahead and to the left—once more!"
As I uttered the words Marlin and Randall and Whitely, beside me, were gazing to the left with me. "Strange," said Randall, "it all seems, almost, as when we first went out past Mars."
Strangely similar, indeed, did it seem to all of us, the panorama that now again stretched all about us, visible through the racing space-flier's windows, as we sat in the four control-chairs before them. For ahead and away to the left gleamed again the dull-red disk of Mars, farther now from us than on our first trip out but seeming almost the same. Ahead too, and close to the right, shone mighty Jupiter, and beyond it on the left the yellow spot of Saturn once more, with far beyond it and straight ahead again the green little spark of light that was Neptune. Behind, too, the bluish light-spot of Earth and the lessened fire-disk of the sun were as before, and as before the blazing stars that jeweled all the deep-black firmament about us. But behind our flier we could barely see innumerable tiny gleaming points moving forward at the same speed as ourselves through the void, keeping pace with us in regular formation, a great V-formation of which our flier was the point and that moved steadily on through space. For those tiny points, extending back and out of sight in the void behind us, were the space-fliers of that great fleet of five thousand space-fliers which our own, the flagship, was leading out through the solar system to Neptune!
For two days, now, we had been flashing with that great fleet behind us from Earth, out toward the solar system's edge on our mighty expedition, and five days had passed since we had stood before the World Congress with Marlin rendering to it our report. In those intervening three days on Earth we had been the center of such a whirl of hectic activity as the world had never known before—the whirl of preparations for the start of the colossal fleet. For in those three short days Marlin with the energies of a world at his bidding, had strained every nerve to complete the last preparations of the great armada of space-fliers which he, with us three as his lieutenants, was to lead out on its unprecedented flight to Neptune.
The most necessary preparation was the equipping of the five thousand space-fliers with the concentrated force-ray weapons used by the Neptunians in their space-cylinders, those concentrated rays which, instead of pushing against what they struck, tore through it with driving power. Fortunately, the production of these concentrated rays required only the addition of special smaller ray-openings beside the regular ray-openings in the sides of the space-fliers, but even so it strained the capacities of the world's workers to install in each of the space-fliers those smaller openings in the short time available.
Each of the five thousand space-fliers held a crew of eight, their operators having been trained during our absence as fast as the fliers themselves had been built. We four in our own space-flier, the flagship of the great fleet, had four additional crew-members now, four mechanic-operators who worked in shifts and tended ceaselessly the operation of the flier's various mechanisms, the great generators, and the other mechanical equipment, thus leaving Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself free to devote all our attention to the command of the great fleet itself, though one of us retained the controls of the flier itself. Another preparation that had been made during our absence had been to equip each flier with space-walkers for its crew, and to equip each with efficient radiophone apparatus. This, while the Heaviside layer around Earth would prevent it functioning from Earth to space or from space to Earth, would allow free communication from space-flier to space-flier while in space itself, and thus would allow Marlin and us to control with spoken orders all the great fleet we led.
Thus the last preparations had been completed and three days after our arrival at Earth the great fleet of space-fliers had taken its departure, the five thousand faceted polyhedron-like fliers rising as one from the flat roofs of New York's countless gigantic buildings. Once more we had started at night, and it seemed that all of the peoples of Earth had assembled in and around New York that night to speed us farewell. The vast crowds that had watched our single space-flier start out on its first trip weeks before, were as nothing to those vaster crowds that had watched the great fleet leave, since all on Earth knew now what word we had brought back from Neptune and knew that in two-score more days, unless this fleet was successful in its tremendous task, unless it could win through the Neptunian opposition and halt the giant sun-ray, that all on Earth would perish in flaming death.
Thus surely there could have been no tenser moment in Earth's history than that, when, with the World President and the massed members of the World Congress watching again around us, our flagship had risen from the roof of the great World Government building into the night, flashing up and outward once more toward Sagittarius, toward unseen Neptune. And behind us almost instantly there had flashed up in regular timing and formation our five thousand following fliers, racing out and after us with colossal speed like ourselves and flying in that hollow triangle or V-formation behind us. That formation had been adopted so that the rays of the fliers of the fleet, driven back toward Earth to push them on, would not strike against other fliers behind them, as would have been the case had our fleet moved out in a compact mass. And now for forty-eight hours our five thousand space-fliers had been hurtling outward, with our own flagship still at the apex of their formation.
And as we four sat now again in the four control-chairs, two of our mechanic-operators watching over the generators behind us and the other two asleep in their bunks, we had a somewhat different array of controls before us. Before myself were the controls of the flier itself, unchanged, with the six switches that directed its propulsion force-rays from the six openings. Marlin, though, to my right, had before him now as well as his array of astronomical instruments, the black mouthpiece and speaker of the radiophone, as well as a compact array of switch-studs by which he could speak to and hear from the various squadron-leaders in the great fleet behind us. For convenience in giving orders, the five thousand fliers of the fleet had been divided into fifty squadrons of a hundred space-fliers each, and it was to the designated leader of each squadron that Marlin gave his orders, which were then transmitted by that leader to the hundred fliers of his squadron.
Before Randall, too, to my left, were new controls, the controls of the concentrated force-rays which were to be our fleet's weapons even as such rays were the Neptunians' also, and with which our flagship had of course been equipped. Those controls were two thick metal levers of no great size, with hand-grips at their end, one of which controlled by its position the side of the flier from which the concentrated cleaving ray was shot forth, the other controlling the slant or exact direction at which that ray was emitted. With Randall handling these, our weapons, Whitely had before him all the space-flier's remaining controls—those of the generators, air replenishers, the various recording dials that were vital to its operation, and other essential things. So that as our throbbing flier drove on now at the great fleet's head, with Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself gazing to the left toward the nearing crimson shield of Mars, we had each before us some vital part of our great fleet's or our flier's control.
Gazing toward Mars' red disk, Marlin broke the silence. "We'll need no side-rays this time to hold us out from it," he said, and I nodded.
"No, it's far enough from us now, and the speed of our fliers will take them safely past—is taking them past now. But it's the asteroids ahead that I've been thinking of."
Marlin somberly shook his head. "There's no help for it, Hunt," he said. "We'll have to lead the fleet straight through the asteroidal belt and trust to chance that as few of our fliers as possible will be struck."
The following hours, therefore, were perhaps the most tense and terrible that ever we had experienced. For as we shot on past Mars and through the great belt of whirling asteroids, it was not possible for the five thousand space-fliers of our fleet to maneuver to avoid those asteroids. We must hold straight on in our regular formation, we knew, lest all our fliers crash one into the other, so in that formation we went steadily on through that great zone of death. And hardly had we entered it, Marlin and Randall and Whitely gazing forth as intensely as myself, than an expanding dark globe loomed suddenly before us, sweeping past us with terrifying closeness, and then as it shot past there came suddenly in the blackness of space behind us a soundless flash of fiery light, that flared for a moment and faded. The asteroid, we knew, had struck a flier close behind us!
From ahead and from either side still, as we sped on, other asteroids were rushing, following their complicated orbits as our great fleet's open triangle of space-fliers moved through them, and now again and again still behind us came other fiery flashes in quick succession, flashes of flame which each marked the instant destruction of a space-flier and all its occupants! Yet there came no word, no protest, from any of the space-fliers behind us, all were going steadily forward at unaltered speed and in unaltered formation through the great belt of whirling death. And though, within a few hours more than a score of our space-fliers had been annihilated in white-hot and soundless flashes of fire as they were struck by the hurtling asteroids, the rest had escaped unscathed, and Marlin was giving to them the cheering knowledge that we had won through the asteroidal belt and were out of its whirling death.
Thus again Jupiter loomed ahead and to our right, though closer now and greater in apparent size, and again we four were staring toward it in almost as great a wonder as formerly, as its mighty cloud-wrapped disk and attendant four big moons loomed closer. By this time, Marlin had transmitted to all the fliers behind us a brief order, and already from each of them and from our own a side force-ray was shooting toward the gigantic planet to hold us out from its terrific attraction. The V-formation in which our five thousand space-fliers flew was so slightly tilted sidewise as to allow the use of side-rays by all our fliers, and a side-ray of immense power it required indeed to hold each of us out from the mighty monarch of the solar system's planets as we sped past its huge and enigmatic sphere.
But still on and on through the void our mighty armada of space-fliers was racing, on toward the green spark of Neptune that slowly waxed brighter far ahead of us. That little green spot of light held our eyes, even to the exclusion of Saturn's yellow disk, expanding again to the left before us as we shot toward it also, for all our minds were centered upon Neptune and what mighty task it was that awaited us at that great world and its moon, what mighty struggle would be ours. So that it was not until Saturn's disk had expanded almost to moon-size before us, surrounded by the great rings and by its whirling moons, that we gave that planet any attention. By this time, for more than seven days our huge fleet had been speeding out through the boundless void, out through the solar system, and so it was as a certain landmark to us that Saturn appeared as we neared it, the last planet between us and our goal of Neptune. With our great fleet close behind, as we drew abreast of the huge planet's mighty sphere and colossal rings, it was intently enough that we four, gathered again in the control-chairs of our flier, and gazed toward it.
"The most dangerous planet in the solar system—Saturn," said Marlin, as we looked toward the huge world from which our side-rays now were holding us. "It was death almost for us before when we ventured too close in passing it."
"Well, we're safe enough from it this time," Whitely commented, "for since then it's moved farther to the left—is farther away from us with no danger to us now of chance meteors from its rings."
"Yes, we're safe enough from it now," Marlin admitted, "yet at the same time——"
Before Marlin could finish the words they were interrupted by a thing that chills my blood to remember even now. One moment he was speaking beside us, our space-flier flashing steadily on at its tremendous speed at the head of its great triangle-fleet, past huge Saturn to the left. The next moment there was a terrific whirling around us of our space-flier's walls, it spun for an instant with tremendous speed in space, and at the same moment then was being driven with colossal speed in a direction at right angles to that in which we had been moving, was being shot through the void toward the mighty sphere and rings and moons of huge Saturn! And even as in that awful moment it drove with sickening speed, with an acceleration terrible, toward Saturn, all its forward progress suddenly halted, reeling blindly and at unthinkable velocity toward the huge planet, I looked through the windows, and saw whirling about us, the thousands of space-fliers of our mighty fleet bunched in a great, irregular mass with us, and hurtling through the void at the same tremendous speed toward great Saturn as ourselves!
"Saturn!" cried Randall hoarsely as we whirled in that mad moment. "The controls, Hunt!—we're being shot in toward it!"
"The controls don't answer!" I shouted, my hands frantically flashing over them. "Something's driving us into Saturn—our rays can't hold us out——"
"The Neptunians! There behind us—those great cylinders—they're pushing all our fleet into Saturn to death!"
As Whitely voiced that last mad cry we glanced back through the windows of the flier even as they whirled about us, even as our flier and all the thousands of space-fliers of our great fleet whirled madly in toward huge Saturn looming ahead, and we saw that even as he had cried out, there, behind us, hanging motionless in space and only visible to us for a moment, hung a great mass of cylinder-fliers! Half our own great fleet in number they seemed, those massed Neptunian cylinders, and midmost among them were a score of greater cylinders of immense size, far larger than any of the others, that were grouped closely together and from openings in which there was coming toward us a pale force-ray of immense size, visible only as it issued from those greater cylinders! And that ray it was, as was plain even in that instant, that was pushing our fleet with colossal power in toward its death in great Saturn's maze of rings and moons! The Neptunians had come out with those great ray-generators, those greater cylinders, and with a portion of their thousands of cylinder-fliers, and had waited for us in space to the right of Saturn, knowing well that our own escape meant a great attack upon them, an effort to halt their great doom-ray! They had awaited us there and when we had come between them and Saturn, never suspecting their presence, they had loosed upon us this forceful ray that was now driving us swiftly in to death!
"An ambush!" I cried. "An ambush in space—the Neptunians are pushing us in to Saturn—our fleet can't live for minutes then!"