The thought maddened me, and with a sudden desperate inspiration I ceased to direct our flier's rays ahead against Saturn in vain attempt to halt our reeling flash forward, but instead suddenly shot a ray back against the mass of Neptunian cylinders no longer visible in space far behind. As that powerful propelling ray struck their cylinders' mass, our reeling flier leaped forward with even greater speed toward Saturn, and as it shot forward thus faster than even the huge ray from behind alone could push it, it was slightly freed from that vast ray's pressure, and I could edge it upward a little from that great ray's path! Up--up--while Marlin and Whitely and Randall watched with white faces beside me, while our space-fliers and all the fleet's around and behind us came on at terrible velocity toward mighty Saturn that now filled the firmament before us. Up--up--and as I saw that we were winning gradually up from the great ray's path, I shouted to Marlin, heard him with his radiophone apparatus quickly order all the fleet's fliers to follow my example in an effort to win up from the great ray's pressure. Only the fliers uppermost in that ray's path, though, like our own, could hope to get clear in this way, but as we swept on, gradually our own flier and perhaps four or five hundred others out of our great mass of five thousand won thus upward until at last we burst up out of the vast ray's path and were out of its pushing pressure! "Back to the Neptunian cylinders!" Marlin shouted into the mouthpiece before him. "Unless we can destroy the greater cylinders whose ray is pushing the rest of our fleet into Saturn, we're lost!" And back now our flier and the five hundred others that were clear of the ray like it, were rushing, back away from Saturn, while the remaining thousands of space-fliers of our fleet, unable to get clear in that way of the vast ray's pressure, were being driven on by it with terrific speed and power toward annihilation against Saturn! We must destroy the greater cylinders that were sending forth that ray, we knew, before the mass of our fleet crashed into Saturn, and so our five hundred space-fliers, our own flagship at their head, went fast almost as light through the black gloom of space, back toward the two thousand or more Neptunian cylinder-fliers that were massed around those greater cylinders that were our object! Upward and backward we flashed, until in another moment it seemed that great mass of cylinder-fliers loomed before and beneath us in space, the score or more of greater cylinders that were pushing with their huge ray our fleet to doom. Before ever the Neptunians in those cylinders could see us we had rushed back high above them, and then, as Marlin gave a single order through the mouthpiece before him, our five hundred faceted space-fliers were diving through space upon that Neptunian mass of motionless cylinders!