Side by side for the moment the Neptunian and Earth fleets flew, countless weapon-rays stabbing across the gap between them as at dizzying speed they shot through the void, and I kept our space-flier at our fleet's head, as Marlin gave his orders to the fliers behind us, Whitely swiftly opening and closing the controls of our generators to keep constant the flier's power and speed, Randall was sending our own slender and deadly rays shooting toward the opposite Neptunian cylinders like bolts of straight and half-seen lightning! For but instants it could have been that the two great fleets, our own of space-fliers and the smaller Neptunian one, whirled through the void, but eternities it seemed to me, so tense and timeless was that whirl of awful action. Soon I became aware of a mighty yellow disk that filled the firmament from top to bottom before us, toward which our racing, struggling fleets were flashing, and then I saw Whitely bending across me and shouting to Marlin through the wild whirl of this terrific battle: "We're heading with the Neptunian fleet in to Saturn!" he was shouting. "What this battle will mean in those rings and moons----!" "We'll keep straight with them!" Marlin cried. "They are trying to escape from us in Saturn's rings and moons, and get back to Neptune to rejoin the main Neptunian body!" So that now as fleet and fleet rushed forward I held our own flier at our own fleet's head, racing forward with the vast whirling system of Saturn's rings and moons stretching dangerously before us. Full before us was looming greater each instant the spinning dark globe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and now as our two fleets rushed side by side toward it at terrific speed, stabbing still at each other from space-flier to cylinder with the concentrated weapon-rays, it seemed that inevitably in the next moment we must crash against the big moon! Seeing this, though, Marlin shouted a swift order into the mouthpiece before him, and instantly in answer to it our great fleet's mass bore sidewise against the racing mass of the Neptunian cylinders! For an instant it seemed that the two fleets were merging into each other, space-flier crashing into cylinder and slender rays coming thick, and then the smaller Neptunian fleet had given way beneath the pressure of ours, had veered sidewise so that in the following moment the two fleets were rushing past Titan's whirling sphere!