"We're heading with the Neptunian fleet in to Saturn!" he was shouting. "What this battle will mean in those rings and moons——!"
"We'll keep straight with them!" Marlin cried. "They are trying to escape from us in Saturn's rings and moons, and get back to Neptune to rejoin the main Neptunian body!"
So that now as fleet and fleet rushed forward I held our own flier at our own fleet's head, racing forward with the vast whirling system of Saturn's rings and moons stretching dangerously before us. Full before us was looming greater each instant the spinning dark globe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and now as our two fleets rushed side by side toward it at terrific speed, stabbing still at each other from space-flier to cylinder with the concentrated weapon-rays, it seemed that inevitably in the next moment we must crash against the big moon! Seeing this, though, Marlin shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before him, and instantly in answer to it our great fleet's mass bore sidewise against the racing mass of the Neptunian cylinders! For an instant it seemed that the two fleets were merging into each other, space-flier crashing into cylinder and slender rays coming thick, and then the smaller Neptunian fleet had given way beneath the pressure of ours, had veered sidewise so that in the following moment the two fleets were rushing past Titan's whirling sphere!
And now we were inside Titan's orbit, and as we whirled farther in just across the path of another and smaller whirling moon, I saw that Saturn's colossal rings lay edge-on close before our racing masses of craft, gigantic spinning rings of mighty meteor-masses, countless great meteor-swarms whirling there about the vast yellow planet whose sphere now was stupendous in the heavens before us. In another few moments Neptunian cylinders and space-fliers of Earth would have rushed alike into those thundering swarms of meteors, in which no craft could live for a moment. Already chance meteors were whirling through space about us as we shot on, cylinder or space-flier here and there in the two racing, grappling fleets vanishing in white-hot flashes of heat and fire as a meteor struck them. But other and more cylinders and space-fliers were vanishing in wreckage beneath the cleaving rays from either fleet, and both were racing on so intent upon our terrific struggle as to notice hardly at all the vast whirling rings before us! I heard Whitely utter a hoarse cry to Marlin as we flashed forward, heard Marlin swiftly utter an order in the mouthpiece before him, and then our fleet, and the Neptunian cylinders at almost the same instant, had shot diagonally upward and instead of crashing into the great rings' edge were slanting swiftly up over them!
And now, as Neptunians and Earth fliers drove together up over Saturn's colossal rings, the intensity of the struggle seemed to deepen to a fierceness as yet unknown. For the moment it was sheer blind battle without need of reason or command, sheer awful combat there in space above Saturn's whirling rings, with beside us the vast cloud-screened yellow sphere of Saturn itself looming gigantic, and with outside the great rings its whirling maze of moons! Cylinders and space-fliers grappled in that moment with mindless fury, and with a swiftness and skill of which I had not dreamed myself capable, I whirled our space-flier this way and that amid the swarming, boiling ruck of the giant battle, amid the grappling hordes of space-fliers and cylinders that filled the air before us, their cleaving concentrated rays slicing this way and that in swift circles of death about us! I heard Whitely laughing a little from excitement beside me as the battle reached this terrific pitch, saw Randall sending our own weapon-rays this way and that with lightning-swiftness, Marlin gazing out tensely into that hell of battle that filled space about us. Struggling there above Saturn's colossal rings, ever and again Neptunian cylinder or space-flier of Earth shot too low and was caught by the whirling meteor-swarms of those giant rings, annihilated instantly by them! Hundreds of cylinders and space-fliers had gone to death already, but so far the battle had been almost even despite our greater force, and seeing this Marlin cried quickly into the order-mouthpiece before him.
Instantly our whirling space-fliers shot back suddenly from the wild ruck of the battle, formed instantly into a long double column of fliers with our own flier at the head, and then before the surprised Neptunians could reform their own spread-out and disorganized mass, our compact column had leaped forward and had crashed through their formless mass with a great shock, fliers and cylinders perishing in scores in that reeling crash! And then our double column had divided, pushing out to either side and thus splitting and separating the Neptunian mass of cylinders, and thus separated and inferior to us in numbers we were in the next moment leaping upon them there above Saturn's rings and sending their cylinders into wrecked fragments by the hundreds with our whirling rays! Fiercely their own rays came back upon us, as they faced us, and then they seemed to waver, to hesitate. And before we could sense their intention their remaining cylinders, depleted by scores each moment now and numbering no more than fifteen hundred, had dropped downward almost to the giant whirling rings, had formed into a swift massed formation there, and then with all the power of their propulsion-rays were speeding away, away from Saturn, out through the void toward the calm green distant spot of light that was Neptune!
"They're fleeing!" I cried, as our own space-flier whirled around in that moment. "We've beaten these, at least—they're fleeing back to Neptune!"
"Regular formation—all squadrons!" Marlin was shouting into the mouthpiece before him. "Full speed out from Saturn—after the Neptunians!"
And as our space-fliers, still over four thousand in number despite the losses of that wild combat, massed swiftly together in their V-formation and then were hurtling out from Saturn through the gulf after the fleeing cylinders, I was crying to him over the sudden waxing throb of our generators: "There's far more Neptunian cylinders than these that waited for us at Saturn here—the rest must be waiting at Neptune itself!"