"And upon this great fleet of space-fliers rests now the fate of the solar system! For that fleet must go out through the solar system now to Neptune and halt the giant ray radiating from Triton's sunward side toward the sun, if the solar system is to live. What perils, what opposition that fleet will meet, Marlin has made clear to you. These Neptunians, most ancient and mighty of the solar system's peoples, are of colossal powers, such powers that they are scrupling not at splitting the sun itself! They have thousands of their great space-cylinders that can whirl through space as swiftly and as well as our own space-fliers. They have as weapons their concentrated force-rays, which we must provide for the fliers of our own fleet before it leaves. They have an ancient science and might that can produce we know not what weapons against us, and they know that our four first venturers escaped back to Earth, and will be expecting now an attack from us, will resist that attack with all their powers, undoubtedly, since they are fighting for the existence of their races, their world, even as we are fighting for ours! "Thus this great fleet of five thousand space-fliers of ours goes out to battle, to battle between the races of Neptune and Earth that must decide the fate of the solar system for all time. There can be but one fit to lead this fleet out to such battle, and that is Marlin himself, who was the first to discover this peril that hangs over us, who was one of the first to suggest a means of struggling against that peril, and who has led this first daring venture out through a thousand perils to Neptune, and back again to Earth with the knowledge without which we could not act. So that it is he, with these three companions of his, Whitely and Hunt and Randall, who dared all with him and who have done for Earth what he has done, as his three lieutenants, who must command this great expedition of ours which we are sending out to halt the oncoming doom, these gathered forces of all the Earth!