"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, were _moving_, 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!"