It was too
stupendous. Yet....

Huge, vague thoughts had birth within me. I felt, suddenly, terribly
naked. And an awful Nearness, shook me.

And Heaven ...! Was that an illusion?

My thoughts came and went, erratically. The Sea of Sleep--and she!
Heaven.... I came back, with a bound, to the present. Somewhere, out of
the void behind me, there rushed an immense, dark body--huge and silent.
It was a dead star, hurling onward to the burying place of the stars. It
drove between me and the Central Suns--blotting them out from my vision,
and plunging me into an impenetrable night.

An age, and I saw again the violet rays. A great while later--aeons it
must have been--a circular glow grew in the sky, ahead, and I saw the
edge of the receding star, show darkly against it. Thus, I knew that it
was nearing the Central Suns. Presently, I saw the bright ring of the
Green Sun, show plainly against the night The star had passed into the
shadow of the Dead Sun. After that, I just waited. The strange years
went slowly, and ever, I watched, intently.

'The thing I had expected, came at last--suddenly, awfully. A vast
flare of dazzling light. A streaming burst of white flame across the
dark void. For an indefinite while, it soared outward--a gigantic
mushroom of fire. It ceased to grow. Then, as time went by, it began to
sink backward, slowly. I saw, now, that it came from a huge, glowing
spot near the center of the Dark Sun. Mighty flames, still soared
outward from this. Yet, spite of its size, the grave of the star was no
more than the shining of Jupiter upon the face of an ocean, when
compared with the inconceivable mass of the Dead Sun.

I may remark here, once more, that no words will ever convey to the
imagination, the enormous bulk of the two Central Suns.

_XXII_

THE DARK NEBULA

Years melted into the past, centuries, aeons. The light of the
incandescent star, sank to a furious red.

It was later, that I saw the dark nebula--at first, an impalpable
cloud, away to my right. It grew, steadily, to a clot of blackness in
the night. How long I watched, it is impossible to say; for time, as we
count it, was a thing of the past. It came closer, a shapeless
monstrosity of darkness--tremendous. It seemed to slip across the night,
sleepily--a very hell-fog. Slowly, it slid nearer, and passed into the
void, between me and the Central Suns. It was as though a curtain had
been drawn before my vision. A strange tremor of fea