Through the Roof
Even as the two creatures leaped down to the floor, and before they
could change their low cries of astonishment into louder cries of
alarm, Marlin and I had leaped across the compartment toward them! For
a full two-score feet in one great leap we shot toward them, a feat
only possible with Triton's lesser gravitation, and only possible, too,
because we knew in that moment that a single loud cry from the two
creatures would bring to their aid the hundreds of Neptunians sleeping
about us. Before either could utter such a cry, we two had shot through
the air and were upon them!
So astounded were they with our appearance and our supernatural leap
across the compartment, that before they could put themselves into a
posture of defense, we had struck them, had knocked them to the floor
and were grappling with them. In that first moment of contact I had
reached for the mouth-opening of the disk-bodied monster at whom I had
leaped, had gripped that opening in the top of its disk-body to prevent
its outcry and then had striven to lift the thing sidewise, to hurl it
against the floor. But great as was my strength against Triton's lesser
gravitation, the strength of the Neptunian I held was greater still,
and its weight, due to the weight-disks worn by it, was enormous. In an
instant its seven great limbs were clutching for me, grasping me, and
as I strained there against that great monstrous disk-body's grip, I
knew with fatal certainty that never could I match my strength against
its own. For even as I struggled desperately with it, Marlin struggling
as wildly with the other beside me, the thing was lifting me with its
own great limbs from the floor!
Upward it drew me with those powerful limbs, its bulging glassy eyes
staring from its disk-body's edge straight into my own, as we grappled
desperately in the dark compartment with the sleeping Neptunians
all about us! I felt myself being overcome, my strength puny beside
the strength of that monster, and as I clutched wildly still at the
mouth-opening in the top of the disk-body, I thrust my clenched fist
down into that small round mouth-opening, half by chance and half by
design, closing it thus with my balled fist. Instantly the creature's
body turned and twisted frantically, its grip upon me forgotten for the
moment, its whole body's mass seeming to heave and twitch as my hand
thus cut off the passage of air into that mouth-opening, into its body!
I was throttling it, I knew, and hung fiercely to my grip upon it, my
clenched hand still within its mouth-opening, while the thing swayed
and tore at me with ever-decreasing strength. A moment more and its
struggles ceased, it collapsed limply to the floor, and I staggered up
again to my feet.
In a single glance I saw that the other Neptunian had gripped Marlin
and was crushing him against a corner of the compartment's shelving and
instantly, with a single great leap, I was upon that other monster, had
gained upon it the same throttling grip which I had found was so deadly
to these creatures. In a flash the Neptunian had released his hold upon
Marlin, was whirling me around the compartment, shaking me this way and
that, and wildly attempting to tear itself loose from me, but with the
last of my strength I hung to it, and in a few moments it, too, had
weakened, then had slumped down in a lifeless, grotesque mass. And as
I rose from it I saw that Marlin had staggered up likewise, was coming
toward me. None other of the Neptunians had been aroused by the noise
of our mad combat, because in the first excitement of that combat the
two Neptunians we fought had not thought to cry out, and after I had
gained that throttling hold upon them they could not. So around us the
silent ranks of Neptunians slept on unaroused, their open, glassy eyes
full upon us even in their sleep, while Marlin and I were stumbling
toward the compartment's door.
"On, Hunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "We still have a chance, if we can
find a landing-compartment, can steal one of the cylinders before these
sleeping Neptunians wake!"
Through the next compartment we went, and the next, and the next,
all sleep-compartments, filled with rows of slumbering Neptunians
like those behind us, but in our progress we had come upon no
landing-compartment. And though we knew that such there were here
and there on Triton's dark side, we could not tell, in the darkness
and with the huge walls towering all around us, in what direction
from us they might be. We could but blunder aimlessly on through the
maze of adjoining sleep-compartments in the blind hope that we might
chance upon one of the landing-sections, and as we went on, staggering
in great, irregular leaps through compartment after compartment,
all filled either with masses of sleeping Neptunians or with great
heat-radiating mechanisms, we knew that at any moment might come the
great signal of light that would awaken the hordes around us.
Never could there have been flight more nightmare-like than that of
Marlin and myself through the dark compartments of Triton's dark
side, in blind search for the cylinders which alone held out to us
any chance of escape. Through the sleep-compartments, with their
masses of open-eyed and sleeping disk-bodied Neptunians, through the
compartments where reared the great glowing globes whose radiated heat
alone held back the cold doom that so long had threatened these strange
beings, through compartment after compartment in a flight made more
grotesque and unreal to us by the strange method of our progress; by
the strange, great, smooth leaps that we made instead of steps, great
floating leaps of a score of feet in which we rushed through the dark
sleeping compartments, reckless now of the few Neptunians who might
be waking and moving upon the dark side. Then suddenly as we leaped
toward the door of still another sleep-compartment, poised an instant
to leap through that low door, we halted, gazed with abruptly-flaring
hope ahead. For the next compartment, we saw, was a rectangular one
and greater in size than any we had passed through as yet, and in
it there stood the great gleaming shapes of a score or more of the
cylinder-fliers that we sought!
With hearts pounding Marlin and I crouched in the low door, gazing
through the darkness toward those great cylinders, that gleamed a
little in the feeble light that came down upon Triton's dark side from
the stars through the great roof overhead. We saw that the low doors
in the sides of those cylinders, near the bases, were open, and from
them there came to us the throbbing of their mechanisms, inside! It
was evident that these were part of the countless cylinders used to
help in transporting the Neptunian hordes from dark side to sunward
side of Triton, and _vice versa_, and it was equally evident from those
throbbing mechanisms' operation, that the hour of awakening for those
hordes was at hand and that these were waiting for that awakening. For
there stood also, between us and the nearest of the cylinders, three
tube-armed Neptunians who were conversing in brief, snapping speech as
they waited!
* * * * *
For the moment, at sight of those cylinders, Marlin and I came near
to throwing ourselves toward them regardless of the three, but that
we knew would be suicide, so despite our torturing agony of soul we
waited there in the doorway, gazing desperately toward the cylinders.
And in a moment, as we sought in vain for some way to get to the
nearest of those cylinders, there came a final staccato order from
one of the three Neptunians and at that order the other two turned
and passed through a door in the landing-compartment's side opposite
from us. It was our chance, the chance for which we had hardly dared
to hope even, and no sooner had the two Neptunians disappeared through
the opposite door, the other standing with his eyes following them
for the moment, than Marlin and I had crept out a little bit into the
landing-compartment and then with a great simultaneous leap had shot
through the air toward that remaining Neptunian!
There was no chance for resistance on the creature's part. For even as
we knocked it sidewise with the force of our leap Marlin had grasped
the creature's limbs and with fierce, desperate strength I had with my
clenched fist closed its mouth-opening in that method whose deadliness
had been proved to me in our other battle. The thing threshed wildly,
then it, too, had gone limp, and had collapsed. And in the next instant
Marlin and I were rising from it, were leaping across the compartment
toward the open low door of the nearest great cylinder, from whose
great gleaming upright bulk before us came the throbbing of its
powerful generators. And then, a dozen feet from it, we stopped dead,
and from Marlin came a hoarse cry.
For at that moment there had swept over us, through us, past us, from
the direction of Triton's sunward side across its surface, a band of
intensely brilliant white light, white light that blazed brilliant for
the moment all around us, turning the changeless night of Triton's
dark side around us for the moment into a white and blinding day, and
then sweeping swiftly on, around Triton's surface! It was the great
signal of awakening, the signal for the millions of sleeping Neptunians
about us to awake and change places with the swarming millions upon
the sunward side! And even as that dazzling signal came, as Marlin and
I stood stupefied there for the moment before the looming cylinder's
open door, there came from all around us, from over all the dark
side's great extent and from all its maze of sleep-compartments, a
rising babel of staccato voices, the voices of its awakening Neptunian
millions! Then, before ever we could recover from the stupefaction
that in that instant held us rooted to the spot, there had poured into
the great landing-compartment from the compartments on all sides of it
swarms of hastening Neptunians, swarms of disk-bodied monsters, who in
that moment saw us, uttered as one a sharp great cry of discovery, and
in the next moment were rushing from all sides toward us!
"_The cylinder!_"
It was Marlin's wild cry, that aroused me from the stupefaction of
amazement that held me. Straight before us, a dozen feet away, was the
open door of the nearest cylinder, and in the next split-second Marlin
and I, as one, had leaped toward it, had shot through that door, into
the cylinder's interior, even as the Neptunians raced toward us. The
next instant I had reached frantically for the door, had with one swift
motion slid it clanging shut, and then as the Neptunian masses outside
hurled themselves toward it, Marlin and I were throwing ourselves up
through the openings toward the cylinder's uppermost section. In one
leap I was at the central control-standard, fumbled frantically with
the green control-studs for an agonizing moment, and then, just as we
heard the Neptunians below flinging themselves against the door, the
great throbbing cylinder shot upward!
Up over Triton's dark side we rose, a dozen slender force-rays
criss-crossing about us from beneath in that moment, and as we glanced
momentarily down we could see the Neptunians in the landing-compartment
beneath rushing toward the other cylinders there! And glancing
far across the surface of Triton, we could see all its mighty
compartment-city, dark and sunward sides alike, swarming now with
Neptunian hordes as the end and beginning of their strange day and
night periods was signalled. Over the great compartment-city, over all
the countless millions of Neptunians that swarmed through it, there
was spreading a crackling roar of excited tumult, as our escape was
discovered. And from far away on either side and from beneath us,
scores of great cylinders whirled toward us!
"Up--_up_!" Marlin was shouting now beside me. "They'll have us in
another moment!"
I pressed swiftly again the studs before me, and as the cylinder shot
up and sidewise with terrific speed on an upward slant I shouted back
to Marlin over the roar of air about us. "The roof-openings!" I cried.
"We'll make for the nearest one!"
But as the cylinder flashed obliquely upward, Marlin and I crouching
in the two opposite seats at the control-standard, I became aware of
the swarms of racing cylinders behind closing in upon us. And over
the dark and sunward surfaces of Triton that great mounting roar of
sound was spreading, as the Neptunian hordes saw our wild attempt
at escape. Up--up--and now we were racing close beneath the great
roof, transparent from below, with the pursuing cylinders drawing
ever nearer, their Neptunian occupants more skilled than I in their
operation. And now, too, from those uprising, pursuing swarms were
directed toward us slender pencil-like rays of pale light, visible only
near their source, concentrated force-rays, that would cleave through
our cylinder as through paper!
On and upward--and now as we shot on, with the swarming cylinders
hurtling hotly after us in wild pursuit, with the throb of our
generators and the roar of air about us thundering in our ears, with
the wild tumult of the massed Neptunians on Triton's surface coming
dully up to us from beneath, Marlin and I were gazing with tense eyes
ahead and upward. The great opening, the great sliding section of the
roof down through which we had come--that was our one chance to escape
from Triton. I knew that unless we could win through that opening, out
of Triton's enclosed world, we were doomed. On and on we went--our eyes
still upon the vast roof overhead in search of that opening in it, when
suddenly Marlin cried hoarsely in my ear, and pointed ahead. And there
from ahead were rushing toward us other scores of cylinders, other
swarms of racing cylinders answering the spreading alarm, while still
others were shooting up from below toward us! From behind, from ahead,
from beneath, the cylinders' swarms were converging upon us in that
moment, and as instinctively I slowed our cylinder's mad rush I looked
upward, toward the great roof----
"The opening-section!" I cried suddenly. "But it's closed against us!"
For there above, indeed, was that great circle in the vast transparent
roof that we knew could be slid aside and opened by its Neptunian
guards in the bright-lit little cage-room suspended beside it. My one
hope had been that in our stolen cylinder we might deceive those guards
of the great orifice into opening it for us to pass. But that hope
was gone. Behind and below and before us were the pursuing swarms of
cylinders and the Neptunians in the cage-room above knew that something
was wrong, and had not opened the great circle for us. There were other
similar circles, similar opening-sections, in Triton's roof, but it
was too late now to seek them because from all about us the swarming,
racing cylinders were rushing upon us. In another moment their rays
would shatter us! I heard Marlin, beside me, utter a low exclamation
of utter hopelessness as those cylinders rushed upon us, held our
own cylinder for the moment motionless there in mid-air beneath the
great roof's opening-section, and then suddenly reached toward the
control-studs, even as Marlin's hoarse cry was sounding beside me.
"The end, Hunt!" he was crying. "The cylinders are almost upon us--and
the opening-section is closed!"
"The end maybe--but not this way!" I shouted fiercely, at the same
moment sending the cylinder flashing straight upward with all its
speed. "Hold to your chair, Marlin--_we're going to smash through that
opening-section of the roof_!"
Even as I cried out thus, our cylinder was rising upward toward the
roof with all the power of its throbbing generators, hurtling upward
at speed unthinkable toward the great circle of the opening-section!
I was aware in that moment of the crowding swarms of cylinders about
and beneath us loosing toward us a storm of crossing force-rays that
we drove clear of in that instant. I was aware of the Neptunians in
the cage-room beside the great opening-section rushing wildly about as
we shot upward like the cylindrical projectile of some giant cannon!
The next instant I caught the gleam of the transparent roof, of the
opening-section just above us, Marlin and I instinctively crouched
lower in our seats, and a moment later there was a blinding, stunning
shock that seemed to split the universe with its detonation. We were
dragged up from our seats with awful force. And then as we straightened
up and looked out, we saw that the cylinder had smashed through the
great opening-section and was throbbing above Triton's mighty roof!
The cylinder's ceiling, above us, was crumpled and bent badly, but
in that moment it seemed a miracle that we had lived through that
terrible collision. It was only our awful speed that had saved us,
driving us through the opening-section's thick metal even as a cyclone
will drive fragile straws and twigs unbroken through a board. Now as
we looked downward we saw that the swarming pursuing cylinders were
massed beneath the crumpled opening-section and that that circle of
the opening-section was slowly sliding aside, bent and crumpled as it
was, to allow those cylinders to emerge through Triton's roof after us!
And up they came, a full hundred of them, racing up after us at utmost
speed, up from the great metal roof of Triton, dark and opaque to our
eyes from above, and up through its atmosphere close on our track!
* * * * *
Through the rushing roar of air about us, the throbbing of our
generators, I was aware of Marlin shouting something beside me. I was
gazing ahead for the moment, as that wild flight and pursuit passed on
through Triton's atmosphere. Giant Neptune's cloudy green sphere bulked
gigantic in the heavens before us, and far beyond it was the little
fire-disk of the sun. Then I turned back to see the hundred pursuing
cylinders, getting ever closer behind us. As I started at the sight,
I became aware of Marlin shouting beside me, and at the same moment
realized the import of his words. I realized that the throbbing of
our generators was halting, hesitating, failing! Our great crash out
through the roof had broken some part of their mechanism and now they
were failing rapidly, and the speed of our cylinder was slowing!
And behind us the scores of onrushing cylinders were closer--closer!
Already toward us again from them were leaping the slender pale
force-rays, missing us at that distance but sweeping close about us.
With an utter tenseness of body and spirit, Marlin and I watched them
drawing closer, as our cylinder shot on through Triton's atmosphere.
Suddenly another storm of rays had shot and swept toward us from
behind, and one of those wild-whirling rays, in a single instant, clove
through the cylinder's uppermost sides like a sword of fire through
cardboard, slicing away completely the already-crumpled roof above
us and the upper half-dozen feet of the walls! Instantly a flood of
icy-cold air rushed in upon us and seemed in that moment to freeze us
through. At the same moment the throbbing generators ceased completely
to operate, the cylinder slowing swiftly on its rush forward, drifting
helplessly there in the outer reaches of Triton's atmosphere, while
from behind, like leaping creatures of prey, the scores of cylinders
rushed upon us!
Neither Marlin nor I voiced a cry in that moment. We could only stare
as if we were automatons, toward the onrushing cylinders, the oncoming
doom. We had run our course at last. It seemed in that moment that all
our bitter battle for freedom, our toilsome escape from our cell, our
flight through Triton's sleeping side, our stealing of the cylinder
and wild crash upward through the great roof's opening-section--that
all this futile flight of ours was reenacting itself with lightning
swiftness before my eyes. The swarming cylinders were almost on us,
holding their rays now as they saw us helpless until they were closer,
their great mass whirling straight toward us. And then, as I gripped
the control-standard before me, expectant in that instant of the end.
I saw that onrushing mass of cylinders suddenly shattered as though by
gigantic blows from above. I saw the scores of cylinders driven this
way and that in a single instant with colossal force, even as they
rushed to annihilate us! And I looked dazedly up, was looking up----
"_The space-flier!_" Marlin's insane cry was sounding there beside me.
"_It's the space-flier--and Whitely and Randall!_"
The space-flier! There high above us and above the pursuing cylinders
it hung, a gleaming faceted ball, at sight of which I could only gaze
stupefied. I saw in that moment that down from its lowest ray-opening
there was radiating toward the cylinders that had been hurtling in
a mass toward us, a pale, almost invisible great force-ray and that
it was that ray's giant pressure that had shattered the mass of our
pursuers, and in an instant had driven their massed cylinders to all
sides! Then, as they broke thus in wild confusion before that swift
great force-ray from above, the space-flier was flashing down toward
our roofless, drifting cylinder, was hovering just beside us, touching
that cylinder, with the round outer door in its facet within our reach!
In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's
edge, had whirled open that outer door of the space-flier. When we
threw ourselves into the little vestibule-chamber or air-lock, shut the
outer door, and turned toward the inner one, that inner one was opened
and Whitely--Whitely!--was pulling us inside!
[Illustration: _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!