Before us Earth and its little moon gleamed brilliant in the blackness of space when our five hundred space-fliers shot in toward them once again, days later. Again we four held our familiar positions in the four control-chairs of our space-flier, and again Marlin and Randall and Whitely were gazing forth with me as at the head of those massed space-fliers we moved in with slowing speed. It had been for a score of days that we had reeled back through the solar system from Neptune, from its edge, had reeled back from the border line of that vast void of space, in which Triton long days before had become invisible, hurtling out into that void forever. Past perilous Saturn, and past mighty Jupiter, and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt and past red Mars once more we had sped, within us only a strange sick desire for Earth once more; that Earth which we knew, would be shaken even now with unimaginable rejoicings as its peoples saw the acceleration of the sun's spin that had menaced all our universe halted at last with the hurling forth of Triton days before. And now, as we sped in at last toward Earth, it was in mutual silence that we gazed ahead.
Once again the outlines of Earth's great continents were coming clear to our eyes as we shot nearer, and once again, now, we were heading toward that side of it that lay in shade, in night, toward the North American continent, to hover out from it, over it, and then to drop down toward it, down through the darkness of Earth's night toward New York. Again beneath us Earth's surface was widening to a vast dark plain as we sank down toward it, and then again through the darkness we had seen, beneath us, the gleaming lights of New York, and were sinking lower toward them. Down—down—until New York stretched beneath us but one colossal bed of brilliance, one vast mass of blazing lights above which there flashed to and fro the innumerable brilliantly-lit aircraft like countless shuttles of light, the giant World Government Building and all the colossal buildings that stretched far away around it burning with unequalled brilliance, and their roofs and the ways between them thronged once more with crowds, such crowds as never yet had the mighty city seen.
A strange dumbness held us, as we sank slowly downward with our massed space-fliers. Then, as a great whirling light-beam from beneath caught our fliers' descending mass, held us in its glare, other beams were swinging toward us, holding us bathed in a white flood of light as we sank downward. And as we were discovered thus to the vast thronged city beneath, the swarming aircraft above it abruptly shot downward from about us, while the great roaring voice of the city's crowds abruptly ceased as the city saw us. Down through a great silence, the most tense and utter silence surely ever to reign in the mighty city beneath, we dropped, our fliers separating and falling smoothly over the crowds, over the seas of white, upturned faces, falling through that hushed silence toward the roofs of the great buildings beneath, our own toward the roof of the great World Government building.
As we shot downward we saw that upon that roof waited now for us a massed and silent crowd, as in the streets below, that had given back to the roof's edges to make way for our own space-flier and those with us to descend. Smoothly I lessened the power of our lower ray, and smoothly we sank downward through the brilliant lights above that roof, until at last our own and the fliers about us had come gently to rest upon it, the throb of our generators ceasing. Then, with the same dense silence reigning outside, Marlin slowly was opening our space-flier's doors, and with Whitely and Randall and me behind him was stepping forth upon the great roof's surface, into the white brilliance of its lights. Hesitatingly, weariedly, with the men of our other fliers gathered now about us, we looked around. Beside us there stood, and around us, the massed members of the World Congress, with the World President with them. Over these silent figures we looked, a little dazedly, and out over the superhumanly brilliant, superhumanly silent city that stretched about us, and then up toward the great constellations as though in reassurance. For they stretched above us as before, as always, Capricorn and Sagittarius and Scorpio and the rest, with Jupiter and Saturn and Mars shining there, and with great Neptune, invisible here to our eyes, and farther still than Neptune its moon-world of Triton hurtling on toward those distant stars. Dazedly, slowly, we looked, up and around us, while still around us that hushed, thick silence held, and then saw that the World President was coming toward us.
Across the roof he came toward us from those silent crowds about us, his hands outstretched, his voice unsteady.
"Marlin—Randall—Hunt—Whitely!" he said. And then—"You have come back once more—back to the Earth that you and your forces have saved."
"We have come back," said Marlin, his voice low, strange. "Have come back with what remains of those forces."
And then, while the World President and the World Congress stood silent before us, beneath the brilliant lights, Marlin was speaking slowly to them, was speaking in short, halting words of our flight outward, our escape from the great ambush at Saturn, our wild pursuit onward to Neptune and the colossal battle that had ended there with our halting of the other ray, with our hurling of Triton and all the Neptunians on it out into the void forever. In a hushed, strained silence the crowd before us was listening, and as the speech-apparatus beside us took Marlin's slow words out to all the crowds in all the vast city about us, and beyond, they, too, were listening in that same tense stillness. Then, when he had finished, that stillness continued unbroken for moments.
"Marlin—Whitely—Hunt—Randall—!" he was saying, again. "There is no way in which we can tell, there is no need for us to tell, what gratitude Earth's peoples have now for you and for your men, who saved Earth and all the solar system from a dreadful death."
Marlin slowly shook his head. "That gratitude is not for us alone who came back," he said, "but for those others of us who did not come back—who went to death out there for Earth."