And as that dazzling light-band moved around the big moon-world's dark
side, around the almost empty compartment-city that covered that dark
side, we saw emerging into that compartment-city of the dark side, as
though from its walls themselves, millions on millions of disk-bodied
Neptunians that matched in number the vast swarms on the sunlit side!
And as we gazed down in utter amazement we saw from whence they came.
There were in the dark compartment-city's extent many compartments like
those we had seen upon Neptune, with nothing in them save shelving,
which formed in their walls myriads of shelfed openings a few feet in
height and some four feet in width, one above the other. And in these
narrow, flat shelf-openings countless Neptunians had been sleeping!
Their disk-bodies, with the flexible legs drawn up, fitted snugly into
those flat, strange openings in the walls, and vast hordes of them,
countless millions of them, had been sleeping in the shelf-compartments
on Triton's dark side!
As that band of brilliant light swept swiftly across the dark side,
though, they had awakened, were pouring forth in all their hordes into
and through the compartments, all streaming toward the sunward side,
while the more remote of them were heading toward the same side in
flashing cylinders above. Then, as we gazed toward that sunward side,
we saw the brilliant band of light reappearing there, moving swiftly
still around Triton's surface, through the pale dim light of its
sunward side, having in those moments moved completely around Triton!
It moved on until in a moment more it had stopped where first it had
formed, at the junction of the dark and sunward sides. There it hung
for a moment, dazzling, and then had suddenly snapped out of being.
And now we saw that all the crowding millions of Neptunians that had
been busy upon the sunlit side were streaming through the compartments
toward the dark side!
"The Neptunians' day and night!" Marlin exclaimed, as we gazed
downward. "Triton must keep one face always toward the sun and one
dark, so these Neptunians spend their day on the sunlit side and sleep
their night on the dark side!"
"And that great band of light that traveled around Triton was their
signal, then!" I added.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account