"But how—?" he began. Shouting in his ear, I explained to him the desperate inspiration that had come to me. I saw his eyes and those of Marlin and Whitely widen as they heard, and then he nodded grimly, clutched the control-switches tighter.
And now about us was sounding again the roar of air as we shot through Neptune's atmosphere, shot above the surface of the huge planet with the cylinders rushing still at equal speed behind us, their deadly rays stabbing this way and that in slicing sweeps toward us. Through the cloudy mists of Neptune's upper atmosphere we flashed, straight onward, with the dark metal surface of the giant world's vast roof clear now to our eyes far beneath. And as we shot over it I saw Randall's grip tighten on the control-switches, saw him glance back toward the pursuing cylinders, behind and a little beneath us, and then abruptly he had flung open the switch of the great force-ray that was driving us on, our rear-ray! Instantly the speed of the space-flier slowed, and in a split-second the onrushing cylinders, racing on unslowing in that moment, were hurtling past beneath us. And as they did so, another switch had clicked under Randall's hands and straight down upon those cylinders from the space-flier's bottom was driving down another mighty force-ray!
In the next instant we had a glimpse of those massed cylinders that had been rushing thus beneath us driven down by the power of our great force-ray with inconceivable speed and force, driven down in a whirling, confused mass toward the vast metal roof of great Neptune below! And as our great ray, traveling across their mass, drove them thus downward with colossal power, we saw a moment later the cylinders of that mass crashing downward against that roof, shattering into crumpled, wrecked masses of metal upon the mighty structure, annihilated with all inside them on that roof as our great ray drove them down against it! Half at least of that mass of cylinders perished thus in the first crash downward and before the rest could gather again to whirl up to the attack, our great ray was playing upon them also, crashing them down upon the great roof of death, until in only a moment more but a half-dozen of the cylinders remained intact! And these, as their fellows crashed to death beneath us, were gathering and speeding away from this death that smote from above, were going back toward the dull-gleaming disk of Triton!
Marlin and Whitely and Randall and I were all crying out in that moment as the surviving cylinders flashed away in flight, and then Marlin and I had turned toward our two friends. "Whitely—Randall—!" Marlin was saying. "You escaped those Neptunians that first discovered us, then? We saw the fragments of wreckage your pursuers brought back, and Hunt and I never dreamed you might still live!"
"It was a trick that enabled us to escape," Whitely explained. "When they discovered us there beneath Neptune's roof—chased us up through that roof and up into the great cloud-belts, I saw that we could not long escape those pursuing cylinders. So, while Randall drove the flier through the mists and while they searched in those mists for us, I battered and broke with blows of a large tool some of the spare plates and instruments we carried. Then, as they came closer to us, their force-rays slicing through the mists in search of us, I cast those fragments loose from the flier, and when they struck against the pursuing cylinders in the mists, when those cylinders saw the wrecked fragments, they had no doubt but that their force-rays had struck us somewhere in the cloud-layer and annihilated us. We lay in the shrouding mists until we saw them returning toward Neptune's surface. We realized then that you two had been captured by whatever manner of creatures these Neptunians were, and saw the cylinders, with you in one of them, going down beneath Triton's roof. For days, therefore, Randall and I waited around Triton's surface, hoping against hope to get down inside in some way and find you, and had almost given up hope, when we saw the cylinder you had stolen racing up from Triton, and were able to save it and you from the pursuing cylinders."
"But you, Marlin—Hunt—" Whitely continued. "You have learned how and why these Neptunians are sending forth the great ray that is turning the sun faster? We saw that ray and another great ray on opposite sides of Triton—Is it not possible that we alone might be able to halt that ray?"
Marlin solemnly shook his head. "No chance, Whitely, for us," he said. "Perhaps no chance even for all the forces of Earth!" And quickly he told, while Whitely and Randall listened enthralled, of the captivity of us two in Triton's strange and swarming world; of the gigantic tale of Neptune's past and the purpose of its peoples, as it had been told us by the great globe of the Council of Thirty; of our desperate escape and flight across the dark side of Triton and our wild crashing upward through the roof and out from Triton. "We alone," Marlin concluded, "can never halt either of those great rays, for each has countless cylinders and Neptunians within to guard it, and each has twenty control-boxes of which one alone can keep it operating. No, our one chance is to get back to Earth, to gather there the great fleet of space-fliers which the World President and the World Congress planned to build in our absence, and to come out in that great fleet with the most powerful weapons available and endeavor to crush these strange Neptunians, to halt that great ray of doom that is turning the sun ever faster! For unless we can do that, unless we can bring Earth's fleet of space-fliers out here and halt the great sun-ray, that ray will in sixty days more have finished its work, will have split the sun and loosed doom upon all its planets except Neptune! And so it is back to Earth that we must race now at our utmost speed!"
Marlin's solemn voice ceased, and there was silence for a moment in the space-flier, we four gazing toward each other without speaking. By then the flier, with the tremendous impetus of its flight still driving it forward, had swept on and out over great Neptune now, out of the giant world's cloudy atmosphere and into empty space beyond it. And, with Neptune's giant globe filling the firmament behind us, Randall snapped on again our rear force-ray, sent that ray radiating back toward the vast disk of Neptune itself. And then again we were forced deep in our chairs as the flier's tremendous speed accelerated once more, the flier hurtling with greater and greater velocity through the gulf of space toward the far little disk of fire that was the sun, far ahead. For it was toward it, toward our Earth, that we were going from Neptune, from the solar system's edge, to carry back word to Earth of the nature of the doom that hung above it and to gather Earth's forces to forestall that doom!
CHAPTER XIII