And down—down—down—like striking, rushing meteors our hundreds of space-fliers shot, to one side of the giant beam, down with the great domed forts beneath swiftly flashing over Triton's roof to mass beneath us at the pit's side. Through the little window-openings in those forts we saw the disk-bodied Neptunians inside, and knew that beneath the great roof of Triton also were swarming the millions upon countless millions of all the Neptunian races, all the disk-bodied monsters in their great compartment-city, who, with this great ray, were turning our sun faster and faster to divide in a score more days and doom the solar system! And with a desperation born of that thought we shot down once more, down with the hell of rays from the great domed forts again raging up around us and taking toll of our fliers as we shot over them, curving back upward once more, and stabbing again toward the control-boxes in the pit's wall our weapon-rays as we reached that curve's lowest point! But this time, though the great forts took toll again of scores of our fliers as we shot down over them and up again, over the pit and up again, our rays were so imperfectly aimed, that no control-box was destroyed this time!
Upward we swirled and then again, with a persistence more insensate than human, were racing downward again in a terrific swoop over the pit of the great ray! Again the deadly rays of the surrounding hundred domed forts crashed through our down-swooping fliers, sending masses of them again into whirling wreckage, while as we swooped down over the pit and upward again in that lightning-like rush through death we saw that our rays had missed once more and that none of the control-boxes had this time been destroyed by them! And as we reeled upward again over the great pit, from over the giant domed forts, we saw that but a few more than five hundred space-fliers remained to us of the thousand and more with which we had first flashed downward! In three downward swoops only, in three lightning-like moments of attack, the giant invulnerable forts beneath had annihilated more than half our force, and we had succeeded in destroying but a single one of the twenty control-boxes!
"The end!" cried Whitely. "The end of our chance to halt the great sun-ray!"
"The end of our great fight through the solar system—the end of Earth's and the solar system's last chance!"
For it was the end! Even as we cried out thus we knew it, beyond shadow of doubt, as the shattered mass of our remaining space-fliers reeled high above Triton's roof, high above the great pit of the ray and the colossal moving domed forts that guarded it! Marlin—Whitely—Randall—they were swaying in that moment, the knowledge of doom plain upon their faces as upon mine! Another great swoop downward and those giant, almost invulnerable moving forts would blast us entirely from the air with their storms of rays! All of the nineteen remaining controls below must be destroyed to halt the mighty sun-ray, and before we could destroy even one of them, we would be annihilated! The giant ray beside us would turn the sun on ever faster, turn it on until in a score more days the sun would divide at last into a double star and engulf its planets in its diverging fires—all save Neptune! And as we came thus to the end at last of our superhuman struggle to halt the solar system's doom there was coming up to us from beneath the great roof of Triton a vast, rolling muffled shouting of triumphant Neptunians, of all the Neptunian hordes upon Triton who saw as we did that for us the end had come!
"But if it's the end, we'll meet it trying!" Randall cried. "One more swoop downward—we can die that way at least——!"
But from Marlin, who stood with crimson face and blazing eyes, there came a mad shout. "The end—no!" he cried. "There's still a chance for us—to halt the other ray—the ray on Triton's outward side!"
The other ray! The other giant force-ray that went from Triton's outward side, its dark side, into the gulf of interstellar space toward that far star in Sagittarius, the other mighty ray that braced Triton against the great sun-ray's pressure and that kept that sun-ray's pressure from hurling Triton out into the great interstellar void! The other ray—and if it were halted—then Triton—I felt my mind reeling as the stupendous meaning of Marlin's mad shout came home to it! The other ray—guarded by only a half-score of the giant moving domed forts, instead of the hundred beneath us—and then Marlin's voice was tearing across the throbbing, rushing din to my ears and instinctively I had obeyed his order, had shot our space-flier forward at immense speed even as there rushed forward beside us our five hundred and more remaining fliers! I whirled it away from the great pit of the giant sun-ray and over Triton's roof at lightning speed toward its dark side, toward the other giant ray that reached out into interstellar space from that dark side!
And as we rushed thus away with reeling speed, we heard the mighty thundering cheers of the Neptunian millions beneath the great roof changing to wild cries of alarm, saw the hundred great domed forts around the sun-ray moving over Triton's roof after us with immense speed, themselves, gliding at utmost velocity on around that roof's smooth surface after us in sudden wild alarm! But, more slow by a little than our massed space-fliers that split the air above Triton they dropped behind us even as we shot forward, even as that colossal roar of rising alarm rolled across Triton's surface beneath the great roof! On—on—like rushing meteors massed close together our space-fliers flashed now, toward Triton's dark side around its surface, and then were whirling around that dark side, were whirling straight toward the colossal other beam, the giant other force-ray that stabbed out opposite from the sun-ray, that stabbed out toward Sagittarius' bright star and by its pressure towards that star kept Triton braced against the sun-ray's outward pressure! Marlin was shouting, screaming an order as we flashed downward, and we caught sight for a moment of the half-score domed forts, left as guards of this other ray's great pit and controls, and then like comets of metal our fliers were thundering down upon them!