He began by reviewing in a few sentences the colossal peril that had threatened and was threatening us, the increased spin of the sun beneath Neptune's mighty ray that soon must result in its division and the solar system's doom. Then, with a reference to that other gathering of the World Congress at which our venture out to Neptune had been decided upon, he came to the start of that venture. While they listened in utter tenseness he told of our start, of our going out from Earth first of all men into the outer void, out past the mysteries of Mars with greater and greater speed. Our onward flight through the terrible dangers of the great asteroidal belt and our narrow escapes in it, our outward rush past mighty Jupiter--these he described in his steady voice, and we felt the tenseness that held all in the great room in dead silence. He told them of what doom had nearly been ours at Saturn, of our fall toward its great rings of death and our narrow escape from them. Then, with a little pause, he was going on, was telling of our onward flashing flight beyond Saturn out through the vast outer reaches of the solar system, out past the orbit of Uranus toward Neptune itself. In utmost suspense they listened as he told of our arrival at last at Neptune, of our amazement at finding that giant world shielded with an enclosing roof of metal, and of our greater amazement at finding that world, the colossal city that covered it, utterly dead and deserted. Low exclamations of surprise broke from his listeners then as he narrated how he and I had been surprised in the dead city of Neptune by the coming of the Neptunians in their cylinders, their attack upon and pursuit upward of Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, their capture of ourselves and their taking us from Neptune out to the moon-world of Triton. And a low wave of uncontrollable excitement swept across the great room as Marlin told those in it of the roofed and warmed world of Triton and the countless millions of Neptunians on it, and above all of the giant force-ray that was stabbing from Triton's sunward side toward the sun and loosing doom upon us!