Now we were falling a few hundred feet above the roof of the World Government building, on which a little knot of figures awaited us, and as I gazed from it across the other roofs of the great city I uttered a low exclamation. "On the roofs—you see?" I asked. "Those things of metal—those space-fliers——!"
But they too were gazing toward the roofs, toward the innumerable crystal-like metal forms that we could half-recognize on those roofs in the darkness. But a glimpse only we had of them before the space-flier was sinking downward to the great roof itself, and as Marlin saw the knot of figures on that roof he half-turned. "The World President," he said, quietly, "waiting for us on the roof."
That roof's flat expanse was just beneath us, covered itself with other great crystal-like gleaming fliers, but with a clear space at its center where once had stood our space-flier's framework. There was no framework there now, but smoothly I brought the flier down upon that space, down to the roof, poised it a moment a foot above it, and then let it sink to the roof's surface and opened a half-dozen of the switches before me, the throbbing of the generators that had been enduring for so long ceasing and giving way to an unaccustomed silence that was strange to our ears. Then Marlin had turned, was opening the inner door, and in another moment the outer one had swung open also, a flood of cool, clean air rushing in upon us. Marlin leading, we stepped out, stood unsteadily for a moment on the great roof's surface beneath the brilliance of the lights that flared above it.
From beneath and above came still through the night the unceasing roar of the great crowds in the huge city's streets and the hum of its swarming, seething aircraft, and then we saw that the little group of men on the roof beside us were coming toward us, the World President at their head. His strong, keen eyes were steady upon us as he came forward, his hands outstretched, and then he had gripped our own hands, was holding them for a moment in silence. In that moment we were all four swaying a little as we stood there, gazing about us at the far-flung lights of the great city around us, at the men before us, at the strangely-dulled stars overhead, as though never had we seen them before. When the World President spoke, his human-sounding voice seemed strange even to our ears.
"Marlin—Randall—Whitely—Hunt—" he said. "You have come back then from your mission?"
"We've come back—from Neptune," Marlin said simply.
"The World Congress is already gathered—is waiting for you," said the other, as simply, and then with him and the officials about him we were walking toward the stair-opening in the great roof, were walking through ranks of the great looming faceted things of metal that I saw now clearly were replicas each of our own polyhedron-like space-flier!
Down through that opening we went, down stairs after stairs until we were emerging through a high door on the raised platform at the end of the great room in which the World Congress awaited us. Brilliant white light flooded that room and in it, in silent row upon row, were seated the twelve hundred members of the great Congress. As we four entered, with the World President and his officials, there was turned instantly toward us every eye, and a tense hush of utter silence settled in which our own steps seemed loud to our ears. There were no shouts or cheering cries from the Congress' members, in that moment, for all knew that what they were to hear now from us was the word of hope or hopelessness for Earth, the report of our great mission upon which rested Earth's single chance for life. And as I stared across the great, silent Congress in that moment, there flashed upon the screen of my mind, strangely enough, a picture of that other silent, solemn council before which Marlin and I had stood but a few days before, that Council of Thirty of the strange Neptunians whose great synthesizing globe-mechanism had spoken to us. Then, as we stood there, the World President was stepping forward to address the Congress.
"There is no need for me to tell you who are the four men standing here before you," he said. "Marlin—Whitely—Randall—Hunt—these four who went out to Neptune on the Earth's behalf, and whom Earth has tensely awaited now for weeks. I do not know, any more than you, what they found there, what chance for Earth they found or failed to find. And it is that that we, the representatives of the world's peoples, now wait to hear from Marlin, the leader of this great expedition." Utter silence held all present.