Slender beams sprang quick to meet us from those ten great domed forts, but though those beams drove crashingly upward upon us in narrow rays of death, it was not toward the domed forts that we were rushing, but toward the twenty control-boxes set in the wall of the giant pit from which this other mighty ray issued! Through the wildly-whirling beams that sliced the air about us we flashed downward, and then as the pit's walls loomed close ahead, as beside us, almost thundered into by us, loomed the pale, gigantic beam, we saw the out-jutting control-boxes full before us, set around the pit's great wall, and the beams of our massed space-fliers were driving thick toward them! Crash!—crash!—crash!—and we were shouting crazily as we saw half the twenty control-boxes smashing inward, annihilated by our first wild rush! And then as we spun around there in the pit, around the giant beam to annihilate the other control-boxes, the rays of the ten domed forts sweeping insanely about us, Whitely cried out hoarsely and pointed away across Triton's metal roof-surface toward the hundred mighty shapes of the great domed forts rushing to the defense of this other ray, rushing to annihilate us!
"The control-boxes!" Marlin cried. "The last control-boxes!"
And even as he cried that, even as with their utmost immense speed the hundred colossal domed forts of metal rushed over Triton's metal roof to join with the outnumbered half-score beside us, to annihilate us with one combined mighty blast of their countless rays, our massed space-fliers had whirled around the great pit, around the mighty ray, and were driving toward the remaining control-boxes in its wall with all their weapon-rays stabbing ahead! Crash!—crash!—and those remaining control-boxes were crumpling, crashing, beneath our rays, with but a single control-box in the wall remaining intact in the next instant, a single one that sufficed still to keep the giant ray beside us going upward, outward, though! And even as we gathered, whirled to rush upon it also, the colossal rushing domed forts had appeared at the pit's edge around and above us, seeming to pause for a split-second before their combined countless rays came down to annihilate us! But in that instant, when the giant domed forts paused above us, Randall had whirled back the ray-switches in his hands, and from our space-flier and from a score more around us in the same instant there had flashed toward that last control-box a converging score or more of driving rays that instantly had crashed through and had annihilated that last control! And as that last control-box of all the giant ray's twenty was thus destroyed, there came what seemed a blinding flash of light at the great ray-mechanism far in the mighty pit beneath us, and then the giant pale force-ray that radiated upward and outward from that mechanism had abruptly snapped out beside us!
There was a pause, a silence of a single instant, a pause in which all the universe about us seemed holding its breath, in which our rushing space-fliers were whirling up out of the great pit, in which the giant domed forts at the great pit's edge beneath us seemed held in an enchantment of stupefaction. And then as our massed space-fliers whirled thus upward over Triton's surface, as Marlin and Randall and Whitely stared downward, swaying, we saw the great metal-roofed world of Triton reeling beneath us as though from some colossal shock, saw it rushing outward from beneath us with colossal, unthinkable speed! Saw it rushing out with velocity inconceivable away from the sun, away from Neptune, away from the solar system, rushing out into the vast void of interstellar space, hurled into the void with all the countless millions of the Neptunians upon it, hurled into the void out from the solar system never to return!
Hurled into the void, we four knew even as we watched it whirl away from beneath us, by the pressure of its own colossal sun-ray, that continued to emanate from it! For that giant ray which the Neptunians had directed toward the sun had pushed back upon Triton with pressure inconceivable, even as we had known, and it had been only the other ray radiating out toward Sagittarius' distant star that had braced Triton thus against the sun-ray's unthinkable outward pressure! And with our halting of that immense other ray, with our halting of that bracing ray, the moment that saw its connection of bracing force or pressure broken between Triton and that distant star saw Triton hurled out instantly by the pressure of its own giant sun-ray against the sun, that awful outward pressure breaking the moon-world loose instantly from the hold of great Neptune, its parent planet, from all the solar system, hurling it out from the solar system's edge into the boundless outer void forever!
Marlin—Whitely—Randall—myself—as we reeled there at the window watching, as our space-fliers whirled up and outward from Triton even as it shot outward from beneath us, we saw its gleaming sphere swiftly diminishing as it hurtled out in the great void, saw that it was spinning as it shot outward from the impetus of that gigantic push, that the great sun-ray issuing from it was whirling with its spinning now! And then as its gleaming sphere shot out into the void away from us, away from great Neptune behind us, away from the solar system's edge, shooting out into the cold and sunless outer void and bearing upon it all the Neptunian hordes to death, Marlin flung out his hand toward its diminishing gleaming little sphere in the black void before us, was crying out to it as though to the Neptunian millions upon it as it shot out, never to return.
"You of Neptune or we of Earth!" he cried. "One had to go to death—to doom! You fought for Neptune and your races as we fought for Earth and the solar system—but Earth and the solar system win!"
CHAPTER XVI
Space-Rovers