The landing-compartment about us held scores of resting cylinders like our own, and even as we looked about we saw throngs of Neptunians hastening forward and removing from our own and the other ten that had just landed, the disassembled mechanisms which they had brought from Neptune. The leader, however, motioned to our guards to follow with us, and set off quickly across the landing-compartment toward one of its doors. Following him, our four tube-armed guards watchful now about us, we saw him pass through the low, broad door before us, and though his strange disk-body passed easily through that door, Marlin and I were forced to stoop low to get through it. Then, our guards never relaxing their cautious watch over us, we were moving on through the next compartment, and the next, and the next, on through compartment after compartment, all thronging with Neptunians, moving across the great compartment-city toward the twilight band that divided Triton's dark and sunlit sides.
And as Marlin and I moved with our guards and their leader thus through the pale daylight of Triton, through the compartments crowded with masses upon masses of Neptunians, we forgot almost the uncertain fate that hung over us, in the interest and wonder of what we saw. For though we had explored the greater compartment-city that covered all the surface of mighty Neptune, had seen its marvels also, it had been a city dead, a city of lifeless and unused mechanisms whose purposes we had not been able to guess. But here on Triton, in the compartments that covered its surface, we saw a Neptunian city bursting with crowding life, saw it as the giant city of Neptune itself must once have been, before some unguessed purpose of the Neptunians had brought them here to Triton. And, seeing it thus, we were able to comprehend many things that had puzzled us in our venture through the city on Neptune's lifeless surface.
We passed through compartments in which throngs of Neptunians moved about great rows of looming, pear-shaped mechanisms such as we had seen on Neptune, great water-making mechanisms that were beating here with a slow, rhythmic sound of power, and from which there pulsed into the great connecting pipes a ceaseless gush of water. That water, we knew, was made synthetically in the mechanisms by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but whether those atoms were derived, as on Neptune, from the break-down of Neptune's great vapor-masses, or whether they were formed themselves from the primal electricity, we could not guess. Through many compartments of these we passed, and through other compartments that held great pumps that evidently forced the water supplies thus manufactured to every part of Triton's surface.
And we went through compartments, too, in which were other great objects that had puzzled us so completely on Neptune, but whose purpose we saw now. These were the great flat metal containers stacked one upon the other, each a foot or so in depth, and each filled with black, green-shot soil. About them, as on Neptune, were set in the walls great white disks connected to generating apparatus of some kind, but here those generating mechanisms were humming with power, tended by many Neptunians, and there shot from the disks, over and through those great containers of soil, a ceaseless flood of pale violet light or force. And, even as we passed through those compartments, we saw strange and stocky pale-green plants bursting up from the soil of the containers, growing at incredible speed before our eyes, attaining a height of inches in but a minute or so! As these strange pale-green plants reached a height of a foot or so, there formed upon them masses of fruits or vegetables dead white in color, some being long and pod-like and others ball-shaped. And as these formed, the attendant Neptunians were swiftly turning off the violet force, pulling the fruit-laden little plants from the fine soil, and depositing them in low-wheeled containers, which were wheeled instantly away. Then from the framework that held the great soil-containers there sprayed out upon them fine whitish-green particles that I recognized as seed of some sort, that fell upon the soil and then were turned under it as some reversing mechanism turned over the soil in each container. Then the violet force from the wall-disks was turned on again, and in a moment another crop of pale-green plants was shooting up out of the containers!
It was then that I saw the astounding purpose of those projectors of violet force that were set in the walls around the soil-containers. For it was evident that they shot forth upon the containers a force or vibration which held in it the ultra-violet and other radiations which, in sunlight, stimulate the growth of plant-life. These vibrations were projected artificially through the containers of soil with immeasurably greater intensity than in sunlight, and so stimulated the growth of plant-life in those containers immeasurably more. Also I could see that tubes ran from the framework through the soil of the containers, flooding that soil with moisture, and as that water used thus came through special cubical tanks and mixers, it was apparent that it was impregnated with the chemical elements needed by the plant-life in its swift, astounding growth. Thus, stimulated to an intense degree by those influences, the plant-life in those containers could germinate and shoot up and ripen with unbelievable speed. When it was removed, the containers were ready at once for another crop. The whole operation was swift and almost automatic, and as we saw great masses of the white fruits or vegetables being wheeled away from the plant-compartments, we realized at last how the Neptunians, in their great compartment-cities, obtained a ceaseless and inexhaustible food and water supply.
As we passed on, marveling, we saw other great mechanisms at work. Some were huge and cogged, operated by seated Neptunians before them, turning out ceaseless great blocks of smooth, black stone-like material that composed the intersecting compartment-walls, which poured out as a thick liquid and hardened in molds into that diamond-hard substance. Others were strange-appearing machines like none we had seen on Neptune, whose purpose we could not guess. Here and there there glowed in its square compartment one of the great heat-radiating globes, sending currents of intensely warm air rushing out from about it, all the mechanisms of those globes seeming to be cased inside themselves. Yet even these things were no more wonderful to us than the throngs of Neptunians that swirled and pressed in their millions in the great compartment-city about us.
Numberless, indeed, were the hordes of those Neptunians, their masses swarming about us in great crowds of disk-bodied, pale-green monsters, busy upon the clanking, beating, hissing mechanisms around them, busy in providing the heat and food and water of their strange world. It seemed impossible, almost, that so many countless millions of them could thus have crowded together on Triton's surface. All wore the strange armor or dress of flexible metal around their disk-bodies, some carrying ray-tubes slung in that armor and others various tools or instruments. Here and there we saw one with the same crimson-circle insignia as our leader's upon his metal armor, and it was apparent from the silent deference shown these circle-marked Neptunians that they were officials of some kind. As we marched on behind our leader, our guards close about us, we saw that, despite our strange appearance to them, the Neptunians paid no great attention to us—so busy were they. We saw, too, that here on Triton's sunward side there were no shelf-like sleep-compartments at all, all such being upon the dark side. In silent awe and wonder Marlin and I moved on through the thronging compartments, countless Neptunians crowding busily all about us, and countless cylinders throbbing through the air above, with the vast roof far above them. Then I sensed that we were approaching our destination.
For before us now, as we crossed a last compartment, there lay that twilight band of dusk which marked the division of Triton's dark and sunlit sides, and as we passed out of the pale, dim light of the sunlit side into the twilight of that band, we saw that before us lay a compartment wall that was curving instead of straight, the wall of the great single circular compartment we had noticed from above. The compartment that lay between us and that wall was empty save for a file of Neptunian guards who stood motionless along the curving wall with their force-ray tubes ready in their grasp. As our leader reached them he halted, spoke with them for a moment in staccato speech, and then as their snapping voices ceased the guards stood aside to right and left and permitted us to pass through the low, broad door in that curving wall. Through it we went, our circle-marked leader first and then Marlin and I, our four guards still close about us, and then as we halted inside that door, we two were gazing with a deepened awe and wonder about us.
We were standing just at the edge of that great circular compartment that we had glimpsed from above, one hundreds of feet in diameter, the twilight about it dispelled somewhat in it by soft-glowing disks in its walls. In this great compartment there stood what seemed an immense circular table of metal, only a few feet in height, ring-like in form and with a clear circular space at its center. This great ring-table's edge was not more than a dozen or so feet from the compartment's circular wall, and ranged around it, on low seats between the ring-like table and the wall, were thirty disk-bodied Neptunians. Silent and almost motionless they sat there around the great ring-table, and I saw that upon the metal armor of each was a crimson circle like that of our leader, except that there was a crimson dot at its center, a symbol we had noted on no other Neptunian so far. And from each of the thirty there ran in toward the clear space at the ring-table's center a slender black wire-connection, attached by diverging connections to the body of each of the thirty.