Edmond Hamilton

“ 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 now we were inside Titan's orbit, and as we whirled farther in just across the path of another and smaller whirling moon, I saw that Saturn's colossal rings lay edge-on close before our racing masses of craft, gigantic spinning rings of mighty meteor-masses, countless great meteor-swarms whirling there about the vast yellow planet whose sphere now was stupendous in the heavens before us. In another few moments Neptunian cylinders and space-fliers of Earth would have rushed alike into those thundering swarms of meteors, in which no craft could live for a moment. ”

“ Blazing in their true brilliant colors on all sides of us, the hosts of stars were like jewels of light set in the black firmament. And as our flier throbbed on through the great gulf of empty space at terrific speed, its acceleration still pressing us down somewhat in our chairs, we could see now amid the flaming stars dead ahead the far green spot of light that was Neptune, our goal, visible now to our unaided eyes in the clearness of empty space. ”

“ Still we were racing onward, our great space-flier hurtling on and on through that asteroid-filled region, escaping those great rushing spheres of death, sometimes by the narrowest of margins. Hour upon hour, keeping our sleepless watch at the flier's windows, we flashed on, its colossal speed still mounting as more and more of our generators' power was turned into the great rear force-ray that pressed back towards Earth and that shot us outward. By that time Earth had become but a bright white star behind us, the sun's size and brilliance decreased by a third or more already. ”

“ Now through the windows before and about us, as we clung there, we saw the heavens around us brilliant with the fierce light of undimmed hosts of stars, while as our great flier reeled on at mounting speed into the great gulf, we saw behind and beneath us a great gray cloudy ball that was each moment contracting in size. Earth was receding and diminishing behind us as we flashed out through the void toward distant Neptune, to save that Earth from doom! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To right and left, like light, drove the deadly weapon-rays of our massed space-fliers as we seized the opportunity and leaped upon the Neptunians. Ample was the revenge we had upon them in that moment, since the concentrated rays tore through and wrecked hundreds of their own cylinders as we sprang upon them! Fleeing from before us for the moment, flashing away toward giant Neptune's tremendous green disk ahead, they strove to reform while we leaped after them and harried them with every weapon-ray which our space-fliers could emit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet even with that brilliance dazzling us we could make out plainer and plainer the sphere of Earth, seeming to our eyes a thin silver-blue crescent as it spun there between our inrushing flier and the sun, its tiny moon-spot growing brighter too. Marlin and Whitely and Randall watching tensely beside me, I cut out altogether the great force-ray at the flier's rear, which, even when our speed had reached its maximum, drove us straight onward and kept that speed unvarying against the gravitational influences from either side which were not large enough to require an opposing side-ray. ”

“ Past perilous Saturn, and past mighty Jupiter, and through the dangers of the asteroidal belt and past red Mars once more we had sped, within us only a strange sick desire for Earth once more; that Earth which we knew, would be shaken even now with unimaginable rejoicings as its peoples saw the acceleration of the sun's spin that had menaced all our universe halted at last with the hurling forth of Triton days before. ”

“ Never in all the many discussions concerning the possibility of life on the other planets have astronomers conceded any possibility of life on Neptune, the outermost of the sun's worlds, for though we have always known it to have air and water, its great distance from the sun must needs make it so cold a world as to be unable to sustain life. That was our belief before, but now with this great ray from Neptune swiftly wrecking our solar system before our very eyes, we can no longer doubt that life, intelligent life, exists there! ”

“ 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. ”

“ We four, Marlin and Whitely and Randall and myself, were standing on the flat roof of the great World Government building, that gigantic cylindrical white structure that looms two thousand feet into the air at the center of the new world-capital, New York. All around us there stretched the colossal panorama of New York's mighty cylindrical buildings, each rearing skyward from its little green park, extending as far away as the eye could reach, many of them rising on great supporting piers out of the waters of the rivers and bay around the island. ”

“ The sun as a source of heat for us! The idea seemed incredible to us—the Council of Thirty. For to us of Neptune, lying so far out in space from the sun, that sun could never mean and had never meant what it does to you of the inner planets. To you it is a source of ceaseless blazing heat, of brilliant light, warming your worlds sometimes to scorching, no doubt. But to us that sun has seemed always but a tiny little disk of fire far off in the void from us, a little sun-disk that gives to us the dim light of our pale Neptunian day, but that gives to us hardly any measurable heat whatever. ”

“ And then as its gleaming sphere shot out into the void away from us, away from great Neptune behind us, away from the solar system's edge, shooting out into the cold and sunless outer void and bearing upon it all the Neptunian hordes to death, Marlin flung out his hand toward its diminishing gleaming little sphere in the black void before us, was crying out to it as though to the Neptunian millions upon it as it shot out, never to return.
"You of Neptune or we of Earth!" he cried. "One had to go to death—to doom! ”

“ And now that we were passing the huge world so closely, it seemed to us with its vast rings and great family of whirling moons to be of universe-size itself, so mighty did it loom beside us. The great rings, of small thickness compared to their huge width and circle, were edge-on to us now, a million miles to the left, and we could see that they were in reality but vast swarms of countless meteors, great and small, whirling at great speed about Saturn and forming by their division three rings, the innermost a darker one. ”

“ Even with such a cylinder, indeed, little enough hope was ours, since we dared not attempt to get to the twenty controls of the great sun-ray across the swarming sunward side. Our greatest hope would be to escape from Triton in it, if possible through the great roof that surrounded Triton, but even that hope seemed a futile one now, since, as we went on and on through the dense darkness of this sleeping side of Triton, we were moving still through a maze of sleep-compartments, groping blindly through the vast checkerboard maze of intersecting, towering walls. ”

“ Full before us was looming greater each instant the spinning dark globe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and now as our two fleets rushed side by side toward it at terrific speed, stabbing still at each other from space-flier to cylinder with the concentrated weapon-rays, it seemed that inevitably in the next moment we must crash against the big moon! Seeing this, though, Marlin shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before him, and instantly in answer to it our great fleet's mass bore sidewise against the racing mass of the Neptunian cylinders! ”

“ The immense blackness of empty space around us, the far fiery disk of the sun and the bright sparks of Jupiter and Neptune burning inward and outward from us, the vast ringed sphere of Saturn behind us—these seemed to spin slowly around our flier as with its fellows it dove down through the sheer darkness of the void toward the unsuspecting Neptunian cylinders below. ”

“ But if our fleet cannot do this, if the Neptunians prevent it from reaching the great sun-ray's source, and from halting that ray, then the sun will spin on ever faster and within two-score more days will split at last and engulf in the diverging fires of its two new suns, all the planets save Neptune. For it is this great space-fleet of ours, heading out now toward the last great battle of Earth's and Neptune's races, which alone now can prevent the accelerating speed of the sun and the consequent wrecking of our universe! ”

“ Yet I had seen myself that they must be so, that only on a great planet like Neptune, with far greater gravitational power than Earth, could those squat, flat bodies have evolved. For the greater the power of a planet's gravitation, the lower and the more squat will be the forms of life that evolve upon it. And just as these Neptunians had evolved in their strange disk-form here on the great planet, due to its greater gravitational power, so had their great light-gathering eyes been evolved by the dimness that reigned here always. ”

“ Already chance meteors were whirling through space about us as we shot on, cylinder or space-flier here and there in the two racing, grappling fleets vanishing in white-hot flashes of heat and fire as a meteor struck them. But other and more cylinders and space-fliers were vanishing in wreckage beneath the cleaving rays from either fleet, and both were racing on so intent upon our terrific struggle as to notice hardly at all the vast whirling rings before us! ”

“ Marlin shouted to me, and for a moment I worked frenziedly at the controls before me, but the rays I shot forward to push against Saturn, to hold us back or push us to either side were powerless against the vast pushing ray from behind! Larger and larger great ringed Saturn loomed ahead as our disorganized fleet shot on at awful speed toward it, pushed by the vast ray, and but minutes remained before we would have crashed to death in all our fliers against the mighty planet and its whirling rings and moons! ”