CHAPTER XV

"You of Neptune or We of Earth!"

"Column formation--all squadrons full speed ahead!"

It was Marlin's voice that shouted that swift order in the next instant, and then, even as the gigantic semi-circle of the Neptunian fleet was leaping through the void toward us, our four thousand and odd space-fliers, outnumbered almost by two to one by the cylinders massed ahead, had shifted like lightning from their great V-formation to one of a long double column once more, and no sooner had its squadrons taken that new formation than the column slanted slightly to allow the free use of their propulsion-rays. They were flashing forward now like an enormous spear cast toward the curving front of the giant Neptunian fleet! For it was Marlin's intention to meet that outnumbering mass of cylinders by splitting it with a column as we had done over Saturn to our enemies, and then engaging separately the parts of the disorganized mass. So that now, even as the great half-circle of the Neptunian cylinders whirled through the void to overwhelm us, we had formed that long, double column and were dashing straight at them!

Holding the controls of our space-flier steady in that moment, I was aware for an instant of a sense of the utter strangeness of all the wild scene about me--of our space-flier's interior with Marlin and Randall and Whitely crouched in their chairs beside me, of the great column of polyhedron-like, gleaming, faceted space-fliers that came forward through the black gulf of star-sown space behind us, of the oncoming giant line of the Neptunian cylinders flashing toward us in turn, and of the immense green disk of mighty Neptune looming in the black vault behind them. All seemed for the moment the panorama of some strange nightmare stretched about me, but that momentary sensation that had gripped me so often in our wild rush through the solar system vanished in the next instant as stern reality loomed before us. There were the mighty curving line of gleaming Neptunian cylinders through which in the next split-second our great column must crash! I braced myself mentally for that vast crash that must almost inevitably mean death for the foremost of our space-fliers; I was aware as we drove upon the onrushing Neptunian line, that now unthinkable storms of deadly concentrated rays were raging from fleet to fleet; and then suddenly, at the very instant that we thought to crash into their great approaching line, that line opened swiftly before us to allow our great column to rush unharmed through it!

So astounded were we by that unlooked-for maneuver on the part of the Neptunians, that before we could check our speed, we were through, had shot in our entire column through that opening in their semi-circle, which instantly closed again behind us. And as it did so, there rushed toward each other the open ends of their semi-circle, thus closing that circle even as we rushed into it. Our fleet was held enclosed within the circle of their own! And then, from all those thousands of Neptunian cylinders that surrounded us, there were stabbing at us in countless number slender shafts of concentrated force, countless pencil-like weapon-rays that instantly clove through hundreds of our gathered space-fliers and that strewed space thick about us with their wreckage, even as we sought in vain to answer that terrible rain of deadly rays!

"Trapped!" Whitely was shouting. "They've trapped us inside their circle--are destroying us!"

For, though our own rays were fiercely springing forth and striking cylinder after cylinder of the vast fleet that had gathered about us, that fleet so outnumbered us and had such advantage of position, that it was decimating us in short order. Our space-fliers had broken from their column-formation now, and in a loose, disorganized mass were drifting at the center of that great ring of death which the Neptunians had formed about us. Swiftly our fliers were going into wreckage and death beneath the terrific storm of rays from all around us, and then Marlin's voice was flaring as he shouted an order into his mouthpiece.

"All space-fliers mass together," he cried, "and turn all your propulsion-rays outward!"

"You're going to--" Whitely began, but Marlin cut him short.

"We're going to break up the Neptunians' circle in the only way it can be broken up!" he cried.

As his order sounded the thousands of our space-fliers were obeying it, were massing compactly together at the center of the Neptunians' mighty circle. Thus massed, they presented for the moment a perfect target for our enemies' rays, and for a moment those rays stabbed thick toward us from all sides. In the next moment our massed space-fliers were shooting their great propulsion-rays outward, outward in all directions around us, outward toward the Neptunians' encircling ring! As those rays shot out, they pressed with terrific power against that ring of cylinders about us, and since our own fliers were massed together and thus braced against each other, it was not they that moved but the cylinders, their great ring instantly broken up, disintegrated, as those cylinders were hurled out into the void from us by the pushing power of our great propulsion-rays! For the moment they were broken up completely, their formation entirely shattered, and before they could reform, there had come another order from Marlin and in a compact formation ourselves, our space-fliers were leaping upon their shattered masses!

To right and left, like light, drove the deadly weapon-rays of our massed space-fliers as we seized the opportunity and leaped upon the Neptunians. Ample was the revenge we had upon them in that moment, since the concentrated rays tore through and wrecked hundreds of their own cylinders as we sprang upon them! Fleeing from before us for the moment, flashing away toward giant Neptune's tremendous green disk ahead, they strove to reform while we leaped after them and harried them with every weapon-ray which our space-fliers could emit. Swiftly, though, even as they rushed onward before us, the Neptunian cylinders were drawing together into a great mass again, into a great column-like formation, and as our own column-mass drove beside and after them with weapon-rays stabbing, their resistance abruptly stiffened, and they were racing in close formation once more beside our own mighty fleet, grappling once more with it in space as both rushed toward great Neptune. But we had struck a mighty blow at their disorganized masses in the moment of our opportunity. Fully two thousand of their cylinders had been swept to death by our rays before they had been able to mass again, and now but six thousand or less cylinders remained, racing ahead with our own four thousand or less fliers!

The great green sphere of Neptune was looming colossal ahead and slightly beneath our two oncoming fleets, with behind and above it the bright little disk of Triton. It was toward Triton even in that wild moment that all of us were gazing, toward the source of the giant sun-ray that we must, somehow, halt. But now the battle around us had become so furious that we could spare no thought to aught else, since the two mighty fleets, stabbing ceaselessly at each other with their slender rays as they slowed their flashing progress forward, were rushing into the outer reaches of the atmosphere of huge Neptune! Its air was roaring about our whirling space-fliers as we shot through it, but as we shot on we saw that the Neptunian cylinders were going into annihilation swifter far than were our fliers! For they had formed and were racing beside us in their half-circle formation, while our own fliers at Marlin's command had leaped forward in a long column that could concentrate all its fire of rays upon the side of the Neptunian formation nearest us! And though slender rays tore lightning-like through fliers here and there across our own column, we saw that their cylinders beneath our fire were being wrecked in scores, in hundreds! In that vast running fight we were fast evening the odds against us!

Marlin's eyes were gleaming with excitement as we saw the Neptunians thus falling beside us under our concentrated fire of rays, and Randall and Whitely and I were almost beside ourselves with exultation. Faster were falling the Neptunian cylinders beneath our rain of rays, the rays of their farther cylinders being held from us by their own cylinders in their fatal formation. Already, as we thundered through the mists of mighty Neptune and low over its gleaming surface, we saw that the Neptunian cylinders had been reduced by that deadly fire of ours to hardly more than three thousand, to hardly more than our own fleet of fliers, which had itself lost its hundreds in that vast running battle. As our rays tore into and through their shaken mass hundreds upon hundreds of their cylinders had been cloven through, had been reduced to whirling wreckage, and we had evened the odds in our raging battle at last!

Even as we cried out in triumph, the Neptunians must have seen that to continue in that running fight longer was suicidal for them. They could not change formation during that flight without exposing themselves to worse peril, so in desperation they did a completely unexpected thing. Their enormous mass of cylinders, battered out of its half-circle formation by our terrific fire of rays, suddenly swerved in toward our own fleet as the two great armadas rushed forward above Neptune, and then that Neptunian fleet of cylinders had crashed obliquely with immense power into our own space-flier fleet! The next instant it had so merged with it that the two fleets ceased instantly to exist as such and for the moment became one colossal, swaying, reeling mass of cylinders and space-fliers in utter merged confusion, striking and soaring and smashing each other!

As that great cylinder-armada crashed thus into our own it had seemed to me that the air all around us was filled in that instant with colliding space-fliers and cylinders, and with a hell of slender pale and deadly concentrated rays that raged thick in whirling death about us! I saw before us two onrushing cylinders, whirled the flier up to avoid that imminent collision, and then as they passed beneath us, saw Randall send our rays driving down and cleaving through them, saw them whirl in wreckage into which a battling cylinder and faceted space-flier had crashed themselves in the next instant! I heard Whitely's shout of alarm in the next split-second, instinctively flung the flier sidewise through the boiling ruck of the battle, just in time to escape a pair of stabbing rays from a cylinder beneath, and then saw those rays stab on up and strike another cylinder and destroy it! And even as I whirled the flier sidewise, Randall was driving our rays to right and left against other cylinders rushing upon us!

* * * * *

The air about us seemed filled in that moment with a single wildly-swirling mass of cylinders and space-fliers, grappling with each other there in countless individual combats inextricably intermixed, their weapon-rays going out in destruction through the craft that whirled upon them, their propulsion-rays driving the ships about them crazily to right and left! With inconceivable fury cylinders and fliers soared and fought and fell above great Neptune's roof, the air filled with falling wreckage, our great battle reaching now an undreamed-of phase of intensity, as gleaming cylinders and faceted ball-like space-fliers were annihilated alike by hundreds! That giant merged combat of the two fleets had in minutes taken toll of half the force of each, and I wondered dimly even as I whirled the flier up and back through the wild, annihilating battle how either men of Earth or disk-bodied Neptunians could cling to a battle of such suicidal nature! Then suddenly from Marlin had come a hoarse exclamation, and I saw in that instant all the Neptunian cylinders intermixed with our space-fliers rising upward, as though in answer to a single command!

"Up!" cried Marlin. "The Neptunians are over us! They're going to----!"

But before he could finish the sentence, before our space-fliers could whirl upward in answer to his command, from the Neptunian cylinders massed above us had shot down upon us innumerable powerful propulsion-rays, rays that struck scores, hundreds, of our space-fliers and drove them down with terrific force to crash against the metal roof of Neptune beneath us! They were repeating the maneuver by which we four had escaped from our pursuers over Neptune weeks before, were driving our fliers down to crashing death in hordes! Instantly as Marlin shouted into the order-mouthpiece, our fliers leaped forward, to escape from that death that smote us from above, but as we drove forward in our column formations again, they went on above us, were with their powerful propulsion-rays driving us down to death in scores even as with those rays they prevented us from rising to meet them! We were being quickly destroyed now, and as we saw it, as our column flashed on with the Neptunian cylinders massing in another column above and driving our fliers down by scores, we saw that not much longer could that unequal battle continue! Then abruptly Marlin pointed ahead and downward to Neptune's mighty roof beneath us, was crying an order to us and the fliers behind and about us.

"That opening!" he cried. "Down through it--down beneath the roof! It's our one chance to escape them!"

I caught my breath at that cry of his, for I saw that he was pointing down toward one of the great circular openings in Neptune's roof, openings that were set in it here and there, all being open now as when we had first explored Neptune's mysteries. To flash down beneath the roof through that opening was our one chance of escape from the relentless smiting death above. I saw it, too, so the next instant our own flier and all the long column behind us were diving downward at a dizzying angle toward that great circular opening; and in the next moment before the Neptunian cylinders above could fathom our purpose, we had passed through that opening and were racing forward beneath the great roof! In an instant, though, the Neptunian cylinders had followed in their long column and were racing after us, through the dim Neptunian day above the dead and lifeless surface of the great compartment-city that covered all of Neptune!

On we flashed, with the Neptunian column some distance behind, numbering now some half-thousand more in cylinders than our own bare thousand space-fliers. On until above us we saw another similar opening in the great roof, and then at Marlin's quick order our narrow, long column of fliers were slanting up toward it, through it. And then, outside of the great roof once more, Marlin gave a swift order that revealed to me the purpose of his strategy. For at that order our fleet checked its upward rush and bent its long column lightning-like around to form a great circle, a circle hovering there around and above the great circular opening in the roof through which we had just emerged. And in the next moment, as the Neptunian column flashed up through that opening likewise in hot pursuit of us, never suspecting us of waiting there for it, from all the fliers of our great circle there had radiated toward them storm on storm of deadly concentrated rays, rays that smote them with blinding shock as their column rushed upward and that crashed through hundreds of their upflashing cylinders even as they burst up through the opening, before ever they could catch sight of us around them! In those seconds of dazing surprise there was no chance for them to recoil, and their column of cylinders, as if too astounded for the moment to answer with a single ray, was flashing up from the opening through a hurricane of rays that in that moment was annihilating their cylinders by hundreds! But a scant three or four hundred cylinders of those that ran upward through that gauntlet of death escaped it, and these swirled for a moment in stunned confusion above us, and then were without formation racing away from us over Neptune's surface, racing away toward the gleaming disk of Triton!

"Beaten!" I cried, as our own space-fliers whirled up now after the fleeing cylinders. "They're beaten--they're fleeing back to Triton!"

"The giant ray!" Whitely was shouting, as we thundered forward. "We've still more than a thousand fliers left, and if we can get now to that great sun-ray----!"

"Hold steady after them!" Marlin cried. "We've fought our way this far, and we've got now to get to that ray and halt it!"

Now out over Neptune's surface, out through its mists and outer atmosphere again, the cylinders ahead were roaring at utmost speed, almost leaping in a confused and disorganized mass, the remnants of that mighty fleet that had come out to meet us outside Neptune, toward their moon-world of Triton, whose disk gleamed bright ahead. A thrill of pride even in our wild excitement shot through me as we thundered on in pursuit of those fleeing cylinders. For whatever else that day might hold for us, whether or not we were able to halt that giant ray on Triton's sunward side that was reaching out to the sun and turning it ever faster, we men of Earth had at least proved our fighting ability to the solar system for all time, had come out to the solar system's edge and had shattered there the mighty armada of the Neptunians' ancient and mighty race! And now as we flashed on in swift pursuit of the fleeing survivors of that armada toward Triton, confidence and hope were strengthening in us each moment, for with the Neptunians' great fleet shattered what could hold us back from the shattering and halting of the giant sun-ray and its mechanism?

On--on--and now we were rushing after the fleeing cylinders out of Neptune's atmosphere and into the airless void again, with Triton growing each moment more bright and big as giant Neptune fell behind us. Across the gulf from Neptune to its moon we sped, after those cylinders, with utmost acceleration and speed, and swiftly we drew closer to the Neptunians flying before us, and swiftly too drew closer to the gleaming sphere of Triton. And as it grew larger before us, as we pursued the cylinders in toward it, we all cried out as we followed with our eyes at the sunward side of it the giant pale beam, hardly visible, of the colossal force-ray acting on the sun, that mighty ray that was turning the sun ever faster to the doom of the solar system! We could make out that gigantic beam, leaping out into space toward the distant fire-disk of the sun, and could make out also in that moment a great number of great humped dark shapes gathered on Triton's roof around the great pit of the sun-ray. As our eyes shifted to Triton's other edge we could discern the other giant force-ray, which reached out toward the distant star in Sagittarius and by bracing Triton with its pressure kept the moon-world from being hurled out into space by the sun-ray's pressure. Around this other ray's pit, too, were a few of the strange great humped or domed dark shapes, but in that moment we gave them small attention, for the cylinders that had been fleeing from before us straight toward the great sun-ray's giant beam, had abruptly slowed, stopped, as they rushed into Triton's atmosphere, and had turned desperately to face us!

* * * * *

It was a wild, fierce attempt on their part to hold us even to the last from their great ray, and as their three or four hundred cylinders massed so suddenly before us and faced us, our own column was leaping upon them with all the impetus of our thousand and more space-fliers! The next moment cylinder and space-flier were reeling in a wild last struggle there high in Triton's atmosphere, high above the pit of the giant sun-ray, with the mighty pale beam of that ray passing up and out toward the sun and still beside us! Like demons the Neptunians were fighting now, but we were wrought up to the fiercest pitch of battle ourselves, and as Marlin gave his orders, we were swooping upon them with insensate fury, cylinder and space-flier crashing together there above Triton or falling beneath the slicing sweeps of the weapon-rays that again raged thick around us! Faster, ever faster, fell the outnumbered cylinders before our wild attack, until at last but a score were left--a dozen--a half-dozen--and then those, too, were gone, the last of the Neptunians' mighty fleet of cylinders annihilated! And now as from our hovering space-fliers, still over a thousand in number, there came muffled, wild cheers, our eyes were shifting downward, down to the great pit from which the sun-ray sprang, down to the twenty control-boxes in the sides of that pit!

"Down to the pit--down to the controls!" Marlin was shouting over the wild uproar in our and the other fliers. "Every one of those control-boxes must be destroyed before we can halt the ray!"

"We'll halt the great ray now!" I cried to him, as our space-fliers swooped downward now toward the giant pit of the ray. "We've wiped out their last forces and we can----"

"But look--those great domes around the pit below!" It was Whitely's hoarse shout that broke in upon me. "They're great domed forts--_great domed forts guarding the giant sun-ray's pit and controls_!"

For as we shot down toward the great pit of the mighty force-ray we had seen clearly now the scores of giant domed, humped shapes on Triton's roof around that pit, which we had vaguely discerned from high above. And they were, as Whitely cried to us, great forts! Giant domed forts of inconceivably thick and strong metal, each hundreds of feet in height, with openings here and there in them from which countless deadly weapon-rays could be emitted. And these great domed forts, over a hundred in number, were _moving_, were wheeling this way and that smoothly and swiftly on Triton's roof, were circling slowly on that roof about the pit of the giant sun-ray, guarding that pit and the control-boxes in its walls! Even as we heard Whitely's cry in that moment, as we flashed down toward them, we realized that the Neptunians had constructed those mighty moving forts of metal to guard their great force-ray's controls from our attack, placing more than a hundred of them around the pit of the great sun-ray, and a half-score of them, as we had perceived, around the pit of the other great force-ray on Triton's other side! And then, in the moment that Whitely cried out and that we saw those great forts moving like smooth-gliding mountains of metal beneath us, there had rained upward from them toward us a staggering, withering storm of concentrated force-rays!

Reeling, staggering, falling, our fleet spun in crazy disorder in the next moment as that terrific fire from beneath decimated us! And though in the next instant Marlin's voice rang steel-clear with an order, though in answer to that order our own concentrated rays radiated down madly toward those gliding mountain-like domed forts beneath us, it seemed that our rays had no effect upon them! For so stupendous in thickness and strength were those giant domed forts of metal, that instead of cleaving through them our rays could do no more than crumple and dent somewhat their smooth outer surfaces! They were invulnerable, almost, to our attack, and though one of them was crumpled into twisted metal by scores of our rays happening to converge upon it, the others were almost unharmed and were raking us with a terrible, annihilating rain of rays as we shot down over them!

Down and down--and then as I shot our space-flier down foremost of our mass of fliers through that wild tornado of deadly rays, I saw the great pit's opening looming full beneath us, the giant pale beam coming up from that opening, the twenty vital control-boxes set at equal intervals around its walls! Toward one of those control-boxes our own flier was whirling beneath my hands, and then Randall drove out like light our piercing weapon-rays toward that control-box, clove through and wrecked it instantly! But it was but one of twenty, and in the next instant our space-fliers, unable longer to withstand that terrific fire of rays from the gathering domed forts around the pit, were staggering upward, none other of our fliers having progressed as far down as ours, and none other of the twenty control-boxes being destroyed! And as our space-fliers reeled thus upward, unable to reach the control-boxes in the pit against the awful fire of the gathered domed forts about it, we saw that more than a hundred of our fliers had fallen beneath the terrific fire of rays from the forts in our mad rush downward!

"Those twenty control-boxes!" Marlin was crying. "We've got to destroy every one before the sun-ray will halt!"

"But we can't with these giant moving forts against us!" Whitely cried. "They're wiping us out--they will have destroyed us in minutes!"

"We'll hold it to the end, then!" Marlin shouted. "We've fought our way out through the solar system to this great ray, and unless we halt it now it means death for the solar system in a score more days! Down again to the attack!"

And down--down--down--like striking, rushing meteors our hundreds of space-fliers shot, to one side of the giant beam, down with the great domed forts beneath swiftly flashing over Triton's roof to mass beneath us at the pit's side. Through the little window-openings in those forts we saw the disk-bodied Neptunians inside, and knew that beneath the great roof of Triton also were swarming the millions upon countless millions of all the Neptunian races, all the disk-bodied monsters in their great compartment-city, who, with this great ray, were turning our sun faster and faster to divide in a score more days and doom the solar system! And with a desperation born of that thought we shot down once more, down with the hell of rays from the great domed forts again raging up around us and taking toll of our fliers as we shot over them, curving back upward once more, and stabbing again toward the control-boxes in the pit's wall our weapon-rays as we reached that curve's lowest point! But this time, though the great forts took toll again of scores of our fliers as we shot down over them and up again, over the pit and up again, our rays were so imperfectly aimed, that no control-box was destroyed this time!

Upward we swirled and then again, with a persistence more insensate than human, were racing downward again in a terrific swoop over the pit of the great ray! Again the deadly rays of the surrounding hundred domed forts crashed through our down-swooping fliers, sending masses of them again into whirling wreckage, while as we swooped down over the pit and upward again in that lightning-like rush through death we saw that our rays had missed once more and that none of the control-boxes had this time been destroyed by them! And as we reeled upward again over the great pit, from over the giant domed forts, we saw that but a few more than five hundred space-fliers remained to us of the thousand and more with which we had first flashed downward! In three downward swoops only, in three lightning-like moments of attack, the giant invulnerable forts beneath had annihilated more than half our force, and we had succeeded in destroying but a single one of the twenty control-boxes!

"The end!" cried Whitely. "The end of our chance to halt the great sun-ray!"

"The end of our great fight through the solar system--the end of Earth's and the solar system's last chance!"

For it was the end! Even as we cried out thus we knew it, beyond shadow of doubt, as the shattered mass of our remaining space-fliers reeled high above Triton's roof, high above the great pit of the ray and the colossal moving domed forts that guarded it! Marlin--Whitely--Randall--they were swaying in that moment, the knowledge of doom plain upon their faces as upon mine! Another great swoop downward and those giant, almost invulnerable moving forts would blast us entirely from the air with their storms of rays! All of the nineteen remaining controls below must be destroyed to halt the mighty sun-ray, and before we could destroy even one of them, we would be annihilated! The giant ray beside us would turn the sun on ever faster, turn it on until in a score more days the sun would divide at last into a double star and engulf its planets in its diverging fires--all save Neptune! And as we came thus to the end at last of our superhuman struggle to halt the solar system's doom there was coming up to us from beneath the great roof of Triton a vast, rolling muffled shouting of triumphant Neptunians, of all the Neptunian hordes upon Triton who saw as we did that for us the end had come!

"But if it's the end, we'll meet it trying!" Randall cried. "One more swoop downward--we can die that way at least----!"

* * * * *

But from Marlin, who stood with crimson face and blazing eyes, there came a mad shout. "The end--_no_!" he cried. "_There's still a chance for us--to halt the other ray--the ray on Triton's outward side!_"

_The other ray!_ The other giant force-ray that went from Triton's outward side, its dark side, into the gulf of interstellar space toward that far star in Sagittarius, the other mighty ray that braced Triton against the great sun-ray's pressure and that kept that sun-ray's pressure from hurling Triton out into the great interstellar void! The other ray--and if it were halted--then Triton--I felt my mind reeling as the stupendous meaning of Marlin's mad shout came home to it! The other ray--guarded by only a half-score of the giant moving domed forts, instead of the hundred beneath us--and then Marlin's voice was tearing across the throbbing, rushing din to my ears and instinctively I had obeyed his order, had shot our space-flier forward at immense speed even as there rushed forward beside us our five hundred and more remaining fliers! I whirled it away from the great pit of the giant sun-ray and over Triton's roof at lightning speed toward its dark side, toward the other giant ray that reached out into interstellar space from that dark side!

And as we rushed thus away with reeling speed, we heard the mighty thundering cheers of the Neptunian millions beneath the great roof changing to wild cries of alarm, saw the hundred great domed forts around the sun-ray moving over Triton's roof after us with immense speed, themselves, gliding at utmost velocity on around that roof's smooth surface after us in sudden wild alarm! But, more slow by a little than our massed space-fliers that split the air above Triton they dropped behind us even as we shot forward, even as that colossal roar of rising alarm rolled across Triton's surface beneath the great roof! On--on--like rushing meteors massed close together our space-fliers flashed now, toward Triton's dark side around its surface, and then were whirling around that dark side, were whirling straight toward the colossal other beam, the giant other force-ray that stabbed out opposite from the sun-ray, that stabbed out toward Sagittarius' bright star and by its pressure towards that star kept Triton braced against the sun-ray's outward pressure! Marlin was shouting, screaming an order as we flashed downward, and we caught sight for a moment of the half-score domed forts, left as guards of this other ray's great pit and controls, and then like comets of metal our fliers were thundering down upon them!

Slender beams sprang quick to meet us from those ten great domed forts, but though those beams drove crashingly upward upon us in narrow rays of death, it was not toward the domed forts that we were rushing, but toward the twenty control-boxes set in the wall of the giant pit from which this other mighty ray issued! Through the wildly-whirling beams that sliced the air about us we flashed downward, and then as the pit's walls loomed close ahead, as beside us, almost thundered into by us, loomed the pale, gigantic beam, we saw the out-jutting control-boxes full before us, set around the pit's great wall, and the beams of our massed space-fliers were driving thick toward them! _Crash!_--_crash!_--_crash!_--and we were shouting crazily as we saw half the twenty control-boxes smashing inward, annihilated by our first wild rush! And then as we spun around there in the pit, around the giant beam to annihilate the other control-boxes, the rays of the ten domed forts sweeping insanely about us, Whitely cried out hoarsely and pointed away across Triton's metal roof-surface toward the hundred mighty shapes of the great domed forts rushing to the defense of this other ray, rushing to annihilate us!

"_The control-boxes!_" Marlin cried. "_The last control-boxes!_"

And even as he cried that, even as with their utmost immense speed the hundred colossal domed forts of metal rushed over Triton's metal roof to join with the outnumbered half-score beside us, to annihilate us with one combined mighty blast of their countless rays, our massed space-fliers had whirled around the great pit, around the mighty ray, and were driving toward the remaining control-boxes in its wall with all their weapon-rays stabbing ahead! _Crash!_--_crash!_--and those remaining control-boxes were crumpling, crashing, beneath our rays, with but a single control-box in the wall remaining intact in the next instant, a single one that sufficed still to keep the giant ray beside us going upward, outward, though! And even as we gathered, whirled to rush upon it also, the colossal rushing domed forts had appeared at the pit's edge around and above us, seeming to pause for a split-second before their combined countless rays came down to annihilate us! But in that instant, when the giant domed forts paused above us, Randall had whirled back the ray-switches in his hands, and from our space-flier and from a score more around us in the same instant there had flashed toward that last control-box a converging score or more of driving rays that instantly had crashed through and had annihilated that last control! And as that last control-box of all the giant ray's twenty was thus destroyed, there came what seemed a blinding flash of light at the great ray-mechanism far in the mighty pit beneath us, and then the giant pale force-ray that radiated upward and outward from that mechanism had abruptly snapped out beside us!

There was a pause, a silence of a single instant, a pause in which all the universe about us seemed holding its breath, in which our rushing space-fliers were whirling up out of the great pit, in which the giant domed forts at the great pit's edge beneath us seemed held in an enchantment of stupefaction. And then as our massed space-fliers whirled thus upward over Triton's surface, as Marlin and Randall and Whitely stared downward, swaying, we saw the great metal-roofed world of Triton reeling beneath us as though from some colossal shock, saw it rushing outward from beneath us with colossal, unthinkable speed! Saw it rushing out with velocity inconceivable away from the sun, away from Neptune, away from the solar system, rushing out into the vast void of interstellar space, _hurled into the void with all the countless millions of the Neptunians upon it, hurled into the void out from the solar system never to return_!

Hurled into the void, we four knew even as we watched it whirl away from beneath us, by the pressure of its own colossal sun-ray, that continued to emanate from it! For that giant ray which the Neptunians had directed toward the sun had pushed back upon Triton with pressure inconceivable, even as we had known, and it had been only the other ray radiating out toward Sagittarius' distant star that had braced Triton thus against the sun-ray's unthinkable outward pressure! And with our halting of that immense other ray, with our halting of that bracing ray, the moment that saw its connection of bracing force or pressure broken between Triton and that distant star saw Triton hurled out instantly by the pressure of its own giant sun-ray against the sun, that awful outward pressure breaking the moon-world loose instantly from the hold of great Neptune, its parent planet, from all the solar system, hurling it out from the solar system's edge into the boundless outer void forever!

Marlin--Whitely--Randall--myself--as we reeled there at the window watching, as our space-fliers whirled up and outward from Triton even as it shot outward from beneath us, we saw its gleaming sphere swiftly diminishing as it hurtled out in the great void, saw that it was spinning as it shot outward from the impetus of that gigantic push, that the great sun-ray issuing from it was whirling with its spinning now! And then as its gleaming sphere shot out into the void away from us, away from great Neptune behind us, away from the solar system's edge, shooting out into the cold and sunless outer void and bearing upon it all the Neptunian hordes to death, Marlin flung out his hand toward its diminishing gleaming little sphere in the black void before us, was crying out to it as though to the Neptunian millions upon it as it shot out, never to return.

"You of Neptune or we of Earth!" he cried. "One had to go to death--to doom! You fought for Neptune and your races as we fought for Earth and the solar system--but Earth and the solar system win!"