I was aroused from my silent despair, though, by a low exclamation from Marlin, and looked up to see that the cylinders of which our own was foremost had now halted, hanging midway between metal roof beneath and great vapor-masses above. Then down from above I saw, dropping quickly toward us, three other cylinders similar to the eight, three cylinders at sight of which my heart beat suddenly faster. For it had been three cylinders that had pursued Whitely and Randall in the space-flier! Tensely I watched as the three drove down among our eight, and then one of them had shot suddenly close to the cylinder in which we were, hanging beside it so that its low door-opening was directly touching the door-opening of our own. There was a clang of metal beneath as the doors of both cylinders slid aside. They fitted so closely against each other that no colder air from without could enter into the warmed interior of the two cylinders. Then from the other were coming into our own cylinder three Neptunians who climbed swiftly up into the top-section in which we were, while Marlin and I watched them in indescribable suspense. As they came up into the uppermost section they spoke in their sharp, staccato talk to the Neptunian leader of the crimson-circle insignia, making report to him, it was apparent. But it was not to their snapping speech that Marlin and I gave our attention, but to the things they carried in their grip, and which they were showing to the leader. Those things, I saw with a start of horror, were some shattered and crumpled plates of metal, great flat metal plates that I recognized immediately as being of our space-flier's faceted sides! And they also held a broken, twisted metal thing that I recognized instantly as one of the space-flier's smaller liquid-oxygen tanks! I needed not to understand the strange speech of the Neptunians in that moment to understand what the three were reporting. For those shattered fragments of the space-flier told the tale with terrible clearness. "Whitely and Randall!" It was Marlin's whisper of horror beside me. "They were caught by those pursuing cylinders--were annihilated by their rays----!" "Whitely and Randall----" I felt my voice choke then, as I gazed at those last fragments of the space-flier's wreckage, mutely testifying to the end which our friends had met with beneath the shattering rays in their space-flier somewhere in the cold, vast vapor-masses above us.