"Thus half of our great task was finished, and there remained but to complete the other half, to make ready for the sending forth of the other great force-ray, the first one as we called it, toward the sun. In the years that followed, while the great force-ray traveled ceaselessly, on and on through the great void, toward that distant star that was its goal, we Neptunians were busy here upon Triton with the making ready of the newer force-ray. On Triton's sunward side, directly opposite to the other force-ray's source, we constructed again the great generators that would be used for this newer ray, massing them there beneath the great roof. With those generators finished, we began again to construct a great pit or well in the roof, and to place at its bottom the ray-mechanism that would send this newer force-ray in through the solar system toward the sun. "Terrible years were those for us, though now at last this terrible time approaches its end. For in those years we had not only to keep on the immense task of constructing generators and mechanisms for the newer force-ray, and to keep operating the other great generators and mechanisms that were sending forth ceaselessly the great force-ray toward Sagittarius; we had also to fight against the ever-encroaching cold that was deepening ever its dread menace over us, and that seemed on the point of overcoming us even as we reached the climax of our giant fight against doom. For ever that cold on Triton grew greater as it grew still cooler at its heart, and ever we must make greater and greater efforts to keep operating the innumerable heat-mechanisms that alone held death back from us. Yet we spurred ourselves onward by the thought that now at last we were approaching victory over this dread menace of cold that had beset us for so long, for at last the dozens of years required were drawing to an end and the great force-ray was fast nearing the star in Sagittarius that was its goal. "So we labored on with all our strength, and soon the mechanisms of the new giant force-ray were finished, its great pit ready in Triton's sunward side, and the twenty control-boxes set in that pit's walls. Now at last was approaching the crucial moment of our great plan, that moment in which all must be calculated and performed with infinite care lest we meet disaster. The greatest of our scientists had many times, in those years, calculated the exact moment when the huge force-ray we had shot forth would meet at last the star in Sagittarius, would strike against that star. It was necessary that the other giant force-ray that we were to send forth against the sun would strike the sun's edge at the same moment exactly as the other ray struck that star, and with the same power exactly. So all was anxiety unutterable as we approached this great climax of our plan.