"To go out in that from Earth to Neptune—to Neptune!—it seems impossible," I said.
Marlin nodded, his hand on my shoulder. "It seems strange enough," he assented, "but to Neptune in three more days we're going, Hunt. For no other chance is there to save Earth from the doom marching upon it."
"But can we save it?" I exclaimed. "Can we four really hope to contend against beings who, whatever their nature, have power enough to reach across the solar system and speed our spinning sun on to its doom and ours?"
Marlin looked gravely at me, and at Whitely and Randall beside me. "A chance there is—must be," he said solemnly, "even though little time now remains to us. And with that chance—with Earth's chance—in our hands, we must strike out to the last with all our power for Earth!"
Those words of Marlin, I think, steadied us all in the whirling rush of activities that was ours during the next, the last, three days. For in those three days, as the last generator approached completion and was completed and installed, we four were ceaselessly busy with the last preparations for our start. Whitely, who had designed and was to have complete charge of the space-flier's great generators, was busy inspecting and testing those generators. Randall and I were familiarizing ourselves with the flier's controls, for we two were to alternate in controlling its flight through the void. Marlin, who would not only command our little party but would have charge of the astronomical equipment in it, and would chart our course out through the trackless gulf, was occupied beside numberless other tasks in plotting, with the assistance of some of the world's foremost astronomers, that course that we must follow now. So that as there came upon us the last day of June 16th, that day upon whose night we were to start our momentous journey, it found us working still upon our last preparations.
By the time that day and night had come, too, it found the excited expectation of the world keyed up to an agonized point. For days, indeed, great crowds had swirled about the base of the huge World Government building, on whose roof we worked, and, as the last hours approached, it seemed that all the world's thoughts, indeed, were concentrated upon that roof, upon the great gleaming space-flier on it. For all knew that upon that flier and upon the mission which we four were attempting in it depended the one chance of escape for Earth. For steadily, remorselessly, the sun was spinning still ever faster, the great pushing force-ray from Neptune still stabbing across the solar system to spin the sun on and on with greater and greater rotatory speed, until it divided and doomed Earth and its sister-planets. So that those last days, those last hours, seemed to all the world as to ourselves to pass with nerve-tearing slowness.
There came at last, however, the night of the 16th, the night of our start, with the space-flier complete and ready in its framework at last. The last work of Marlin and Whitely had been to check over the construction-plans of the flier, which were to be left behind so that a great fleet of space-fliers, as the World President had said, could be constructed. Were we to return from Neptune with knowledge of the position and nature of the great doom-ray's source there, that fleet of space-fliers would be ready to sally out and attempt to bring an end to the great ray. But that knowledge, if we gained it, we must bring back ourselves, since there was no method of communication from our space-flier to Earth, the well-known "Heaviside layer" surrounding Earth being impenetrable to all radio and communication vibrations and making such communication impossible. With this last preparation completed, however, we four stood ready upon the night of the 16th for the start of our great venture.
It was an hour after midnight that we were to start, and it was not until some minutes past midnight that Marlin and Whitely and Randall and I left our quarters in the World Government building and ascended to its roof. As we emerged upon that roof we stopped involuntarily. For the great roof itself and all the surrounding colossal city of New York were lit now with brilliant white suspended lights, and beneath them upon the roof and in the streets far beneath were masses upon masses of waiting men and women. Those upon the roof were the twelve hundred members of the great World Congress, assembled there to see our start out into the void on our desperate venture. At their center was a clear, roped-off space on the roof in which there towered the framework that held our great space-flier, gleaming in the brilliance of the lights about it, and just inside that clear space stood the World President, a half-dozen officials beside him.
As we paused there for that moment, Marlin's face grave and intent with purpose, Whitely coolly looking about him, and Randall and I endeavoring to conceal the excitement that pounded at our hearts, the whole scene was imprinted indelibly upon my brain. The crowds and brilliant lights about and beneath us, the great space-flier's faceted bulk looming into the darkness, the colossal buildings of the great world-capital that stretched away in the darkness in all directions, a great mass of shining lights among which swirled a packed sea of humanity gazing up toward our flier—these formed a mighty panorama about us, but in that moment we turned our gaze up from them, up toward the great constellations of summer stars that gleamed in the black skies overhead. Away in the southern skies, not high above the horizon, burned the equatorial constellations, Scorpio and Sagittarius and Capricorn, with the calm white light-globule of Jupiter moving in Scorpio and the bright red dot of Mars and yellow spark of Saturn in Capricorn. But it was toward Sagittarius that we were gazing, for among that constellation's stars there shone also Neptune, invisible to our unaided eyes but almost seen by us, it seemed, in that tense moment.