And behind us the scores of onrushing cylinders were closer--closer! Already toward us again from them were leaping the slender pale force-rays, missing us at that distance but sweeping close about us. With an utter tenseness of body and spirit, Marlin and I watched them drawing closer, as our cylinder shot on through Triton's atmosphere. Suddenly another storm of rays had shot and swept toward us from behind, and one of those wild-whirling rays, in a single instant, clove through the cylinder's uppermost sides like a sword of fire through cardboard, slicing away completely the already-crumpled roof above us and the upper half-dozen feet of the walls! Instantly a flood of icy-cold air rushed in upon us and seemed in that moment to freeze us through. At the same moment the throbbing generators ceased completely to operate, the cylinder slowing swiftly on its rush forward, drifting helplessly there in the outer reaches of Triton's atmosphere, while from behind, like leaping creatures of prey, the scores of cylinders rushed upon us! Neither Marlin nor I voiced a cry in that moment. We could only stare as if we were automatons, toward the onrushing cylinders, the oncoming doom. We had run our course at last. It seemed in that moment that all our bitter battle for freedom, our toilsome escape from our cell, our flight through Triton's sleeping side, our stealing of the cylinder and wild crash upward through the great roof's opening-section--that all this futile flight of ours was reenacting itself with lightning swiftness before my eyes. The swarming cylinders were almost on us, holding their rays now as they saw us helpless until they were closer, their great mass whirling straight toward us. And then, as I gripped the control-standard before me, expectant in that instant of the end. I saw that onrushing mass of cylinders suddenly shattered as though by gigantic blows from above. I saw the scores of cylinders driven this way and that in a single instant with colossal force, even as they rushed to annihilate us! And I looked dazedly up, was looking up---- "_The space-flier!_" Marlin's insane cry was sounding there beside me. "_It's the space-flier--and Whitely and Randall!_"