Even as the two creatures leaped down to the floor, and before they could change their low cries of astonishment into louder cries of alarm, Marlin and I had leaped across the compartment toward them! For a full two-score feet in one great leap we shot toward them, a feat only possible with Triton's lesser gravitation, and only possible, too, because we knew in that moment that a single loud cry from the two creatures would bring to their aid the hundreds of Neptunians sleeping about us. Before either could utter such a cry, we two had shot through the air and were upon them!
So astounded were they with our appearance and our supernatural leap across the compartment, that before they could put themselves into a posture of defense, we had struck them, had knocked them to the floor and were grappling with them. In that first moment of contact I had reached for the mouth-opening of the disk-bodied monster at whom I had leaped, had gripped that opening in the top of its disk-body to prevent its outcry and then had striven to lift the thing sidewise, to hurl it against the floor. But great as was my strength against Triton's lesser gravitation, the strength of the Neptunian I held was greater still, and its weight, due to the weight-disks worn by it, was enormous. In an instant its seven great limbs were clutching for me, grasping me, and as I strained there against that great monstrous disk-body's grip, I knew with fatal certainty that never could I match my strength against its own. For even as I struggled desperately with it, Marlin struggling as wildly with the other beside me, the thing was lifting me with its own great limbs from the floor!
Upward it drew me with those powerful limbs, its bulging glassy eyes staring from its disk-body's edge straight into my own, as we grappled desperately in the dark compartment with the sleeping Neptunians all about us! I felt myself being overcome, my strength puny beside the strength of that monster, and as I clutched wildly still at the mouth-opening in the top of the disk-body, I thrust my clenched fist down into that small round mouth-opening, half by chance and half by design, closing it thus with my balled fist. Instantly the creature's body turned and twisted frantically, its grip upon me forgotten for the moment, its whole body's mass seeming to heave and twitch as my hand thus cut off the passage of air into that mouth-opening, into its body! I was throttling it, I knew, and hung fiercely to my grip upon it, my clenched hand still within its mouth-opening, while the thing swayed and tore at me with ever-decreasing strength. A moment more and its struggles ceased, it collapsed limply to the floor, and I staggered up again to my feet.
In a single glance I saw that the other Neptunian had gripped Marlin and was crushing him against a corner of the compartment's shelving and instantly, with a single great leap, I was upon that other monster, had gained upon it the same throttling grip which I had found was so deadly to these creatures. In a flash the Neptunian had released his hold upon Marlin, was whirling me around the compartment, shaking me this way and that, and wildly attempting to tear itself loose from me, but with the last of my strength I hung to it, and in a few moments it, too, had weakened, then had slumped down in a lifeless, grotesque mass. And as I rose from it I saw that Marlin had staggered up likewise, was coming toward me. None other of the Neptunians had been aroused by the noise of our mad combat, because in the first excitement of that combat the two Neptunians we fought had not thought to cry out, and after I had gained that throttling hold upon them they could not. So around us the silent ranks of Neptunians slept on unaroused, their open, glassy eyes full upon us even in their sleep, while Marlin and I were stumbling toward the compartment's door.
"On, Hunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "We still have a chance, if we can find a landing-compartment, can steal one of the cylinders before these sleeping Neptunians wake!"
Through the next compartment we went, and the next, and the next, all sleep-compartments, filled with rows of slumbering Neptunians like those behind us, but in our progress we had come upon no landing-compartment. And though we knew that such there were here and there on Triton's dark side, we could not tell, in the darkness and with the huge walls towering all around us, in what direction from us they might be. We could but blunder aimlessly on through the maze of adjoining sleep-compartments in the blind hope that we might chance upon one of the landing-sections, and as we went on, staggering in great, irregular leaps through compartment after compartment, all filled either with masses of sleeping Neptunians or with great heat-radiating mechanisms, we knew that at any moment might come the great signal of light that would awaken the hordes around us.
Never could there have been flight more nightmare-like than that of Marlin and myself through the dark compartments of Triton's dark side, in blind search for the cylinders which alone held out to us any chance of escape. Through the sleep-compartments, with their masses of open-eyed and sleeping disk-bodied Neptunians, through the compartments where reared the great glowing globes whose radiated heat alone held back the cold doom that so long had threatened these strange beings, through compartment after compartment in a flight made more grotesque and unreal to us by the strange method of our progress; by the strange, great, smooth leaps that we made instead of steps, great floating leaps of a score of feet in which we rushed through the dark sleeping compartments, reckless now of the few Neptunians who might be waking and moving upon the dark side. Then suddenly as we leaped toward the door of still another sleep-compartment, poised an instant to leap through that low door, we halted, gazed with abruptly-flaring hope ahead. For the next compartment, we saw, was a rectangular one and greater in size than any we had passed through as yet, and in it there stood the great gleaming shapes of a score or more of the cylinder-fliers that we sought!
With hearts pounding Marlin and I crouched in the low door, gazing through the darkness toward those great cylinders, that gleamed a little in the feeble light that came down upon Triton's dark side from the stars through the great roof overhead. We saw that the low doors in the sides of those cylinders, near the bases, were open, and from them there came to us the throbbing of their mechanisms, inside! It was evident that these were part of the countless cylinders used to help in transporting the Neptunian hordes from dark side to sunward side of Triton, and vice versa, and it was equally evident from those throbbing mechanisms' operation, that the hour of awakening for those hordes was at hand and that these were waiting for that awakening. For there stood also, between us and the nearest of the cylinders, three tube-armed Neptunians who were conversing in brief, snapping speech as they waited!
For the moment, at sight of those cylinders, Marlin and I came near to throwing ourselves toward them regardless of the three, but that we knew would be suicide, so despite our torturing agony of soul we waited there in the doorway, gazing desperately toward the cylinders. And in a moment, as we sought in vain for some way to get to the nearest of those cylinders, there came a final staccato order from one of the three Neptunians and at that order the other two turned and passed through a door in the landing-compartment's side opposite from us. It was our chance, the chance for which we had hardly dared to hope even, and no sooner had the two Neptunians disappeared through the opposite door, the other standing with his eyes following them for the moment, than Marlin and I had crept out a little bit into the landing-compartment and then with a great simultaneous leap had shot through the air toward that remaining Neptunian!