* * * * *

At dawn came another bulletin from the Central Bureau. Neptune had a
surface temperature of 3,000 deg. C, was defying all laws of celestial
mechanics, and within three days would have left the solar system for
ever. The results of such a disaster were unpredictable. The entire
solar system was likely to break up. Already Uranus and Jupiter had
deviated from their orbits. Unless something speedily occurred to check
the onrush of the dark star, it was prophesied that the laws governing
the planetary system would run to a new balance, and that in the ensuing
chaos the whole group would spread apart and fall toward the gulfs
beyond the great surrounding void.

What was the nature of the great path of fire? What force did it
represent? And was the dark star controlled by intelligence, or was it a
blind wanderer from space that had come by accident? The flame-path
alone implied that the dark star was guided by an intelligence that
possessed the secret of inconceivable power. Menace hung in the sky now
where all eyes could see in a great arc of fire!

The world was on the brink of eternity, and vast forces at whose nature
men could only guess were sweeping planets and suns out of its path.

The following night was again cold and clear. High in the heavens, where
Neptune should have been, hung a disk of enormously greater size.
Neptune itself was almost invisible, hundreds of millions of miles
beyond its scheduled position. As nearly as Phobar could estimate, not
one hundredth of the sun's rays were reflected from the surface of the
dark star, a proportion far below those for the other planets. Phobar
had a better view of the flame-path, and it was with growing awe that he
watched that strange swathe in the sky during the dead of night. It shot
out from the dark star like a colossal beam or huge pillar of fire
seeking a food of worlds.

With a shiver of cold fear he saw that there were now three of the
bands: one toward Neptune, one toward Saturn, and one toward the sun.
The first was fading, a milky, misty white; the second shone almost as
bright as the first one previously had; and the third, toward the sun,
was a dazzling stream of orange radiance, burning with a steady,
terrible, unbelievable intensity across two and a half billions of miles
of space! That gigantic flare was the most brilliant sight in the whole
night sky, an awful and abysmally prophetic flame that made city