On that day, as we waited in the unchanging twilight for the coming of our Neptunian teacher and his two guards, we were astonished when the door slid up to find facing us outside a different Neptunian official, of the same insignia of the crimson circle, with four guards behind him instead of two. He did not speak to us, but motioned us silently to move outside, and as we did so he gestured to Marlin to take with us the small speech-mechanism by which we were able to converse with the Neptunians. Then, guarded closely before and behind, our attempted escape in the cylinder having kept the Neptunians extremely watchful of us ever since, we were marched out of the long oblong compartment of the cells and across others toward the great circular Council Compartment! Into it we were marched, and found that, as before, there sat around the great ring-table the thirty silent members of the Council, the great metal globe still on its pedestal at their center. They did not turn toward us as we entered and halted beside them, but the great globe did, turning first the single gleaming eye upon us by means of which, we knew, all the massed minds of the thirty members of the Council were receiving a visual impression of us.
Then the globe turned swiftly so that its speech-opening faced us, and it spoke to us, spoke as the assembled minds of the thirty, with all emotions removed and with all thoughts synthesized by its mechanism. "You are the two creatures captured upon our world?" it asked. "And you have been taught our language as we ordered?"
Marlin pressed the button of the little mechanism in his grasp, speaking back in the same snapping speech-sounds by means of it. "We are those two," he said simply.
The globe was silent a moment, then spoke on, the thirty whose minds spoke through it never turning. "When you two were captured upon our great world, others, no doubt like you, were discovered in a space-vehicle which, it was apparent, was operated by the same principle of force-rays which we of Neptune (it was their own word-equivalent for the name of the planet) have long used in our own space-vehicles, and in other ways. That vehicle and those inside it, it has been reported to us, were destroyed by those who discovered it, but we desire to know from whence it and you two came, and in what way you were able to reproduce the force-rays which we of Neptune have long used. From the structure of your bodies it is apparent that you come from a small planet, in all probability the second or third of the sun's worlds. But from which, and why, have you come here?"
Marlin did not answer for some moments, then spoke back through the little mechanism he held. "It is from the sun's third world, indeed, that we have come," he said. "And we have come here, have plunged out through the void to this, the sun's outermost world, to find out why you of Neptune are loosing doom on the solar system with that great force-ray of yours that spins the sun ever faster, and to use all our power to halt that doom!"
In that tense moment a thrill of irrepressible pride shot through me, even in the dark peril in which we stood, at Marlin's words. For they were not his alone; they were the words of Earth, the words of Earth and all its races to Neptune and all its hordes! And at that bold defiance, flung across the void from world to world and issuing here from Marlin in the very face of this supreme Council of the Neptunian rulers, of this great globe-mechanism that held their gathered, synthesized minds for the time being, an order to the guards behind us for our instant death would not have surprised me. Yet here again we were given proof of the difference between the mind-workings of the Neptunians and ourselves. It was evident that the human passions of hate and anger held small place in their cold, machine-like minds, for the great globe that spoke for the minds of the assembled thirty was silent for a time, and when it did speak it seemed not to regard the passion of Marlin's words.
"When you speak of halting the doom that confronts your world," it said, "it is apparent that you do not know the necessity of that doom, the great necessity which has caused our races of Neptunians, under the direction of the Council of Thirty, to loose that doom upon the solar system. Learn now, therefore, that it is to save our own world, our own races, that we are loosing this death upon the sun's other worlds and peoples!"
The great globe again was silent for a moment, the thirty members of the Council silent around it as their assembled minds poured their thoughts into its mechanism, to be released in a single voice. Marlin and I stood there at the great ring-table's edge, and surely no stranger scene could have been imagined than that, with the great circular compartment's towering black walls around us, the twilight that reigned above and around, the thirty silent disk-bodied Neptunians and our own disk-bodied guards, and the great, enigmatic globe-mechanism before us, that spoke and listened as a living thing, representing the massed minds of the thirty. And now that great globe was speaking to us again, in the staccato Neptunian speech.
"It is most wise, perhaps," it said, "that you two of another world learn now what colossal forces and necessities lie behind the loosing of that great doom which you come to strive vainly against. It is most wise that you learn now how useless it is for you or any of your world to oppose yourselves to the plans of us Neptunians. For we of Neptune are of an ancient power and might, beside which you of the inner planets are as newcome children. And lest you doubt that power, lest you doubt the colossal forces that we of Neptune have called into being and use for our own purposes, we of the Council tell you now what mighty past is ours.