Above were the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake.
Here is an impressive story based on the inter-action of planetarybodies and of the sun upon them. A great star is seen approaching theearth. At first it is only an object of interest to the general public,but there is an astronomer on the earth, who is watching each phase andmaking mathematical calculations, for he knows the intimate relation ofgravitation between bodies and the effect on rotating bodies of the sameforce from an outside source. He fears all sorts of wreckage on ourearth. He warns the people, but they, as usual, discount all he says andlabel him mad. But he was not mad. H. G. Wells, in his own way, gives usa picturesque description of the approach of the new body through longdays and nights—he tells how the earth and natural phenomena of theearth will react. Though this star never touches our sphere, thedevastation and destruction wrought by it are complete and horrible. Thestory is correct in its astronomical aspects.
THE STAR
Author of “The War of the Worlds”, “The Time Machine”, Etc.
It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement wasmade, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion ofthe planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheeled aboutthe sun, had become erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to asuspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of newswas scarcely calculated to interest the world the greater portion ofwhose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune,nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery ofa faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planetcause any great excitement.
Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough,even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing largerand brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderlyprogress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and itssatellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind.
Few people without training in science can realize the huge isolationof the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust ofplanetoids, and its impalpable comets swims in vacant immensity thatalmost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there isspace, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmthor light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty billion times a millionmiles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversedbefore the nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few comets,more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to humanknowledge crossed the gulf of space, until early in the twentiethcentury this wanderer appeared.
A vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warningout of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By thesecond day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speckwith a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation Leo near Regulus.In a little while an opera glass could attain it.
On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of twohemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance ofthis unusual apparition in the heavens. “A Planetary Collision,” oneLondon pape