CHAPTER VII
The Giant Ray
The minute that followed was a grotesque whirl of swift action, a desperate reeling struggle between Marlin and me cased in our great space-walkers, and the great disk-bodied Neptunians. Even as they had leaped upon us, we had shot to one side, had brought down upon the foremost of them the great steel bars carried in our pincer-like metal hands, and had sent two of them crumpling to the black paving with a thick green liquid oozing from their shattered bodies. The remainder, though, were upon us before we could strike again, and then as they gripped us I could see the Neptunians who had been working in the adjoining compartment come running toward the combat, to assist their fellows. So that though Marlin and I struck out with desperate fury at the monstrous creatures with the great metal jointed arms of our space-walkers, they had in a moment more with their numberless limbs fettered our arms and torn the bars from our grasp, holding us then motionless and helpless.
Thus held, part of the creatures stepped back from us, and then we heard one of them, who bore a single, crimson-circle device upon his metal dress or armor, utter a staccato order to the others. At once four of them drew from their armor the long tubes we had noted there, and trained them upon us. I knew, instinctively, that those tubes held some deadly force like that with which the cylinders had attacked our space-flier in the battle in mid-air. Later I was to learn that the tubes could release a force-ray similar to that used for propulsion by our space-flier and by the cylinders--a force-ray so concentrated into a pencil-like beam that, instead of merely pressing against whatever it struck, it pierced whatever it touched with terrific force, riving it asunder. Knowing the deadliness of the tubes, I looked for instant annihilation.
But it was evident in a moment that it was only as a precaution that the tubes were held upon us. For now, while a half-score of the Neptunians held Marlin and me firmly by the arms of our space-walkers, the one who had given the order came closer to us, clambered with his powerful multiple limbs upon the top of my space-walker, and gazed in through its vision-windows at me. To see those bulging, glassy and insect-like eyes outside the window so close to my own struck me through with a chilling horror greater than anything I had yet felt. I saw that the creature had discerned me inside the space-walker, had assured himself that creatures of life yet different from himself occupied the two cylinders. For in a moment he had clambered back down to the ground, and then as he uttered another sharp order, the creatures that held us were dragging us forward, toward the door of the compartment into which we had looked before.
Through that low door they dragged us in our space-walkers, and across the adjoining compartment toward one of the great upright cylinders resting there. In another moment the Neptunians had pulled us inside the door of that cylinder into its dark opening, and I saw the one who had given the orders following, with a half-dozen of his fellows. The others were dispersing to the other cylinders, and in a moment the door of our own slid clanging shut behind us. Then there was a hissing and throbbing of strange machinery in the dark interior of the cylinder about us, and at the same moment the leader of the Neptunians motioned to us to emerge from our space-walkers, having removed their own glowing ball-heaters.
I think that both Marlin and I hesitated for a long moment before complying with that command, yet we saw that upon us still were trained the tubes of the four Neptunians who guarded us, so reluctantly we threw open the lower doors of the space-walkers and emerged from them. As we did so, forgetful for the moment of the strange creatures about us, we gazed in amazed interest around us. The huge cylinder's interior, we saw, was divided into a half-dozen compartments by metal floors or ceilings set at intervals of ten or twelve feet from its bottom to its top. A light metal ladder ran up through openings in all of the those floors or divisions, and up that ladder now a few of the many-limbed Neptunians were hurrying toward the upper compartments. We ourselves were standing, with the Neptunian leader of the red-circle insignia, in the lowest or bottom compartment of the cylinder, his four tube-armed guards and a half-dozen green disk-bodied monsters about us.
That lowest compartment held great gleaming-cased mechanisms, from which came the throbbing that we had already heard, and that was so exactly similar to the throb of our space-flier's generators as to remove all doubt but that these were the similar generators of the cylinder. As our eyes roved about them the Neptunian leader uttered a staccato command, at the same time pointing with one of his seven limbs, up toward the ladder. His meaning was unmistakable, and at once Marlin and I stepped toward the ladder and began to climb upward on it, the tubes of the four watchful guards just beneath us as they followed. As we passed up that ladder, through the upper sections of the cylinder's interior, I saw vaguely the things within those sections.
One of them held the dissembled parts of the great cogged mechanisms we had seen them taking down and storing inside the cylinders. Another two or three sections held similar dissembled parts of differing machines that had evidently been taken from another part of the dead vast compartment-city beneath. We passed up through sections that held supplies and strange tank-like affairs, that seemed not unlike the batteries of our own space-flier, and then were climbing up into the topmost section of the cylinder. This was a section whose top and walls were set with so many windows as to make its sides seem quite transparent. And this topmost section, in which a pair of Neptunians already were standing, was quite apparently the control-section.
For at its center rose from its floor a thick metal pillar or standard, upon the top and sides of which were set a battery of dozens of small green studs, and around this were strange seats in which the two waiting Neptunians were now taking their places. As Marlin and I climbed into that uppermost section, the guards and the leader of the disk-bodied Neptunians behind us, we gazed wonderingly about, at the central control-standard and at the strange graduated scales with moving dots of light upon them, that were set here and there in the walls and that seemed recording instruments of one kind or another. Then the crimson-marked leader had given utterance to another sharp succession of snapping sounds, a swift command, at the same time motioning us to the side of the circular room, where were similar low, strange seats. In these we seated ourselves, the four Neptunians who watched us taking places on either side of us, and then as the leader took the remaining seat at the control-standard, we saw one of the other two seated there reach forth with strange quick limbs and touch a number of the studs in swift succession.
At once the great throbbing of the generators or mechanisms in the cylinder's lowest section intensified, and as Marlin and I gazed quickly outward through the windows about us we saw that now the other cylinders in the compartment were all closed and throbbing like this one. Then, as one of the Neptunians at the control-standard touched another stud, the cylinder in which we were rose swiftly upward and out of the great black-walled compartment, rose up smoothly over the dead compartment-city into the pale light of the Neptunian day, followed at once by the three other cylinders. The dim day about us was already waning, fading, as night crept across this huge world of silence and death, with its ceaseless rotation, but there remained still enough light for us to see far across the mighty maze of compartments that was the deserted and dead city. And now across that city the four cylinders were rushing, racing over it in horizontal position, the strange seats upon which we and the Neptunians were seated swinging in gimbal-like frameworks as the cylinder swung thus from vertical to horizontal.
* * * * *
Over the huge compartment-city our four cylinders flashed, then slowed and halted, as up from another point in it rose four more cylinders, the four that we had seen land in a different part of it, and whose occupants had discovered and captured us. Then all of the eight great cylinders, our own in the lead, were rising sharply upward, up toward the opening in the vast roof above, through which we had seen them come. As they shot up toward it, Marlin and I, glancing down and backward, could see, even as we had seen from our space-flier, the vast extent of the dead and deserted compartment-city, with its mechanisms and huge globes and high black intersecting walls lying now in such dusty silence and death. Yet it was only for a moment that we glanced back toward it, for now our eight cylinders were flashing up through the round opening in the huge roof, and out over that vast roof, seeming solid metal from above, that covered all of mighty Neptune. And as we flashed over it, now, I found for the first time opportunity to whisper to Marlin, beside me.
"They're leaving Neptune!" I whispered. "Where can they be going, Marlin? And what has happened to Whitely and Randall?"
He shook his head, answered in the same low tones. "Whitely and Randall have escaped, I hope. They had a small start on their pursuers--they may have eluded them here above Neptune----"
We were abruptly silent as the guards glanced suspiciously toward us with their bulging multiple eyes. And as the great cylinder and those behind shot on, the huge metal roof of Neptune below and the vast vapor-masses of its dense atmosphere stretched above us, I wondered if ever men had found themselves in the position that now was ours. Captured by monstrous disk-bodied beings of horror unutterable, flashing with them above the vast roof that sheathed Neptune and its dead, deserted and colossal compartment-city, to a destination of which we could not dream! And as that thought passed, another came, and I remembered the great mission that had brought us out here to the terrors of mighty Neptune, our great flight outward to find and put an end to the huge force-ray that was stabbing across the solar system and turning the sun ever faster, with every day bringing it nearer to the division that meant doom for almost all its universe. What chance was ours to accomplish that mission now, separated and captured as we were, not knowing even from what source the great ray was issuing, from what strange place these disk-bodied beings had come and to which they were now returning?
I was aroused from my silent despair, though, by a low exclamation from Marlin, and looked up to see that the cylinders of which our own was foremost had now halted, hanging midway between metal roof beneath and great vapor-masses above. Then down from above I saw, dropping quickly toward us, three other cylinders similar to the eight, three cylinders at sight of which my heart beat suddenly faster. For it had been three cylinders that had pursued Whitely and Randall in the space-flier! Tensely I watched as the three drove down among our eight, and then one of them had shot suddenly close to the cylinder in which we were, hanging beside it so that its low door-opening was directly touching the door-opening of our own. There was a clang of metal beneath as the doors of both cylinders slid aside. They fitted so closely against each other that no colder air from without could enter into the warmed interior of the two cylinders. Then from the other were coming into our own cylinder three Neptunians who climbed swiftly up into the top-section in which we were, while Marlin and I watched them in indescribable suspense.
As they came up into the uppermost section they spoke in their sharp, staccato talk to the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia, making report to him, it was apparent. But it was not to their snapping speech that Marlin and I gave our attention, but to the things they carried in their grip, and which they were showing to the leader. Those things, I saw with a start of horror, were some shattered and crumpled plates of metal, great flat metal plates that I recognized immediately as being of our space-flier's faceted sides! And they also held a broken, twisted metal thing that I recognized instantly as one of the space-flier's smaller liquid-oxygen tanks! I needed not to understand the strange speech of the Neptunians in that moment to understand what the three were reporting. For those shattered fragments of the space-flier told the tale with terrible clearness.
"Whitely and Randall!" It was Marlin's whisper of horror beside me. "They were caught by those pursuing cylinders--were annihilated by their rays----!"
"Whitely and Randall----" I felt my voice choke then, as I gazed at those last fragments of the space-flier's wreckage, mutely testifying to the end which our friends had met with beneath the shattering rays in their space-flier somewhere in the cold, vast vapor-masses above us.
Whitely--cool and detached and steady, stirred to passion by nothing save some unprecedented physical phenomenon, considering with curious, impersonal eyes each new peril that had confronted us; and Randall--with his sunny hair and eager young courage and unfailing sense of fun; it was as though they had risen before me in that moment, when we saw at last what death had overtaken them and our space-flier there in the chill clouds of mighty Neptune. I felt Marlin's steadying hand on my shoulder and knew that he was sounding similar depths of despair. For with Whitely and Randall gone, with our space-flier and with ourselves captured and held by these monstrous disk-bodied Neptunians who yet seemed not of Neptune, our chance to halt the great doom-ray that was radiating toward the sun, our chance even to return to Earth with word of the position and nature of that ray's source, was gone also!
Through the despair that had sunken upon me I was aware, in a moment, that the throbbing of the cylinder's great generators had waxed again in intensity. Already the three Neptunians, who had reported the destruction of the space-flier, had returned to their own cylinder, which had separated from ours, and now the whole eleven cylinders, our own in the lead, were racing forward once more, were shooting forward between the great vapor-masses above and the vast metal roof below. At immense and mounting speed they shot forward, a dull roar of whistling air coming to us from without, and in a moment the pale, dim light about us had begun to change to dusk, to darkness, as we shot on. For the eleven cylinders were racing around the surface of Neptune toward the side of it _away_ from the sun at the moment, and as they entered the shade of that side they were plunging through the eternal night. But as the cylinders shot on they seemed to need no light or star to guide them through the deep darkness, though all that was visible was an occasional glinting of the great metal roof below.
On we shot through that deep darkness and there rose in me a sudden thought that roused me a little from the despair that held Marlin and me. Could it be that upon that other side there still remained a remnant of their race? A remnant of the race, that once had built the mighty compartment-city that covered all Neptune and the vast roof that shielded it, but that now occupied but a small part of the huge city? Was it from Neptune's other side, then, that the giant force-ray had stabbed toward the sun? Yet how _could_ that be so, how could that great ray be shot out from any point of Neptune unceasingly as it was, when each twenty hours the great planet turned on its axis, when for half of that twenty hours whatever point that was the ray's source would be turned _away_ from the sun instead of _toward_ it?
* * * * *
With tense interest Marlin and I gazed ahead into the darkness through which our cylinders were rushing, while at the control-standard the leader and the other two Neptunians manipulated the force-rays that were propelling onward the cylinder in which we were. At last, after some minutes of this rushing flight of immense velocity, the cylinders seemed to slow down, to pause. Looking out I could discern the surface of the gigantic metal roof below us, just showing itself to us by a little glint of light here and there from it, and in that moment Marlin and I waited in suspense for the cylinders to sink down toward and through it, to whatever place upon Neptune's other side it was that held the remainder of their strange races, since by then, we knew, we were at that side of Neptune almost exactly opposite the sun. Only a moment the cylinders slowed and paused, and then were leaping through the air again at mounting speed. But instead of flashing downward toward the great roof, they were flashing _upward_!
Upward they were shooting, up through the dense air and straight into the great vapor-masses that loomed above us! Through those great clouds they were racing then, driving upward through them as through a darker darkness, and then suddenly had shot up and out from them, up and out into the clear and thinner air of Neptune's atmosphere's outermost limits. Behind our cylinders thus lay the huge, vapor-wreathed planet, shutting out by its vast bulk all sight of the sun's distant little disk of fire, or of the greater planets. But before us there stretched once more the black vault of space, unfolding itself to our eyes for the first time since we had ventured down through those shrouding vapors to Neptune's surface.
Brightest in that black void there shone, before and somewhat above us, Triton, the moon of Neptune. It was almost white in color, tinged with the pale green of great Neptune, about which it moved, and seeming of the same size to our eyes as Earth's own moon. Beyond and all about it, though, there flamed the great stars, seeming the same to our eyes here at the solar system's outermost limits as they had seemed to us when far within it, at Earth. The great field of stars and star-clusters that was Sagittarius, straight ahead and upward, the irregular parallelogram of Capricorn's stars, to the left, the throbbing crimson heart and jeweled menacing claws of Scorpio, to the right--all seemed to our eyes as they had seemed when we had started--how long ago it seemed!--out from Earth toward great Neptune, that lay now behind us. Yet now, with Neptune behind us, our eleven cylinders were flashing forward with greater and greater speed, were flashing out apparently from the solar system's last outpost into the vast void of interstellar space!
"They're going on--going out from Neptune into outer space!" I exclaimed to Marlin, as we gazed ahead, transfixed.
But suddenly he shook his head, pointing ahead and upward, for now the cylinders were flashing upward as well as forward. "It's Triton they're heading toward!" he said. "Triton--Neptune's single moon!"
"Triton!" I exclaimed, thunderstruck with amazement. "Then--then--it must be on Triton that the remaining Neptunians now are!"
Triton! For it was up toward it, up toward the white, green-tinged moon of Neptune that shone dully in the black vault above and ahead of us, that the eleven cylinders, our own in the lead, were heading! And as they shot out of the last limits of the atmosphere of Neptune, as they flashed forward at swiftly mounting speed still toward the moon, I could but stare at it in amazement. Triton! It was from it, then, that there had come these strange disk-bodied Neptunians who had captured us, who had annihilated our space-flier and our friends. It was on Triton, then, that there must remain whatever Neptunians still were left of those who had built the vast compartment-city that covered all the surface of Neptune itself, who had shielded it with that gigantic floating roof that enclosed all the mighty planet. Yet why had they deserted their vast compartment-city, their great world of Neptune? Why had they left that world for the single moon of Neptune, so much smaller in size? And the giant force-ray that was shooting across space to the sun, turning it ever faster, was it from Neptune then or Triton that that colossal ray was radiating?
It seemed to me that these questions were spinning in my head in a kaleidoscopic whirl of enigmas, as our throbbing cylinder and the ten behind it shot on and upward at a great slant toward the dull-gleaming sphere of Triton. Marlin, beside me, was staring ahead obviously as much mystified as I was, while the four Neptunians ranged on either side of us kept their ceaseless watch upon us. The other three sat still at the central control-standard, directing the cylinder on its rush out from Neptune toward its moon. And now, that moon grew larger ahead of us and above us, a strangely-gleaming sphere that seemed still very small, in comparison with the huge pale-green disk of mighty Neptune that loomed behind us.
I knew, though, that Triton was of the same approximate size as Earth's own moon, and revolved around the great planet at the same approximate distance as Earth's own moon, roughly a quarter of a million miles. As we had noted from our space-flier in flashing out toward Neptune, its moon was now behind the great planet, that is on the other side of it from the sun, but due to the sharp inclination of the plane of Triton's orbit around Neptune, it was so much higher than its great planet in space as to make it possible to see the single moon, even from Neptune's sunward side. And now as our eleven cylinders shot toward it, it was spreading out across the black vault of the heavens before and above us, until at last we were within a few thousand miles of it and the speed of the cylinder was perceptibly decreasing beneath the controls of the three at the central standard.
Smoothly the cylinder, and the ten behind it, slowed, until they were racing forward at a comparatively low velocity. Triton's dull-gleaming sphere filled the heavens before us. Behind and a little below the great green disk of Neptune, belted with the vast cloud-masses of its immense atmosphere, loomed almost as great as ever to our eyes. And far beyond it there burned the sun's bright little disk, just above the huge sphere of Neptune, and visible to us through the thinner vapors of Neptune's uppermost atmosphere. We turned back toward the nearer world of Triton. As the cylinders rushed on toward it, all the suspense of expectation and mystery that had been ours since our first arrival at the strange dead world of Neptune gripped us now with renewed power. And as Marlin and I stared ahead we were aware that the cylinders were dropping, swinging about our pivoted seats and dropping toward the surface of Triton that seemed now to gleam beneath us.
Toward it we smoothly shot, and as Marlin and I gazed intently down we saw that there were below none of the great cloud-masses that wreathed the surface of mighty Neptune. Instead was only a smooth and strangely gleaming surface that we could but vaguely glimpse, and the sight of which made my heart pound in sudden anticipation. Could the thing be--could it be that here upon Triton as upon Neptune----? But my wondering speculations were cut abruptly short by reality as we shot lower toward the surface of Triton, as that surface came clearly at last to the eyes of Marlin and myself, bringing involuntary exclamations of amazement from us. For that surface was metal! Triton was shielded on all sides by a giant metal roof similar to that which enclosed great Neptune itself!
* * * * *
Down toward that mighty roof our eleven cylinders were rushing. When they seemed just above it, they halted their drop and raced along above it, around Triton's vastly curving surface. As they did so, Marlin and I, gazing downward, saw that the vast roof that shielded Triton appeared to be, from above, of the same dark metal as that which protected Neptune, and that it extended away without break or seam as far as we could see over the big moon's surface. And as our cylinders flashed above it, around the world's surface, we were aware that Triton had an atmosphere even as had its great parent-world, since from outside was coming the dull roar of air against the speeding cylinder. It was a fact startling enough, but at that moment it was driven from our minds by a thing more startling still.
For as we flashed thus around Triton's sunward side, Marlin suddenly uttered a hoarse exclamation, pointed ahead and to the left. I gazed in that direction instantly and for a moment saw nothing unusual, but then as the cylinders flashed on I saw that in that direction was what seemed a great round opening in the smooth, dark metal, a titanic circular opening that must be miles across. Up out of that opening was rising what seemed at first glance a vast cylinder of pale light that sprang straight up and outward from the gigantic opening, and that was only visible for a short distance above that opening, fading swiftly into invisibility as it shot out into the gulf of space from Triton. Instinctively my eyes followed the fading length of that mighty beam outward, and then as they did so I felt sudden, awed understanding descending upon me and stared with Marlin toward the giant pit and its great ray in stunned silence. For that giant ray was pointing straight into the great gulf of space, toward the tiny, fiery disk of the distant sun!
"The giant force-ray!" Marlin whispered. "The great force-ray that's turning the sun ever faster--and that we came out here to find!"
"And pointing straight toward the sun!" I exclaimed. "Pointing through Neptune's upper atmosphere toward the sun!"
For we could see now that the giant ray, visible only there at its source, must indeed be cleaving through the upper limits of great Neptune's atmosphere as it reached across the great gulf toward the sun. For since Triton was on the other side of Neptune from the sun, was on its outward side, the great green sphere of Neptune lay almost between the sun and Triton, the big moon being high enough above the great planet, though, due to the inclination of its orbital plane, to make the sun visible to it through the upper reaches of Neptune's vast atmosphere. Through that atmosphere, therefore, we knew, the giant force-ray must be driving on its path across the solar system toward the sun, hurtling across the gulf to strike against that spinning sun's edge with terrific pressure and to spin it ever faster toward that day of division and doom that was marching relentlessly upon it!
But as our cylinders now swept nearer toward the giant force-ray and the pit from which it stabbed up and outward, Marlin and I were staring obliquely down into that vast pit. Seen from the side as we saw it, the tremendous opening seemed only like a mighty well of metal, from which the colossal pale force-ray, almost as great in diameter as the huge pit, stabbed. We could see, however, that set near the great pit's top at regular intervals around its curving wall were what seemed metal cube-like rooms, which were set on the pit's smooth curving wall. They were a score in number, those out-jutting metal cubes, and from slits in their walls came light from within, and glimpses of stud-covered walls and Neptunians moving about them. We knew, without doubt, that those twenty cubes held within them the unthinkably complex controls of this mighty force-ray that was destroying the solar system!
But now our cylinder and the ten that drove close behind it were passing the vast pit, the huge force-ray. I noted that they took extreme care to pass pit and mighty ray at a respectable distance, and knew, too, the reason for it, knew that any luckless cylinder that blundered into that colossal out-stabbing ray would be driven instantly at terrific speed and force out through the solar system and into the sun that the ray was striking! So that it did not surprise us that the cylinders veered far to the side of the huge ray, picking up speed once more when they had passed it, and racing on around Triton's metal-shielded surface and through the cold, dense atmosphere outside it. But as the cylinders drove on the eyes of Marlin and myself now were turned backward, back toward that gigantic pale ray of awful force that shot ceaselessly up and out from that vast pit in Triton's metal side.
"We've found it--the great ray we came out here to find--the source of that ray," I exclaimed to Marlin, "but we've found it too late! Whitely and Randall and the space-flier annihilated--we captured----"
He bent toward me. "Keep your courage up, Hunt," he said. "We may have a chance yet to get free--to get away from this world of Triton before they take us down inside it."
"But what--?" I began, when with a gesture he cut me short. "No more now, Hunt--the guards are watching. But be ready to act if a chance shows itself, for once down in Triton, we'll probably have no chance."
I saw that the four disk-bodied Neptunians who sat about us and guarded us were indeed watching us closely now with their strange bulging eyes, so gave over for the moment our whispered conversation, though with a slight gleam of hope. Glancing back again toward the great force-ray that was almost invisible behind us as the eleven cylinders raced on around Triton's metal surface, I was aware that Marlin was staring back toward it also, intently, shaking his head a little, as though puzzled by something concerning that giant beam of force. In a moment he turned his attention ahead. Our cylinders now were flashing around Triton from its sunward side to its dark side, and as we rushed on Marlin and I could see that to all appearances Triton was not rotating, or at least not above a low rate of speed. Then as we entered into the deeper shadow of the dark side, the sun's little disk vanishing behind us as we shot around Triton's curving surface into the shadow, Marlin uttered a low exclamation once more, and as I turned to look in the same direction I saw that far ahead there was stabbing out and upward into the black void of outer space a second giant force-ray like that one we had already seen shooting toward the sun!
Stupefied, I gazed toward it. For the first giant force-ray, amazing as it was, had yet been expected by us, more or less, since we had known from the first that such a colossal force-beam was stabbing from the region of Neptune toward the sun. But this second mighty force-ray, which seemed exactly the same in size and appearance and which rose from a giant pit or well in the vast metal roof even as did the first, was not directed toward the sun. For it was on the other side of Triton from the first ray, was exactly half around Triton from the first and was going out into space in an exactly opposite direction! Thus while the first colossal force-ray, springing out from Triton's sunward side, shot straight toward the sun, this second huge force-ray, on Triton's dark or outer side, was radiating straight out into the vast void of interstellar space, was radiating straight out, to all appearances, toward the unthinkably distant stars of Sagittarius that burned in that mighty void!
What could be the meaning of this other colossal force-ray, of equal size and power, going out into the vast void outside the solar system? The first great ray that was shooting toward the sun and turning the sun ever faster--its purpose was at least comprehensible, but what purpose could there be in sending an opposite and equal ray out into the mighty void from Triton's other side? That was the question that whirled in my astounded brain in that moment as the eleven cylinders shot on toward that second great ray, over Triton's metal surface. Marlin, though, on seeing that second great ray, seemed to be less puzzled than before. It seemed to have solved for him some problem which the sight of the first huge ray had suggested. To me it was utterly incomprehensible, and perplexed and awed I watched that huge pale ray and the vast pit from which it sprang as we raced toward them. I saw that on that pit's curving walls there jutted forth a score of cube-like projections or control-rooms similar to those in the pit of the first ray. Then I forgot pit and rays alike as the cylinder in which we were and all those behind it slowed suddenly in mid-air and then dipped sharply downward.
* * * * *
Down and down they shot, toward the vast gleaming metal roof of great Triton; down, until we saw that just beneath us there was outlined in that roof a great circle, slightly sunken. Toward this the cylinders dropped, and then as they came to a pause just above it I saw that set beside that circle in the roof was a transparent section beneath which was a small cage-like room, brightly lit. In this were a half-dozen Neptunians, and as they saw the eleven cylinders dropping and pausing above the circle in the roof they turned swiftly, pressed what seemed a series of knobs in their cage-room, and at once the great sunken circle beneath us was sliding along beneath the roof to one side, sliding smoothly away and leaving thus beneath us a great circular opening in the roof.
Instantly up from that opening around our cylinders was rushing a torrent of air, a torrent of uprushing air that I understood well was caused by the warmer air beneath the roof rushing up into the colder outside atmosphere. But now down through that opening and through the air-currents the cylinders were swiftly dropping, and we could see far below in dim light a great compartment-city like the one we had found upon Neptune! In a moment more we would be below the roof, the opening closed above us, prisoned hopelessly in Triton to meet whatever fate our captors decreed. Already two of our four guards, and two of the Neptunians at the control-standard, had left the cylinder's upmost section and had clambered down the ladder to the lowest section in preparation for emerging. There was left with us in the upmost section of the cylinder only two guards and the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia at the control-standard. And as I saw that, I was leaning quietly toward Marlin.
"Now's our chance, Marlin!" I whispered tensely. "If we could overpower these three Neptunians and the rest beneath afterward we might yet get back to Earth!"
He glanced calmly around, then nodded. "We'll take it!" he whispered. "Once beneath this roof of Triton, there'll be no chance."
"Go for the guard beside you, then, when I cough as signal," I told him. "If we can dispose of them and the leader there we can hold the rest below for a time."
He met my eyes with his own, then turned and as though merely shifting a little in his seat moved nearer toward the guard on his side. I had already done the same toward the disk-bodied monster beside myself, both guards having slightly relaxed their first watchfulness. I glanced out, saw that even at that moment our cylinder was sinking with the others toward the great opening in the roof and knew that no moment was to be lost. So, with heart beating rapidly now, even as our cylinder prepared to sink down through the opening with the rest, I coughed slightly. In the next moment I had flung myself with a single motion upon the Neptunian guard beside me and had seen Marlin in the same instant throwing himself on the monster at his own side!
The moment following was of such swift action as to defy the memory. In my leap upon the Neptunian beside me it had been my first object to knock his tube from his grasp before he could loose its rays upon me, and so swift and sudden was my attack that I did so, as did Marlin with the other guard. With the same motion, even as the guard's seven great limbs reached toward me, I had grasped his big disk-body and then with a superhuman effort had raised it in my arms and had cast him from me, down through the opening in the section's floor to crumple against the floor of one of the sections below! I whirled, saw that the other guard had gripped Marlin and was bearing him down, and then even as there came from beneath and from the Neptunian leader at the controls staccato cries of alarm, I had gripped that other guard likewise and hurled him across the cylinder to strike with stunning force against its wall! Then Marlin and I were whirling toward the Neptunian leader at the control-standard, but in the moment that we turned toward him we stopped short. For that Neptunian had leaped aside from the controls of the cylinder and had swiftly drawn his own ray-tube!