CHAPTER XII
Through the Roof
Even as the two creatures leaped down to the floor, and before they could change their low cries of astonishment into louder cries of alarm, Marlin and I had leaped across the compartment toward them! For a full two-score feet in one great leap we shot toward them, a feat only possible with Triton's lesser gravitation, and only possible, too, because we knew in that moment that a single loud cry from the two creatures would bring to their aid the hundreds of Neptunians sleeping about us. Before either could utter such a cry, we two had shot through the air and were upon them!
So astounded were they with our appearance and our supernatural leap across the compartment, that before they could put themselves into a posture of defense, we had struck them, had knocked them to the floor and were grappling with them. In that first moment of contact I had reached for the mouth-opening of the disk-bodied monster at whom I had leaped, had gripped that opening in the top of its disk-body to prevent its outcry and then had striven to lift the thing sidewise, to hurl it against the floor. But great as was my strength against Triton's lesser gravitation, the strength of the Neptunian I held was greater still, and its weight, due to the weight-disks worn by it, was enormous. In an instant its seven great limbs were clutching for me, grasping me, and as I strained there against that great monstrous disk-body's grip, I knew with fatal certainty that never could I match my strength against its own. For even as I struggled desperately with it, Marlin struggling as wildly with the other beside me, the thing was lifting me with its own great limbs from the floor!
Upward it drew me with those powerful limbs, its bulging glassy eyes staring from its disk-body's edge straight into my own, as we grappled desperately in the dark compartment with the sleeping Neptunians all about us! I felt myself being overcome, my strength puny beside the strength of that monster, and as I clutched wildly still at the mouth-opening in the top of the disk-body, I thrust my clenched fist down into that small round mouth-opening, half by chance and half by design, closing it thus with my balled fist. Instantly the creature's body turned and twisted frantically, its grip upon me forgotten for the moment, its whole body's mass seeming to heave and twitch as my hand thus cut off the passage of air into that mouth-opening, into its body! I was throttling it, I knew, and hung fiercely to my grip upon it, my clenched hand still within its mouth-opening, while the thing swayed and tore at me with ever-decreasing strength. A moment more and its struggles ceased, it collapsed limply to the floor, and I staggered up again to my feet.
In a single glance I saw that the other Neptunian had gripped Marlin and was crushing him against a corner of the compartment's shelving and instantly, with a single great leap, I was upon that other monster, had gained upon it the same throttling grip which I had found was so deadly to these creatures. In a flash the Neptunian had released his hold upon Marlin, was whirling me around the compartment, shaking me this way and that, and wildly attempting to tear itself loose from me, but with the last of my strength I hung to it, and in a few moments it, too, had weakened, then had slumped down in a lifeless, grotesque mass. And as I rose from it I saw that Marlin had staggered up likewise, was coming toward me. None other of the Neptunians had been aroused by the noise of our mad combat, because in the first excitement of that combat the two Neptunians we fought had not thought to cry out, and after I had gained that throttling hold upon them they could not. So around us the silent ranks of Neptunians slept on unaroused, their open, glassy eyes full upon us even in their sleep, while Marlin and I were stumbling toward the compartment's door.
"On, Hunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "We still have a chance, if we can find a landing-compartment, can steal one of the cylinders before these sleeping Neptunians wake!"
Through the next compartment we went, and the next, and the next, all sleep-compartments, filled with rows of slumbering Neptunians like those behind us, but in our progress we had come upon no landing-compartment. And though we knew that such there were here and there on Triton's dark side, we could not tell, in the darkness and with the huge walls towering all around us, in what direction from us they might be. We could but blunder aimlessly on through the maze of adjoining sleep-compartments in the blind hope that we might chance upon one of the landing-sections, and as we went on, staggering in great, irregular leaps through compartment after compartment, all filled either with masses of sleeping Neptunians or with great heat-radiating mechanisms, we knew that at any moment might come the great signal of light that would awaken the hordes around us.
Never could there have been flight more nightmare-like than that of Marlin and myself through the dark compartments of Triton's dark side, in blind search for the cylinders which alone held out to us any chance of escape. Through the sleep-compartments, with their masses of open-eyed and sleeping disk-bodied Neptunians, through the compartments where reared the great glowing globes whose radiated heat alone held back the cold doom that so long had threatened these strange beings, through compartment after compartment in a flight made more grotesque and unreal to us by the strange method of our progress; by the strange, great, smooth leaps that we made instead of steps, great floating leaps of a score of feet in which we rushed through the dark sleeping compartments, reckless now of the few Neptunians who might be waking and moving upon the dark side. Then suddenly as we leaped toward the door of still another sleep-compartment, poised an instant to leap through that low door, we halted, gazed with abruptly-flaring hope ahead. For the next compartment, we saw, was a rectangular one and greater in size than any we had passed through as yet, and in it there stood the great gleaming shapes of a score or more of the cylinder-fliers that we sought!
With hearts pounding Marlin and I crouched in the low door, gazing through the darkness toward those great cylinders, that gleamed a little in the feeble light that came down upon Triton's dark side from the stars through the great roof overhead. We saw that the low doors in the sides of those cylinders, near the bases, were open, and from them there came to us the throbbing of their mechanisms, inside! It was evident that these were part of the countless cylinders used to help in transporting the Neptunian hordes from dark side to sunward side of Triton, and _vice versa_, and it was equally evident from those throbbing mechanisms' operation, that the hour of awakening for those hordes was at hand and that these were waiting for that awakening. For there stood also, between us and the nearest of the cylinders, three tube-armed Neptunians who were conversing in brief, snapping speech as they waited!
* * * * *
For the moment, at sight of those cylinders, Marlin and I came near to throwing ourselves toward them regardless of the three, but that we knew would be suicide, so despite our torturing agony of soul we waited there in the doorway, gazing desperately toward the cylinders. And in a moment, as we sought in vain for some way to get to the nearest of those cylinders, there came a final staccato order from one of the three Neptunians and at that order the other two turned and passed through a door in the landing-compartment's side opposite from us. It was our chance, the chance for which we had hardly dared to hope even, and no sooner had the two Neptunians disappeared through the opposite door, the other standing with his eyes following them for the moment, than Marlin and I had crept out a little bit into the landing-compartment and then with a great simultaneous leap had shot through the air toward that remaining Neptunian!
There was no chance for resistance on the creature's part. For even as we knocked it sidewise with the force of our leap Marlin had grasped the creature's limbs and with fierce, desperate strength I had with my clenched fist closed its mouth-opening in that method whose deadliness had been proved to me in our other battle. The thing threshed wildly, then it, too, had gone limp, and had collapsed. And in the next instant Marlin and I were rising from it, were leaping across the compartment toward the open low door of the nearest great cylinder, from whose great gleaming upright bulk before us came the throbbing of its powerful generators. And then, a dozen feet from it, we stopped dead, and from Marlin came a hoarse cry.
For at that moment there had swept over us, through us, past us, from the direction of Triton's sunward side across its surface, a band of intensely brilliant white light, white light that blazed brilliant for the moment all around us, turning the changeless night of Triton's dark side around us for the moment into a white and blinding day, and then sweeping swiftly on, around Triton's surface! It was the great signal of awakening, the signal for the millions of sleeping Neptunians about us to awake and change places with the swarming millions upon the sunward side! And even as that dazzling signal came, as Marlin and I stood stupefied there for the moment before the looming cylinder's open door, there came from all around us, from over all the dark side's great extent and from all its maze of sleep-compartments, a rising babel of staccato voices, the voices of its awakening Neptunian millions! Then, before ever we could recover from the stupefaction that in that instant held us rooted to the spot, there had poured into the great landing-compartment from the compartments on all sides of it swarms of hastening Neptunians, swarms of disk-bodied monsters, who in that moment saw us, uttered as one a sharp great cry of discovery, and in the next moment were rushing from all sides toward us!
"_The cylinder!_"
It was Marlin's wild cry, that aroused me from the stupefaction of amazement that held me. Straight before us, a dozen feet away, was the open door of the nearest cylinder, and in the next split-second Marlin and I, as one, had leaped toward it, had shot through that door, into the cylinder's interior, even as the Neptunians raced toward us. The next instant I had reached frantically for the door, had with one swift motion slid it clanging shut, and then as the Neptunian masses outside hurled themselves toward it, Marlin and I were throwing ourselves up through the openings toward the cylinder's uppermost section. In one leap I was at the central control-standard, fumbled frantically with the green control-studs for an agonizing moment, and then, just as we heard the Neptunians below flinging themselves against the door, the great throbbing cylinder shot upward!
Up over Triton's dark side we rose, a dozen slender force-rays criss-crossing about us from beneath in that moment, and as we glanced momentarily down we could see the Neptunians in the landing-compartment beneath rushing toward the other cylinders there! And glancing far across the surface of Triton, we could see all its mighty compartment-city, dark and sunward sides alike, swarming now with Neptunian hordes as the end and beginning of their strange day and night periods was signalled. Over the great compartment-city, over all the countless millions of Neptunians that swarmed through it, there was spreading a crackling roar of excited tumult, as our escape was discovered. And from far away on either side and from beneath us, scores of great cylinders whirled toward us!
"Up--_up_!" Marlin was shouting now beside me. "They'll have us in another moment!"
I pressed swiftly again the studs before me, and as the cylinder shot up and sidewise with terrific speed on an upward slant I shouted back to Marlin over the roar of air about us. "The roof-openings!" I cried. "We'll make for the nearest one!"
But as the cylinder flashed obliquely upward, Marlin and I crouching in the two opposite seats at the control-standard, I became aware of the swarms of racing cylinders behind closing in upon us. And over the dark and sunward surfaces of Triton that great mounting roar of sound was spreading, as the Neptunian hordes saw our wild attempt at escape. Up--up--and now we were racing close beneath the great roof, transparent from below, with the pursuing cylinders drawing ever nearer, their Neptunian occupants more skilled than I in their operation. And now, too, from those uprising, pursuing swarms were directed toward us slender pencil-like rays of pale light, visible only near their source, concentrated force-rays, that would cleave through our cylinder as through paper!
On and upward--and now as we shot on, with the swarming cylinders hurtling hotly after us in wild pursuit, with the throb of our generators and the roar of air about us thundering in our ears, with the wild tumult of the massed Neptunians on Triton's surface coming dully up to us from beneath, Marlin and I were gazing with tense eyes ahead and upward. The great opening, the great sliding section of the roof down through which we had come--that was our one chance to escape from Triton. I knew that unless we could win through that opening, out of Triton's enclosed world, we were doomed. On and on we went--our eyes still upon the vast roof overhead in search of that opening in it, when suddenly Marlin cried hoarsely in my ear, and pointed ahead. And there from ahead were rushing toward us other scores of cylinders, other swarms of racing cylinders answering the spreading alarm, while still others were shooting up from below toward us! From behind, from ahead, from beneath, the cylinders' swarms were converging upon us in that moment, and as instinctively I slowed our cylinder's mad rush I looked upward, toward the great roof----
"The opening-section!" I cried suddenly. "But it's closed against us!"
For there above, indeed, was that great circle in the vast transparent roof that we knew could be slid aside and opened by its Neptunian guards in the bright-lit little cage-room suspended beside it. My one hope had been that in our stolen cylinder we might deceive those guards of the great orifice into opening it for us to pass. But that hope was gone. Behind and below and before us were the pursuing swarms of cylinders and the Neptunians in the cage-room above knew that something was wrong, and had not opened the great circle for us. There were other similar circles, similar opening-sections, in Triton's roof, but it was too late now to seek them because from all about us the swarming, racing cylinders were rushing upon us. In another moment their rays would shatter us! I heard Marlin, beside me, utter a low exclamation of utter hopelessness as those cylinders rushed upon us, held our own cylinder for the moment motionless there in mid-air beneath the great roof's opening-section, and then suddenly reached toward the control-studs, even as Marlin's hoarse cry was sounding beside me.
"The end, Hunt!" he was crying. "The cylinders are almost upon us--and the opening-section is closed!"
"The end maybe--but not this way!" I shouted fiercely, at the same moment sending the cylinder flashing straight upward with all its speed. "Hold to your chair, Marlin--_we're going to smash through that opening-section of the roof_!"
Even as I cried out thus, our cylinder was rising upward toward the roof with all the power of its throbbing generators, hurtling upward at speed unthinkable toward the great circle of the opening-section! I was aware in that moment of the crowding swarms of cylinders about and beneath us loosing toward us a storm of crossing force-rays that we drove clear of in that instant. I was aware of the Neptunians in the cage-room beside the great opening-section rushing wildly about as we shot upward like the cylindrical projectile of some giant cannon! The next instant I caught the gleam of the transparent roof, of the opening-section just above us, Marlin and I instinctively crouched lower in our seats, and a moment later there was a blinding, stunning shock that seemed to split the universe with its detonation. We were dragged up from our seats with awful force. And then as we straightened up and looked out, we saw that the cylinder had smashed through the great opening-section and was throbbing above Triton's mighty roof!
The cylinder's ceiling, above us, was crumpled and bent badly, but in that moment it seemed a miracle that we had lived through that terrible collision. It was only our awful speed that had saved us, driving us through the opening-section's thick metal even as a cyclone will drive fragile straws and twigs unbroken through a board. Now as we looked downward we saw that the swarming pursuing cylinders were massed beneath the crumpled opening-section and that that circle of the opening-section was slowly sliding aside, bent and crumpled as it was, to allow those cylinders to emerge through Triton's roof after us! And up they came, a full hundred of them, racing up after us at utmost speed, up from the great metal roof of Triton, dark and opaque to our eyes from above, and up through its atmosphere close on our track!
* * * * *
Through the rushing roar of air about us, the throbbing of our generators, I was aware of Marlin shouting something beside me. I was gazing ahead for the moment, as that wild flight and pursuit passed on through Triton's atmosphere. Giant Neptune's cloudy green sphere bulked gigantic in the heavens before us, and far beyond it was the little fire-disk of the sun. Then I turned back to see the hundred pursuing cylinders, getting ever closer behind us. As I started at the sight, I became aware of Marlin shouting beside me, and at the same moment realized the import of his words. I realized that the throbbing of our generators was halting, hesitating, failing! Our great crash out through the roof had broken some part of their mechanism and now they were failing rapidly, and the speed of our cylinder was slowing!
And behind us the scores of onrushing cylinders were closer--closer! Already toward us again from them were leaping the slender pale force-rays, missing us at that distance but sweeping close about us. With an utter tenseness of body and spirit, Marlin and I watched them drawing closer, as our cylinder shot on through Triton's atmosphere. Suddenly another storm of rays had shot and swept toward us from behind, and one of those wild-whirling rays, in a single instant, clove through the cylinder's uppermost sides like a sword of fire through cardboard, slicing away completely the already-crumpled roof above us and the upper half-dozen feet of the walls! Instantly a flood of icy-cold air rushed in upon us and seemed in that moment to freeze us through. At the same moment the throbbing generators ceased completely to operate, the cylinder slowing swiftly on its rush forward, drifting helplessly there in the outer reaches of Triton's atmosphere, while from behind, like leaping creatures of prey, the scores of cylinders rushed upon us!
Neither Marlin nor I voiced a cry in that moment. We could only stare as if we were automatons, toward the onrushing cylinders, the oncoming doom. We had run our course at last. It seemed in that moment that all our bitter battle for freedom, our toilsome escape from our cell, our flight through Triton's sleeping side, our stealing of the cylinder and wild crash upward through the great roof's opening-section--that all this futile flight of ours was reenacting itself with lightning swiftness before my eyes. The swarming cylinders were almost on us, holding their rays now as they saw us helpless until they were closer, their great mass whirling straight toward us. And then, as I gripped the control-standard before me, expectant in that instant of the end. I saw that onrushing mass of cylinders suddenly shattered as though by gigantic blows from above. I saw the scores of cylinders driven this way and that in a single instant with colossal force, even as they rushed to annihilate us! And I looked dazedly up, was looking up----
"_The space-flier!_" Marlin's insane cry was sounding there beside me. "_It's the space-flier--and Whitely and Randall!_"
The space-flier! There high above us and above the pursuing cylinders it hung, a gleaming faceted ball, at sight of which I could only gaze stupefied. I saw in that moment that down from its lowest ray-opening there was radiating toward the cylinders that had been hurtling in a mass toward us, a pale, almost invisible great force-ray and that it was that ray's giant pressure that had shattered the mass of our pursuers, and in an instant had driven their massed cylinders to all sides! Then, as they broke thus in wild confusion before that swift great force-ray from above, the space-flier was flashing down toward our roofless, drifting cylinder, was hovering just beside us, touching that cylinder, with the round outer door in its facet within our reach! In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's edge, had whirled open that outer door of the space-flier. When we threw ourselves into the little vestibule-chamber or air-lock, shut the outer door, and turned toward the inner one, that inner one was opened and Whitely--Whitely!--was pulling us inside!
[Illustration: _In an instant Marlin and I had clambered to the drifting cylinder's edge and to the open outside door._]
"Whitely--Randall--" we were babbling in our excitement, "we thought you dead--saw fragments of the space-flier and thought it destroyed----!"
"No time now to tell you, Marlin--Hunt--" Whitely was hurriedly saying. "Those cylinders are forming again. They're coming up toward us! Head out from Triton, Randall--full speed!"
But even as he had spoken, Randall, in the control-chair, had flashed his hands over the six control-switches, and as Marlin and I clambered with Whitely into the other three chairs, we felt ourselves pressed down with terrific force against them as the space-flier shot out from Triton with colossal speed! But at the same moment the cylinders that had formed again into their close-grouped mass, had leaped forward with us and the next moment saw space-flier and cylinders alike whirling out from the atmosphere of Triton into the empty void of space! I glanced back, saw that the cylinders were close behind our hurtling space-flier, flashing after it somewhat beneath it, so as to clear its great force-ray shooting back toward Triton and flinging it outward. And as I glanced back, I saw Triton's dull-gleaming sphere, with the pale giant force-ray that stabbed from its side toward the sun, growing each instant smaller! But dead ahead of us, though somewhat beneath our level, there loomed the colossal green sphere of Neptune, growing in size as we rushed on at immense speed from its moon!
On we went, and as Randall's hands flashed over the control-switches, Marlin and Whitely and I staring tensely forth with him, we were aware that from the mass of onracing cylinders behind slender force-rays were again questing toward us, though the range was too great for them to loose them accurately at this terrific speed. At any moment, though, one of those concentrated, pencil-like rays might cleave through our space-flier in a lucky hit, and unless we escaped from these relentless pursuers, the space-flier and ourselves were certain of destruction. This I saw, and saw too that Neptune's colossal cloudy sphere lay close before us, so awful was the speed of our flight and pursuit, and as it loomed gigantic before us, filling the heavens, it was apparent that we would pass close above its surface. Suddenly I turned to Randall, shouted in his ear above the thundering throbbing drone of our generators.
"Neptune!" I cried. "There's a chance to smash these pursuing cylinders there!"
"But how--?" he began. Shouting in his ear, I explained to him the desperate inspiration that had come to me. I saw his eyes and those of Marlin and Whitely widen as they heard, and then he nodded grimly, clutched the control-switches tighter.
And now about us was sounding again the roar of air as we shot through Neptune's atmosphere, shot above the surface of the huge planet with the cylinders rushing still at equal speed behind us, their deadly rays stabbing this way and that in slicing sweeps toward us. Through the cloudy mists of Neptune's upper atmosphere we flashed, straight onward, with the dark metal surface of the giant world's vast roof clear now to our eyes far beneath. And as we shot over it I saw Randall's grip tighten on the control-switches, saw him glance back toward the pursuing cylinders, behind and a little beneath us, and then abruptly he had flung open the switch of the great force-ray that was driving us on, our rear-ray! Instantly the speed of the space-flier slowed, and in a split-second the onrushing cylinders, racing on unslowing in that moment, were hurtling past beneath us. And as they did so, another switch had clicked under Randall's hands and straight down upon those cylinders from the space-flier's bottom was driving down another mighty force-ray!
In the next instant we had a glimpse of those massed cylinders that had been rushing thus beneath us driven down by the power of our great force-ray with inconceivable speed and force, driven down in a whirling, confused mass toward the vast metal roof of great Neptune below! And as our great ray, traveling across their mass, drove them thus downward with colossal power, we saw a moment later the cylinders of that mass crashing downward against that roof, shattering into crumpled, wrecked masses of metal upon the mighty structure, annihilated with all inside them on that roof as our great ray drove them down against it! Half at least of that mass of cylinders perished thus in the first crash downward and before the rest could gather again to whirl up to the attack, our great ray was playing upon them also, crashing them down upon the great roof of death, until in only a moment more but a half-dozen of the cylinders remained intact! And these, as their fellows crashed to death beneath us, were gathering and speeding away from this death that smote from above, were going back toward the dull-gleaming disk of Triton!
Marlin and Whitely and Randall and I were all crying out in that moment as the surviving cylinders flashed away in flight, and then Marlin and I had turned toward our two friends. "Whitely--Randall--!" Marlin was saying. "You escaped those Neptunians that first discovered us, then? We saw the fragments of wreckage your pursuers brought back, and Hunt and I never dreamed you might still live!"
"It was a trick that enabled us to escape," Whitely explained. "When they discovered us there beneath Neptune's roof--chased us up through that roof and up into the great cloud-belts, I saw that we could not long escape those pursuing cylinders. So, while Randall drove the flier through the mists and while they searched in those mists for us, I battered and broke with blows of a large tool some of the spare plates and instruments we carried. Then, as they came closer to us, their force-rays slicing through the mists in search of us, I cast those fragments loose from the flier, and when they struck against the pursuing cylinders in the mists, when those cylinders saw the wrecked fragments, they had no doubt but that their force-rays had struck us somewhere in the cloud-layer and annihilated us. We lay in the shrouding mists until we saw them returning toward Neptune's surface. We realized then that you two had been captured by whatever manner of creatures these Neptunians were, and saw the cylinders, with you in one of them, going down beneath Triton's roof. For days, therefore, Randall and I waited around Triton's surface, hoping against hope to get down inside in some way and find you, and had almost given up hope, when we saw the cylinder you had stolen racing up from Triton, and were able to save it and you from the pursuing cylinders."
"But you, Marlin--Hunt--" Whitely continued. "You have learned how and why these Neptunians are sending forth the great ray that is turning the sun faster? We saw that ray and another great ray on opposite sides of Triton--Is it not possible that we alone might be able to halt that ray?"
Marlin solemnly shook his head. "No chance, Whitely, for us," he said. "Perhaps no chance even for all the forces of Earth!" And quickly he told, while Whitely and Randall listened enthralled, of the captivity of us two in Triton's strange and swarming world; of the gigantic tale of Neptune's past and the purpose of its peoples, as it had been told us by the great globe of the Council of Thirty; of our desperate escape and flight across the dark side of Triton and our wild crashing upward through the roof and out from Triton. "We alone," Marlin concluded, "can never halt either of those great rays, for each has countless cylinders and Neptunians within to guard it, and each has twenty control-boxes of which one alone can keep it operating. No, our one chance is to get back to Earth, to gather there the great fleet of space-fliers which the World President and the World Congress planned to build in our absence, and to come out in that great fleet with the most powerful weapons available and endeavor to crush these strange Neptunians, to halt that great ray of doom that is turning the sun ever faster! For unless we can do that, unless we can bring Earth's fleet of space-fliers out here and halt the great sun-ray, that ray will in sixty days more have finished its work, will have split the sun and loosed doom upon all its planets except Neptune! And so it is back to Earth that we must race now at our utmost speed!"
Marlin's solemn voice ceased, and there was silence for a moment in the space-flier, we four gazing toward each other without speaking. By then the flier, with the tremendous impetus of its flight still driving it forward, had swept on and out over great Neptune now, out of the giant world's cloudy atmosphere and into empty space beyond it. And, with Neptune's giant globe filling the firmament behind us, Randall snapped on again our rear force-ray, sent that ray radiating back toward the vast disk of Neptune itself. And then again we were forced deep in our chairs as the flier's tremendous speed accelerated once more, the flier hurtling with greater and greater velocity through the gulf of space toward the far little disk of fire that was the sun, far ahead. For it was toward it, toward our Earth, that we were going from Neptune, from the solar system's edge, to carry back word to Earth of the nature of the doom that hung above it and to gather Earth's forces to forestall that doom!