"But those tracks!" I insisted. "Those squares in the dust—something's been here and has taken a half-dozen of these great machines away with them! And we know that something on Neptune is sending the great force-ray out to the sun!"
"It can't be," Marlin repeated. "We found no source of the great ray on Neptune's sunward side, and, too, how can that ray shoot always toward the sun from some spot on Neptune when Neptune itself is constantly turning? No, Hunt, I think that this means—but look up there!"
As he cried out he was gazing suddenly upward, his space-walker's great arms pointing up, and at that horror-stricken cry, I glanced up to see a sight that froze me motionless there in astonishment. For there, high above us and above the great compartment-city, a dozen strange great shapes were dropping down through the air toward us, were dropping down through one of the openings in the great roof! Long great cylinders of gleaming metal those shapes seemed, dropping silently and smoothly down from the opening, toward the compartment-city, but even as we looked in amazement and terror up toward them, they had halted in mid-air, as though seeing the faceted ball of our hovering space-flier hanging above the city far behind us. Then the next instant all the dozen great cylinders were flashing with unbelievable speed toward our space-flier, a half-score narrow, pencil-like rays of pale, almost invisible light or force stabbing ahead of them toward the space-flier!
Marlin and I cried out in the same instant as those great cylinders whirled through the air toward the space-flier, and in that moment it seemed to us that our wild cries had been heard, for we saw the space-flier whirl itself to one side suddenly, as though Randall and Whitely in it had caught sight suddenly of that onrushing menace. The pale, almost unseen stabbing little rays of force or light shot past them as they swerved thus, and then the next moment cylinders and space-flier seemed to be whirling in a wild melange of geometrical metal forms there in the pale dim light above the great compartment-city. We saw the slender, pencil-like shafts of force stabbing this way and that, saw one cylinder, struck by the shafts of its fellows, riven asunder by those shafts as though by swords of steel and then suddenly the gleaming polyhedron of the space-flier had plunged up out of the wild mêlée and was rocketing up toward one of the great openings in the vast roof above!
As Whitely and Randall thus whirled the space-flier up in an effort to escape their outnumbering, unknown attackers, we saw three of the great cylinders rushing up after them. In another moment the space-flier, closely followed by its three pursuers, had rushed up through the opening and disappeared above, and as they did so we saw that the remaining eight cylinders were dropping now again toward the compartment-city! Watching stupefied still in our amazement, Marlin and I saw that four of the cylinders were heading down toward a point in the great city somewhat to the right of us, while the other four were slanting down now almost straight toward the compartment in which we stood! And as I saw that, as I saw and understood the significance of the tracks and missing mechanisms in this compartment, I grasped Marlin's great metal arm with one of my own, again touching head-armors.
"They're coming down to this compartment!" I cried. "It was they who took the missing mechanisms from here—they've come for more!"
"Out of the compartment, then!" Marlin shouted. "They're after Whitely and Randall in the flier, and if they find us here——!"
With the words we were throwing ourselves, prisoned in our great cumbrous space-walkers as we were, toward the low door through which we had come. In a moment we were through that door, were in the adjoining compartment, but hardly had we gained it than there swept through the pale light from high above four great cylindrical shapes, slanting smoothly down toward the compartment we had just left! From above they could see us easily, whatever beings were inside those descending cylinders, so that as they shot down over our roofless great compartment, Marlin and I poised motionless, praying that our great gleaming space-walkers might be mistaken for mechanisms. Far across the compartment-city we could glimpse the four other cylinders dropping down toward a different point, also, and then in the next moment the four above us had shot down over us and with a throbbing sound coming clearly to us from those cylinders' interiors, were coming to rest in the compartment we had just left!
Glancing for a moment at each other through the vision-windows of our space-walkers, Marlin and I then softly moved in them toward the low door through which we had just come. For though our fear was great, our curiosity, our realization of the mission that had brought us out here to Neptune, was greater. In a moment we were at the door, were lowering ourselves awkwardly and silently to a position from which we could gaze through it into the adjoining compartment. In that compartment, we saw now, the four great cylinders had landed, and were resting upon the floor at its center. Each cylinder was of forty feet diameter and twice that in height, and their gleaming metal sides were broken here and there by small windows. They were broken too, we saw with a start, by ray-openings like those of our own space-flier, and it was evident from those that the cylinders were propelled through space by the same force-rays that moved our flier!