Thus the last preparations had been completed and three days after our arrival at Earth the great fleet of space-fliers had taken its departure, the five thousand faceted polyhedron-like fliers rising as one from the flat roofs of New York's countless gigantic buildings. Once more we had started at night, and it seemed that all of the peoples of Earth had assembled in and around New York that night to speed us farewell. The vast crowds that had watched our single space-flier start out on its first trip weeks before, were as nothing to those vaster crowds that had watched the great fleet leave, since all on Earth knew now what word we had brought back from Neptune and knew that in two-score more days, unless this fleet was successful in its tremendous task, unless it could win through the Neptunian opposition and halt the giant sun-ray, that all on Earth would perish in flaming death.
Thus surely there could have been no tenser moment in Earth's history than that, when, with the World President and the massed members of the World Congress watching again around us, our flagship had risen from the roof of the great World Government building into the night, flashing up and outward once more toward Sagittarius, toward unseen Neptune. And behind us almost instantly there had flashed up in regular timing and formation our five thousand following fliers, racing out and after us with colossal speed like ourselves and flying in that hollow triangle or V-formation behind us. That formation had been adopted so that the rays of the fliers of the fleet, driven back toward Earth to push them on, would not strike against other fliers behind them, as would have been the case had our fleet moved out in a compact mass. And now for forty-eight hours our five thousand space-fliers had been hurtling outward, with our own flagship still at the apex of their formation.
And as we four sat now again in the four control-chairs, two of our mechanic-operators watching over the generators behind us and the other two asleep in their bunks, we had a somewhat different array of controls before us. Before myself were the controls of the flier itself, unchanged, with the six switches that directed its propulsion force-rays from the six openings. Marlin, though, to my right, had before him now as well as his array of astronomical instruments, the black mouthpiece and speaker of the radiophone, as well as a compact array of switch-studs by which he could speak to and hear from the various squadron-leaders in the great fleet behind us. For convenience in giving orders, the five thousand fliers of the fleet had been divided into fifty squadrons of a hundred space-fliers each, and it was to the designated leader of each squadron that Marlin gave his orders, which were then transmitted by that leader to the hundred fliers of his squadron.
Before Randall, too, to my left, were new controls, the controls of the concentrated force-rays which were to be our fleet's weapons even as such rays were the Neptunians' also, and with which our flagship had of course been equipped. Those controls were two thick metal levers of no great size, with hand-grips at their end, one of which controlled by its position the side of the flier from which the concentrated cleaving ray was shot forth, the other controlling the slant or exact direction at which that ray was emitted. With Randall handling these, our weapons, Whitely had before him all the space-flier's remaining controls—those of the generators, air replenishers, the various recording dials that were vital to its operation, and other essential things. So that as our throbbing flier drove on now at the great fleet's head, with Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself gazing to the left toward the nearing crimson shield of Mars, we had each before us some vital part of our great fleet's or our flier's control.
Gazing toward Mars' red disk, Marlin broke the silence. "We'll need no side-rays this time to hold us out from it," he said, and I nodded.
"No, it's far enough from us now, and the speed of our fliers will take them safely past—is taking them past now. But it's the asteroids ahead that I've been thinking of."
Marlin somberly shook his head. "There's no help for it, Hunt," he said. "We'll have to lead the fleet straight through the asteroidal belt and trust to chance that as few of our fliers as possible will be struck."
The following hours, therefore, were perhaps the most tense and terrible that ever we had experienced. For as we shot on past Mars and through the great belt of whirling asteroids, it was not possible for the five thousand space-fliers of our fleet to maneuver to avoid those asteroids. We must hold straight on in our regular formation, we knew, lest all our fliers crash one into the other, so in that formation we went steadily on through that great zone of death. And hardly had we entered it, Marlin and Randall and Whitely gazing forth as intensely as myself, than an expanding dark globe loomed suddenly before us, sweeping past us with terrifying closeness, and then as it shot past there came suddenly in the blackness of space behind us a soundless flash of fiery light, that flared for a moment and faded. The asteroid, we knew, had struck a flier close behind us!
From ahead and from either side still, as we sped on, other asteroids were rushing, following their complicated orbits as our great fleet's open triangle of space-fliers moved through them, and now again and again still behind us came other fiery flashes in quick succession, flashes of flame which each marked the instant destruction of a space-flier and all its occupants! Yet there came no word, no protest, from any of the space-fliers behind us, all were going steadily forward at unaltered speed and in unaltered formation through the great belt of whirling death. And though, within a few hours more than a score of our space-fliers had been annihilated in white-hot and soundless flashes of fire as they were struck by the hurtling asteroids, the rest had escaped unscathed, and Marlin was giving to them the cheering knowledge that we had won through the asteroidal belt and were out of its whirling death.
Thus again Jupiter loomed ahead and to our right, though closer now and greater in apparent size, and again we four were staring toward it in almost as great a wonder as formerly, as its mighty cloud-wrapped disk and attendant four big moons loomed closer. By this time, Marlin had transmitted to all the fliers behind us a brief order, and already from each of them and from our own a side force-ray was shooting toward the gigantic planet to hold us out from its terrific attraction. The V-formation in which our five thousand space-fliers flew was so slightly tilted sidewise as to allow the use of side-rays by all our fliers, and a side-ray of immense power it required indeed to hold each of us out from the mighty monarch of the solar system's planets as we sped past its huge and enigmatic sphere.