An ambush in space! They were being pushed into Saturn.
An ambush in space! They were being pushed into Saturn.
An ambush in space! They were being pushed into Saturn.
"Try to bring our flier out of it—up out of their ray's push, Hunt!" Marlin shouted to me, and for a moment I worked frenziedly at the controls before me, but the rays I shot forward to push against Saturn, to hold us back or push us to either side were powerless against the vast pushing ray from behind! Larger and larger great ringed Saturn loomed ahead as our disorganized fleet shot on at awful speed toward it, pushed by the vast ray, and but minutes remained before we would have crashed to death in all our fliers against the mighty planet and its whirling rings and moons! The end of our fleet and the end of Earth's hope, crashed to annihilation by the Neptunian ambush that had been laid for us here in space!
The thought maddened me, and with a sudden desperate inspiration I ceased to direct our flier's rays ahead against Saturn in vain attempt to halt our reeling flash forward, but instead suddenly shot a ray back against the mass of Neptunian cylinders no longer visible in space far behind. As that powerful propelling ray struck their cylinders' mass, our reeling flier leaped forward with even greater speed toward Saturn, and as it shot forward thus faster than even the huge ray from behind alone could push it, it was slightly freed from that vast ray's pressure, and I could edge it upward a little from that great ray's path! Up—up—while Marlin and Whitely and Randall watched with white faces beside me, while our space-fliers and all the fleet's around and behind us came on at terrible velocity toward mighty Saturn that now filled the firmament before us. Up—up—and as I saw that we were winning gradually up from the great ray's path, I shouted to Marlin, heard him with his radiophone apparatus quickly order all the fleet's fliers to follow my example in an effort to win up from the great ray's pressure. Only the fliers uppermost in that ray's path, though, like our own, could hope to get clear in this way, but as we swept on, gradually our own flier and perhaps four or five hundred others out of our great mass of five thousand won thus upward until at last we burst up out of the vast ray's path and were out of its pushing pressure!
"Back to the Neptunian cylinders!" Marlin shouted into the mouthpiece before him. "Unless we can destroy the greater cylinders whose ray is pushing the rest of our fleet into Saturn, we're lost!"
And back now our flier and the five hundred others that were clear of the ray like it, were rushing, back away from Saturn, while the remaining thousands of space-fliers of our fleet, unable to get clear in that way of the vast ray's pressure, were being driven on by it with terrific speed and power toward annihilation against Saturn! We must destroy the greater cylinders that were sending forth that ray, we knew, before the mass of our fleet crashed into Saturn, and so our five hundred space-fliers, our own flagship at their head, went fast almost as light through the black gloom of space, back toward the two thousand or more Neptunian cylinder-fliers that were massed around those greater cylinders that were our object! Upward and backward we flashed, until in another moment it seemed that great mass of cylinder-fliers loomed before and beneath us in space, the score or more of greater cylinders that were pushing with their huge ray our fleet to doom. Before ever the Neptunians in those cylinders could see us we had rushed back high above them, and then, as Marlin gave a single order through the mouthpiece before him, our five hundred faceted space-fliers were diving through space upon that Neptunian mass of motionless cylinders!
Down like light we flashed upon them through the black gloom of space, and a wild exhilaration thrilled me through in that moment, as we flew downward. The immense blackness of empty space around us, the far fiery disk of the sun and the bright sparks of Jupiter and Neptune burning inward and outward from us, the vast ringed sphere of Saturn behind us—these seemed to spin slowly around our flier as with its fellows it dove down through the sheer darkness of the void toward the unsuspecting Neptunian cylinders below. Marlin was gripping the control-board's edge, staring downward with the radiophone mouthpiece close before him, Whitely at the other side gazing down with his calm eyes ablaze for once, while Randall grasped tightly, with his face set and stone-like, the two levers of our concentrated force-ray weapon, and while with my own hands I held the controls of the flier's propulsion-rays, and sent it swooping down out of the upper void now upon the Neptunians, even as the hundreds of our fliers around us swooped. Then, as those cylinders loomed greater close beneath us Randall had swung sharply the levers in his hands and as he did so there had emerged from our space-flier, and from all those about us, ray upon ray of concentrated, terrible force, slender and pencil-like rays of pale force, that crashed down with awful cleaving power through the massed cylinders beneath!
I saw in that whirling instant score upon score of the cylinders below cloven through by those terrific slicing rays, saw a full half of the score of greater cylinders that had been our chief target break up into great fragments as our rays swept through them! For that moment it seemed that below us unharmed and wrecked cylinders were merged together in a wildly-confused mass, fragments of wreckage and disk-bodied Neptunians, slain instantly by the cold of space, and unharmed cylinders whirling together there in a great mass beneath us! In that instant we had stayed our downward rush, almost upon that great mass, had with a repelling ray shot our fliers over and beyond it, and then as we whirled upward once more, as Marlin again uttered a hoarse, swift command, we were leaping back toward the great mass of the Neptunians, leaping back with all in our flier shouting now as we drove toward the remaining greater cylinders to destroy them also!
But now, as we shot toward them, the Neptunians had rallied from the first surprise of our crashing attack down upon them, and before we could again swoop down upon them, their unharmed cylinder-fliers, still more than two thousand in number, had separated themselves from the confused wreckage of those we had destroyed and were driving boldly up toward us, to meet us! In another instant they would have overwhelmed us, would have wiped us from the void with their great mass crashing over our own, their concentrated rays directed toward us, but before they could come closer Marlin had given an order and from our own racing fliers there had shot out toward the onracing Neptunian cylinder-fliers propulsion-rays that in an instant had pushed us back from their onrushing fleet, back through a great gulf of space in an instant! Before they could comprehend the maneuver, another order had sounded, and we were again leaping forward, this time on a lower level, leaping toward the half-score greater cylinders that still remained motionless where first they had been, their combined great ray still pushing our fleet on to Saturn! The cylinder-fliers above, their occupants seeing our object, darted down like falling meteors to prevent us, but were an instant too late. Before they could do so, our concentrated rays had cloven through the half-score greater cylinders and had annihilated them, their combined great ray ceasing instantly!
"The greater cylinders are all destroyed!" Whitely was saying. "We've saved our fleet from death against Saturn, at least!"
"Back toward Saturn—toward the fleet!" Marlin shouted. "We're outnumbered five to one by these Neptunian cylinders!"
For even as he cried out, the two thousand or more Neptunian cylinder-fliers, too late to save their greater cylinders, but made more fierce by the sight of their destruction, were diving down from above, with all their concentrated weapon-rays toward us! Against those outnumbering cylinders our own few hundred fliers had no chance, and even as the Neptunians whirled down on us, as Marlin shouted his order, our space-fliers were going on toward Saturn, the Neptunians leveling out instantly and raging through the void after us in close pursuit. On we shot, their questing weapon-rays taking toll now of our rearmost fliers, and though Saturn was again filling the firmament before us with his mighty cloudy-yellow disk, his colossal whirling rings and circling maze of moons, there was no sign of our fleet's main body ahead. Had we destroyed the greater cylinders too late? Had their combined great ray pushed our fleet in to death against Saturn before we could save it? It seemed so in that tense moment and then, close ahead, there loomed in black relief against Saturn's mighty heaven-filling disk, a great swarm of black dots that were whirling toward us.
"The fleet!"
As I cried the words, Marlin was giving swift orders through the mouthpiece before him, and then, even as our own few hundred fliers suddenly slowed their speed and halted, the great swarm of dots ahead had rushed up beside and around us, had taken form around us as the thousands of space-fliers of our great fleet, falling instantly into their regular formation and confronting thus the Neptunian cylinders that had been so hotly pursuing us! Those Neptunians were too late to halt their cylinder-fliers as we faced them thus so suddenly in force, our five thousand fliers opposed to theirs, hardly half our number, but they swerved as they saw us, swerved upward and attempted to race above us, raking us with their weapon-rays of concentrated force! Before they could do so, however, Marlin had uttered another order and our fleet had shot up to meet them, so that in the next moment, Earth and Neptunian craft had rushed together in their two respective fleets, there beside mighty Saturn!
As the two great fleets neared each other there crossed and flashed from one to the other innumerable slender rays of concentrated force, and space-flier and cylinder-flier were being clove through and annihilated by those slicing rays as they neared one another! Almost it seemed that we must crash straight into the oncoming Neptunian cylinders, the whole firmament for the moment ahead of us being full of their onrushing mass. I saw openings in those oncoming cylinders from which gleamed light, looked inside and there as one sees things in a dream were the many disk-bodied Neptunians calmly manipulating the controls as their great mass of cylinders shot toward our greater mass of space-fliers. Cylinders and space-fliers were being annihilated in that moment by scores by the slender rays that drove across the closing gap between the fleets, and then just as we seemed on the point of crashing dead into their oncoming cylinders they had shot their propulsion-rays sidewise, had swerved aside and were rushing with our own great fleet, which had instantly swerved with them, through the void!
Side by side for the moment the Neptunian and Earth fleets flew, countless weapon-rays stabbing across the gap between them as at dizzying speed they shot through the void, and I kept our space-flier at our fleet's head, as Marlin gave his orders to the fliers behind us, Whitely swiftly opening and closing the controls of our generators to keep constant the flier's power and speed, Randall was sending our own slender and deadly rays shooting toward the opposite Neptunian cylinders like bolts of straight and half-seen lightning! For but instants it could have been that the two great fleets, our own of space-fliers and the smaller Neptunian one, whirled through the void, but eternities it seemed to me, so tense and timeless was that whirl of awful action. Soon I became aware of a mighty yellow disk that filled the firmament from top to bottom before us, toward which our racing, struggling fleets were flashing, and then I saw Whitely bending across me and shouting to Marlin through the wild whirl of this terrific battle:
"We're heading with the Neptunian fleet in to Saturn!" he was shouting. "What this battle will mean in those rings and moons——!"
"We'll keep straight with them!" Marlin cried. "They are trying to escape from us in Saturn's rings and moons, and get back to Neptune to rejoin the main Neptunian body!"
So that now as fleet and fleet rushed forward I held our own flier at our own fleet's head, racing forward with the vast whirling system of Saturn's rings and moons stretching dangerously before us. Full before us was looming greater each instant the spinning dark globe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and now as our two fleets rushed side by side toward it at terrific speed, stabbing still at each other from space-flier to cylinder with the concentrated weapon-rays, it seemed that inevitably in the next moment we must crash against the big moon! Seeing this, though, Marlin shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before him, and instantly in answer to it our great fleet's mass bore sidewise against the racing mass of the Neptunian cylinders! For an instant it seemed that the two fleets were merging into each other, space-flier crashing into cylinder and slender rays coming thick, and then the smaller Neptunian fleet had given way beneath the pressure of ours, had veered sidewise so that in the following moment the two fleets were rushing past Titan's whirling sphere!
And now we were inside Titan's orbit, and as we whirled farther in just across the path of another and smaller whirling moon, I saw that Saturn's colossal rings lay edge-on close before our racing masses of craft, gigantic spinning rings of mighty meteor-masses, countless great meteor-swarms whirling there about the vast yellow planet whose sphere now was stupendous in the heavens before us. In another few moments Neptunian cylinders and space-fliers of Earth would have rushed alike into those thundering swarms of meteors, in which no craft could live for a moment. Already chance meteors were whirling through space about us as we shot on, cylinder or space-flier here and there in the two racing, grappling fleets vanishing in white-hot flashes of heat and fire as a meteor struck them. But other and more cylinders and space-fliers were vanishing in wreckage beneath the cleaving rays from either fleet, and both were racing on so intent upon our terrific struggle as to notice hardly at all the vast whirling rings before us! I heard Whitely utter a hoarse cry to Marlin as we flashed forward, heard Marlin swiftly utter an order in the mouthpiece before him, and then our fleet, and the Neptunian cylinders at almost the same instant, had shot diagonally upward and instead of crashing into the great rings' edge were slanting swiftly up over them!
And now, as Neptunians and Earth fliers drove together up over Saturn's colossal rings, the intensity of the struggle seemed to deepen to a fierceness as yet unknown. For the moment it was sheer blind battle without need of reason or command, sheer awful combat there in space above Saturn's whirling rings, with beside us the vast cloud-screened yellow sphere of Saturn itself looming gigantic, and with outside the great rings its whirling maze of moons! Cylinders and space-fliers grappled in that moment with mindless fury, and with a swiftness and skill of which I had not dreamed myself capable, I whirled our space-flier this way and that amid the swarming, boiling ruck of the giant battle, amid the grappling hordes of space-fliers and cylinders that filled the air before us, their cleaving concentrated rays slicing this way and that in swift circles of death about us! I heard Whitely laughing a little from excitement beside me as the battle reached this terrific pitch, saw Randall sending our own weapon-rays this way and that with lightning-swiftness, Marlin gazing out tensely into that hell of battle that filled space about us. Struggling there above Saturn's colossal rings, ever and again Neptunian cylinder or space-flier of Earth shot too low and was caught by the whirling meteor-swarms of those giant rings, annihilated instantly by them! Hundreds of cylinders and space-fliers had gone to death already, but so far the battle had been almost even despite our greater force, and seeing this Marlin cried quickly into the order-mouthpiece before him.
Instantly our whirling space-fliers shot back suddenly from the wild ruck of the battle, formed instantly into a long double column of fliers with our own flier at the head, and then before the surprised Neptunians could reform their own spread-out and disorganized mass, our compact column had leaped forward and had crashed through their formless mass with a great shock, fliers and cylinders perishing in scores in that reeling crash! And then our double column had divided, pushing out to either side and thus splitting and separating the Neptunian mass of cylinders, and thus separated and inferior to us in numbers we were in the next moment leaping upon them there above Saturn's rings and sending their cylinders into wrecked fragments by the hundreds with our whirling rays! Fiercely their own rays came back upon us, as they faced us, and then they seemed to waver, to hesitate. And before we could sense their intention their remaining cylinders, depleted by scores each moment now and numbering no more than fifteen hundred, had dropped downward almost to the giant whirling rings, had formed into a swift massed formation there, and then with all the power of their propulsion-rays were speeding away, away from Saturn, out through the void toward the calm green distant spot of light that was Neptune!
"They're fleeing!" I cried, as our own space-flier whirled around in that moment. "We've beaten these, at least—they're fleeing back to Neptune!"
"Regular formation—all squadrons!" Marlin was shouting into the mouthpiece before him. "Full speed out from Saturn—after the Neptunians!"
And as our space-fliers, still over four thousand in number despite the losses of that wild combat, massed swiftly together in their V-formation and then were hurtling out from Saturn through the gulf after the fleeing cylinders, I was crying to him over the sudden waxing throb of our generators: "There's far more Neptunian cylinders than these that waited for us at Saturn here—the rest must be waiting at Neptune itself!"
He nodded, grim-faced. "The main Neptune fleet is probably waiting there for us—and must outnumber us by almost two to one. But if we can overtake these fifteen hundred cylinders before us we'll keep them, at least, from rejoining their main fleet!"
Now Saturn and its rings and moons was dwindling swiftly behind us as our great fleet shot forward again from it, out toward Neptune's steady, pale-green little light-spot, and after the hundreds of cylinders fleeing before us toward it. With an acceleration that never before had we dared to risk did we leap forward through the void now, and so awful was the pressure of that acceleration upon us that even with our shock-absorbing apparatus we were crushed almost into unconsciousness by it. Steadily, though, with the last of my consciousness and strength, I held the space-flier's speed and course onward, while close behind us there shot after us with the same terrific acceleration, the fliers of our own fleet. We knew, though, that the Neptunians were fleeing toward their great world at a speed and acceleration as great as ours, for we were not gaining upon them. Their massed hundreds of cylinders, indeed, were not visible to us in the great void ahead except by means of our telescope, but with it we could keep them in view and could check their progress and ours out through the great gulf toward the solar system's edge.
Out—out—for hour upon hour we throbbed through the void after those fleeing Neptunian cylinders, out once again toward great Neptune and toward the last mighty battle that was to be ours there. For well we knew that the two thousand and more Neptunian cylinders that had waited for us there at Saturn, that had laid that great ambush in space for us there and then had battled us so fiercely over Saturn, were but a portion of the Neptunian main fleet of cylinders, sent out to delay, and if possible, to destroy us. That great main body of their cylinders, we knew, must number almost double as many craft as our own, and undoubtedly was aware of our coming and was waiting for us at Neptune or near it. And it was the great main body of the Neptunian cylinders that we must overcome, I knew, before ever we could hope to get to Triton and halt there the giant force-ray that was turning the sun on toward the doom of the solar system. And well we knew, too, that in the interval the Neptunians had had time to build many more cylinders, to make their great fleet even greater, and that whatever mighty weapons they had devised in that time we now must face.
So that as our great fleet of space-fliers, holding to its regular formation, flashed on and on and on through the great gulf of space, on out through the outer vast reaches of the solar system toward its outermost planet, our every effort was bent upon overtaking the fleeing Neptunians before us and annihilating them before they could rejoin the main body. At the same colossal speed as ourselves they were fleeing from before us, on toward Neptune's tiny green disk far ahead, and though we held steady in our pursuit after them, we could not lessen the gap between us. Hour passed into hour and day into changeless day thus as we throbbed on in that tremendous pursuit, hours and days that we could not measure, all things seeming timeless now as our great fleet flashed on in this terrific pursuit. At maximum speed, at millions of miles an hour, the Neptunians and ourselves were hurtling on, yet they kept out of reach ahead of us, as Neptune grew larger ahead. And now that mighty pursuit of ours had become so strange and unreal and dream-like that it was as men in a dream that we watched and slept and watched in our space-fliers as Earth's brave fleet shot on through the last reaches of the solar system toward its edge.
Timeless indeed seemed the day on day, the hour on hour, of that daring pursuit of our fleeing enemies out from Saturn toward great Neptune, but now we knew that that pursuit had begun to draw to an end, since Neptune's disk was steadily enlarging before us and we had begun slowly to draw closer to the fleeing cylinders! Closer and closer our fleet, our own foremost space-flier, was coming to those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, and the interval of hours and days of pursuit out from the wild combat at Saturn seemed as though it had not existed, so tense once more we became as we drew nearer to the Neptunians before us. At last, with Neptune's pale-green disk and the bright little spot of Triton above and behind it within hours of us, we had come so close to the fleeing cylinders that their mass, hurtling on in a cone-like formation, was clearly visible to our unaided eyes in the void ahead. And by this time, in every space-flier of our onrushing fleet, its occupants were waiting impatiently for the moment when we would be near enough to loose our concentrated weapon-rays on the fleeing craft ahead.
"We'll overtake them before they reach Neptune!" Marlin declared, gazing intently ahead toward the gleaming points that were the fleeing cylinders far ahead. "Within hours now we'll be up to them!"
"Well enough for us that we can do so, too!" Whitely commented. "For if they rejoined their main body, the odds against us might be overpowering!"
And now as pursuers and pursued rushed nearer and nearer toward mighty Neptune's great pale-green sphere, they were also nearing each other, our onleaping four thousand space-fliers drawing closer and closer toward those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, though they were a great distance from us. Beside me Randall's hands were resting on the weapon-ray controls, and as we came closer still to the fleeing Neptunians, I saw Marlin leaning toward the mouthpiece, preparing to give his order to the great fleet behind us. Closer—closer—we could clearly make out now the massed fleeing cylinders far in the void ahead—already almost within accurate ray-range, a swarm of black dots against Neptune's cloudy green disk ahead. And as we came thus close Marlin leaned to voice his order, to spread the space-fliers of our fleet into a broad firing-formation and send their rays stabbing ahead. But that order was never uttered, for at that moment Whitely uttered a sharp cry, and we saw that the racing mass of cylinders ahead was suddenlyslowing!
With unprecedented quickness its speed was decreasing before us and in moments more we would have crashed into those slowing cylinders had not Marlin's voice snapped a quick order that slowed instantly all the fliers of our fleet likewise. Fearful of some trick, slowing thus, we gazed intently ahead in that moment and then all of us had cried out together as we saw, beyond that swarm of black dots that were the slowing fifteen hundred Neptunian cylinders before us, other black dots that showed against great Neptune's disk also, which loomed great now in the heavens ahead! Other black dots, an immense swarm of them, that we knew were other cylinders, an immense fleet of them, rushing out from Neptune toward the fifteen hundred before us and toward ourselves! And then as in moments more the fifteen hundred cylinders before us slowed and stopped in space even as we had slowed, we saw sweeping from behind them, from great Neptune, those other cylinders, forming with them, there in space, a colossal semi-circular mass of fully eight thousand Neptunian cylinders in all, that faced our own four thousand or more space-fliers there in the void! It was the giant assembled Neptunian fleet, gathered here outside their world to face our own fleet, in that great struggle in which Earth and Neptune were to come now at last to death-grips for the life or death of the solar system!
CHAPTER XV
"You of Neptune or We of Earth!"
"Column formation—all squadrons full speed ahead!"
It was Marlin's voice that shouted that swift order in the next instant, and then, even as the gigantic semi-circle of the Neptunian fleet was leaping through the void toward us, our four thousand and odd space-fliers, outnumbered almost by two to one by the cylinders massed ahead, had shifted like lightning from their great V-formation to one of a long double column once more, and no sooner had its squadrons taken that new formation than the column slanted slightly to allow the free use of their propulsion-rays. They were flashing forward now like an enormous spear cast toward the curving front of the giant Neptunian fleet! For it was Marlin's intention to meet that outnumbering mass of cylinders by splitting it with a column as we had done over Saturn to our enemies, and then engaging separately the parts of the disorganized mass. So that now, even as the great half-circle of the Neptunian cylinders whirled through the void to overwhelm us, we had formed that long, double column and were dashing straight at them!
Holding the controls of our space-flier steady in that moment, I was aware for an instant of a sense of the utter strangeness of all the wild scene about me—of our space-flier's interior with Marlin and Randall and Whitely crouched in their chairs beside me, of the great column of polyhedron-like, gleaming, faceted space-fliers that came forward through the black gulf of star-sown space behind us, of the oncoming giant line of the Neptunian cylinders flashing toward us in turn, and of the immense green disk of mighty Neptune looming in the black vault behind them. All seemed for the moment the panorama of some strange nightmare stretched about me, but that momentary sensation that had gripped me so often in our wild rush through the solar system vanished in the next instant as stern reality loomed before us. There were the mighty curving line of gleaming Neptunian cylinders through which in the next split-second our great column must crash! I braced myself mentally for that vast crash that must almost inevitably mean death for the foremost of our space-fliers; I was aware as we drove upon the onrushing Neptunian line, that now unthinkable storms of deadly concentrated rays were raging from fleet to fleet; and then suddenly, at the very instant that we thought to crash into their great approaching line, that line opened swiftly before us to allow our great column to rush unharmed through it!
So astounded were we by that unlooked-for maneuver on the part of the Neptunians, that before we could check our speed, we were through, had shot in our entire column through that opening in their semi-circle, which instantly closed again behind us. And as it did so, there rushed toward each other the open ends of their semi-circle, thus closing that circle even as we rushed into it. Our fleet was held enclosed within the circle of their own! And then, from all those thousands of Neptunian cylinders that surrounded us, there were stabbing at us in countless number slender shafts of concentrated force, countless pencil-like weapon-rays that instantly clove through hundreds of our gathered space-fliers and that strewed space thick about us with their wreckage, even as we sought in vain to answer that terrible rain of deadly rays!
"Trapped!" Whitely was shouting. "They've trapped us inside their circle—are destroying us!"
For, though our own rays were fiercely springing forth and striking cylinder after cylinder of the vast fleet that had gathered about us, that fleet so outnumbered us and had such advantage of position, that it was decimating us in short order. Our space-fliers had broken from their column-formation now, and in a loose, disorganized mass were drifting at the center of that great ring of death which the Neptunians had formed about us. Swiftly our fliers were going into wreckage and death beneath the terrific storm of rays from all around us, and then Marlin's voice was flaring as he shouted an order into his mouthpiece.
"All space-fliers mass together," he cried, "and turn all your propulsion-rays outward!"
"You're going to—" Whitely began, but Marlin cut him short.
"We're going to break up the Neptunians' circle in the only way it can be broken up!" he cried.
As his order sounded the thousands of our space-fliers were obeying it, were massing compactly together at the center of the Neptunians' mighty circle. Thus massed, they presented for the moment a perfect target for our enemies' rays, and for a moment those rays stabbed thick toward us from all sides. In the next moment our massed space-fliers were shooting their great propulsion-rays outward, outward in all directions around us, outward toward the Neptunians' encircling ring! As those rays shot out, they pressed with terrific power against that ring of cylinders about us, and since our own fliers were massed together and thus braced against each other, it was not they that moved but the cylinders, their great ring instantly broken up, disintegrated, as those cylinders were hurled out into the void from us by the pushing power of our great propulsion-rays! For the moment they were broken up completely, their formation entirely shattered, and before they could reform, there had come another order from Marlin and in a compact formation ourselves, our space-fliers were leaping upon their shattered masses!
To right and left, like light, drove the deadly weapon-rays of our massed space-fliers as we seized the opportunity and leaped upon the Neptunians. Ample was the revenge we had upon them in that moment, since the concentrated rays tore through and wrecked hundreds of their own cylinders as we sprang upon them! Fleeing from before us for the moment, flashing away toward giant Neptune's tremendous green disk ahead, they strove to reform while we leaped after them and harried them with every weapon-ray which our space-fliers could emit. Swiftly, though, even as they rushed onward before us, the Neptunian cylinders were drawing together into a great mass again, into a great column-like formation, and as our own column-mass drove beside and after them with weapon-rays stabbing, their resistance abruptly stiffened, and they were racing in close formation once more beside our own mighty fleet, grappling once more with it in space as both rushed toward great Neptune. But we had struck a mighty blow at their disorganized masses in the moment of our opportunity. Fully two thousand of their cylinders had been swept to death by our rays before they had been able to mass again, and now but six thousand or less cylinders remained, racing ahead with our own four thousand or less fliers!
The great green sphere of Neptune was looming colossal ahead and slightly beneath our two oncoming fleets, with behind and above it the bright little disk of Triton. It was toward Triton even in that wild moment that all of us were gazing, toward the source of the giant sun-ray that we must, somehow, halt. But now the battle around us had become so furious that we could spare no thought to aught else, since the two mighty fleets, stabbing ceaselessly at each other with their slender rays as they slowed their flashing progress forward, were rushing into the outer reaches of the atmosphere of huge Neptune! Its air was roaring about our whirling space-fliers as we shot through it, but as we shot on we saw that the Neptunian cylinders were going into annihilation swifter far than were our fliers! For they had formed and were racing beside us in their half-circle formation, while our own fliers at Marlin's command had leaped forward in a long column that could concentrate all its fire of rays upon the side of the Neptunian formation nearest us! And though slender rays tore lightning-like through fliers here and there across our own column, we saw that their cylinders beneath our fire were being wrecked in scores, in hundreds! In that vast running fight we were fast evening the odds against us!
Marlin's eyes were gleaming with excitement as we saw the Neptunians thus falling beside us under our concentrated fire of rays, and Randall and Whitely and I were almost beside ourselves with exultation. Faster were falling the Neptunian cylinders beneath our rain of rays, the rays of their farther cylinders being held from us by their own cylinders in their fatal formation. Already, as we thundered through the mists of mighty Neptune and low over its gleaming surface, we saw that the Neptunian cylinders had been reduced by that deadly fire of ours to hardly more than three thousand, to hardly more than our own fleet of fliers, which had itself lost its hundreds in that vast running battle. As our rays tore into and through their shaken mass hundreds upon hundreds of their cylinders had been cloven through, had been reduced to whirling wreckage, and we had evened the odds in our raging battle at last!
Even as we cried out in triumph, the Neptunians must have seen that to continue in that running fight longer was suicidal for them. They could not change formation during that flight without exposing themselves to worse peril, so in desperation they did a completely unexpected thing. Their enormous mass of cylinders, battered out of its half-circle formation by our terrific fire of rays, suddenly swerved in toward our own fleet as the two great armadas rushed forward above Neptune, and then that Neptunian fleet of cylinders had crashed obliquely with immense power into our own space-flier fleet! The next instant it had so merged with it that the two fleets ceased instantly to exist as such and for the moment became one colossal, swaying, reeling mass of cylinders and space-fliers in utter merged confusion, striking and soaring and smashing each other!
As that great cylinder-armada crashed thus into our own it had seemed to me that the air all around us was filled in that instant with colliding space-fliers and cylinders, and with a hell of slender pale and deadly concentrated rays that raged thick in whirling death about us! I saw before us two onrushing cylinders, whirled the flier up to avoid that imminent collision, and then as they passed beneath us, saw Randall send our rays driving down and cleaving through them, saw them whirl in wreckage into which a battling cylinder and faceted space-flier had crashed themselves in the next instant! I heard Whitely's shout of alarm in the next split-second, instinctively flung the flier sidewise through the boiling ruck of the battle, just in time to escape a pair of stabbing rays from a cylinder beneath, and then saw those rays stab on up and strike another cylinder and destroy it! And even as I whirled the flier sidewise, Randall was driving our rays to right and left against other cylinders rushing upon us!
The air about us seemed filled in that moment with a single wildly-swirling mass of cylinders and space-fliers, grappling with each other there in countless individual combats inextricably intermixed, their weapon-rays going out in destruction through the craft that whirled upon them, their propulsion-rays driving the ships about them crazily to right and left! With inconceivable fury cylinders and fliers soared and fought and fell above great Neptune's roof, the air filled with falling wreckage, our great battle reaching now an undreamed-of phase of intensity, as gleaming cylinders and faceted ball-like space-fliers were annihilated alike by hundreds! That giant merged combat of the two fleets had in minutes taken toll of half the force of each, and I wondered dimly even as I whirled the flier up and back through the wild, annihilating battle how either men of Earth or disk-bodied Neptunians could cling to a battle of such suicidal nature! Then suddenly from Marlin had come a hoarse exclamation, and I saw in that instant all the Neptunian cylinders intermixed with our space-fliers rising upward, as though in answer to a single command!
"Up!" cried Marlin. "The Neptunians are over us! They're going to——!"
But before he could finish the sentence, before our space-fliers could whirl upward in answer to his command, from the Neptunian cylinders massed above us had shot down upon us innumerable powerful propulsion-rays, rays that struck scores, hundreds, of our space-fliers and drove them down with terrific force to crash against the metal roof of Neptune beneath us! They were repeating the maneuver by which we four had escaped from our pursuers over Neptune weeks before, were driving our fliers down to crashing death in hordes! Instantly as Marlin shouted into the order-mouthpiece, our fliers leaped forward, to escape from that death that smote us from above, but as we drove forward in our column formations again, they went on above us, were with their powerful propulsion-rays driving us down to death in scores even as with those rays they prevented us from rising to meet them! We were being quickly destroyed now, and as we saw it, as our column flashed on with the Neptunian cylinders massing in another column above and driving our fliers down by scores, we saw that not much longer could that unequal battle continue! Then abruptly Marlin pointed ahead and downward to Neptune's mighty roof beneath us, was crying an order to us and the fliers behind and about us.
"That opening!" he cried. "Down through it—down beneath the roof! It's our one chance to escape them!"
I caught my breath at that cry of his, for I saw that he was pointing down toward one of the great circular openings in Neptune's roof, openings that were set in it here and there, all being open now as when we had first explored Neptune's mysteries. To flash down beneath the roof through that opening was our one chance of escape from the relentless smiting death above. I saw it, too, so the next instant our own flier and all the long column behind us were diving downward at a dizzying angle toward that great circular opening; and in the next moment before the Neptunian cylinders above could fathom our purpose, we had passed through that opening and were racing forward beneath the great roof! In an instant, though, the Neptunian cylinders had followed in their long column and were racing after us, through the dim Neptunian day above the dead and lifeless surface of the great compartment-city that covered all of Neptune!
On we flashed, with the Neptunian column some distance behind, numbering now some half-thousand more in cylinders than our own bare thousand space-fliers. On until above us we saw another similar opening in the great roof, and then at Marlin's quick order our narrow, long column of fliers were slanting up toward it, through it. And then, outside of the great roof once more, Marlin gave a swift order that revealed to me the purpose of his strategy. For at that order our fleet checked its upward rush and bent its long column lightning-like around to form a great circle, a circle hovering there around and above the great circular opening in the roof through which we had just emerged. And in the next moment, as the Neptunian column flashed up through that opening likewise in hot pursuit of us, never suspecting us of waiting there for it, from all the fliers of our great circle there had radiated toward them storm on storm of deadly concentrated rays, rays that smote them with blinding shock as their column rushed upward and that crashed through hundreds of their upflashing cylinders even as they burst up through the opening, before ever they could catch sight of us around them! In those seconds of dazing surprise there was no chance for them to recoil, and their column of cylinders, as if too astounded for the moment to answer with a single ray, was flashing up from the opening through a hurricane of rays that in that moment was annihilating their cylinders by hundreds! But a scant three or four hundred cylinders of those that ran upward through that gauntlet of death escaped it, and these swirled for a moment in stunned confusion above us, and then were without formation racing away from us over Neptune's surface, racing away toward the gleaming disk of Triton!
"Beaten!" I cried, as our own space-fliers whirled up now after the fleeing cylinders. "They're beaten—they're fleeing back to Triton!"
"The giant ray!" Whitely was shouting, as we thundered forward. "We've still more than a thousand fliers left, and if we can get now to that great sun-ray——!"
"Hold steady after them!" Marlin cried. "We've fought our way this far, and we've got now to get to that ray and halt it!"
Now out over Neptune's surface, out through its mists and outer atmosphere again, the cylinders ahead were roaring at utmost speed, almost leaping in a confused and disorganized mass, the remnants of that mighty fleet that had come out to meet us outside Neptune, toward their moon-world of Triton, whose disk gleamed bright ahead. A thrill of pride even in our wild excitement shot through me as we thundered on in pursuit of those fleeing cylinders. For whatever else that day might hold for us, whether or not we were able to halt that giant ray on Triton's sunward side that was reaching out to the sun and turning it ever faster, we men of Earth had at least proved our fighting ability to the solar system for all time, had come out to the solar system's edge and had shattered there the mighty armada of the Neptunians' ancient and mighty race! And now as we flashed on in swift pursuit of the fleeing survivors of that armada toward Triton, confidence and hope were strengthening in us each moment, for with the Neptunians' great fleet shattered what could hold us back from the shattering and halting of the giant sun-ray and its mechanism?
On—on—and now we were rushing after the fleeing cylinders out of Neptune's atmosphere and into the airless void again, with Triton growing each moment more bright and big as giant Neptune fell behind us. Across the gulf from Neptune to its moon we sped, after those cylinders, with utmost acceleration and speed, and swiftly we drew closer to the Neptunians flying before us, and swiftly too drew closer to the gleaming sphere of Triton. And as it grew larger before us, as we pursued the cylinders in toward it, we all cried out as we followed with our eyes at the sunward side of it the giant pale beam, hardly visible, of the colossal force-ray acting on the sun, that mighty ray that was turning the sun ever faster to the doom of the solar system! We could make out that gigantic beam, leaping out into space toward the distant fire-disk of the sun, and could make out also in that moment a great number of great humped dark shapes gathered on Triton's roof around the great pit of the sun-ray. As our eyes shifted to Triton's other edge we could discern the other giant force-ray, which reached out toward the distant star in Sagittarius and by bracing Triton with its pressure kept the moon-world from being hurled out into space by the sun-ray's pressure. Around this other ray's pit, too, were a few of the strange great humped or domed dark shapes, but in that moment we gave them small attention, for the cylinders that had been fleeing from before us straight toward the great sun-ray's giant beam, had abruptly slowed, stopped, as they rushed into Triton's atmosphere, and had turned desperately to face us!
It was a wild, fierce attempt on their part to hold us even to the last from their great ray, and as their three or four hundred cylinders massed so suddenly before us and faced us, our own column was leaping upon them with all the impetus of our thousand and more space-fliers! The next moment cylinder and space-flier were reeling in a wild last struggle there high in Triton's atmosphere, high above the pit of the giant sun-ray, with the mighty pale beam of that ray passing up and out toward the sun and still beside us! Like demons the Neptunians were fighting now, but we were wrought up to the fiercest pitch of battle ourselves, and as Marlin gave his orders, we were swooping upon them with insensate fury, cylinder and space-flier crashing together there above Triton or falling beneath the slicing sweeps of the weapon-rays that again raged thick around us! Faster, ever faster, fell the outnumbered cylinders before our wild attack, until at last but a score were left—a dozen—a half-dozen—and then those, too, were gone, the last of the Neptunians' mighty fleet of cylinders annihilated! And now as from our hovering space-fliers, still over a thousand in number, there came muffled, wild cheers, our eyes were shifting downward, down to the great pit from which the sun-ray sprang, down to the twenty control-boxes in the sides of that pit!
"Down to the pit—down to the controls!" Marlin was shouting over the wild uproar in our and the other fliers. "Every one of those control-boxes must be destroyed before we can halt the ray!"
"We'll halt the great ray now!" I cried to him, as our space-fliers swooped downward now toward the giant pit of the ray. "We've wiped out their last forces and we can——"
"But look—those great domes around the pit below!" It was Whitely's hoarse shout that broke in upon me. "They're great domed forts—great domed forts guarding the giant sun-ray's pit and controls!"
For as we shot down toward the great pit of the mighty force-ray we had seen clearly now the scores of giant domed, humped shapes on Triton's roof around that pit, which we had vaguely discerned from high above. And they were, as Whitely cried to us, great forts! Giant domed forts of inconceivably thick and strong metal, each hundreds of feet in height, with openings here and there in them from which countless deadly weapon-rays could be emitted. And these great domed forts, over a hundred in number, weremoving, were wheeling this way and that smoothly and swiftly on Triton's roof, were circling slowly on that roof about the pit of the giant sun-ray, guarding that pit and the control-boxes in its walls! Even as we heard Whitely's cry in that moment, as we flashed down toward them, we realized that the Neptunians had constructed those mighty moving forts of metal to guard their great force-ray's controls from our attack, placing more than a hundred of them around the pit of the great sun-ray, and a half-score of them, as we had perceived, around the pit of the other great force-ray on Triton's other side! And then, in the moment that Whitely cried out and that we saw those great forts moving like smooth-gliding mountains of metal beneath us, there had rained upward from them toward us a staggering, withering storm of concentrated force-rays!
Reeling, staggering, falling, our fleet spun in crazy disorder in the next moment as that terrific fire from beneath decimated us! And though in the next instant Marlin's voice rang steel-clear with an order, though in answer to that order our own concentrated rays radiated down madly toward those gliding mountain-like domed forts beneath us, it seemed that our rays had no effect upon them! For so stupendous in thickness and strength were those giant domed forts of metal, that instead of cleaving through them our rays could do no more than crumple and dent somewhat their smooth outer surfaces! They were invulnerable, almost, to our attack, and though one of them was crumpled into twisted metal by scores of our rays happening to converge upon it, the others were almost unharmed and were raking us with a terrible, annihilating rain of rays as we shot down over them!
Down and down—and then as I shot our space-flier down foremost of our mass of fliers through that wild tornado of deadly rays, I saw the great pit's opening looming full beneath us, the giant pale beam coming up from that opening, the twenty vital control-boxes set at equal intervals around its walls! Toward one of those control-boxes our own flier was whirling beneath my hands, and then Randall drove out like light our piercing weapon-rays toward that control-box, clove through and wrecked it instantly! But it was but one of twenty, and in the next instant our space-fliers, unable longer to withstand that terrific fire of rays from the gathering domed forts around the pit, were staggering upward, none other of our fliers having progressed as far down as ours, and none other of the twenty control-boxes being destroyed! And as our space-fliers reeled thus upward, unable to reach the control-boxes in the pit against the awful fire of the gathered domed forts about it, we saw that more than a hundred of our fliers had fallen beneath the terrific fire of rays from the forts in our mad rush downward!
"Those twenty control-boxes!" Marlin was crying. "We've got to destroy every one before the sun-ray will halt!"
"But we can't with these giant moving forts against us!" Whitely cried. "They're wiping us out—they will have destroyed us in minutes!"
"We'll hold it to the end, then!" Marlin shouted. "We've fought our way out through the solar system to this great ray, and unless we halt it now it means death for the solar system in a score more days! Down again to the attack!"
And down—down—down—like striking, rushing meteors our hundreds of space-fliers shot, to one side of the giant beam, down with the great domed forts beneath swiftly flashing over Triton's roof to mass beneath us at the pit's side. Through the little window-openings in those forts we saw the disk-bodied Neptunians inside, and knew that beneath the great roof of Triton also were swarming the millions upon countless millions of all the Neptunian races, all the disk-bodied monsters in their great compartment-city, who, with this great ray, were turning our sun faster and faster to divide in a score more days and doom the solar system! And with a desperation born of that thought we shot down once more, down with the hell of rays from the great domed forts again raging up around us and taking toll of our fliers as we shot over them, curving back upward once more, and stabbing again toward the control-boxes in the pit's wall our weapon-rays as we reached that curve's lowest point! But this time, though the great forts took toll again of scores of our fliers as we shot down over them and up again, over the pit and up again, our rays were so imperfectly aimed, that no control-box was destroyed this time!
Upward we swirled and then again, with a persistence more insensate than human, were racing downward again in a terrific swoop over the pit of the great ray! Again the deadly rays of the surrounding hundred domed forts crashed through our down-swooping fliers, sending masses of them again into whirling wreckage, while as we swooped down over the pit and upward again in that lightning-like rush through death we saw that our rays had missed once more and that none of the control-boxes had this time been destroyed by them! And as we reeled upward again over the great pit, from over the giant domed forts, we saw that but a few more than five hundred space-fliers remained to us of the thousand and more with which we had first flashed downward! In three downward swoops only, in three lightning-like moments of attack, the giant invulnerable forts beneath had annihilated more than half our force, and we had succeeded in destroying but a single one of the twenty control-boxes!
"The end!" cried Whitely. "The end of our chance to halt the great sun-ray!"
"The end of our great fight through the solar system—the end of Earth's and the solar system's last chance!"
For it was the end! Even as we cried out thus we knew it, beyond shadow of doubt, as the shattered mass of our remaining space-fliers reeled high above Triton's roof, high above the great pit of the ray and the colossal moving domed forts that guarded it! Marlin—Whitely—Randall—they were swaying in that moment, the knowledge of doom plain upon their faces as upon mine! Another great swoop downward and those giant, almost invulnerable moving forts would blast us entirely from the air with their storms of rays! All of the nineteen remaining controls below must be destroyed to halt the mighty sun-ray, and before we could destroy even one of them, we would be annihilated! The giant ray beside us would turn the sun on ever faster, turn it on until in a score more days the sun would divide at last into a double star and engulf its planets in its diverging fires—all save Neptune! And as we came thus to the end at last of our superhuman struggle to halt the solar system's doom there was coming up to us from beneath the great roof of Triton a vast, rolling muffled shouting of triumphant Neptunians, of all the Neptunian hordes upon Triton who saw as we did that for us the end had come!
"But if it's the end, we'll meet it trying!" Randall cried. "One more swoop downward—we can die that way at least——!"
But from Marlin, who stood with crimson face and blazing eyes, there came a mad shout. "The end—no!" he cried. "There's still a chance for us—to halt the other ray—the ray on Triton's outward side!"
The other ray!The other giant force-ray that went from Triton's outward side, its dark side, into the gulf of interstellar space toward that far star in Sagittarius, the other mighty ray that braced Triton against the great sun-ray's pressure and that kept that sun-ray's pressure from hurling Triton out into the great interstellar void! The other ray—and if it were halted—then Triton—I felt my mind reeling as the stupendous meaning of Marlin's mad shout came home to it! The other ray—guarded by only a half-score of the giant moving domed forts, instead of the hundred beneath us—and then Marlin's voice was tearing across the throbbing, rushing din to my ears and instinctively I had obeyed his order, had shot our space-flier forward at immense speed even as there rushed forward beside us our five hundred and more remaining fliers! I whirled it away from the great pit of the giant sun-ray and over Triton's roof at lightning speed toward its dark side, toward the other giant ray that reached out into interstellar space from that dark side!
And as we rushed thus away with reeling speed, we heard the mighty thundering cheers of the Neptunian millions beneath the great roof changing to wild cries of alarm, saw the hundred great domed forts around the sun-ray moving over Triton's roof after us with immense speed, themselves, gliding at utmost velocity on around that roof's smooth surface after us in sudden wild alarm! But, more slow by a little than our massed space-fliers that split the air above Triton they dropped behind us even as we shot forward, even as that colossal roar of rising alarm rolled across Triton's surface beneath the great roof! On—on—like rushing meteors massed close together our space-fliers flashed now, toward Triton's dark side around its surface, and then were whirling around that dark side, were whirling straight toward the colossal other beam, the giant other force-ray that stabbed out opposite from the sun-ray, that stabbed out toward Sagittarius' bright star and by its pressure towards that star kept Triton braced against the sun-ray's outward pressure! Marlin was shouting, screaming an order as we flashed downward, and we caught sight for a moment of the half-score domed forts, left as guards of this other ray's great pit and controls, and then like comets of metal our fliers were thundering down upon them!
Slender beams sprang quick to meet us from those ten great domed forts, but though those beams drove crashingly upward upon us in narrow rays of death, it was not toward the domed forts that we were rushing, but toward the twenty control-boxes set in the wall of the giant pit from which this other mighty ray issued! Through the wildly-whirling beams that sliced the air about us we flashed downward, and then as the pit's walls loomed close ahead, as beside us, almost thundered into by us, loomed the pale, gigantic beam, we saw the out-jutting control-boxes full before us, set around the pit's great wall, and the beams of our massed space-fliers were driving thick toward them!Crash!—crash!—crash!—and we were shouting crazily as we saw half the twenty control-boxes smashing inward, annihilated by our first wild rush! And then as we spun around there in the pit, around the giant beam to annihilate the other control-boxes, the rays of the ten domed forts sweeping insanely about us, Whitely cried out hoarsely and pointed away across Triton's metal roof-surface toward the hundred mighty shapes of the great domed forts rushing to the defense of this other ray, rushing to annihilate us!
"The control-boxes!" Marlin cried. "The last control-boxes!"
And even as he cried that, even as with their utmost immense speed the hundred colossal domed forts of metal rushed over Triton's metal roof to join with the outnumbered half-score beside us, to annihilate us with one combined mighty blast of their countless rays, our massed space-fliers had whirled around the great pit, around the mighty ray, and were driving toward the remaining control-boxes in its wall with all their weapon-rays stabbing ahead!Crash!—crash!—and those remaining control-boxes were crumpling, crashing, beneath our rays, with but a single control-box in the wall remaining intact in the next instant, a single one that sufficed still to keep the giant ray beside us going upward, outward, though! And even as we gathered, whirled to rush upon it also, the colossal rushing domed forts had appeared at the pit's edge around and above us, seeming to pause for a split-second before their combined countless rays came down to annihilate us! But in that instant, when the giant domed forts paused above us, Randall had whirled back the ray-switches in his hands, and from our space-flier and from a score more around us in the same instant there had flashed toward that last control-box a converging score or more of driving rays that instantly had crashed through and had annihilated that last control! And as that last control-box of all the giant ray's twenty was thus destroyed, there came what seemed a blinding flash of light at the great ray-mechanism far in the mighty pit beneath us, and then the giant pale force-ray that radiated upward and outward from that mechanism had abruptly snapped out beside us!
There was a pause, a silence of a single instant, a pause in which all the universe about us seemed holding its breath, in which our rushing space-fliers were whirling up out of the great pit, in which the giant domed forts at the great pit's edge beneath us seemed held in an enchantment of stupefaction. And then as our massed space-fliers whirled thus upward over Triton's surface, as Marlin and Randall and Whitely stared downward, swaying, we saw the great metal-roofed world of Triton reeling beneath us as though from some colossal shock, saw it rushing outward from beneath us with colossal, unthinkable speed! Saw it rushing out with velocity inconceivable away from the sun, away from Neptune, away from the solar system, rushing out into the vast void of interstellar space,hurled into the void with all the countless millions of the Neptunians upon it, hurled into the void out from the solar system never to return!
Hurled into the void, we four knew even as we watched it whirl away from beneath us, by the pressure of its own colossal sun-ray, that continued to emanate from it! For that giant ray which the Neptunians had directed toward the sun had pushed back upon Triton with pressure inconceivable, even as we had known, and it had been only the other ray radiating out toward Sagittarius' distant star that had braced Triton thus against the sun-ray's unthinkable outward pressure! And with our halting of that immense other ray, with our halting of that bracing ray, the moment that saw its connection of bracing force or pressure broken between Triton and that distant star saw Triton hurled out instantly by the pressure of its own giant sun-ray against the sun, that awful outward pressure breaking the moon-world loose instantly from the hold of great Neptune, its parent planet, from all the solar system, hurling it out from the solar system's edge into the boundless outer void forever!
Marlin—Whitely—Randall—myself—as we reeled there at the window watching, as our space-fliers whirled up and outward from Triton even as it shot outward from beneath us, we saw its gleaming sphere swiftly diminishing as it hurtled out in the great void, saw that it was spinning as it shot outward from the impetus of that gigantic push, that the great sun-ray issuing from it was whirling with its spinning now! And then as its gleaming sphere shot out into the void away from us, away from great Neptune behind us, away from the solar system's edge, shooting out into the cold and sunless outer void and bearing upon it all the Neptunian hordes to death, Marlin flung out his hand toward its diminishing gleaming little sphere in the black void before us, was crying out to it as though to the Neptunian millions upon it as it shot out, never to return.
"You of Neptune or we of Earth!" he cried. "One had to go to death—to doom! You fought for Neptune and your races as we fought for Earth and the solar system—but Earth and the solar system win!"
CHAPTER XVI
Space-Rovers
Before us Earth and its little moon gleamed brilliant in the blackness of space when our five hundred space-fliers shot in toward them once again, days later. Again we four held our familiar positions in the four control-chairs of our space-flier, and again Marlin and Randall and Whitely were gazing forth with me as at the head of those massed space-fliers we moved in with slowing speed. It had been for a score of days that we had reeled back through the solar system from Neptune, from its edge, had reeled back from the border line of that vast void of space, in which Triton long days before had become invisible, hurtling out into that void forever. Past perilous Saturn, and past mighty Jupiter, and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt and past red Mars once more we had sped, within us only a strange sick desire for Earth once more; that Earth which we knew, would be shaken even now with unimaginable rejoicings as its peoples saw the acceleration of the sun's spin that had menaced all our universe halted at last with the hurling forth of Triton days before. And now, as we sped in at last toward Earth, it was in mutual silence that we gazed ahead.
Once again the outlines of Earth's great continents were coming clear to our eyes as we shot nearer, and once again, now, we were heading toward that side of it that lay in shade, in night, toward the North American continent, to hover out from it, over it, and then to drop down toward it, down through the darkness of Earth's night toward New York. Again beneath us Earth's surface was widening to a vast dark plain as we sank down toward it, and then again through the darkness we had seen, beneath us, the gleaming lights of New York, and were sinking lower toward them. Down—down—until New York stretched beneath us but one colossal bed of brilliance, one vast mass of blazing lights above which there flashed to and fro the innumerable brilliantly-lit aircraft like countless shuttles of light, the giant World Government Building and all the colossal buildings that stretched far away around it burning with unequalled brilliance, and their roofs and the ways between them thronged once more with crowds, such crowds as never yet had the mighty city seen.
A strange dumbness held us, as we sank slowly downward with our massed space-fliers. Then, as a great whirling light-beam from beneath caught our fliers' descending mass, held us in its glare, other beams were swinging toward us, holding us bathed in a white flood of light as we sank downward. And as we were discovered thus to the vast thronged city beneath, the swarming aircraft above it abruptly shot downward from about us, while the great roaring voice of the city's crowds abruptly ceased as the city saw us. Down through a great silence, the most tense and utter silence surely ever to reign in the mighty city beneath, we dropped, our fliers separating and falling smoothly over the crowds, over the seas of white, upturned faces, falling through that hushed silence toward the roofs of the great buildings beneath, our own toward the roof of the great World Government building.
As we shot downward we saw that upon that roof waited now for us a massed and silent crowd, as in the streets below, that had given back to the roof's edges to make way for our own space-flier and those with us to descend. Smoothly I lessened the power of our lower ray, and smoothly we sank downward through the brilliant lights above that roof, until at last our own and the fliers about us had come gently to rest upon it, the throb of our generators ceasing. Then, with the same dense silence reigning outside, Marlin slowly was opening our space-flier's doors, and with Whitely and Randall and me behind him was stepping forth upon the great roof's surface, into the white brilliance of its lights. Hesitatingly, weariedly, with the men of our other fliers gathered now about us, we looked around. Beside us there stood, and around us, the massed members of the World Congress, with the World President with them. Over these silent figures we looked, a little dazedly, and out over the superhumanly brilliant, superhumanly silent city that stretched about us, and then up toward the great constellations as though in reassurance. For they stretched above us as before, as always, Capricorn and Sagittarius and Scorpio and the rest, with Jupiter and Saturn and Mars shining there, and with great Neptune, invisible here to our eyes, and farther still than Neptune its moon-world of Triton hurtling on toward those distant stars. Dazedly, slowly, we looked, up and around us, while still around us that hushed, thick silence held, and then saw that the World President was coming toward us.
Across the roof he came toward us from those silent crowds about us, his hands outstretched, his voice unsteady.
"Marlin—Randall—Hunt—Whitely!" he said. And then—"You have come back once more—back to the Earth that you and your forces have saved."
"We have come back," said Marlin, his voice low, strange. "Have come back with what remains of those forces."
And then, while the World President and the World Congress stood silent before us, beneath the brilliant lights, Marlin was speaking slowly to them, was speaking in short, halting words of our flight outward, our escape from the great ambush at Saturn, our wild pursuit onward to Neptune and the colossal battle that had ended there with our halting of the other ray, with our hurling of Triton and all the Neptunians on it out into the void forever. In a hushed, strained silence the crowd before us was listening, and as the speech-apparatus beside us took Marlin's slow words out to all the crowds in all the vast city about us, and beyond, they, too, were listening in that same tense stillness. Then, when he had finished, that stillness continued unbroken for moments.
"Marlin—Whitely—Hunt—Randall—!" he was saying, again. "There is no way in which we can tell, there is no need for us to tell, what gratitude Earth's peoples have now for you and for your men, who saved Earth and all the solar system from a dreadful death."
Marlin slowly shook his head. "That gratitude is not for us alone who came back," he said, "but for those others of us who did not come back—who went to death out there for Earth."
"We of Earth know that," the World President said, "and our gratitude is for them as for you—our silence now for them as for you. But you who came back—you four who dared first of all men out through the void, and who came back to lead Earth's forces out to the terrific struggle that saved us—is it gratitude only that Earth can give you?"
Marlin half-turned, his eyes meeting our own. "There is nothing Earth can give us, more," he said, "for we have that which never men have had before, have the space-fliers and have now all the solar system's worlds before us! For to us four could be no greater gift, no greater thing, than that—to be space-rovers once more together!"
And as Marlin's eyes met ours, standing there on the great building's brilliant-lit roof with all about us the assembled masses of the World Congress, silent, with those other vast silent throngs in all the mighty city around us, we were looking together upward. Marlin with his brilliant eyes; Whitely with his calm, strong upturned face; Randall with a new light flaming into his tired eyes; I with a strange new eagerness clutching at my heart; we all were looking upward. Upward past the brilliant lights around us toward the constellations and toward the planets that shone among them, crimson Mars and yellow Saturn and white Jupiter! Upward with a sudden strange tenseness, forgetful for the moment of the hushed world around us that we had helped to save from doom, upward across the immensities of space where we four had roved toward the great planets that moved there across the star-sown summer sky!
The End