Space-Rovers
Before us Earth and its little moon gleamed brilliant in the blackness
of space when our five hundred space-fliers shot in toward them once
again, days later. Again we four held our familiar positions in the
four control-chairs of our space-flier, and again Marlin and Randall
and Whitely were gazing forth with me as at the head of those massed
space-fliers we moved in with slowing speed. It had been for a score
of days that we had reeled back through the solar system from Neptune,
from its edge, had reeled back from the border line of that vast void
of space, in which Triton long days before had become invisible,
hurtling out into that void forever. Past perilous Saturn, and past
mighty Jupiter, and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt and past
red Mars once more we had sped, within us only a strange sick desire
for Earth once more; that Earth which we knew, would be shaken even now
with unimaginable rejoicings as its peoples saw the acceleration of the
sun's spin that had menaced all our universe halted at last with the
hurling forth of Triton days before. And now, as we sped in at last
toward Earth, it was in mutual silence that we gazed ahead.
Once again the outlines of Earth's great continents were coming clear
to our eyes as we shot nearer, and once again, now, we were heading
toward that side of it that lay in shade, in night, toward the North
American continent, to hover out from it, over it, and then to drop
down toward it, down through the darkness of Earth's night toward New
York. Again beneath us Earth's surface was widening to a vast dark
plain as we sank down toward it, and then again through the darkness
we had seen, beneath us, the gleaming lights of New York, and were
sinking lower toward them. Down--down--until New York stretched beneath
us but one colossal bed of brilliance, one vast mass of blazing lights
above which there flashed to and fro the innumerable brilliantly-lit
aircraft like countless shuttles of light, the giant World Government
Building and all the colossal buildings that stretched far away around
it burning with unequalled brilliance, and their roofs and the ways
between them thronged once more with crowds, such crowds as never yet
had the mighty city seen.
A strange dumbness held us, as we sank slowly downward with our massed
space-fliers. Then, as a great whirling light-beam from beneath caught
our fliers' descending mass, held us in its glare, other beams were
swinging toward us, holding us bathed in a white flood of light as we
sank downward. And as we were discovered thus to the vast thronged
city beneath, the swarming aircraft above it abruptly shot downward
from about us, while the great roaring voice of the city's crowds
abruptly ceased as the city saw us. Down through a great silence, the
most tense and utter silence surely ever to reign in the mighty city
beneath, we dropped, our fliers separating and falling smoothly over
the crowds, over the seas of white, upturned faces, falling through
that hushed silence toward the roofs of the great buildings beneath,
our own toward the roof of the great World Government building.
As we shot downward we saw that upon that roof waited now for us a
massed and silent crowd, as in the streets below, that had given back
to the roof's edges to make way for our own space-flier and those
with us to descend. Smoothly I lessened the power of our lower ray,
and smoothly we sank downward through the brilliant lights above that
roof, until at last our own and the fliers about us had come gently
to rest upon it, the throb of our generators ceasing. Then, with the
same dense silence reigning outside, Marlin slowly was opening our
space-flier's doors, and with Whitely and Randall and me behind him
was stepping forth upon the great roof's surface, into the white
brilliance of its lights. Hesitatingly, weariedly, with the men of our
other fliers gathered now about us, we looked around. Beside us there
stood, and around us, the massed members of the World Congress, with
the World President with them. Over these silent figures we looked, a
little dazedly, and out over the superhumanly brilliant, superhumanly
silent city that stretched about us, and then up toward the great
constellations as though in reassurance. For they stretched above us
as before, as always, Capricorn and Sagittarius and Scorpio and the
rest, with Jupiter and Saturn and Mars shining there, and with great
Neptune, invisible here to our eyes, and farther still than Neptune its
moon-world of Triton hurtling on toward those distant stars. Dazedly,
slowly, we looked, up and around us, while still around us that hushed,
thick silence held, and then saw that the World President was coming
toward us.
Across the roof he came toward us from those silent crowds about us,
his hands outstretched, his voice unsteady.
"Marlin--Randall--Hunt--Whitely!" he said. And then--"You have come
back once more--back to the Earth that you and your forces have saved."
"We have come back," said Marlin, his voice low, strange. "Have come
back with what remains of those forces."
And then, while the World President and the World Congress stood silent
before us, beneath the brilliant lights, Marlin was speaking slowly
to them, was speaking in short, halting words of our flight outward,
our escape from the great ambush at Saturn, our wild pursuit onward to
Neptune and the colossal battle that had ended there with our halting
of the other ray, with our hurling of Triton and all the Neptunians on
it out into the void forever. In a hushed, strained silence the crowd
before us was listening, and as the speech-apparatus beside us took
Marlin's slow words out to all the crowds in all the vast city about
us, and beyond, they, too, were listening in that same tense stillness.
Then, when he had finished, that stillness continued unbroken for
moments.
"Marlin--Whitely--Hunt--Randall--!" he was saying, again. "There is
no way in which we can tell, there is no need for us to tell, what
gratitude Earth's peoples have now for you and for your men, who saved
Earth and all the solar system from a dreadful death."
Marlin slowly shook his head. "That gratitude is not for us alone who
came back," he said, "but for those others of us who did not come
back--who went to death out there for Earth."
"We of Earth know that," the World President said, "and our gratitude
is for them as for you--our silence now for them as for you. But you
who came back--you four who dared first of all men out through the
void, and who came back to lead Earth's forces out to the terrific
struggle that saved us--is it gratitude only that Earth can give you?"
Marlin half-turned, his eyes meeting our own. "There is nothing Earth
can give us, more," he said, "for we have that which never men have
had before, have the space-fliers and have now all the solar system's
worlds before us! For to us four could be no greater gift, no greater
thing, than that--to be space-rovers once more together!"
And as Marlin's eyes met ours, standing there on the great building's
brilliant-lit roof with all about us the assembled masses of the
World Congress, silent, with those other vast silent throngs in all
the mighty city around us, we were looking together upward. Marlin
with his brilliant eyes; Whitely with his calm, strong upturned face;
Randall with a new light flaming into his tired eyes; I with a strange
new eagerness clutching at my heart; we all were looking upward.
Upward past the brilliant lights around us toward the constellations
and toward the planets that shone among them, crimson Mars and yellow
Saturn and white Jupiter! Upward with a sudden strange tenseness,
forgetful for the moment of the hushed world around us that we had
helped to save from doom, upward across the immensities of space where
we four had roved toward the great planets that moved there across the
star-sown summer sky!
The End