CHAPTER XIV
An Ambush in Space
"Mars ahead and to the left--once more!"
As I uttered the words Marlin and Randall and Whitely, beside me, were gazing to the left with me. "Strange," said Randall, "it all seems, almost, as when we first went out past Mars."
Strangely similar, indeed, did it seem to all of us, the panorama that now again stretched all about us, visible through the racing space-flier's windows, as we sat in the four control-chairs before them. For ahead and away to the left gleamed again the dull-red disk of Mars, farther now from us than on our first trip out but seeming almost the same. Ahead too, and close to the right, shone mighty Jupiter, and beyond it on the left the yellow spot of Saturn once more, with far beyond it and straight ahead again the green little spark of light that was Neptune. Behind, too, the bluish light-spot of Earth and the lessened fire-disk of the sun were as before, and as before the blazing stars that jeweled all the deep-black firmament about us. But behind our flier we could barely see innumerable tiny gleaming points moving forward at the same speed as ourselves through the void, keeping pace with us in regular formation, a great V-formation of which our flier was the point and that moved steadily on through space. For those tiny points, extending back and out of sight in the void behind us, were the space-fliers of that great fleet of five thousand space-fliers which our own, the flagship, was leading out through the solar system to Neptune!
For two days, now, we had been flashing with that great fleet behind us from Earth, out toward the solar system's edge on our mighty expedition, and five days had passed since we had stood before the World Congress with Marlin rendering to it our report. In those intervening three days on Earth we had been the center of such a whirl of hectic activity as the world had never known before--the whirl of preparations for the start of the colossal fleet. For in those three short days Marlin with the energies of a world at his bidding, had strained every nerve to complete the last preparations of the great armada of space-fliers which he, with us three as his lieutenants, was to lead out on its unprecedented flight to Neptune.
The most necessary preparation was the equipping of the five thousand space-fliers with the concentrated force-ray weapons used by the Neptunians in their space-cylinders, those concentrated rays which, instead of pushing against what they struck, tore through it with driving power. Fortunately, the production of these concentrated rays required only the addition of special smaller ray-openings beside the regular ray-openings in the sides of the space-fliers, but even so it strained the capacities of the world's workers to install in each of the space-fliers those smaller openings in the short time available.
Each of the five thousand space-fliers held a crew of eight, their operators having been trained during our absence as fast as the fliers themselves had been built. We four in our own space-flier, the flagship of the great fleet, had four additional crew-members now, four mechanic-operators who worked in shifts and tended ceaselessly the operation of the flier's various mechanisms, the great generators, and the other mechanical equipment, thus leaving Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself free to devote all our attention to the command of the great fleet itself, though one of us retained the controls of the flier itself. Another preparation that had been made during our absence had been to equip each flier with space-walkers for its crew, and to equip each with efficient radiophone apparatus. This, while the Heaviside layer around Earth would prevent it functioning from Earth to space or from space to Earth, would allow free communication from space-flier to space-flier while in space itself, and thus would allow Marlin and us to control with spoken orders all the great fleet we led.
Thus the last preparations had been completed and three days after our arrival at Earth the great fleet of space-fliers had taken its departure, the five thousand faceted polyhedron-like fliers rising as one from the flat roofs of New York's countless gigantic buildings. Once more we had started at night, and it seemed that all of the peoples of Earth had assembled in and around New York that night to speed us farewell. The vast crowds that had watched our single space-flier start out on its first trip weeks before, were as nothing to those vaster crowds that had watched the great fleet leave, since all on Earth knew now what word we had brought back from Neptune and knew that in two-score more days, unless this fleet was successful in its tremendous task, unless it could win through the Neptunian opposition and halt the giant sun-ray, that all on Earth would perish in flaming death.
Thus surely there could have been no tenser moment in Earth's history than that, when, with the World President and the massed members of the World Congress watching again around us, our flagship had risen from the roof of the great World Government building into the night, flashing up and outward once more toward Sagittarius, toward unseen Neptune. And behind us almost instantly there had flashed up in regular timing and formation our five thousand following fliers, racing out and after us with colossal speed like ourselves and flying in that hollow triangle or V-formation behind us. That formation had been adopted so that the rays of the fliers of the fleet, driven back toward Earth to push them on, would not strike against other fliers behind them, as would have been the case had our fleet moved out in a compact mass. And now for forty-eight hours our five thousand space-fliers had been hurtling outward, with our own flagship still at the apex of their formation.
And as we four sat now again in the four control-chairs, two of our mechanic-operators watching over the generators behind us and the other two asleep in their bunks, we had a somewhat different array of controls before us. Before myself were the controls of the flier itself, unchanged, with the six switches that directed its propulsion force-rays from the six openings. Marlin, though, to my right, had before him now as well as his array of astronomical instruments, the black mouthpiece and speaker of the radiophone, as well as a compact array of switch-studs by which he could speak to and hear from the various squadron-leaders in the great fleet behind us. For convenience in giving orders, the five thousand fliers of the fleet had been divided into fifty squadrons of a hundred space-fliers each, and it was to the designated leader of each squadron that Marlin gave his orders, which were then transmitted by that leader to the hundred fliers of his squadron.
Before Randall, too, to my left, were new controls, the controls of the concentrated force-rays which were to be our fleet's weapons even as such rays were the Neptunians' also, and with which our flagship had of course been equipped. Those controls were two thick metal levers of no great size, with hand-grips at their end, one of which controlled by its position the side of the flier from which the concentrated cleaving ray was shot forth, the other controlling the slant or exact direction at which that ray was emitted. With Randall handling these, our weapons, Whitely had before him all the space-flier's remaining controls--those of the generators, air replenishers, the various recording dials that were vital to its operation, and other essential things. So that as our throbbing flier drove on now at the great fleet's head, with Marlin and Randall and Whitely and myself gazing to the left toward the nearing crimson shield of Mars, we had each before us some vital part of our great fleet's or our flier's control.
Gazing toward Mars' red disk, Marlin broke the silence. "We'll need no side-rays this time to hold us out from it," he said, and I nodded.
"No, it's far enough from us now, and the speed of our fliers will take them safely past--is taking them past now. But it's the asteroids ahead that I've been thinking of."
Marlin somberly shook his head. "There's no help for it, Hunt," he said. "We'll have to lead the fleet straight through the asteroidal belt and trust to chance that as few of our fliers as possible will be struck."
The following hours, therefore, were perhaps the most tense and terrible that ever we had experienced. For as we shot on past Mars and through the great belt of whirling asteroids, it was not possible for the five thousand space-fliers of our fleet to maneuver to avoid those asteroids. We must hold straight on in our regular formation, we knew, lest all our fliers crash one into the other, so in that formation we went steadily on through that great zone of death. And hardly had we entered it, Marlin and Randall and Whitely gazing forth as intensely as myself, than an expanding dark globe loomed suddenly before us, sweeping past us with terrifying closeness, and then as it shot past there came suddenly in the blackness of space behind us a soundless flash of fiery light, that flared for a moment and faded. The asteroid, we knew, had struck a flier close behind us!
From ahead and from either side still, as we sped on, other asteroids were rushing, following their complicated orbits as our great fleet's open triangle of space-fliers moved through them, and now again and again still behind us came other fiery flashes in quick succession, flashes of flame which each marked the instant destruction of a space-flier and all its occupants! Yet there came no word, no protest, from any of the space-fliers behind us, all were going steadily forward at unaltered speed and in unaltered formation through the great belt of whirling death. And though, within a few hours more than a score of our space-fliers had been annihilated in white-hot and soundless flashes of fire as they were struck by the hurtling asteroids, the rest had escaped unscathed, and Marlin was giving to them the cheering knowledge that we had won through the asteroidal belt and were out of its whirling death.
Thus again Jupiter loomed ahead and to our right, though closer now and greater in apparent size, and again we four were staring toward it in almost as great a wonder as formerly, as its mighty cloud-wrapped disk and attendant four big moons loomed closer. By this time, Marlin had transmitted to all the fliers behind us a brief order, and already from each of them and from our own a side force-ray was shooting toward the gigantic planet to hold us out from its terrific attraction. The V-formation in which our five thousand space-fliers flew was so slightly tilted sidewise as to allow the use of side-rays by all our fliers, and a side-ray of immense power it required indeed to hold each of us out from the mighty monarch of the solar system's planets as we sped past its huge and enigmatic sphere.
* * * * *
But still on and on through the void our mighty armada of space-fliers was racing, on toward the green spark of Neptune that slowly waxed brighter far ahead of us. That little green spot of light held our eyes, even to the exclusion of Saturn's yellow disk, expanding again to the left before us as we shot toward it also, for all our minds were centered upon Neptune and what mighty task it was that awaited us at that great world and its moon, what mighty struggle would be ours. So that it was not until Saturn's disk had expanded almost to moon-size before us, surrounded by the great rings and by its whirling moons, that we gave that planet any attention. By this time, for more than seven days our huge fleet had been speeding out through the boundless void, out through the solar system, and so it was as a certain landmark to us that Saturn appeared as we neared it, the last planet between us and our goal of Neptune. With our great fleet close behind, as we drew abreast of the huge planet's mighty sphere and colossal rings, it was intently enough that we four, gathered again in the control-chairs of our flier, and gazed toward it.
"The most dangerous planet in the solar system--Saturn," said Marlin, as we looked toward the huge world from which our side-rays now were holding us. "It was death almost for us before when we ventured too close in passing it."
"Well, we're safe enough from it this time," Whitely commented, "for since then it's moved farther to the left--is farther away from us with no danger to us now of chance meteors from its rings."
"Yes, we're safe enough from it now," Marlin admitted, "yet at the same time----"
Before Marlin could finish the words they were interrupted by a thing that chills my blood to remember even now. One moment he was speaking beside us, our space-flier flashing steadily on at its tremendous speed at the head of its great triangle-fleet, past huge Saturn to the left. The next moment there was a terrific whirling around us of our space-flier's walls, it spun for an instant with tremendous speed in space, and at the same moment then was being driven with colossal speed in a direction at right angles to that in which we had been moving, was being shot through the void toward the mighty sphere and rings and moons of huge Saturn! And even as in that awful moment it drove with sickening speed, with an acceleration terrible, toward Saturn, all its forward progress suddenly halted, reeling blindly and at unthinkable velocity toward the huge planet, I looked through the windows, and saw whirling about us, the thousands of space-fliers of our mighty fleet bunched in a great, irregular mass with us, and hurtling through the void at the same tremendous speed toward great Saturn as ourselves!
"Saturn!" cried Randall hoarsely as we whirled in that mad moment. "The controls, Hunt!--we're being shot in toward it!"
"The controls don't answer!" I shouted, my hands frantically flashing over them. "Something's driving us into Saturn--our rays can't hold us out----"
"_The Neptunians! There behind us--those great cylinders--they're pushing all our fleet into Saturn to death!_"
As Whitely voiced that last mad cry we glanced back through the windows of the flier even as they whirled about us, even as our flier and all the thousands of space-fliers of our great fleet whirled madly in toward huge Saturn looming ahead, and we saw that even as he had cried out, there, behind us, hanging motionless in space and only visible to us for a moment, hung a great mass of cylinder-fliers! Half our own great fleet in number they seemed, those massed Neptunian cylinders, and midmost among them were a score of greater cylinders of immense size, far larger than any of the others, that were grouped closely together and from openings in which there was coming toward us a pale force-ray of immense size, visible only as it issued from those greater cylinders! And that ray it was, as was plain even in that instant, that was pushing our fleet with colossal power in toward its death in great Saturn's maze of rings and moons! The Neptunians had come out with those great ray-generators, those greater cylinders, and with a portion of their thousands of cylinder-fliers, and had waited for us in space to the right of Saturn, knowing well that our own escape meant a great attack upon them, an effort to halt their great doom-ray! They had awaited us there and when we had come between them and Saturn, never suspecting their presence, they had loosed upon us this forceful ray that was now driving us swiftly in to death!
"An ambush!" I cried. "An ambush in space--the Neptunians are pushing us in to Saturn--our fleet can't live for minutes then!"
[Illustration: _An ambush in space! They were being pushed into Saturn._]
"Try to bring our flier out of it--up out of their ray's push, Hunt!" Marlin shouted to me, and for a moment I worked frenziedly at the controls before me, but the rays I shot forward to push against Saturn, to hold us back or push us to either side were powerless against the vast pushing ray from behind! Larger and larger great ringed Saturn loomed ahead as our disorganized fleet shot on at awful speed toward it, pushed by the vast ray, and but minutes remained before we would have crashed to death in all our fliers against the mighty planet and its whirling rings and moons! The end of our fleet and the end of Earth's hope, crashed to annihilation by the Neptunian ambush that had been laid for us here in space!
The thought maddened me, and with a sudden desperate inspiration I ceased to direct our flier's rays ahead against Saturn in vain attempt to halt our reeling flash forward, but instead suddenly shot a ray back against the mass of Neptunian cylinders no longer visible in space far behind. As that powerful propelling ray struck their cylinders' mass, our reeling flier leaped forward with even greater speed toward Saturn, and as it shot forward thus faster than even the huge ray from behind alone could push it, it was slightly freed from that vast ray's pressure, and I could edge it upward a little from that great ray's path! Up--up--while Marlin and Whitely and Randall watched with white faces beside me, while our space-fliers and all the fleet's around and behind us came on at terrible velocity toward mighty Saturn that now filled the firmament before us. Up--up--and as I saw that we were winning gradually up from the great ray's path, I shouted to Marlin, heard him with his radiophone apparatus quickly order all the fleet's fliers to follow my example in an effort to win up from the great ray's pressure. Only the fliers uppermost in that ray's path, though, like our own, could hope to get clear in this way, but as we swept on, gradually our own flier and perhaps four or five hundred others out of our great mass of five thousand won thus upward until at last we burst up out of the vast ray's path and were out of its pushing pressure!
"Back to the Neptunian cylinders!" Marlin shouted into the mouthpiece before him. "Unless we can destroy the greater cylinders whose ray is pushing the rest of our fleet into Saturn, we're lost!"
And back now our flier and the five hundred others that were clear of the ray like it, were rushing, back away from Saturn, while the remaining thousands of space-fliers of our fleet, unable to get clear in that way of the vast ray's pressure, were being driven on by it with terrific speed and power toward annihilation against Saturn! We must destroy the greater cylinders that were sending forth that ray, we knew, before the mass of our fleet crashed into Saturn, and so our five hundred space-fliers, our own flagship at their head, went fast almost as light through the black gloom of space, back toward the two thousand or more Neptunian cylinder-fliers that were massed around those greater cylinders that were our object! Upward and backward we flashed, until in another moment it seemed that great mass of cylinder-fliers loomed before and beneath us in space, the score or more of greater cylinders that were pushing with their huge ray our fleet to doom. Before ever the Neptunians in those cylinders could see us we had rushed back high above them, and then, as Marlin gave a single order through the mouthpiece before him, our five hundred faceted space-fliers were diving through space upon that Neptunian mass of motionless cylinders!
Down like light we flashed upon them through the black gloom of space, and a wild exhilaration thrilled me through in that moment, as we flew downward. The immense blackness of empty space around us, the far fiery disk of the sun and the bright sparks of Jupiter and Neptune burning inward and outward from us, the vast ringed sphere of Saturn behind us--these seemed to spin slowly around our flier as with its fellows it dove down through the sheer darkness of the void toward the unsuspecting Neptunian cylinders below. Marlin was gripping the control-board's edge, staring downward with the radiophone mouthpiece close before him, Whitely at the other side gazing down with his calm eyes ablaze for once, while Randall grasped tightly, with his face set and stone-like, the two levers of our concentrated force-ray weapon, and while with my own hands I held the controls of the flier's propulsion-rays, and sent it swooping down out of the upper void now upon the Neptunians, even as the hundreds of our fliers around us swooped. Then, as those cylinders loomed greater close beneath us Randall had swung sharply the levers in his hands and as he did so there had emerged from our space-flier, and from all those about us, ray upon ray of concentrated, terrible force, slender and pencil-like rays of pale force, that crashed down with awful cleaving power through the massed cylinders beneath!
* * * * *
I saw in that whirling instant score upon score of the cylinders below cloven through by those terrific slicing rays, saw a full half of the score of greater cylinders that had been our chief target break up into great fragments as our rays swept through them! For that moment it seemed that below us unharmed and wrecked cylinders were merged together in a wildly-confused mass, fragments of wreckage and disk-bodied Neptunians, slain instantly by the cold of space, and unharmed cylinders whirling together there in a great mass beneath us! In that instant we had stayed our downward rush, almost upon that great mass, had with a repelling ray shot our fliers over and beyond it, and then as we whirled upward once more, as Marlin again uttered a hoarse, swift command, we were leaping back toward the great mass of the Neptunians, leaping back with all in our flier shouting now as we drove toward the remaining greater cylinders to destroy them also!
But now, as we shot toward them, the Neptunians had rallied from the first surprise of our crashing attack down upon them, and before we could again swoop down upon them, their unharmed cylinder-fliers, still more than two thousand in number, had separated themselves from the confused wreckage of those we had destroyed and were driving boldly up toward us, to meet us! In another instant they would have overwhelmed us, would have wiped us from the void with their great mass crashing over our own, their concentrated rays directed toward us, but before they could come closer Marlin had given an order and from our own racing fliers there had shot out toward the onracing Neptunian cylinder-fliers propulsion-rays that in an instant had pushed us back from their onrushing fleet, back through a great gulf of space in an instant! Before they could comprehend the maneuver, another order had sounded, and we were again leaping forward, this time on a lower level, leaping toward the half-score greater cylinders that still remained motionless where first they had been, their combined great ray still pushing our fleet on to Saturn! The cylinder-fliers above, their occupants seeing our object, darted down like falling meteors to prevent us, but were an instant too late. Before they could do so, our concentrated rays had cloven through the half-score greater cylinders and had annihilated them, their combined great ray ceasing instantly!
"The greater cylinders are all destroyed!" Whitely was saying. "We've saved our fleet from death against Saturn, at least!"
"Back toward Saturn--toward the fleet!" Marlin shouted. "We're outnumbered five to one by these Neptunian cylinders!"
For even as he cried out, the two thousand or more Neptunian cylinder-fliers, too late to save their greater cylinders, but made more fierce by the sight of their destruction, were diving down from above, with all their concentrated weapon-rays toward us! Against those outnumbering cylinders our own few hundred fliers had no chance, and even as the Neptunians whirled down on us, as Marlin shouted his order, our space-fliers were going on toward Saturn, the Neptunians leveling out instantly and raging through the void after us in close pursuit. On we shot, their questing weapon-rays taking toll now of our rearmost fliers, and though Saturn was again filling the firmament before us with his mighty cloudy-yellow disk, his colossal whirling rings and circling maze of moons, there was no sign of our fleet's main body ahead. Had we destroyed the greater cylinders too late? Had their combined great ray pushed our fleet in to death against Saturn before we could save it? It seemed so in that tense moment and then, close ahead, there loomed in black relief against Saturn's mighty heaven-filling disk, a great swarm of black dots that were whirling toward us.
"The fleet!"
As I cried the words, Marlin was giving swift orders through the mouthpiece before him, and then, even as our own few hundred fliers suddenly slowed their speed and halted, the great swarm of dots ahead had rushed up beside and around us, had taken form around us as the thousands of space-fliers of our great fleet, falling instantly into their regular formation and confronting thus the Neptunian cylinders that had been so hotly pursuing us! Those Neptunians were too late to halt their cylinder-fliers as we faced them thus so suddenly in force, our five thousand fliers opposed to theirs, hardly half our number, but they swerved as they saw us, swerved upward and attempted to race above us, raking us with their weapon-rays of concentrated force! Before they could do so, however, Marlin had uttered another order and our fleet had shot up to meet them, so that in the next moment, Earth and Neptunian craft had rushed together in their two respective fleets, there beside mighty Saturn!
As the two great fleets neared each other there crossed and flashed from one to the other innumerable slender rays of concentrated force, and space-flier and cylinder-flier were being clove through and annihilated by those slicing rays as they neared one another! Almost it seemed that we must crash straight into the oncoming Neptunian cylinders, the whole firmament for the moment ahead of us being full of their onrushing mass. I saw openings in those oncoming cylinders from which gleamed light, looked inside and there as one sees things in a dream were the many disk-bodied Neptunians calmly manipulating the controls as their great mass of cylinders shot toward our greater mass of space-fliers. Cylinders and space-fliers were being annihilated in that moment by scores by the slender rays that drove across the closing gap between the fleets, and then just as we seemed on the point of crashing dead into their oncoming cylinders they had shot their propulsion-rays sidewise, had swerved aside and were rushing with our own great fleet, which had instantly swerved with them, through the void!
Side by side for the moment the Neptunian and Earth fleets flew, countless weapon-rays stabbing across the gap between them as at dizzying speed they shot through the void, and I kept our space-flier at our fleet's head, as Marlin gave his orders to the fliers behind us, Whitely swiftly opening and closing the controls of our generators to keep constant the flier's power and speed, Randall was sending our own slender and deadly rays shooting toward the opposite Neptunian cylinders like bolts of straight and half-seen lightning! For but instants it could have been that the two great fleets, our own of space-fliers and the smaller Neptunian one, whirled through the void, but eternities it seemed to me, so tense and timeless was that whirl of awful action. Soon I became aware of a mighty yellow disk that filled the firmament from top to bottom before us, toward which our racing, struggling fleets were flashing, and then I saw Whitely bending across me and shouting to Marlin through the wild whirl of this terrific battle:
"We're heading with the Neptunian fleet in to Saturn!" he was shouting. "What this battle will mean in those rings and moons----!"
"We'll keep straight with them!" Marlin cried. "They are trying to escape from us in Saturn's rings and moons, and get back to Neptune to rejoin the main Neptunian body!"
So that now as fleet and fleet rushed forward I held our own flier at our own fleet's head, racing forward with the vast whirling system of Saturn's rings and moons stretching dangerously before us. Full before us was looming greater each instant the spinning dark globe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and now as our two fleets rushed side by side toward it at terrific speed, stabbing still at each other from space-flier to cylinder with the concentrated weapon-rays, it seemed that inevitably in the next moment we must crash against the big moon! Seeing this, though, Marlin shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before him, and instantly in answer to it our great fleet's mass bore sidewise against the racing mass of the Neptunian cylinders! For an instant it seemed that the two fleets were merging into each other, space-flier crashing into cylinder and slender rays coming thick, and then the smaller Neptunian fleet had given way beneath the pressure of ours, had veered sidewise so that in the following moment the two fleets were rushing past Titan's whirling sphere!
And now we were inside Titan's orbit, and as we whirled farther in just across the path of another and smaller whirling moon, I saw that Saturn's colossal rings lay edge-on close before our racing masses of craft, gigantic spinning rings of mighty meteor-masses, countless great meteor-swarms whirling there about the vast yellow planet whose sphere now was stupendous in the heavens before us. In another few moments Neptunian cylinders and space-fliers of Earth would have rushed alike into those thundering swarms of meteors, in which no craft could live for a moment. Already chance meteors were whirling through space about us as we shot on, cylinder or space-flier here and there in the two racing, grappling fleets vanishing in white-hot flashes of heat and fire as a meteor struck them. But other and more cylinders and space-fliers were vanishing in wreckage beneath the cleaving rays from either fleet, and both were racing on so intent upon our terrific struggle as to notice hardly at all the vast whirling rings before us! I heard Whitely utter a hoarse cry to Marlin as we flashed forward, heard Marlin swiftly utter an order in the mouthpiece before him, and then our fleet, and the Neptunian cylinders at almost the same instant, had shot diagonally upward and instead of crashing into the great rings' edge were slanting swiftly up over them!
And now, as Neptunians and Earth fliers drove together up over Saturn's colossal rings, the intensity of the struggle seemed to deepen to a fierceness as yet unknown. For the moment it was sheer blind battle without need of reason or command, sheer awful combat there in space above Saturn's whirling rings, with beside us the vast cloud-screened yellow sphere of Saturn itself looming gigantic, and with outside the great rings its whirling maze of moons! Cylinders and space-fliers grappled in that moment with mindless fury, and with a swiftness and skill of which I had not dreamed myself capable, I whirled our space-flier this way and that amid the swarming, boiling ruck of the giant battle, amid the grappling hordes of space-fliers and cylinders that filled the air before us, their cleaving concentrated rays slicing this way and that in swift circles of death about us! I heard Whitely laughing a little from excitement beside me as the battle reached this terrific pitch, saw Randall sending our own weapon-rays this way and that with lightning-swiftness, Marlin gazing out tensely into that hell of battle that filled space about us. Struggling there above Saturn's colossal rings, ever and again Neptunian cylinder or space-flier of Earth shot too low and was caught by the whirling meteor-swarms of those giant rings, annihilated instantly by them! Hundreds of cylinders and space-fliers had gone to death already, but so far the battle had been almost even despite our greater force, and seeing this Marlin cried quickly into the order-mouthpiece before him.
* * * * *
Instantly our whirling space-fliers shot back suddenly from the wild ruck of the battle, formed instantly into a long double column of fliers with our own flier at the head, and then before the surprised Neptunians could reform their own spread-out and disorganized mass, our compact column had leaped forward and had crashed through their formless mass with a great shock, fliers and cylinders perishing in scores in that reeling crash! And then our double column had divided, pushing out to either side and thus splitting and separating the Neptunian mass of cylinders, and thus separated and inferior to us in numbers we were in the next moment leaping upon them there above Saturn's rings and sending their cylinders into wrecked fragments by the hundreds with our whirling rays! Fiercely their own rays came back upon us, as they faced us, and then they seemed to waver, to hesitate. And before we could sense their intention their remaining cylinders, depleted by scores each moment now and numbering no more than fifteen hundred, had dropped downward almost to the giant whirling rings, had formed into a swift massed formation there, and then with all the power of their propulsion-rays were speeding away, away from Saturn, out through the void toward the calm green distant spot of light that was Neptune!
"They're fleeing!" I cried, as our own space-flier whirled around in that moment. "We've beaten these, at least--they're fleeing back to Neptune!"
"Regular formation--all squadrons!" Marlin was shouting into the mouthpiece before him. "Full speed out from Saturn--after the Neptunians!"
And as our space-fliers, still over four thousand in number despite the losses of that wild combat, massed swiftly together in their V-formation and then were hurtling out from Saturn through the gulf after the fleeing cylinders, I was crying to him over the sudden waxing throb of our generators: "There's far more Neptunian cylinders than these that waited for us at Saturn here--the rest must be waiting at Neptune itself!"
He nodded, grim-faced. "The main Neptune fleet is probably waiting there for us--and must outnumber us by almost two to one. But if we can overtake these fifteen hundred cylinders before us we'll keep them, at least, from rejoining their main fleet!"
Now Saturn and its rings and moons was dwindling swiftly behind us as our great fleet shot forward again from it, out toward Neptune's steady, pale-green little light-spot, and after the hundreds of cylinders fleeing before us toward it. With an acceleration that never before had we dared to risk did we leap forward through the void now, and so awful was the pressure of that acceleration upon us that even with our shock-absorbing apparatus we were crushed almost into unconsciousness by it. Steadily, though, with the last of my consciousness and strength, I held the space-flier's speed and course onward, while close behind us there shot after us with the same terrific acceleration, the fliers of our own fleet. We knew, though, that the Neptunians were fleeing toward their great world at a speed and acceleration as great as ours, for we were not gaining upon them. Their massed hundreds of cylinders, indeed, were not visible to us in the great void ahead except by means of our telescope, but with it we could keep them in view and could check their progress and ours out through the great gulf toward the solar system's edge.
Out--out--for hour upon hour we throbbed through the void after those fleeing Neptunian cylinders, out once again toward great Neptune and toward the last mighty battle that was to be ours there. For well we knew that the two thousand and more Neptunian cylinders that had waited for us there at Saturn, that had laid that great ambush in space for us there and then had battled us so fiercely over Saturn, were but a portion of the Neptunian main fleet of cylinders, sent out to delay, and if possible, to destroy us. That great main body of their cylinders, we knew, must number almost double as many craft as our own, and undoubtedly was aware of our coming and was waiting for us at Neptune or near it. And it was the great main body of the Neptunian cylinders that we must overcome, I knew, before ever we could hope to get to Triton and halt there the giant force-ray that was turning the sun on toward the doom of the solar system. And well we knew, too, that in the interval the Neptunians had had time to build many more cylinders, to make their great fleet even greater, and that whatever mighty weapons they had devised in that time we now must face.
So that as our great fleet of space-fliers, holding to its regular formation, flashed on and on and on through the great gulf of space, on out through the outer vast reaches of the solar system toward its outermost planet, our every effort was bent upon overtaking the fleeing Neptunians before us and annihilating them before they could rejoin the main body. At the same colossal speed as ourselves they were fleeing from before us, on toward Neptune's tiny green disk far ahead, and though we held steady in our pursuit after them, we could not lessen the gap between us. Hour passed into hour and day into changeless day thus as we throbbed on in that tremendous pursuit, hours and days that we could not measure, all things seeming timeless now as our great fleet flashed on in this terrific pursuit. At maximum speed, at millions of miles an hour, the Neptunians and ourselves were hurtling on, yet they kept out of reach ahead of us, as Neptune grew larger ahead. And now that mighty pursuit of ours had become so strange and unreal and dream-like that it was as men in a dream that we watched and slept and watched in our space-fliers as Earth's brave fleet shot on through the last reaches of the solar system toward its edge.
Timeless indeed seemed the day on day, the hour on hour, of that daring pursuit of our fleeing enemies out from Saturn toward great Neptune, but now we knew that that pursuit had begun to draw to an end, since Neptune's disk was steadily enlarging before us and we had begun slowly to draw closer to the fleeing cylinders! Closer and closer our fleet, our own foremost space-flier, was coming to those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, and the interval of hours and days of pursuit out from the wild combat at Saturn seemed as though it had not existed, so tense once more we became as we drew nearer to the Neptunians before us. At last, with Neptune's pale-green disk and the bright little spot of Triton above and behind it within hours of us, we had come so close to the fleeing cylinders that their mass, hurtling on in a cone-like formation, was clearly visible to our unaided eyes in the void ahead. And by this time, in every space-flier of our onrushing fleet, its occupants were waiting impatiently for the moment when we would be near enough to loose our concentrated weapon-rays on the fleeing craft ahead.
"We'll overtake them before they reach Neptune!" Marlin declared, gazing intently ahead toward the gleaming points that were the fleeing cylinders far ahead. "Within hours now we'll be up to them!"
"Well enough for us that we can do so, too!" Whitely commented. "For if they rejoined their main body, the odds against us might be overpowering!"
And now as pursuers and pursued rushed nearer and nearer toward mighty Neptune's great pale-green sphere, they were also nearing each other, our onleaping four thousand space-fliers drawing closer and closer toward those fleeing fifteen hundred cylinders, though they were a great distance from us. Beside me Randall's hands were resting on the weapon-ray controls, and as we came closer still to the fleeing Neptunians, I saw Marlin leaning toward the mouthpiece, preparing to give his order to the great fleet behind us. Closer--closer--we could clearly make out now the massed fleeing cylinders far in the void ahead--already almost within accurate ray-range, a swarm of black dots against Neptune's cloudy green disk ahead. And as we came thus close Marlin leaned to voice his order, to spread the space-fliers of our fleet into a broad firing-formation and send their rays stabbing ahead. But that order was never uttered, for at that moment Whitely uttered a sharp cry, and we saw that the racing mass of cylinders ahead was suddenly _slowing_!
With unprecedented quickness its speed was decreasing before us and in moments more we would have crashed into those slowing cylinders had not Marlin's voice snapped a quick order that slowed instantly all the fliers of our fleet likewise. Fearful of some trick, slowing thus, we gazed intently ahead in that moment and then all of us had cried out together as we saw, beyond that swarm of black dots that were the slowing fifteen hundred Neptunian cylinders before us, other black dots that showed against great Neptune's disk also, which loomed great now in the heavens ahead! Other black dots, an immense swarm of them, that we knew were other cylinders, an immense fleet of them, rushing out from Neptune toward the fifteen hundred before us and toward ourselves! And then as in moments more the fifteen hundred cylinders before us slowed and stopped in space even as we had slowed, we saw sweeping from behind them, from great Neptune, those other cylinders, forming with them, there in space, a colossal semi-circular mass of fully eight thousand Neptunian cylinders in all, that faced our own four thousand or more space-fliers there in the void! It was the giant assembled Neptunian fleet, gathered here outside their world to face our own fleet, in that great struggle in which Earth and Neptune were to come now at last to death-grips for the life or death of the solar system!