CHAPTER V

At the Solar System's Edge

"Out of the flier!" Marlin cried to us. "Our one chance is to get out and repair those broken connections from the outside."

"But how----" Randall began, when the astronomer broke in on him. "The space-walkers! In them we can get outside, can try to repair those connections before we fall into the great rings!"

A moment we stared toward him in sheer surprise, and then as one we were leaping toward the four big space-walkers, suspended from the flier's wall. For though we had not dreamed, in taking them with us, of any such emergency as now confronted us, we saw that, even as Marlin had said, our one chance to escape the annihilation that soon would be ours otherwise lay in their use. Swiftly, therefore, we unhooked the great cylindrical space-walkers, neither they nor aught else in the flier having any but small weight now, that weight being the result of the pull of great Saturn, toward which we were falling. Quickly swinging open the section near the cylinder's base that was its door, therefore, I pulled myself up into the cylinder, then closed its hermetically-sealing door with the small inside lever provided for the purpose.

I was standing, therefore, in a metal cylinder seven feet in height and three in diameter, its top tapering into a rounded little dome in which were small windows from which I could look outward. My arms I had thrust into the great hollow jointed arms of metal that projected from the cylinder's sides, and had at my fingers' ends inside those arms the controls of the great pincer-hands in which those arms ended outside, and the control also of the small generator inside the cylinder whose little force-ray was shot down from the cylinder's bottom. This could be shot straight down, sending the space-walker upward by pushing against some larger body, or could be shot out obliquely sending the space-walker horizontally in any direction. Once inside the space-walker therefore, with its tiny generator throbbing and the equally small air-renovator and heater functioning, I was ready to venture out into the airless void.

Glancing out through the vision-windows I saw that Marlin and Whitely and Randall had struggled into their space-walkers also, and were signalling their readiness. We grasped therefore the tools and materials we had hastily assembled for our task, these being spare plates to repair the flier's outer wall and a small molecular-diffusion welder, and then with those in the grasp of our great pincer-hands were pulling ourselves toward the flier's screw-door. In a moment we had that open, and were crowding into the little vestibule-chamber which lay between the outer and inner doors. Closing the inner one tightly behind us, we swiftly screwed open the outer door. As it opened there was a rush of air from about us as the air of the little vestibule-chamber rushed out into the great airless void outside, and then Marlin was leading the way out of that door, out into sheer space outside our falling space-flier!

I saw Marlin drawing himself in his space-walker through the door and then floating gently out that door, floating in space a few feet from our flier and falling at the same rate as it toward mighty Saturn! In a moment more I was following him, Whitely and Randall behind me, and as I too propelled myself with a slight push through the door, my cylindrical space-walker floated outward. I found myself, therefore, cased within that space-walker's cylinder, and floating in it in the sheer empty void of interplanetary space! Beside me was the great gleaming faceted ball of our flier, falling at the same rate as ourselves toward the huge rings of mighty Saturn, to the left. Beneath and before and on all other sides of me, though, was only space, the tremendous gulf, gleaming with the great hosts of stars on all sides, with the sun's brilliant little disk shining far behind us. For the moment our position was so strange, so utterly alien and unprecedented, as we four floated there beside the falling space-flier in our four great metal cylinders, that we could only gaze about us in sheer awe and wonder. Then Marlin, with one of the great metal jointed arms of his space-walker, motioned to us and toward the flier, and we realized that we had but little time left in which to accomplish the task now before us.

For with every moment the flier and our four space-walkers were falling at greater speed toward the colossal rings of huge Saturn, to the left, and the whirling titanic meteor-swarms of those rings were growing larger and larger. But a few hours remained before, with the growing acceleration of our free-falling flier, it would be meeting its end in those clashing, crashing meteors of the great swarm, so that if we were to repair the damage to it, and get its generators functioning again before it met its doom, we must work fast. Our four space-walkers were falling toward Saturn at the same rate as the great flier beside us, so that we hung just beside that flier in space without need to use the propelling force-rays of our four cylinders. And now Marlin, grasping with his great metal-pincer hands one of the projecting joints of the flier's great faceted walls, was pulling himself around it even as he fell with it through space, was pulling himself around to its other side, where the meteor that had struck us a glancing blow had done its damage.

In a moment Whitely and Randall and I had followed, moving clumsily in our great cylinders as we fell with the flier on toward Saturn's rings, and as we reached the other side where Marlin was hovering now in his space-walker we saw that the meteor that had grazed us had demolished two of the great facets of the flier's outer wall, and had shattered and crumpled a third. Save for a slight denting, though, the inner wall seemed unharmed, a fact that alone had saved us, but the black cable-connections between the walls were broken in a half-score places, we saw. It was that severing of the connections that had halted our great generators, we knew, so now our first task was to repair those connections, and it was upon that task that we began at once to work. Surely never had men worked under stranger circumstances than those, was my thought as we began the work of re-matching the severed connections. For we four, cased in our four great cylindrical metal space-walkers, were falling through space at a tremendous and ever-increasing rate, even as we worked upon our great flier falling with us, we were falling through the mighty void toward the whirling rings of Saturn, looming immense in space beside us. It meant annihilation for us, if we could not complete our repairs in time to escape them!

And as we toiled there at the connections, it seemed to me that never could we complete them in time to escape the great rings. For not only were there a half-score breaks in the intricate cables, but each cable held within itself a dozen smaller connections or strands that in each break must be exactly rematched. And working as we were with the great pincer-claws of the space-walker our progress was terribly slow. Minutes passed into an hour and another hour, as we labored furiously there outside the flier with those connections, and by then it seemed to us that the colossal rings of Saturn, a huge whirling storm of meteors, were but a few minutes from us, so vastly did they loom before us, and so swiftly were we and our flier falling. With the energy of utter despair we labored on there at the seemingly endless task of rejoining the intricate connections, our tools and materials that we were not using at the moment being simply released by us beside us, since they fell with us and our flier at the same rate toward Saturn and thus were within our grasp, our tools floated there beside us!

* * * * *

Now we were approaching the last of the connections, but now too we saw that it was only a matter of minutes before our space-flier and we would be whirling into the edge of the mighty rings of Saturn, that loomed now gigantic in their spinning meteor-masses before us! Already meteors were driving about us in space more thickly, and only by a miracle had our helplessly-falling flier escaped them so far. It seemed impossible that we could complete our task before the flier and ourselves were shot into the crashing death of those colossal whirling meteor-swarms, but we were working with the mad energy of a forlorn hope, and now too Marlin was leaning toward us with his space-walker to shout something to us. For when one space-walker touched another, their two occupants could hear each other's shouts, the sound-vibrations carried through the touching metal sides. Marlin was crying to us that but minutes were left us, and was ordering Randall to return back inside the flier and stand ready there to shoot it away from the great-looming rings the instant that the connections were repaired!

In a moment Randall had obeyed, pulling himself around the falling flier to its door and inside, while Marlin and Whitely and I worked tensely upon the last of the connections, matching and joining them with the greatest speed of which we were capable. Now it seemed that greater meteors were all about us, and now the huger, denser masses of the mighty rings were towering vastly beside us, as at plummet-like speed our flier and ourselves whirled toward them and toward death! Hanging there in sheer space at the falling flier's side, working madly upon those last connections, with all about us the glittering hosts of the stars and with beside us the titanic bulk of great Saturn and its colossal rings, we seemed caught in some unreal and torturing nightmare. Then as the huge meteor-masses of the mighty rings loomed just beside us, as I reached with the pincer-hands of my space-walker toward the last of the connections, I heard from Marlin in the space-walker touching mine a hoarse cry of despair. But at that last moment my claw-hands were swiftly joining the last connection and in the next instant came the steady throbbing of the great generators inside the flier! In that instant we had grasped our tools with one metal arm and with the other each of us had gripped the edge of the flier's shattered outer wall. And then, just as the flier and ourselves seemed hurtling straight into the mighty wall of whirling meteors that was the great rings beside us, the space-flier, with us three hanging desperately to it, was hurtling away from those rings as its great force-ray shot from inside toward them, was flashing at terrific mounting speed out from them into space!

For an instant, so terrific was the accelerating speed of the flier beneath Randall's control inside, that we three, hanging to the broken outer wall in our space-walkers, seemed on the point of being torn away from our grip on it, of falling back to Saturn once more. But in a moment more, with a great distance already between the flier and the huge rings that had almost been our doom, Randall had halted it, was holding it motionless in space by means of a steady force-ray. Then we were swiftly repairing the break in its outer wall, by means of the plates and tools to which we had clung, setting those great plates in place to replace the three shattered ones, and then welding them swiftly into the flier's outer wall integrally by means of the molecular-diffusion instrument. That done, we pulled ourselves around the flier's faceted surface to its outer door, opening that door and closing it again once inside the vestibule-chamber. Then as Marlin touched a stud the vestibule-chamber was filling with air, and in another moment we were inside the flier once more, were pulling ourselves out of the great space-walkers, with Randall already out of his and at the controls.

"That was almost our trip's end!" cried Marlin as he emerged from his space-walker. "Another few minutes and we'd have been inside the rings--would have been pounded into instant annihilation by the meteors there!"

I passed a hand over my brow. "Never again do I want to find myself in a situation like that," I said. "As it was, it was the space-walkers alone that saved us."

Marlin nodded, gazing out toward great Saturn looming gigantic still to our left. "If ever we come back," he said, "if ever we try to reach Saturn and explore it as we may some day, we'll have our work cut out for us. Those mighty meteor-masses--those rings----"

"Well, at present the farther we get from Saturn the better I'll feel," Whitely told us. "And I'm glad enough that there's no other planet between us and Neptune, at least, for Uranus is far away."

Now, recovering from the first shakiness of the reaction from our awful peril, we turned with Randall to the consideration of our position. Our great ray that had shot back from the flier, and had pushed us by its force out through the solar system, had been snapped out by the halting of the generators, and we had now only the side-ray that was holding us out from Saturn. I suggested, therefore, that for the remainder of our trip out to Neptune we turn the space-flier's rear force-ray upon Saturn instead of Earth, since Earth by now had dwindled to a small bluish-white star far behind. To train our rear force-ray upon Earth and to adjust the mechanism that kept the ray trained automatically afterwards upon the object suggested, would take more time than if we were simply to push the rear force-ray against great Saturn.

Marlin approved the suggestion, so after sending the flier out farther from Saturn and ahead of it by oblique applications of the side-ray, we held it carefully in space until it was headed toward the far green spot of Neptune, and then turned on the rear force-ray with half its full power at the start. At once, with terrific acceleration, we were flashing on toward Neptune, the giant power of the ray pushing against Saturn and driving our flier ever outward. So tremendous was that acceleration, indeed, that despite the shock-absorbing apparatus of our chairs we came near to being overcome by the awful pressure upon us. Yet it was necessary that we use the highest possible speed and acceleration, now, for our former speed and acceleration had been completely lost when the halting of the generators had allowed Saturn to pull us inward. And though we were now flashing out past Saturn's orbit, with only the orbit of Uranus between us and our goal of Neptune, we had still two-thirds of our journey before us! So colossal are the distances between the great outer planets, distances beside which the gaps between Mars and Earth and Venus and Mercury seem tiny.

With the utmost acceleration of speed that we could stand, though, our space-flier was now hurtling outward, its great force-ray pushing against Saturn with more and more power and sending us flashing forward with greater and greater velocity. In the next dozen hours of our flight we had reached again to the speed of five million miles an hour that had been ours before we had met with our misadventure at Saturn. And as we hurtled on Neptune was slowly largening before our eyes, its distant, tiny little spot of calm green light becoming bigger, brighter, though very slowly. But the eyes of Marlin and Whitely and Randall and myself were always upon that green light-spot as we hurtled on, hour following hour and day following day in our eventless onward flight through the solar system's outer immensities of space. And still our speed was steadily growing until at last, by the time we approached Uranus' orbit, we were flying through the great void at the space-flier's utmost velocity, more than eight million miles an hour.

That was a speed colossal, yet so accustomed had we four become to the space-flier's tremendous velocities that it seemed not unusual to us. Flashing through the void as we were, the only objects by which one could measure speed were the planets before and behind us, and these changed in size so slowly as to make our speed seem small. The greatest change to us in the attaining of the space-flier's immense utmost speed was the change of conditions inside the flier itself. Formerly the pressure of our constant acceleration had replaced to some degree the effects of gravitation, that pressure forcing us always towards the flier's rear, as we turned more and more power into our giant pushing ray, as we shot out with greater and greater speed. But now, with our utmost speed attained and that acceleration's pressure missing, we floated inside the flier as though entirely weightless, being attracted only very slightly toward the walls by the slight gravitational attraction of the flier's mass itself. So that now the straps across chairs and bunks and the handholds here and there on the walls that we had provided proved indispensable to us, indeed.

* * * * *

It was upon the fifteenth day after our start from Earth, the first day of July as I noted by Earth-reckoning, that we crossed the orbit of Uranus. As we approached that orbit, only our recording distance-dials, of course, marking the fact that we were nearing the path of Uranus, I stood or rather floated with Marlin and Whitely at the flier's rear windows, gazing backward. Behind us gleamed in the star-swept heavens the planets past which we had come, and those others beyond them. Great Saturn with his vast rings that had almost been our deaths was already dwindling fast, as our flier shot out from it with its force-ray pressing with ceaseless power against it. Already the huge ringed planet was but a tiny yellow disk of light to our eyes, so far out from it we were.

To the left, too, shone the white star of giant Jupiter, small but intensely brilliant still, while farther distant and infinitely fainter was the red spark that was Mars. Our eyes shifted from these to the bluish light-point that was Earth, and then beyond it to the little disk of brilliant fire that was the sun, its light and heat reaching us now in the smallest of quantities as we fled on into the chill immensities of the outer reaches of the solar system. There close beside that fiery little sun-disk we could also make out the silvery little light-point that was Venus, and by making use of a small hand-glass could also discern closer even beside the sun the tiny point of rosy light that we knew to be Mercury, smallest and inmost of all the planets. But as we watched there, as our space-flier hurtled on at unvarying, colossal speed over the orbit of Uranus, it was toward Uranus itself we were gazing. Far back from us on the solar system's other side hung the green spot of light that was Uranus, booming onward in its vast path around the sun, but though we watched steadily through the hand-glass toward it we were unable to make out the four small moons that accompany the great green planet, which shone with a deeper green even than the greenish spot of Neptune, ahead.

"Uranus--Venus--Mercury----," said Marlin, as he gazed musingly backward. "Those three we have not passed, yet they're no greater mysteries to us than those that we have passed. But some day----"

"Some day----," I repeated, staring back, lost in thought myself, not completing, any more than Marlin, the thought that I had started to express.

Nor did I need to complete it, for as Marlin and Whitely and I stared back to where the sun's disk sent its light bravely out across the unthinkable reaches of space that separated us from it, our thoughts were all on those three planets, on Uranus and Venus and Mercury, and on those others, Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, that we had passed. What wonders, unknown to us, might not exist upon any of those worlds? But they were wonders barred to us for the time, since time was the one thing of which we had the least, in our great rush outward to the sun's outermost planet, in our desperate race outward to attempt to save our own Earth from the doom that hovered over it. For still that doom cast its shadowing wing darkly over Earth, still Whitely's instruments informed us that the giant force-ray from Neptune was stabbing back toward the sun, turning the sun ever faster at the same remorseless rate. So that it was toward Neptune, after minutes, that we turned, taking our places in our chairs beside Randall, at the controls, and gazing with him toward the planet far ahead that was our goal.

And now that we had crossed the orbit of Uranus, some two-thirds of our colossal journey's length lay behind us, and Neptune was becoming ever brighter ahead, its pale-green spot of light having become almost as brilliant to our eyes as Saturn, behind us. As we viewed it through our telescope, too, we could make out the tiny light-point of Triton, the single moon of Neptune. Somewhat larger than our own moon was Triton, we knew, and we could see through our glass what had long been known by Earth's astronomers, that this single moon of Neptune's revolved about it in a plane sharply slanted or inclined to the plane of Neptune's equator, to the general plane of the ecliptic or solar system. And close indeed seemed the light-point of this single moon to Neptune, since we knew that it was at almost the same distance from the great planet as our own moon is from Earth.

It was toward Neptune and its little moon that our eyes turned now and in the hours and days that followed, while gradually our excitement became tense as the great planet loomed ahead of us. Soon it had become a perceptible pale-green disk, widening out as we shot on and on toward it. We would reach it, we calculated, upon the twenty-first day of our journey, twenty-one days after starting from Earth. An eternity it seemed, that period of three weeks, such vast realms of space we had come through, such tremendous perils we had dared and passed. But now all those perils and worlds we had passed, Mars and the deadly asteroidal belt, great Jupiter and Saturn and the doom that had almost been ours there, all these things faded from our minds as we found ourselves with our thoughts concentrated wholly upon the far planet that from the first had been our goal, that planet which we must reach if Earth was to be saved. For ever, ever, the great force-ray of Neptune was turning the sun faster, and now less than a hundred days remained before that turning sun would be no longer able to hold together, would be dividing and releasing fiery doom upon Earth and almost all its other planets.

What was awaiting us at Neptune? That was the question that was foremost in all our minds as we shot on in those last tense days. What manner of beings there would they be who, we had assumed, were stabbing this ray of doom toward the sun? What manner of beings _could_ they be who could exist at all, if exist they did, upon such a planet as Neptune, a planet moving about the sun at the unthinkable distance of almost three billion miles? Upon a planet that could receive but a minute fraction only of the sun's light and heat compared to that received on Earth? Upon a planet which astronomers had always believed to be of far lesser density than Earth, of a density little more than that of liquids rather than of solids. Was it possible that upon this farthest of all the sun's circling worlds there could exist life of any kind, not to speak of life intelligent enough to stab across the solar system and spin the sun itself faster to its division and its universe's doom?

* * * * *

Those were the questions that throbbed through our brains now as our hurtling space-flier shot on and on, Neptune growing with each hour before us. By the nineteenth day its disk had expanded to such a degree that we were able to discern upon it the cloud-belts that had already long been seen upon it by Earth's astronomers. By the twentieth those great vapor-belts were plainly perceptible, and also Triton, its moon, had become visible to our unaided eyes, revolving close about the great planet in its sharp-slanted plane, being now behind the planet but so much above it as to be completely visible to us. By the twentieth, too, the sun behind us had become hardly more than a super-brilliant star, its tiny fiery disk bathing us still with a certain amount of light, although long before this we had ceased to rely upon its heat on our flier's sunward side and had had recourse to our own heating-mechanism. By this time too, of all the planets, only Jupiter and Saturn were visible behind us; the rest were invisible to us at the colossal distances which now separated us from then.

It was not behind but ahead, though, that we were gazing, as our space-flier flashed over the last portion of its great trip, as Neptune apparently grew in size before us. Seated in my control-chair, with Whitely and Marlin and Randall in their chairs beside me, I watched the mighty planet fascinated, as we hurtled on toward it in the early hours of the twenty-first day, that day that we had calculated would bring us to our goal. And truly, now, Neptune was looming in something of its true greatness before us. Only a tiny point of light in a telescope on Earth, hardly more than that on the long days of our journey outward, we saw it now in some size and splendor, a huge cloud-belted world as large almost exactly as Uranus, outrivaled in the solar system only by it and by the two giants of Jupiter and Saturn. Over sixty times larger than our own Earth it was, a huge world spinning far out here at the solar system's very edge, the last outpost of that solar system with beyond it only the awful emptiness of interstellar space.

Silently we gazed toward its great, green disk, its small gleaming moon, as our space-flier throbbed on toward it. Whitely, as usual, was checking from time to time the performance of the never-ceasing generators whose great force-ray, pressing against Saturn still, was hurling us forward. Randall was gazing forward with me, helping me now and then to ascertain from our speed and distance dials our distance from the great planet. Marlin had applied himself to the telescope, was gazing ahead through it toward the big world's cloud-wreathed surface, touching a focusing wheel now and then. For minutes we throbbed on thus, the beat of the generators the only sound in the hurtling space-flier's interior, but at last Marlin drew back from the telescope's eye-piece and frowned as he gazed toward the great green planet ahead.

"I can make out nothing through those cloud-belts," he said. "Those belts show, as astronomers have always believed, that Neptune has a great atmosphere. But what lies beneath them we'll not know until we penetrate through them to the planet's surface."

"That won't be long," I told him. "We're already only fifty million miles from Neptune--should reach it in seven or eight hours more."

"You'll be slowing the flier's speed before long then?" asked Whitely, and I nodded.

"We'll wait until we're ten million miles from it and then cut out our rear-ray that's pushing us on, and send out a front force-ray toward Neptune to break our progress."

Those next several hours, however, seemed to us in passing to be drawn out to infinite length, so great had become our suspense. At last, however, as we stared tensely ahead, Randall gave the word beside me that marked our place as within ten million miles of the great planet, which had now grown to a vast pale-green cloudy disk in the heavens before us. And as he gave that word I snapped shut one of the six switches before me, turning off the great rear force-ray of the flier, and at the same moment snapped open another switch that sent a great force-ray stabbing straight out from the ray-opening in the flier's front, stabbing straight out toward the great disk of Neptune ahead!

Almost at once our mad flight toward that huge world began to diminish in speed. Minute by minute the figures on the speed-dial crept backward, so that from eight million miles an hour our speed dropped quickly to six million, and then to four and to three and to two million.

With this swift decreasing of our speed we were experiencing now the reverse of that pressure that had been ours upon our acceleration, since now we were straining upward and forward against the straps of our chairs, the pneumatic shock-absorbing apparatus of those chairs functioning now as it had done then. But though we felt again the dizziness and slight nausea attendant upon these tremendous changes of speed, we forgot that in our intent contemplation of the huge world that loomed but a million miles ahead, its tremendous pale-green sphere, belted with great cloud-masses, seeming to fill the heavens before us. Already Marlin, with his instruments, had found as we neared Neptune that the giant world's rotatory speed was a little more than twenty Earth-hours, solving a problem that long had defied Earth's astronomers by the discovery that the great planet turned on its axis each score of hours.

An involuntary thrill of pride ran through me even as we shot in toward those great cloud-masses that encircled Neptune. Neptune! The sun's farthest world, and we four had reached it, had shot across the awful gulf that none had ever thought to span! Marlin, beside me, was gazing forward into the great cloud-layers now with the astronomical curiosity of all his career gleaming in his gray eyes, as we approached this farthest of our solar system's worlds. Whitely was contemplating it with his usual cool detachment, but thoughtfully. Randall's face was as eager with interest as my own must have been, and when, a little later, there came a low mounting roar of sound around our flashing space-flier, the roar of an atmosphere through which we were rushing, he uttered a low exclamation, swiftly manipulated our outside air-tester, and then turned to us.

"An atmosphere to Neptune, surely enough!" he exclaimed. "About twice the pressure of Earth's, even this far out, and the air-tester shows a large percentage of water-vapor and rather larger amount of oxygen. Otherwise it seems much the same as Earth's."

Marlin nodded. "We should be able to move in that," he said, "but the greater gravitation of Neptune will probably be such as to make it necessary to keep inside the space-walkers."

But now the space-flier was hurtling into the outer vapor-layers, that swirled about us in white mist-masses in the pale light that came to us from the tiny, distant sun. Onward and downward through those vapor-layers, through the cloud-belts about the great planet, our space-flier shot, while we four gazed ahead and downward, now with excitement keyed to an utter tenseness. Then with sudden stunning surprise, for we had thought those cloud-layers of immense thickness, our space-flier shot out and down from them, shot down into clear air, clear atmosphere. And as it did so, from the four of us came simultaneous cries. For there in the pale, dim unEarthly light there stretched far away beneath us the surface of the planet that for so long had been our goal on our great race to save Earth from doom, the surface of great Neptune!