An Ambush in Space
"Mars ahead and to the left--once more!"
As I uttered the words Marlin and Randall and Whitely, beside me, were
gazing to the left with me. "Strange," said Randall, "it all seems,
almost, as when we first went out past Mars."
Strangely similar, indeed, did it seem to all of us, the panorama
that now again stretched all about us, visible through the racing
space-flier's windows, as we sat in the four control-chairs before
them. For ahead and away to the left gleamed again the dull-red disk of
Mars, farther now from us than on our first trip out but seeming almost
the same. Ahead too, and close to the right, shone mighty Jupiter, and
beyond it on the left the yellow spot of Saturn once more, with far
beyond it and straight ahead again the green little spark of light
that was Neptune. Behind, too, the bluish light-spot of Earth and the
lessened fire-disk of the sun were as before, and as before the blazing
stars that jeweled all the deep-black firmament about us. But behind
our flier we could barely see innumerable tiny gleaming points moving
forward at the same speed as ourselves through the void, keeping pace
with us in regular formation, a great V-formation of which our flier
was the point and that moved steadily on through space. For those tiny
points, extending back and out of sight in the void behind us, were the
space-fliers of that great fleet of five thousand space-fliers which
our own, the flagship, was leading out through the solar system to
Neptune!
For two days, now, we had been flashing with that great fleet behind
us from Earth, out toward the solar system's edge on our mighty
expedition, and five days had passed since we had stood before the
World Congress with Marlin rendering to it our report. In those
intervening three days on Earth we had been the center of such a whirl
of hectic activity as the world had never known before--the whirl of
preparations for the start of the colossal fleet. For in those three
short days Marlin with the energies of a world at his bidding, had
strained every nerve to complete the last preparations of the great
armada of space-fliers which he, with us three as his lieutenants, was
to lead out on its unprecedented flight to Neptune.
The most necessary preparation was the equipping of the five thousand
space-fliers with the concentrated force-ray weapons used by the
Neptunians in their space-cylinders, those concentrated rays which,
instead of pushing against what they struck, tore through it with
driving power. Fortunately, the production of these concentrated rays
required only the addition of special smaller ray-openings beside the
regular ray-openings in the sides of the space-fliers, but even so it
strained the capacities of the world's workers to install in each of
the space-fliers those smaller openings in the short time available.
Each of the five thousand space-fliers held a crew of eight, their
operators having been trained during our absence as fast as the
fliers themselves had been built. We four in our own space-flier, the
flagship of the great fleet, had four additional crew-members now,
four mechanic-operators who worked in shifts and tended ceaselessly
the operation of the flier's various mechanisms, the great generators,
and the other mechanical equipment, thus leaving Marlin and Randall
and Whitely and myself free to devote all our attention to the command
of the great fleet itself, though one of us retained the controls of
the flier itself. Another preparation that had been made during our
absence had been to equip each flier with space-walkers for its crew,
and to equip each with efficient radiophone apparatus. This, while the
Heaviside layer around Earth would prevent it functioning from Earth
to space or from space to Earth, would allow free communication from
space-flier to space-flier while in space itself, and thus would allow
Marlin and us to control with spoken orders all the great fleet we led.
Thus the last preparations had been completed and three days after
our arrival at Earth the great fleet of space-fliers had taken its
departure, the five thousand faceted polyhedron-like fliers rising as
one from the flat roofs of New York's countless gigantic buildings.
Once more we had started at night, and it seemed that all of the
peoples of Earth had assembled in and around New York that night
to speed us farewell. The vast crowds that had watched our single
space-flier start out on its first trip weeks before, were as nothing
to those vaster crowds that had watched the great fleet leave, since
all on Earth knew now what word we had brought back from Neptune and
knew that in two-score more days, unless this fleet was successful
in its tremendous task, unless it could win through the Neptunian
opposition and halt the giant sun-ray, that all on Earth would perish
in flaming death.
Thus surely there could have been no tenser moment in Earth's history
than that, when, with the World President and the massed members of
the World Congress watching again around us, our flagship had risen
from the roof of the great World Government building into the night,
flashing up and outward once more toward Sagittarius, toward unseen
Neptune. And behind us almost instantly there had flashed up in regular
timing and formation our five thousand following fliers, racing out and
after us with colossal speed like ourselves and flying in that hollow
triangle or V-formation behind us. That formation had been adopted so
that the rays of the fliers of the fleet, driven back toward Earth to
push them on, would not strike against other fliers behind them, as
would have been the case had our fleet moved out in a compact mass.
And now for forty-eight hours our five thousand space-fliers had been
hurtling outward, with our own flagship still at the apex of their
formation.
And as we four sat now again in the four control-chairs, two of our
mechanic-operators watching over the generators behind us and the
other two asleep in their bunks, we had a somewhat different array
of controls before us. Before myself were the controls of the flier
itself, unchanged, with the six switches that directed its propulsion
force-rays from the six openings. Marlin, though, to my right, had
before him now as well as his array of astronomical instruments, the
black mouthpiece and speaker of the radiophone, as well as a compact
array of switch-studs by which he could speak to and hear from the
various squadron-leaders in the great fleet behind us. For convenience
in giving orders, the five thousand fliers of the fleet had been
divided into fifty squadrons of a hundred space-fliers each, and it was
to the designated leader of each squadron that Marlin gave his orders,
which were then transmitted by that leader to the hundred fliers of his
squadron.
Before Randall, too, to my left, were new controls, the controls of the
concentrated force-rays which were to be our fleet's weapons even as
such rays were the Neptunians' also, and with which our flagship had of
course been equipped. Those controls were two thick metal levers of
no great size, with hand-grips at their end, one of which controlled
by its position the side of the flier from which the concentrated
cleaving ray was shot forth, the other controlling the slant or exact
direction at which that ray was emitted. With Randall handling these,
our weapons, Whitely had before him all the space-flier's remaining
controls--those of the generators, air replenishers, the various
recording dials that were vital to its operation, and other essential
things. So that as our throbbing flier drove on now at the great
fleet's head, with Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself gazing to
the left toward the nearing crimson shield of Mars, we had each before
us some vital part of our great fleet's or our flier's control.
Gazing toward Mars' red disk, Marlin broke the silence. "We'll need no
side-rays this time to hold us out from it," he said, and I nodded.
"No, it's far enough from us now, and the speed of our fliers will take
them safely past--is taking them past now. But it's the asteroids ahead
that I've been thinking of."
Marlin somberly shook his head. "There's no help for it, Hunt," he
said. "We'll have to lead the fleet straight through the asteroidal
belt and trust to chance that as few of our fliers as possible will be
struck."
The following hours, therefore, were perhaps the most tense and
terrible that ever we had experienced. For as we shot on past Mars and
through the great belt of whirling asteroids, it was not possible for
the five thousand space-fliers of our fleet to maneuver to avoid those
asteroids. We must hold straight on in our regular formation, we knew,
lest all our fliers crash one into the other, so in that formation we
went steadily on through that great zone of death. And hardly had we
entered it, Marlin and Randall and Whitely gazing forth as intensely
as myself, than an expanding dark globe loomed suddenly before us,
sweeping past us with terrifying closeness, and then as it shot past
there came suddenly in the blackness of space behind us a soundless
flash of fiery light, that flared for a moment and faded. The asteroid,
we knew, had struck a flier close behind us!
From ahead and from either side still, as we sped on, other asteroids
were rushing, following their complicated orbits as our great fleet's
open triangle of space-fliers moved through them, and now again and
again still behind us came other fiery flashes in quick succession,
flashes of flame which each marked the instant destruction of a
space-flier and all its occupants! Yet there came no word, no protest,
from any of the space-fliers behind us, all were going steadily forward
at unaltered speed and in unaltered formation through the great belt
of whirling death. And though, within a few hours more than a score
of our space-fliers had been annihilated in white-hot and soundless
flashes of fire as they were struck by the hurtling asteroids, the
rest had escaped unscathed, and Marlin was giving to them the cheering
knowledge that we had won through the asteroidal belt and were out of
its whirling death.
Thus again Jupiter loomed ahead and to our right, though closer now
and greater in apparent size, and again we four were staring toward it
in almost as great a wonder as formerly, as its mighty cloud-wrapped
disk and attendant four big moons loomed closer. By this time, Marlin
had transmitted to all the fliers behind us a brief order, and already
from each of them and from our own a side force-ray was shooting toward
the gigantic planet to hold us out from its terrific attraction.
The V-formation in which our five thousand space-fliers flew was so
slightly tilted sidewise as to allow the use of side-rays by all our
fliers, and a side-ray of immense power it required indeed to hold each
of us out from the mighty monarch of the solar system's planets as we
sped past its huge and enigmatic sphere.
* * * * *
But still on and on through the void our mighty armada of space-fliers
was racing, on toward the green spark of Neptune that slowly waxed
brighter far ahead of us. That little green spot of light held our
eyes, even to the exclusion of Saturn's yellow disk, expanding again to
the left before us as we shot toward it also, for all our minds were
centered upon Neptune and what mighty task it was that awaited us at
that great world and its moon, what mighty struggle would be ours. So
that it was not until Saturn's disk had expanded almost to moon-size
before us, surrounded by the great rings and by its whirling moons,
that we gave that planet any attention. By this time, for more than
seven days our huge fleet had been speeding out through the boundless
void, out through the solar system, and so it was as a certain landmark
to us that Saturn appeared as we neared it, the last planet between us
and our goal of Neptune. With our great fleet close behind, as we drew
abreast of the huge planet's mighty sphere and colossal rings, it was
intently enough that we four, gathered again in the control-chairs of
our flier, and gazed toward it.
"The most dangerous planet in the solar system--Saturn," said Marlin,
as we looked toward the huge world from which our side-rays now were
holding us. "It was death almost for us before when we ventured too
close in passing it."
"Well, we're safe enough from it this time," Whitely commented, "for
since then it's moved farther to the left--is farther away from us with
no danger to us now of chance meteors from its rings."
"Yes, we're safe enough from it now," Marlin admitted, "yet at the same
time----"
Before Marlin could finish the words they were interrupted by a thing
that chills my blood to remember even now. One moment he was speaking
beside us, our space-flier flashing steadily on at its tremendous
speed at the head of its great triangle-fleet, past huge Saturn to the
left. The next moment there was a terrific whirling around us of our
space-flier's walls, it spun for an instant with tremendous speed in
space, and at the same moment then was being driven with colossal speed
in a direction at right angles to that in which we had been moving,
was being shot through the void toward the mighty sphere and rings and
moons of huge Saturn! And even as in that awful moment it drove with
sickening speed, with an acceleration terrible, toward Saturn, all its
forward progress suddenly halted, reeling blindly and at unthinkable
velocity toward the huge planet, I looked through the windows, and saw
whirling about us, the thousands of space-fliers of our mighty fleet
bunched in a great, irregular mass with us, and hurtling through the
void at the same tremendous speed toward great Saturn as ourselves!
"Saturn!" cried Randall hoarsely as we whirled in that mad moment. "The
controls, Hunt!--we're being shot in toward it!"
"The controls don't answer!" I shouted, my hands frantically flashing
over them. "Something's driving us into Saturn--our rays can't hold us
out----"
"_The Neptunians! There behind us--those great cylinders--they're
pushing all our fleet into Saturn to death!_"
As Whitely voiced that last mad cry we glanced back through the windows
of the flier even as they whirled about us, even as our flier and all
the thousands of space-fliers of our great fleet whirled madly in
toward huge Saturn looming ahead, and we saw that even as he had cried
out, there, behind us, hanging motionless in space and only visible to
us for a moment, hung a great mass of cylinder-fliers! Half our own
great fleet in number they seemed, those massed Neptunian cylinders,
and midmost among them were a score of greater cylinders of immense
size, far larger than any of the others, that were grouped closely
together and from openings in which there was coming toward us a pale
force-ray of immense size, visible only as it issued from those greater
cylinders! And that ray it was, as was plain even in that instant,
that was pushing our fleet with colossal power in toward its death in
great Saturn's maze of rings and moons! The Neptunians had come out
with those great ray-generators, those greater cylinders, and with a
portion of their thousands of cylinder-fliers, and had waited for us in
space to the right of Saturn, knowing well that our own escape meant a
great attack upon them, an effort to halt their great doom-ray! They
had awaited us there and when we had come between them and Saturn,
never suspecting their presence, they had loosed upon us this forceful
ray that was now driving us swiftly in to death!
"An ambush!" I cried. "An ambush in space--the Neptunians are pushing
us in to Saturn--our fleet can't live for minutes then!"
[Illustration: _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
suddenly _slowing_!
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!