CHAPTER VIII
Prisoned on Triton
Nothing, I know now, of our own doing could ever have saved us from the death that in that moment loomed dark and close above us. For, as the Neptunian leader raised the tube toward us, I knew that before ever a leap could take us across the cylinder to him, the pencil-like rays of force from his tube would be tearing through us. For that split-second, therefore, escape seemed impossible, and then before we could fully realize the situation there came an interruption. The currents of warmer air from the opening just beneath, down through which the cylinder had been dropping with the others, were sweeping still upward with great force around the cylinder. Only the Neptunian's grasp on the controls had kept the cylinder heading down through those currents, and now, as he leaped away from the controls for the moment and drew his tube, those currents immediately seized upon the unguided cylinder and in the next moment had whirled it over and sidewise with immense speed and power! And as it whirled thus over, Marlin and myself and the Neptunian before us were thrown instantly and indiscriminately to the cylinder's side!
For a moment we rolled helplessly about the whirling cylinder's interior, about the upmost section, and in that moment all thought of battle had left us. Then, as I felt Marlin and the Neptunian leader and the stunned guard rolling with me indiscriminately, I was aware, too, of cries from the cylinder's other sections and of Neptunians drawing themselves up to the upmost section on the ladder. Abruptly, in a moment more the cylinder steadied, hung poised and upright as before, and then as Marlin and I scrambled to our feet we saw that a trio of the Neptunians beneath had made their way up to the upmost section, despite the cylinder's whirling, by means of their multiple limbs, and that while one now held the controls the other two had their tubes trained once more full upon us!
Our wild attempt at escape had failed, it was evident, for now, as the Neptunian leader of the crimson circle rose, he was addressing to the others a sharp, snapping order, and at the same time motioning Marlin and me peremptorily to the seats we had formerly occupied. We took them with no further resistance, for we knew that our desperate outbreak had put the Neptunians upon their guard and that the slightest suspicious motion on our part might well mean instant death. And as we seated ourselves once more with the guards on either side, one from beneath replacing the one I had killed, the despair that formerly had filled us seemed immeasurably intensified. For now the cylinder was sinking down after the others, through the great opening in Triton's roof, and even as Marlin and I looked outward we saw the great opening in that roof closing again above us with a clang that to our ears was like the clang of doom.
Above our sinking cylinders now there stretched the great roof, and, even as Neptune's enclosing roof, this one was almost entirely transparent from below, though opaque from above. And here as on Neptune we could see no supporting pillars whatever for this vast spherical roof that enclosed all Triton. This world seemed, indeed, but a smaller replica of mighty Neptune. For, as our cylinders sank down through the shadows of its darker side and then leveled out and began to race back around its curving surface toward the sunward side once more, we saw that all of Triton's surface was covered, even like Neptune, with a great compartment-city whose intersecting black walls stretched in their vast checkerboard arrangement over all the great moon's surface. But as our cylinders shot over these, over the darkened portion of the surface of Triton and toward the sunward side, we saw that the compartment-city beneath was different, in some features, from that of Neptune.
For one thing, there were moving to and fro above it a number of great cylinders like that in which we were, and in the compartments of the darkened side moved, too, a few Neptunians here and there. And the great globes of metal that dotted this compartment-city of Triton, even as that of Neptune, were here glowing with radiant light; glowing, I knew, with radiant heat. For this was the secret of the Neptunians' existence on Triton, this heat that glowed from the numberless giant globes set in compartments here and there. Those great glowing globes kept the air beneath Triton's great roof warm and comfortable, the great roof itself preventing that warmer air from escaping into the moon's colder outer atmosphere. As we shot on over the darkened side of Triton, the side turned away from the sun, I could not but think that the remnants of the Neptunian race must be few indeed, so few of them moved in the shadowy compartments beneath.
At last, as Marlin and I gazed ahead, we could make out a brighter crescent of light at the edge of the strange moon-world, and as we shot on we saw that we were approaching the edge of the sunward or sunlit side. A moment more and we could see it clearly and as we did so Marlin and I gasped in utter amazement. For that part of the great compartment-city that lay on Triton's sunward side, in the pale sunlight, was swarming with incalculable millions upon tens of millions of Neptunians! Crowding, seething, pressing together, they were pouring to and fro through the compartments in the pale light of day, busy with the mechanisms that scarce had room in those compartments, so great were their crowds! And over this sunward side hundreds upon hundreds of cylinders swarmed, rushing to and fro!
"Neptunians! Neptunians in countless millions here on the sunward side of Triton! But why then are there so few upon the dark side?"
Marlin shook his head at my exclamation. "I can't guess," he said. "And I never dreamed that----"
Before he could finish the sentence there came an amazing interruption from beneath. As we gazed downward from our speeding cylinder we saw a giant band of intensely brilliant white light spring suddenly into being at the very line that marked where dark side and sunlit side of Triton met. A mile in width, that great brilliant band of light seemed to extend clear from Triton's north pole to its south, as far north and south of us as our eyes could reach. And then, even as we stared, astounded at it, that brilliant and immense band of light was moving around Triton's surface over the dark side! Swiftly it moved, like a great wave of brilliant light sweeping around Triton's surface, and in a moment had disappeared from view far around the horizon from us on the dark side!
And as that dazzling light-band moved around the big moon-world's dark side, around the almost empty compartment-city that covered that dark side, we saw emerging into that compartment-city of the dark side, as though from its walls themselves, millions on millions of disk-bodied Neptunians that matched in number the vast swarms on the sunlit side! And as we gazed down in utter amazement we saw from whence they came. There were in the dark compartment-city's extent many compartments like those we had seen upon Neptune, with nothing in them save shelving, which formed in their walls myriads of shelfed openings a few feet in height and some four feet in width, one above the other. And in these narrow, flat shelf-openings countless Neptunians had been sleeping! Their disk-bodies, with the flexible legs drawn up, fitted snugly into those flat, strange openings in the walls, and vast hordes of them, countless millions of them, had been sleeping in the shelf-compartments on Triton's dark side!
As that band of brilliant light swept swiftly across the dark side, though, they had awakened, were pouring forth in all their hordes into and through the compartments, all streaming toward the sunward side, while the more remote of them were heading toward the same side in flashing cylinders above. Then, as we gazed toward that sunward side, we saw the brilliant band of light reappearing there, moving swiftly still around Triton's surface, through the pale dim light of its sunward side, having in those moments moved completely around Triton! It moved on until in a moment more it had stopped where first it had formed, at the junction of the dark and sunward sides. There it hung for a moment, dazzling, and then had suddenly snapped out of being. And now we saw that all the crowding millions of Neptunians that had been busy upon the sunlit side were streaming through the compartments toward the dark side!
"The Neptunians' day and night!" Marlin exclaimed, as we gazed downward. "Triton must keep one face always toward the sun and one dark, so these Neptunians spend their day on the sunlit side and sleep their night on the dark side!"
"And that great band of light that traveled around Triton was their signal, then!" I added.
* * * * *
It was plain now that that was the astounding truth. These countless millions of Neptunians, coming here to Triton for some reason, had been accustomed upon their own great turning planet to a day and night of ten hours each, much like those of Earth. Triton, though, as we had already guessed, kept the same face always toward the sun, it was evident, turning at just such a rate of rotation as compensated for its revolutions around Neptune and its slower movements with Neptune around the sun. Thus, with one face always toward the sun and the other always in darkness, the Neptunians had been forced to establish arbitrary day and night periods, dividing their millions into two great bodies, apparently. While half of them worked on the sunlit side for ten hours, in their day, the other half were sleeping upon the dark side. Then, when the ten hours ended, the great band of light went around Triton as a signal, and the two bodies of them changed places, the millions who had worked upon the sunward side taking their places for an equal period of sleep on the dark side, while those who had slept on the dark side streamed to the sunlit side for ten hours!
Even as we watched from our speeding cylinder we saw that great change taking place, millions upon millions of the Neptunians streaming from one side to the other in great throngs through the compartment-city, while, from farther around Triton's two sides, rushed countless cylinders, in which hosts of others were changing sides. Within a few minutes, it seemed, that change had taken place, and beneath us on Triton's sunward side there thronged in the pale light of its day the vast hordes that so lately had been sleeping, while on the dark side the other masses of the Neptunians had disappeared into the countless shelf-like openings of the sleep-compartments, to lie in sleep for another ten hours. In marveling wonder Marlin and I stared, and then woke suddenly to a realization of our own position.
Beneath us there lay the very edge or dividing line between the dark and sunlit sides, a belt of twilight dusk that was very narrow. Squarely across that belt, we saw, there lay beneath us a great compartment that was largest by far of all that we had yet seen, and that was unique among them in that, instead of being rectangular, it was circular in shape. Down, over and past this mighty circular compartment our cylinders were speeding, and we could but vaguely note some circular object inside it, when we were past it, were speeding low over the thronged and busy compartments of the sunward side. Rapidly the speed of the cylinders decreased, and then they had paused in mid-air, were beginning to descend. And in a moment more they had come smoothly to rest in a great rectangular compartment which seemed reserved as a landing-place, since on it there rested scores of other cylinders, others constantly arriving or departing. Later we were to learn that these landing-compartments were scattered in large number over Triton's surface, on the sunlit and dark sides both.
For the present moment, though, Marlin and I were gazing only at our immediate surroundings. As we landed the guards on either side of us gripped us tightly, the others keeping their tubes pointed toward us, and then, as the throbbing of the cylinder's generators ceased, the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia uttered a staccato order. At once our guards were thrusting us toward the ladder that led downward, and, holding us above and beneath, were descending that ladder with us into the cylinder's lowest compartment. There the Neptunian leader followed us in a moment, and as the cylinder's door was slid open a flood of warm, heavy air and a babel of sound from about us rolled inside. Before emerging, though, the Neptunians performed an action that for the moment puzzled me completely.
This was to take from the cabinets in the cylinder's side a number of small metal objects that seemed to be disks of gray metal a few inches across with flexible metal straps attached to them. These the Neptunians attached to the bottom or ends of their round, short limbs, as though little round sandals of metal. Then at the order of their leader they took other disks and attached them to the feet of Marlin and myself, one to each foot, binding them to our soles by passing the flexible straps up around our ankles. The thing was as puzzling to Marlin as to myself, for the moment, nor could we understand its object until, a moment later, the Neptunians began to pass out of the cylinder to the paving of the compartment outside. For as they did so I had reached toward one of the unused disks to examine it and had uttered an exclamation to find that, though so small in size and thickness, it was of many pounds weight! Yet as Marlin and I, in answer to the leader's order and gesture, passed out of the cylinder to the landing-compartment's floor, we could not feel at all that weight of dozens of pounds which had been fastened to our feet!
Abruptly, though, light came to my perplexed mind. "Triton!" I exclaimed. "It's of about the same size as Earth's moon and hasn't much more gravitational power. And these Neptunians, used to the far greater gravitational power of Neptune, have to use these weights to add to their weight here on Triton to make it possible for them to move as always!"
Marlin's eyes widened, and then he nodded. "It must be so," he said. "I wondered when I saw them from above how these creatures of Neptune could move so freely on its smaller moon."
It was, indeed, a simple, yet ingenious device which the Neptunians had adopted. Accustomed as they had been to the great gravitational power of Neptune, seventeen times that of Earth, their squat, strange bodies owing their form to that great gravitational power, their muscles would have sent them through the air of Triton in immense and uncontrollable leaps at each step, so much smaller was the moon-world's gravitational power. So they had devised these small disks which fitted to the end of their strange limbs, and which, though so small and thin, yet had great weight, no doubt because the atoms of their substance had been compressed closely together for the purpose. The Neptunians had used disks of some thickness for themselves, and had used thinner ones for Marlin and myself, their smaller weight just sufficing to counteract the difference in gravitational power between Earth and Triton. And now, as we stepped out into the landing-compartment with our guards, it seemed as though we were walking with lead-weighted shoes at the ocean's bottom.
The landing-compartment about us held scores of resting cylinders like our own, and even as we looked about we saw throngs of Neptunians hastening forward and removing from our own and the other ten that had just landed, the disassembled mechanisms which they had brought from Neptune. The leader, however, motioned to our guards to follow with us, and set off quickly across the landing-compartment toward one of its doors. Following him, our four tube-armed guards watchful now about us, we saw him pass through the low, broad door before us, and though his strange disk-body passed easily through that door, Marlin and I were forced to stoop low to get through it. Then, our guards never relaxing their cautious watch over us, we were moving on through the next compartment, and the next, and the next, on through compartment after compartment, all thronging with Neptunians, moving across the great compartment-city toward the twilight band that divided Triton's dark and sunlit sides.
And as Marlin and I moved with our guards and their leader thus through the pale daylight of Triton, through the compartments crowded with masses upon masses of Neptunians, we forgot almost the uncertain fate that hung over us, in the interest and wonder of what we saw. For though we had explored the greater compartment-city that covered all the surface of mighty Neptune, had seen its marvels also, it had been a city dead, a city of lifeless and unused mechanisms whose purposes we had not been able to guess. But here on Triton, in the compartments that covered its surface, we saw a Neptunian city bursting with crowding life, saw it as the giant city of Neptune itself must once have been, before some unguessed purpose of the Neptunians had brought them here to Triton. And, seeing it thus, we were able to comprehend many things that had puzzled us in our venture through the city on Neptune's lifeless surface.
* * * * *
We passed through compartments in which throngs of Neptunians moved about great rows of looming, pear-shaped mechanisms such as we had seen on Neptune, great water-making mechanisms that were beating here with a slow, rhythmic sound of power, and from which there pulsed into the great connecting pipes a ceaseless gush of water. That water, we knew, was made synthetically in the mechanisms by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but whether those atoms were derived, as on Neptune, from the break-down of Neptune's great vapor-masses, or whether they were formed themselves from the primal electricity, we could not guess. Through many compartments of these we passed, and through other compartments that held great pumps that evidently forced the water supplies thus manufactured to every part of Triton's surface.
And we went through compartments, too, in which were other great objects that had puzzled us so completely on Neptune, but whose purpose we saw now. These were the great flat metal containers stacked one upon the other, each a foot or so in depth, and each filled with black, green-shot soil. About them, as on Neptune, were set in the walls great white disks connected to generating apparatus of some kind, but here those generating mechanisms were humming with power, tended by many Neptunians, and there shot from the disks, over and through those great containers of soil, a ceaseless flood of pale violet light or force. And, even as we passed through those compartments, we saw strange and stocky pale-green plants bursting up from the soil of the containers, growing at incredible speed before our eyes, attaining a height of inches in but a minute or so! As these strange pale-green plants reached a height of a foot or so, there formed upon them masses of fruits or vegetables dead white in color, some being long and pod-like and others ball-shaped. And as these formed, the attendant Neptunians were swiftly turning off the violet force, pulling the fruit-laden little plants from the fine soil, and depositing them in low-wheeled containers, which were wheeled instantly away. Then from the framework that held the great soil-containers there sprayed out upon them fine whitish-green particles that I recognized as seed of some sort, that fell upon the soil and then were turned under it as some reversing mechanism turned over the soil in each container. Then the violet force from the wall-disks was turned on again, and in a moment another crop of pale-green plants was shooting up out of the containers!
It was then that I saw the astounding purpose of those projectors of violet force that were set in the walls around the soil-containers. For it was evident that they shot forth upon the containers a force or vibration which held in it the ultra-violet and other radiations which, in sunlight, stimulate the growth of plant-life. These vibrations were projected artificially through the containers of soil with immeasurably greater intensity than in sunlight, and so stimulated the growth of plant-life in those containers immeasurably more. Also I could see that tubes ran from the framework through the soil of the containers, flooding that soil with moisture, and as that water used thus came through special cubical tanks and mixers, it was apparent that it was impregnated with the chemical elements needed by the plant-life in its swift, astounding growth. Thus, stimulated to an intense degree by those influences, the plant-life in those containers could germinate and shoot up and ripen with unbelievable speed. When it was removed, the containers were ready at once for another crop. The whole operation was swift and almost automatic, and as we saw great masses of the white fruits or vegetables being wheeled away from the plant-compartments, we realized at last how the Neptunians, in their great compartment-cities, obtained a ceaseless and inexhaustible food and water supply.
As we passed on, marveling, we saw other great mechanisms at work. Some were huge and cogged, operated by seated Neptunians before them, turning out ceaseless great blocks of smooth, black stone-like material that composed the intersecting compartment-walls, which poured out as a thick liquid and hardened in molds into that diamond-hard substance. Others were strange-appearing machines like none we had seen on Neptune, whose purpose we could not guess. Here and there there glowed in its square compartment one of the great heat-radiating globes, sending currents of intensely warm air rushing out from about it, all the mechanisms of those globes seeming to be cased inside themselves. Yet even these things were no more wonderful to us than the throngs of Neptunians that swirled and pressed in their millions in the great compartment-city about us.
Numberless, indeed, were the hordes of those Neptunians, their masses swarming about us in great crowds of disk-bodied, pale-green monsters, busy upon the clanking, beating, hissing mechanisms around them, busy in providing the heat and food and water of their strange world. It seemed impossible, almost, that so many countless millions of them could thus have crowded together on Triton's surface. All wore the strange armor or dress of flexible metal around their disk-bodies, some carrying ray-tubes slung in that armor and others various tools or instruments. Here and there we saw one with the same crimson-circle insignia as our leader's upon his metal armor, and it was apparent from the silent deference shown these circle-marked Neptunians that they were officials of some kind. As we marched on behind our leader, our guards close about us, we saw that, despite our strange appearance to them, the Neptunians paid no great attention to us--so busy were they. We saw, too, that here on Triton's sunward side there were no shelf-like sleep-compartments at all, all such being upon the dark side. In silent awe and wonder Marlin and I moved on through the thronging compartments, countless Neptunians crowding busily all about us, and countless cylinders throbbing through the air above, with the vast roof far above them. Then I sensed that we were approaching our destination.
For before us now, as we crossed a last compartment, there lay that twilight band of dusk which marked the division of Triton's dark and sunlit sides, and as we passed out of the pale, dim light of the sunlit side into the twilight of that band, we saw that before us lay a compartment wall that was curving instead of straight, the wall of the great single circular compartment we had noticed from above. The compartment that lay between us and that wall was empty save for a file of Neptunian guards who stood motionless along the curving wall with their force-ray tubes ready in their grasp. As our leader reached them he halted, spoke with them for a moment in staccato speech, and then as their snapping voices ceased the guards stood aside to right and left and permitted us to pass through the low, broad door in that curving wall. Through it we went, our circle-marked leader first and then Marlin and I, our four guards still close about us, and then as we halted inside that door, we two were gazing with a deepened awe and wonder about us.
We were standing just at the edge of that great circular compartment that we had glimpsed from above, one hundreds of feet in diameter, the twilight about it dispelled somewhat in it by soft-glowing disks in its walls. In this great compartment there stood what seemed an immense circular table of metal, only a few feet in height, ring-like in form and with a clear circular space at its center. This great ring-table's edge was not more than a dozen or so feet from the compartment's circular wall, and ranged around it, on low seats between the ring-like table and the wall, were thirty disk-bodied Neptunians. Silent and almost motionless they sat there around the great ring-table, and I saw that upon the metal armor of each was a crimson circle like that of our leader, except that there was a crimson dot at its center, a symbol we had noted on no other Neptunian so far. And from each of the thirty there ran in toward the clear space at the ring-table's center a slender black wire-connection, attached by diverging connections to the body of each of the thirty.
These thirty connections ended at the space at the ring-table's center, running there into a strange object or mechanism that stood in that space. It was composed of a great metal pedestal with straight sides, like an upright pillar, into which the thirty connections ran, while upon the pillar's top was supported a globe of metal somewhat greater in diameter than the pillar, being some five feet across. In this globe's side was a round opening, while set at two other points at opposite sides of it were what seemed inset diaphragms. From the supported globe came a fine hum, scarcely audible, and that was the only sound in the great compartment. The whole scene was strange--the towering black walls of the great circular compartment about us, the great ring-table in it and the thirty silent, motionless disk-bodied Neptunians seated around that table, and the giant globe on its pedestal at the table's central space.
* * * * *
As we stood there the Neptunian leader before us spoke in sharp snaps, as though explaining our presence, but not to the thirty around the table; it spoke to the great central globe of metal! In amazement we watched him, and then we saw that the globe was turning upon its pedestal, turning toward us a small circle of clear glass set in its opposite side, that surveyed us for the moment exactly like a single calm eye. Then the globe turned again, the opening in its side again facing us, and then from that opening came a staccato answer to our leader, a swift question, apparently, in the snapping speech-sounds of the Neptunians! The globe was hearing our captor's report, was questioning him concerning that report, while the thirty around the table uttered no sound, and turned not toward us!
"Good God!" I muttered at that astounding spectacle. "That globe of metal, Marlin--it hears him, answers him! The thing must be alive!"
[Illustration: "_That globe of metal, Marlin--it hears him, answers him!_
_The thing must be alive!_"]
"Not alive, Hunt," Marlin said swiftly, his own eyes startled, though. "Those connections that run from the thirty to the globe--they center in that globe's mechanism in some way the minds, the intelligence, of all the thirty!"
Swift light flashed upon me at Marlin's words, and as I gazed astonished toward the thirty Neptunians and the central globe I knew that Marlin's explanation was the only logical one. These thirty Neptunians, it was apparent, were the supreme rulers, the highest council, of all the Neptunian race. And since it was necessary that they use all of their differing minds as one in directing the destinies of their strange race, they had in some way devised a mechanism for that purpose, which synthesized the intelligence, the minds, of the thirty into one single mind by means of that strange mechanism. So that it was literally as one mind that the thirty perceived and thought, when gathered here together, the central globe speaking out the synthesized thoughts and questions of all the thirty!
As Marlin and I stared in amazement toward it, our leader was answering to the globe's questions concerning us, the snapping speech of the Neptunian indistinguishable from that of the mechanism. Then when he had finished, the globe was speaking briefly to him again, a short order, and in answer to that order the Neptunian leader turned at once toward us. I think that both Marlin and myself would not have been surprised to meet then the death that we knew hung over us, but, instead, the leader gestured to us and to our guards and led the way out of the great circular Council Compartment, through a different door from that by which we had entered. As we passed through that door I glanced back and saw the thirty Neptunians of the great Council still sitting motionless and silent around their weird globe-mechanism, which was listening now to the report of three other Neptunians who had entered behind us.
Once out of the great circular compartment, we found ourselves with our guards in an irregular-shaped compartment, filled with Neptunian guards who parted to allow us to pass. Through that and through another rectangular compartment we went, and then into a long oblong compartment in which we could see, despite the twilight that reigned here, were many smaller compartments or divisions along the walls. These were very like cell-compartments, and the low door of each of these was closed by a black slab that slid down across it from above. Before these doors there were patrolling in the long compartment a half-dozen of Neptunian guards, and, after being challenged by these, our own leader and four guards marched us to one of these little cell-compartments, reaching forth to grasp or touch something on its outside wall.
As the Neptunian leader did so, the door of the cell-compartment slid smoothly and silently upward, leaving its opening clear. Without ceremony, then, Marlin and I were motioned to pass inside, and with the four ray-tubes of the guards full upon us we had no choice in the matter. Stepping inside, therefore, we found ourselves in a compartment some ten feet square, whose walls, like all the black walls of the compartment-city, towered for two hundred feet upward around us, the only light the square of dusky sky far above. Then, as Marlin and I stared about us, the door shot smoothly down across the opening, and we heard the soft, shuffling steps of the Neptunian leader and our four guards retreating, outside, leaving us gazing at each other's white faces in silence. Our great mission out to Neptune, our great attempt to save Earth and prevent the wrecking of the solar system, had come to an end at last, with our two friends gone and with Marlin and myself imprisoned here beyond all hope of escape on Neptune's peopled moon!