CHAPTER XI

Desperate Chances

As the great globe's voice ceased for a moment, that strange, staccato voice to which for many minutes Marlin and I had listened, I found my brain whirling with the things we had just heard. For a moment I glanced around as though to assure myself of the reality of what was about me, of what had just been told us. The great globe, the thirty silent Neptunians of the Council around it, the other disk-bodied Neptunians who guarded us--these, with the towering black walls and strange twilight about us, only deepened the strange trance of horror in which I had listened. And now the great globe was speaking again.

"Thus it is clear to you how unalterable is the doom that we are loosing upon the sun's other planets, upon your own planet, to save our own. Nothing now can save your world, and the other worlds of the sun, from annihilation, and it is to make that clear to you that we of the Council have told you this much of what we have done. Nothing can save your world from death, yet you two of that world shall escape that death with us Neptunians. For it is evident that your race and you must have considerable scientific knowledge to enable you to imitate our great force-ray and use it to venture out here to Neptune. So that, though lesser than our own great ancient race in science and knowledge, it may well be that you have certain knowledge, which would be new and useful to us. For that reason you have been saved, and have been taught our Neptunian tongue. From now on our scientists will question you, and whatever of new knowledge you are able to give to us, you shall give. You have heard, from us, how hopeless it is to think more of your own doomed world, and you know, of course, how entirely in our power you are. Therefore think well, when you are taken back to your cell, upon what you have learned here, since it is only for the sake of what little our knowledge might gain from you that you two have been preserved from the death."

The great globe was silent, and before we could reply to it, could gather even our whirling thoughts, the Neptunians guarding us had closed about us again, pointing to the door through which we had come. As in a daze Marlin and I were led through that door, the great globe turning and following us with its single vision eye as we went out. I think that neither Marlin nor I came to complete realization of our surroundings until we had been thrust once more into our little cell. For it was only then, staring toward me as though half-unseeingly, that Marlin repeated slowly the great globe-mechanism's last words.

"The death that in days will overtake our world! And the Neptunians are loosing that death on our world and all the sun's other worlds to save their own races!"

"And that is the explanation of all!" I exclaimed. "The great ray that turns the sun faster, the other ray shooting out toward the stars, the dead and deserted surface of Neptune, the crowded surface of Triton--God, Marlin, if we could only get back to Earth with what we know!"

"We _must_ get back!" he cried. "Even if we escaped, we two could not turn off that great sun-ray, could not wreck all its twenty controls. But if we could only get back to Earth and lead back here the fleet of space-fliers that the World President planned to build!"

"It's hopeless, Marlin," I said. "We've thought of a thousand ways of escape in the days that we've been here, and not one has even the wildest chance of success."

Hopeless indeed it seemed to Marlin and me as we sat there silent in the dusky little cell. For the colossal epic of Neptune's past and mighty plan which we had heard there from the Council of Thirty, from their globe-mechanism that centralized their minds, had implanted in us a profound despair. We had found at last the explanation of all this vast enigmatic thing that was wrecking our universe, but had found in that very explanation new depths of hopelessness. Earth was doomed, the solar system as such was doomed! We saw it, now, beyond all doubt, we, who alone of Earth's races knew whence that doom was coming. And I think that neither Marlin nor I, sitting silent there in the dusk of our cell, gave any thought to the terrible fate that hung over us two who had been kept alive, as we now knew, for whatever possible knowledge we might be able to impart to the Neptunians. We forgot our own fate of a living death amid the Neptunians in our agonized contemplation of the great deepening shadow of doom that was darkening the sun and all its universe.

It seemed to me, as we sat there, that it was centuries, rather than weeks, since Marlin had given to Earth his first warning of that doom, his first news of the sun's increased spin. All that we had come through since that time seemed the events of countless years. The great meeting of the World Congress, and its adoption of the plan of Marlin and Whitely; the building of the space-flier and that start by night of Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself in it; our hurtling flight out from Earth on our great mission, past Mars and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt, past mighty Jupiter and on, spinning through the peril that almost annihilated us at Saturn, to our goal, Neptune; our amazement at finding that world roofed and enclosed, the venture of Marlin and myself down into its dead and deserted compartment-city; the attack of the Neptunians, the pursuit and destruction, somewhere out in the mists of Neptune, of our two friends, of Whitely and Randall in the space-flier; and our own capture, our own journey to Triton's swarming, strange world, and our days' imprisonment; and now, at last, this titanic tale of the past and purpose of Neptune's races, which had been told us by the great globe of the Council. It seemed incredible, indeed, that all of these things could have been so compressed into the time of a few-score days as they had been.

Yet they had been, I knew, and knew too that the sixty-odd days that remained to us before the end came, before the sun, spinning ever faster beneath the pressure of the giant ray from Triton, split at last into a double star, that these three-score days would seem centuries on centuries of agonizing torment for us two, who must wait, imprisoned here, for the doom that was closing down upon the solar system to come to its dread climax. And at that thought, at the thought of that helpless inaction that must be ours, a blind unreasoning revolt arose in me as in Marlin, and like him I sprang to my feet, paced the little cell's length with clenched hands. All was unchanged about us, the towering black walls around us, the half-heard staccato voices of the Neptunian guards outside, the dim roar of sound that came to us through the twilight from Triton's swarming sunward side. The very changelessness of the things about us pressed upon my spirits with such suffocating force in that moment, that I was almost on the point of beating blindly against the cell's door, when recalled to myself by the suddenly tense tones of Marlin's voice, beside me.

"Hunt!" he exclaimed. "There _is_ a chance to get out, I think! I've been thinking, and if we can make a great enough effort I think that we can win clear of this cell, at least!"

I shook my head. "It's no use, Marlin," I said. "We've gone over it all a thousand times--there's no way out but through the door, and that never opens but with a half-dozen Neptunian guards standing with ray-tubes outside it."

"But there is another way," he persisted. "Out the cell's top, Hunt, out the roofless top!"

"We tried it," I told him, "and it was useless. Even with the lesser gravitation here on Triton, even without these weights on our feet, we could only jump a score or more feet straight upward, and the walls are two hundred feet high and utterly smooth and vertical."

"But one way we didn't try," he insisted, and as I listened with dull lack of interest, he went on to outline to me his idea. And as I listened, my indifference suddenly vanished, for I saw that Marlin's keen, inventive brain had really found a plan that would give us a chance of escape. "It's our one hope," he finished, "and if we can use it to get out of this cell, we'll have a chance to steal one of these cylinders of the Neptunians and get back to Earth in it in time!"

"We'll try it at once, then," I said, excited now at this faint gleam of hope. "For the changing-hour for the Neptunians on the dark and sunward sides comes soon, and we don't know how soon those Neptunian scientists, who are to question us, will be coming here."

* * * * *

We prepared for the attempt at once. Our first and main preparation was to unbind once more from our feet the little and great-weighted disks of metal, which increased our weight against Triton's lesser gravitation to its normal Earth-figure. With those disks removed, our lightest step sent us a few feet into the air, so greatly were the results of our muscular efforts increased. Then, since with my somewhat greater strength I was to be the first to try Marlin's plan, I stepped, or rather floated, toward the compartment-cell's side with a single step, crouching down there with my body braced against the wall behind me. From that position the square little opening of the cell, two hundred feet above, seemed infinitely distant, yet I did not despair, drawing a long breath and then with all the force of my muscles leaping obliquely upward. Upward and slantwise thus I went with the force of that leap for more than a score of feet, toward the opposite wall that much higher from the floor, seeming to float smoothly up--so much slower than on Earth was my progress through the air.

And as I shot smoothly toward the opposite wall I was twisting myself in mid-air, so that when I struck that wall, more than a score of feet above the floor, it was my feet that struck it. And as they struck it, bent with my impact against the wall, I abruptly straightened them again, shot suddenly away from that wall again on an upward slant again toward the other wall. Again, as I floated upward, I was twisting in mid-air to strike that wall feet-foremost, and again as I struck it I was kicking against it with my legs, so that hardly had I touched it than I was shooting back across the cell again toward the opposite wall, but again on an upward slant, gaining a score of feet on each strange leap I made thus across the cell! Thus, in zig-zag leaps from wall to wall, I was progressing up the narrow cell toward its roofless top far above! It was just the same as when on Earth a man in a wide chimney can work himself up from bottom to top of it by bracing himself now against one wall and now against another. And the fact that the cell was much wider, could only be touched one wall at a time, was counterbalanced by the fact of Triton's far lesser gravitational power, which alone was making it possible for me to continue my strange progress upward!

On Triton alone, indeed, or on a world of similar size and gravitational power, was such a feat possible, for only thus could one leap with such new impetus each time from wall to wall, and twist in mid-air to strike braced for another leap. And as I leapt up in that criss-cross fashion from wall to wall, my heart beating rapidly, putting all my strength into each great leap, I could see Marlin on the cell's floor below gazing up tensely through the dusk, knew what depended upon our escape, and so struggled upward with a superhuman strength. Up--up--back and across--across and back--in leap after slanting leap upward I progressed, until with a half-dozen more leaps the cell's open top lay close above me. By then, though, the energy which I had summoned for this superhuman feat seemed fast waning, and as I shot from wall to wall I realized that I was gaining less and less toward the top with each leap!

Another leap--another--and as I shot back across the cell's width from wall to wall I was aware of the wall's top but a few yards above me, yet felt at the same time the exhaustion that had gained upon me, now almost near to overcoming me. Another leap--with agonized muscles I propelled myself back to the opposite wall, with the top of that wall but a few feet above me. One more up-slanting leap would take me back up and across to the opposite wall's top, I knew, but in that tortured moment I felt that I could never make it, and knew that if I missed it I must inevitably fall downward. So, as I struck that wall feet-foremost, I put the last of my strength into a great effort and shot floatingly across the cell's width for the last time. And this time, with hands outstretched, I struck the top edge of that opposite wall, fumbled with it for an agonizing moment, and then had grasped it and had drawn myself up on the thick wall's top!

For a moment I lay across its top, oblivious to all else in the exhaustion that possessed me, inhaling and exhaling great panting breaths. Then as I drew myself up a little I peered about me. Far away on all sides of me stretched the walls of the compartment-city that covered all of Triton, those walls' tops intersecting like a great checkerboard, and all level with the thick wall's top on which I lay. Twilight lay over a broad band of that compartment-city about me, the twilight band between the dark and sunward sides, the brighter day of the sunward side stretching away to one side, humming with activity and with many cylinders moving to and fro above it, while to the other side stretched the silent, sleeping dark side, beneath its unchanging night. Now I gazed down through the dusk toward the cell's floor far beneath, and saw Marlin gazing up toward me anxiously, gestured silently to him. And in a moment more he was coming up toward me by the same great zig-zag leaps from wall to wall that I had used.

In anxious suspense I watched him as he came gradually up toward me, shooting from side to side of the cell in upward-slanting leaps that brought him each many feet upward. Gradually, though, I saw that the force of his leaps was lessening, his upward progress slowing, as he, too, began to feel the waning of his strength. I knew that, older than myself as he was, those leaps were telling against Marlin even more than they had done against me, and in utmost suspense I watched as he came more and more slowly toward me. At last he was but a score or more feet beneath, his face tense and strained as he shot from wall to wall, gaining now but a few feet each leap. With clenched fingers I watched him, powerless to help, saw him by a last gathering of his strength making another up-slanting leap and another and another, until but one more was needed to reach up to the wall on which I crouched. And even as Marlin made that last leap, even as he shot across the cell's width and up toward the wall on which I crouched, I realized with a thrill of horror that he had leaped short!

In that moment, as Marlin shot across the cell's width toward me with hands outstretched, I saw his white, strained face and knew that even as I did he realized the shortness of the leap that he had made with his last strength, realized that his outstretched hands would miss the wall's top by feet. That moment in which he shot across the cell, as his own hands struck the smooth wall of length, yet as he shot toward me it was more by instinct than by conscious thought that I acted. Swiftly hooking my knees over the wall's top upon which I crouched, I hung with head and body downward into the cell, reached downward with hands open, and as Marlin shot across the cell, as his own hands struck the smooth wall of it many feet below the top, I reached and grasped them tightly. A moment thus we hung there, he held by my own down-swinging body, and then holding his own hand by one of mine I reached upward with the other, drew myself slowly and with an infinite effort upward. In another moment I had drawn myself and Marlin on to the wall's top, and there crouched with him again in a silence of exhaustion for the moment. Only his and my own lessened weight, on Triton, had made it possible for me thus to save him.

[Illustration: _I hung with head and body downward into the cell ... and as Marlin shot across the cell ... I reached to grasp him._]

For but a moment we crouched there, then raised ourselves and looked quickly around us. Cylinders were moving to and fro from time to time over the compartments of the twilight band, from the sunward side, and we knew that if we remained upon the wall's top long we would inevitably be discovered. We must descend into one of the compartments as swiftly as possible. But into which one? In an endeavor to solve the question, we began to crawl quietly along the top of the wall, gazing down upon its other side as we did so. The compartment on that other side was a cell like our own, and it was empty; but its only egress was into the hall between the cell-rows, and that was guarded by the Neptunian armed guards. To descend into it or into any of the other compartment-cells was useless, so along the wall's top we crawled, through the dusk, until in a moment or so more we found ourselves looking down into one of the irregular-shaped ante-rooms to the great circular compartment of the Council of Thirty.

* * * * *

In the ante-room compartment stood the usual files of Neptunian guards, and as we saw them, far beneath us, we heard a sharp staccato order from one of them, saw them standing aside from the entrance to the great circular Council compartment. Then, as we watched, we saw emerging from that circular compartment in a moment more, thirty Neptunians, the supreme Council of Thirty before which we had been so short a time before! They were conversing now in their staccato speech, no longer held silent by the synthesizing of their minds in the great globe-mechanism, and as we watched them from far above, we saw them, surrounded now by the files of guards, passing across the ante-room compartment and through a door in it, toward the sunward side of Triton. When they had gone, the ante-room compartment empty beneath us, Marlin pointed downward.

"Down here, Hunt!" he whispered. "If we stay longer on the wall-tops we'll be seen by some cylinder passing above, and if we get down into this compartment, we can make our way to the dark side!"

"You're going to try to steal a cylinder on the dark side?" I asked, and he nodded.

"Yes, in the darkness there, where the Neptunians are sleeping, we'll have a chance to get at one. But we must hurry, for there's little time left before the great signal comes for those on dark and sunward sides to change places!"

So, spurred on by that necessity, we swung ourselves over the wall's edge and then dropped down through the dusk two hundred feet toward the ante-room compartment's floor. Yet that great drop was to us not more than a drop of a tenth that distance on Earth, so slowly did we float down toward the floor, breaking our fall a little by scraping along the smooth wall. We struck the floor, tumbled in a heap there, and then straightened, gazed about. The ante-room was quite empty and in it were but three of the broad low doors. One led back to the cell-compartments from which we had escaped, another led to the sunward side. Through that had just passed the Council of Thirty and their guards. The other led into the great circular Council compartment itself. The last, it was clear, was the only one that held out to us any prospect of reaching the dark side, so we passed through it quickly and into the great Council compartment, moving now in great floating leaps each step.

The great circular compartment was as empty of life as the one which we had just left, the twilight dusk in it dispelled somewhat by the soft-glowing disks in its walls. The great ring-table in it had in the seats around it no Neptunians of the Council now, but at that table's center stood still the great metal globe whose strange mechanism made of the thirty minds of the Council members a single mind, in perception and action. Knowing even as we did that it was but a lifeless mechanism now, without the Council's members connected to it, it was yet with some awe that we stared toward that great mechanism, to whose voice we had listened so short a time before. Much would I have given to have examined it, to have inspected whatever strange mechanism lay within the globe, but time now was our enemy. Soon the signal would come that would send the millions of Neptunians on dark and sunward sides streaming across Triton to change their sides. And unless we could steal one of the cylinders and escape before that signal came, we would inevitably be discovered.

So, sparing only a glance toward the great silent globe, Marlin and I moved silently across the great Council compartment, toward one of the low doors in it that led apparently toward the dark side of Triton, to our right. Cautiously we passed through that door, finding ourselves in another ante-room compartment, as empty now as the one through which we had already come. Swiftly we moved across it, in the great floating leaps that each step of ours made now, toward the door in it that led in the direction of the dark side. But even as we moved toward that door, as we stooped to pass through it, Marlin and I shrank suddenly back, appalled. For as we bent toward that door, the sound of staccato voices had come to us from just ahead, and we had seen in that moment that there were Neptunians in the next compartment, several armed with ray-tubes, who were coming straight toward that door, straight toward us!

A moment we glanced wildly about through the dusky compartment as they came toward us, then we had leaped aside from the door, had reached one of the compartment's corners, leaping more than a score of feet toward that corner and crouching there in the dusk, even as the dozen Neptunians came through the door! It was our one chance of escaping them, the chance that they might not perceive us in the compartment's corner through the twilight dusk that reigned in it. But I knew that so keen were their great bulging multiple eyes that it was against hope that I hoped. The Neptunians who had come into the compartment, however, seemed not to notice us as they entered, passing across it toward the great Council compartment, conversing among themselves in their snapping speech-sounds as they did so. Tensely we crouched there, stiffening suddenly, as we saw one of the disk-bodied monsters suddenly turn and glance back across the compartment in our direction. But in the next moment he had turned back, not seeing us, and then they had passed through the opposite door, their strange voices passing from our hearing.

Marlin and I straightened, with long breaths of relief. "Close, Hunt!" he whispered. "But on to the dark side--we've little enough time left!"

"We're almost out of the twilight band now," I told him, "and in the dark side we'll be a little safer."

* * * * *

And now we were moving quietly through the door from which the approach of the Neptunians had startled us, through the compartment beyond it and on through another and another. These compartments of the twilight band seemed for the most part quite empty, filled neither with masses of working Neptunians like those of the sunward side, nor masses of sleeping Neptunians like those of the dark side. We had found, however, that the compartments of the twilight band were in fact used only for the housing of the Council of Thirty and of the other activities and departments of the rulers of the Neptunians, their only purpose aside from that being to provide easy access from the dark to the sunward side of Triton, and _vice versa_. So it was that now as we crept through the twilight dusk of those compartments, we found them almost wholly empty and tenantless, though once or twice we were forced again to seek hiding in the shadows as we heard the staccato voices of Neptunians in the distance. Once, too, we were startled by one of the cylinders throbbing by close above us, and since we had had no time to hide from it, thought ourselves discovered by it, though after tense minutes it became plain that its occupants had not seen us.

But soon the twilight of that narrow band was deepening, and almost at once, it seemed, we were moving from that twilight dusk into a deep darkness that obscured all things about us. We had reached the dark side of Triton, we knew, and now moved more carefully still, for upon that dark side, we knew equally well, slept half the massed millions of the Neptunian races. The first few compartments which we traversed in that darkness, however, were as empty as those in the twilight behind us. But then, as we moved silently on, we came into the first of the great sleeping-compartments. Even like those which had puzzled us so on Neptune it was, with its towering walls lined with intersecting shelves whose openings, twice as long as they were high, were ranged in rows, one above the other, like giant pigeon-holes.

This sleep-compartment, though, was not empty like those upon Neptune, for in its hundreds of shelf-openings, its great pigeon-holes, there slept hundreds upon hundreds of the disk-bodied Neptunians! Their seven short limbs folded up around their disk-bodies, they reposed in those openings with their bulging, glassy eyes as open as ever. It was evident they all were sleeping, since the dimness of the day upon Neptune had made lids for those eyes unnecessary in the evolution of their strange race. And eery was that sight to Marlin and myself, as we stepped silently into and across the great sleep-compartment. For it seemed to us that the hundreds of Neptunians reposing thus in those wall-openings were regarding us fixedly with their great multiple eyes, watching us as we moved across the compartment. None stirred, though, as we made our way across it to the opposite door, and moved into the next, which we found to be another sleep-compartment also, its wall-openings, too, holding hundreds of the sleeping monsters.

Through a dozen such sleep-compartments we went, moving with infinite quiet and care, lest any of those sleeping thousands about us be aroused by any sound. And almost it seemed to Marlin and me as we crept on that that hope was ended in any case, since so far we had found none of the landing-compartments for which we searched, none of the cylindrical fliers in which alone we could escape. We had passed through other compartments that held the great heat-radiating globes, now, great glowing globes whose intense heat was not radiated out horizontally at all, but sent up in vertical heat-currents, which by convection in some way warmed all Triton's atmosphere. Past these and through still more sleep-compartments we went, pausing now and then as from the distance in the dark side there reached us a few staccato voices; still we came not upon any of the landing-compartments for which we searched.

Despair was growing in me as we crept on through the sleep-compartments, through the thousands of slumbering Neptunians. For soon would come the signal that would awaken all those Neptunians about us, I knew, and unless we found a landing-compartment, a cylinder that we might steal before then, all was lost. Even with such a cylinder, indeed, little enough hope was ours, since we dared not attempt to get to the twenty controls of the great sun-ray across the swarming sunward side. Our greatest hope would be to escape from Triton in it, if possible through the great roof that surrounded Triton, but even that hope seemed a futile one now, since, as we went on and on through the dense darkness of this sleeping side of Triton, we were moving still through a maze of sleep-compartments, groping blindly through the vast checkerboard maze of intersecting, towering walls. And as we came into still another of the sleep-compartments, with its massed sleeping Neptunians in the wall-openings around it, I halted beside Marlin, twitched his sleeve.

"Marlin!" I whispered. "That signal will be coming soon--this dark side's sleeping millions will be waking around us, and we've seen no sign of cylinders yet!"

"We must go on, Hunt!" he whispered tensely. "It's our only chance now--to get to one of the cylinders before they awaken!"

"But if we were to head in a different direction--" I began, then was abruptly silent, stiffening suddenly, as Marlin did, beside me.

For there across the dark compartment from us it had seemed to us that one of the sleeping Neptunians in the wall-openings had moved! Fixedly, in that moment, we stared toward it, its own great glassy eyes staring back toward us like those of all the other sleeping monsters. Was the creature asleep or waking? The question burned in our brains at that moment as Marlin and I stood there motionless, gazing toward the Neptunian. It was but the merest moment, though, that we gazed thus at the thing transfixed, for in the next instant it and the one in the opening beside it, roused by its own movement, had moved again, and then with their low staccato cries of surprise sounding together as one, the two Neptunian monsters had leaped down to the compartment's floor from their openings and were confronting us!