He nodded, grim-faced. "The main Neptune fleet is probably waiting there for us—and must outnumber us by almost two to one. But if we can overtake these fifteen hundred cylinders before us we'll keep them, at least, from rejoining their main fleet!"
Now Saturn and its rings and moons was dwindling swiftly behind us as our great fleet shot forward again from it, out toward Neptune's steady, pale-green little light-spot, and after the hundreds of cylinders fleeing before us toward it. With an acceleration that never before had we dared to risk did we leap forward through the void now, and so awful was the pressure of that acceleration upon us that even with our shock-absorbing apparatus we were crushed almost into unconsciousness by it. Steadily, though, with the last of my consciousness and strength, I held the space-flier's speed and course onward, while close behind us there shot after us with the same terrific acceleration, the fliers of our own fleet. We knew, though, that the Neptunians were fleeing toward their great world at a speed and acceleration as great as ours, for we were not gaining upon them. Their massed hundreds of cylinders, indeed, were not visible to us in the great void ahead except by means of our telescope, but with it we could keep them in view and could check their progress and ours out through the great gulf toward the solar system's edge.
Out—out—for hour upon hour we throbbed through the void after those fleeing Neptunian cylinders, out once again toward great Neptune and toward the last mighty battle that was to be ours there. For well we knew that the two thousand and more Neptunian cylinders that had waited for us there at Saturn, that had laid that great ambush in space for us there and then had battled us so fiercely over Saturn, were but a portion of the Neptunian main fleet of cylinders, sent out to delay, and if possible, to destroy us. That great main body of their cylinders, we knew, must number almost double as many craft as our own, and undoubtedly was aware of our coming and was waiting for us at Neptune or near it. And it was the great main body of the Neptunian cylinders that we must overcome, I knew, before ever we could hope to get to Triton and halt there the giant force-ray that was turning the sun on toward the doom of the solar system. And well we knew, too, that in the interval the Neptunians had had time to build many more cylinders, to make their great fleet even greater, and that whatever mighty weapons they had devised in that time we now must face.
So that as our great fleet of space-fliers, holding to its regular formation, flashed on and on and on through the great gulf of space, on out through the outer vast reaches of the solar system toward its outermost planet, our every effort was bent upon overtaking the fleeing Neptunians before us and annihilating them before they could rejoin the main body. At the same colossal speed as ourselves they were fleeing from before us, on toward Neptune's tiny green disk far ahead, and though we held steady in our pursuit after them, we could not lessen the gap between us. Hour passed into hour and day into changeless day thus as we throbbed on in that tremendous pursuit, hours and days that we could not measure, all things seeming timeless now as our great fleet flashed on in this terrific pursuit. At maximum speed, at millions of miles an hour, the Neptunians and ourselves were hurtling on, yet they kept out of reach ahead of us, as Neptune grew larger ahead. And now that mighty pursuit of ours had become so strange and unreal and dream-like that it was as men in a dream that we watched and slept and watched in our space-fliers as Earth's brave fleet shot on through the last reaches of the solar system toward its edge.
Timeless indeed seemed the day on day, the hour on hour, of that daring pursuit of our fleeing enemies out from Saturn toward great Neptune, but now we knew that that pursuit had begun to draw to an end, since Neptune's disk was steadily enlarging before us and we had begun slowly to draw closer to the fleeing cylinders! Closer and closer our fleet, our own foremost space-flier, was coming to those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, and the interval of hours and days of pursuit out from the wild combat at Saturn seemed as though it had not existed, so tense once more we became as we drew nearer to the Neptunians before us. At last, with Neptune's pale-green disk and the bright little spot of Triton above and behind it within hours of us, we had come so close to the fleeing cylinders that their mass, hurtling on in a cone-like formation, was clearly visible to our unaided eyes in the void ahead. And by this time, in every space-flier of our onrushing fleet, its occupants were waiting impatiently for the moment when we would be near enough to loose our concentrated weapon-rays on the fleeing craft ahead.
"We'll overtake them before they reach Neptune!" Marlin declared, gazing intently ahead toward the gleaming points that were the fleeing cylinders far ahead. "Within hours now we'll be up to them!"
"Well enough for us that we can do so, too!" Whitely commented. "For if they rejoined their main body, the odds against us might be overpowering!"
And now as pursuers and pursued rushed nearer and nearer toward mighty Neptune's great pale-green sphere, they were also nearing each other, our onleaping four thousand space-fliers drawing closer and closer toward those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, though they were a great distance from us. Beside me Randall's hands were resting on the weapon-ray controls, and as we came closer still to the fleeing Neptunians, I saw Marlin leaning toward the mouthpiece, preparing to give his order to the great fleet behind us. Closer—closer—we could clearly make out now the massed fleeing cylinders far in the void ahead—already almost within accurate ray-range, a swarm of black dots against Neptune's cloudy green disk ahead. And as we came thus close Marlin leaned to voice his order, to spread the space-fliers of our fleet into a broad firing-formation and send their rays stabbing ahead. But that order was never uttered, for at that moment Whitely uttered a sharp cry, and we saw that the racing mass of cylinders ahead was suddenly slowing!
With unprecedented quickness its speed was decreasing before us and in moments more we would have crashed into those slowing cylinders had not Marlin's voice snapped a quick order that slowed instantly all the fliers of our fleet likewise. Fearful of some trick, slowing thus, we gazed intently ahead in that moment and then all of us had cried out together as we saw, beyond that swarm of black dots that were the slowing fifteen hundred Neptunian cylinders before us, other black dots that showed against great Neptune's disk also, which loomed great now in the heavens ahead! Other black dots, an immense swarm of them, that we knew were other cylinders, an immense fleet of them, rushing out from Neptune toward the fifteen hundred before us and toward ourselves! And then as in moments more the fifteen hundred cylinders before us slowed and stopped in space even as we had slowed, we saw sweeping from behind them, from great Neptune, those other cylinders, forming with them, there in space, a colossal semi-circular mass of fully eight thousand Neptunian cylinders in all, that faced our own four thousand or more space-fliers there in the void! It was the giant assembled Neptunian fleet, gathered here outside their world to face our own fleet, in that great struggle in which Earth and Neptune were to come now at last to death-grips for the life or death of the solar system!