able, way
_en rapport_, and we both believe further that the terrestrial
crystal must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from
that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs.
Possibly the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our
globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the facts.

XX.

THE STAR.

It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made,
almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the
planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun,
had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a
suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news
was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose
inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor
outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a
faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause
any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the
intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new
body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite
different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the
deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an
unprecedented kind.

Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of
the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of
planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that
almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is
space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth
or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million
miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed
before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few comets
more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human
knowledge crossed this gulf of space until early in the twentieth century
this strange wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was, bulky,
heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into
the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly visible to any
decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the
constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while an opera glass could
attain it.