It was Marlin's wild cry, that aroused me from the stupefaction of amazement that held me. Straight before us, a dozen feet away, was the open door of the nearest cylinder, and in the next split-second Marlin and I, as one, had leaped toward it, had shot through that door, into the cylinder's interior, even as the Neptunians raced toward us. The next instant I had reached frantically for the door, had with one swift motion slid it clanging shut, and then as the Neptunian masses outside hurled themselves toward it, Marlin and I were throwing ourselves up through the openings toward the cylinder's uppermost section. In one leap I was at the central control-standard, fumbled frantically with the green control-studs for an agonizing moment, and then, just as we heard the Neptunians below flinging themselves against the door, the great throbbing cylinder shot upward! Up over Triton's dark side we rose, a dozen slender force-rays criss-crossing about us from beneath in that moment, and as we glanced momentarily down we could see the Neptunians in the landing-compartment beneath rushing toward the other cylinders there! And glancing far across the surface of Triton, we could see all its mighty compartment-city, dark and sunward sides alike, swarming now with Neptunian hordes as the end and beginning of their strange day and night periods was signalled. Over the great compartment-city, over all the countless millions of Neptunians that swarmed through it, there was spreading a crackling roar of excited tumult, as our escape was discovered. And from far away on either side and from beneath us, scores of great cylinders whirled toward us! "Up--_up_!" Marlin was shouting now beside me. "They'll have us in another moment!" I pressed swiftly again the studs before me, and as the cylinder shot up and sidewise with terrific speed on an upward slant I shouted back to Marlin over the roar of air about us. "The roof-openings!" I cried. "We'll make for the nearest one!" But as the cylinder flashed obliquely upward, Marlin and I crouching in the two opposite seats at the control-standard, I became aware of the swarms of racing cylinders behind closing in upon us. And over the dark and sunward surfaces of Triton that great mounting roar of sound was spreading, as the Neptunian hordes saw our wild attempt at escape. Up--up--and now we were racing close beneath the great roof, transparent from below, with the pursuing cylinders drawing ever nearer, their Neptunian occupants more skilled than I in their operation. And now, too, from those uprising, pursuing swarms were directed toward us slender pencil-like rays of pale light, visible only near their source, concentrated force-rays, that would cleave through our cylinder as through paper!