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07 - Tales of Space and Time The Star · Classic Sci-Fi Tales Audio Library

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  Speaker 1: Tales of Space and Time, Chapter two, The Star. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recording by Linda Dodge. Tales of Space
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  Speaker 1: and Time, Chapter two, The Star by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: It was on the first day of the new year
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  Speaker 1: that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories,
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  Speaker 1: that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of
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  Speaker 1: all the planets that wheel about the Sun, had become
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  Speaker 1: very erratic. Ogilvie had already called attention to a suspected
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  Speaker 1: retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of
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  Speaker 1: news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater
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  Speaker 1: proportion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of
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  Speaker 1: the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession. Did the
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  Speaker 1: subsequent discovery of a faint, remote speck of light in
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  Speaker 1: the region of the perturbed planet cause any great excitement.
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  Speaker 1: Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before
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  Speaker 1: it became known that the new body was rapidly growing
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  Speaker 1: larger and brighter, and its motion was quite different from
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  Speaker 1: the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection
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  Speaker 1: of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an
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  Speaker 1: unprecedented kind. Few people without a training in science can
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  Speaker 1: realize the huge isolation of the Solar System. The Sun,
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  Speaker 1: with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and
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  Speaker 1: its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost
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  Speaker 1: defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is
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  Speaker 1: space vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without
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  Speaker 1: warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness for twenty million
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  Speaker 1: times a million miles. This is the smallest estimate of
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  Speaker 1: the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of
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  Speaker 1: the stars is attained, and saving a few comets more
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  Speaker 1: unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to
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  Speaker 1: human knowledge crossed this gulf of space until early in
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  Speaker 1: the twentieth century. This strange wanderer appeared a vast mass
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  Speaker 1: of matter. It was bulky heavy, rushing without warning out
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  Speaker 1: of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance
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  Speaker 1: of the Sun. By the second day it was clearly
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  Speaker 1: visible to any decent instrument as a speck with a
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  Speaker 1: barely sensible diameter in the constellation of Leo near Regulus.
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  Speaker 1: In a little while an opera glass could attain it.
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  Speaker 1: On the third day of the new year, the newspaper
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  Speaker 1: readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first
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  Speaker 1: time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in
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  Speaker 1: the heavens quote a planetary collision unquote. One London paper
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  Speaker 1: headed the news and proclaimed, to Shane's opinion that this
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  Speaker 1: strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader
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  Speaker 1: writers enlarged upon the topic, so that in most of
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  Speaker 1: the capitals of the world on January third, there was
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  Speaker 1: an expectation, however vague, of some eminent phenomenon in the sky,
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  Speaker 1: And as the night followed the sunset round the globe,
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  Speaker 1: thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see the old,
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  Speaker 1: familiar stars, just as they had always been. Until it
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  Speaker 1: was dawn in London and Pollock's setting, and the stars
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  Speaker 1: overhead grown pale. The winter's dawn. It was a sickly
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  Speaker 1: filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and
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  Speaker 1: candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people
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  Speaker 1: were astir but the yawning policemen saw the thing. The
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  Speaker 1: busy crowds in the market stopped a gape, workmen going
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  Speaker 1: to their work, betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news carts,
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  Speaker 1: dissipation going home, jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on
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  Speaker 1: their beats. And in the country, laborers trudging afield, poachers
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  Speaker 1: slinking home. All over the dusty, quickening country, it could
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  Speaker 1: be seen and out at sea by seamen watching for
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  Speaker 1: the day, a great white star come suddenly into the
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  Speaker 1: western sky. Brighter it was than any star in our skies,
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  Speaker 1: brighter than the evening star at its brightest. It still
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  Speaker 1: glowed out, white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light,
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  Speaker 1: but a small, round, clear, shining disk. An hour after
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  Speaker 1: the day had come, and where science has not reached,
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  Speaker 1: men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars
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  Speaker 1: and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fury signs in
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  Speaker 1: the heavens. Sturdy boars, dusky huttentots, gold coast Negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards,
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  Speaker 1: Portuguese stood in the warmth of the sunrise, watching the
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  Speaker 1: setting of this strange new star, and in a hundred observatories.
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  Speaker 1: There had been suppressed excitement rising almost to shouting pitch,
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  Speaker 1: as the two remote bodies had rushed together, and a
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  Speaker 1: hurrying to and fro to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope,
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  Speaker 1: and this appliance and that to record this novel astonishing sight,
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  Speaker 1: the destruction of a world, for it was a world,
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  Speaker 1: a sister planet of our Earth, far greater than our Earth. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune as
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  Speaker 1: it was, had been struck fairly and squarely by the
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  Speaker 1: strange planet from outer space, and the heat of the
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  Speaker 1: concussion had incontinentally turned two solid globes into one vast
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  Speaker 1: mass of incandescence round the world that day, two hours
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  Speaker 1: before the dawn went the pallid, great white star, fading
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  Speaker 1: only as it sank westward, and the sun mounted above it.
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  Speaker 1: Everywhere men marveled at it, But all of those who
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  Speaker 1: saw it, none could have marveled more than those sailors,
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  Speaker 1: habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea
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  Speaker 1: had heard nothing of its advent, and saw it now
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  Speaker 1: rise like a pigmy moon, and climb zenithward and hang
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  Speaker 1: overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night.
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  Speaker 1: And when next it rose over Europe, everywhere were crowds
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  Speaker 1: of watchers on hilly slopes, on house roofs, in open spaces,
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  Speaker 1: staring eastward for the rising of the great new Star.
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  Speaker 1: It rose with a white glow in front of it,
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  Speaker 1: like the glare of a white fire, and those who
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  Speaker 1: had seen it come into existence the night before cried
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  Speaker 1: out at the sight of it. It is larger, they cried,
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  Speaker 1: It is brighter. And indeed the moon a quarter fall
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  Speaker 1: and sinking in the west, was in its apparent size
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  Speaker 1: beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth, had it
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  Speaker 1: as much brightness now as the little circle of the
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  Speaker 1: strange new star. It is brighter, cried the people clustering
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  Speaker 1: in the streets. But in the dim observatories, the watchers
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  Speaker 1: held their breath and peered at one another. It is nearer,
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  Speaker 1: they said, nearer, And voice after voice repeated it is nearer.
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  Speaker 1: And the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled
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  Speaker 1: along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities, grimy compositors
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  Speaker 1: fingered the type It is nearer. Men writing in offices
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  Speaker 1: struck with a strange realization, flung down their pins. Men
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  Speaker 1: talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility.
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  Speaker 1: In those words, quote it is nearer, unquote. It hurried
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  Speaker 1: along the awakening streets. It was shouted down the frost
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  Speaker 1: stilled ways of quiet villages. Men who had read these
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  Speaker 1: things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow lit doorways,
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  Speaker 1: shouting the news to the passers by. It is nearer.
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  Speaker 1: Pretty women flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly
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  Speaker 1: between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest. They did
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  Speaker 1: not feel nearer. Indeed, how furious, how very very clever
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  Speaker 1: people must be to find out things like that. Lonely
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  Speaker 1: tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to
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  Speaker 1: comfort themselves, looking skyward, It has need to be nearer,
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  Speaker 1: for the night's as cold as charity. Don't seem much
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  Speaker 1: warmth from it. If it is nearer, all the same,
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  Speaker 1: what is a new star to me? Cried the weeping
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  Speaker 1: woman kneeling beside her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for
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  Speaker 1: his examination work, puzzled it out for himself. With the
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  Speaker 1: great white star shining broad and bright through the frost
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  Speaker 1: flowers of his window. Sint trifugal centripetal, he said, with
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  Speaker 1: his chin on his fist, Stop a planet in its flight,
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  Speaker 1: rob it of its centrifugal force. What then, sintripetal has it?
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  Speaker 1: And down it falls into the sun. And this do
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  Speaker 1: we come in the way? I wonder? The light of
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  Speaker 1: that day went the way of its brethren, and with
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  Speaker 1: the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange
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  Speaker 1: star again. And now it was so bright that the
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  Speaker 1: waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself,
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  Speaker 1: hanging huge in the sunset. In a South African city,
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  Speaker 1: a great man had married, and the streets were alight
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  Speaker 1: to welcome his return with his bride. Even the skies
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  Speaker 1: have illuminated, said the flatterer. Under capricorn, two negro lovers,
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  Speaker 1: daring the wild beasts and evil spirits for love of
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  Speaker 1: one another, crouched together in the cane brake where the
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  Speaker 1: fire flies hovered. That is our star. They whispered and
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  Speaker 1: felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light.
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  Speaker 1: The master mathematicians sat in his private room and pushed
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  Speaker 1: the papers from him. His calculations were already finished in
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  Speaker 1: a small white file. There still remained a little of
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  Speaker 1: the drug that had kept him awake and active for
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  Speaker 1: four long nights. Each day, Serene, explicit, patient as ever,
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  Speaker 1: he had given his lecture to his students, and then
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  Speaker 1: had come back at once to this momentous calculation. His
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  Speaker 1: face was grave, a little drawn, and hectic from his
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  Speaker 1: drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought.
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  Speaker 1: Then he went to the window, and the blind went
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  Speaker 1: up with a click. Half Way up in the sky,
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  Speaker 1: over the clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city
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  Speaker 1: hung the star. He looked at it as one might
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  Speaker 1: look into the eyes of a brave enemy. You may
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  Speaker 1: kill me, he said, after a silence. But I can
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  Speaker 1: hold you, and all the universe for that matter, in
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  Speaker 1: the grip of this little brain. I would not change
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  Speaker 1: even now, he looked at his little file. There will
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  Speaker 1: be no need of sleep again, he said. The next day,
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  Speaker 1: at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theater,
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  Speaker 1: put his hat on the end of the table, as
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  Speaker 1: his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk.
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  Speaker 1: It was a joke among his students that he could
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  Speaker 1: not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in
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  Speaker 1: his fingers, And once he had been stricken to impotence
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  Speaker 1: by their hiding his supply, he came and looked under
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  Speaker 1: his gray eyebrows at the rising tears of fresh young faces,
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  Speaker 1: and spoke with his accustomed, studied commonness of phrasing. Circumstances
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  Speaker 1: have arisen, circumstances beyond my control, he said, and paused,
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  Speaker 1: which will debar me from completing the course I had designed?
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  Speaker 1: It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing
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  Speaker 1: clearly and briefly, that man has lived in vain. The
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  Speaker 1: students glanced at one another had they heard aright, mad
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  Speaker 1: raised eyebrows and grinning lips. There were but one or
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  Speaker 1: two faces remained intent upon this calm, gray fringed face.
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  Speaker 1: It will be interesting, he was saying, to devote this
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  Speaker 1: morning to an exposition, so far as I can make
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  Speaker 1: it clear to you of the calculations that have led
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  Speaker 1: me to this conclusion. Let us assume he turned toward
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  Speaker 1: the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was
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  Speaker 1: unusual to him. What was that about lived in vain?
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  Speaker 1: Whispered one student to another. Listen said the other nodding
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  Speaker 1: toward the lecturer, and presently they began to understand. That
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  Speaker 1: night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion
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  Speaker 1: had carried it some way across Leo toward Virgo, and
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  Speaker 1: its brightness was so great that the sky became a
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  Speaker 1: luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden
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  Speaker 1: in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldeboran, Sirius,
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  Speaker 1: and the pointers of the Bear. It was very white
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  Speaker 1: and beautiful in many parts of the world that night.
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  Speaker 1: A pallid halo encircled it about It was perceptibly larger
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  Speaker 1: in the clear, refractive sky of the tropics. It seemed
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  Speaker 1: as if it were nearly a quarter the size of
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  Speaker 1: the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England,
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  Speaker 1: but the world was as brightly lit as if it
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  Speaker 1: were midsummer moonlight. One could see to read quite ordinary
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  Speaker 1: print by that cold, clear light, and in the cities
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  Speaker 1: the lamps burnt yellow and wan, and everywhere the world
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  Speaker 1: was awake that night. Throughout Christendom, a somber murmur hung
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  Speaker 1: in the keen air over the countryside, like the belling
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  Speaker 1: of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew
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  Speaker 1: to a clangor in the cities. It was the tolling
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  Speaker 1: of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples,
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  Speaker 1: summoning the people to sleep no more, to send no more,
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  Speaker 1: but to gather in their churches and prey. And overhead,
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  Speaker 1: growing larger and brighter, as the Earth rolled on its
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  Speaker 1: way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star, and
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  Speaker 1: the streets and houses were a lit In all the cities,
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  Speaker 1: the shipyards glared, and whatever roads led to high country
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  Speaker 1: were lit and crowded all night long, and in all
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  Speaker 1: the seas about the civilized lands, ships with throbbing engines,
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  Speaker 1: and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and living creatures,
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  Speaker 1: were standing out to ocean and the north. For already
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  Speaker 1: the warning of the master Mathematician had been telegraphed all
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  Speaker 1: over the world and translated into a hundred tongues. The
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  Speaker 1: new planet and Neptune, locked in a fury embrace, were
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  Speaker 1: whirling headlong ever faster and faster towards the Sun. Already
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  Speaker 1: every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles, and
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  Speaker 1: every second its terrific velocity increased as it flew. Now, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: it must pass a hundred million miles wide of the
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  Speaker 1: Earth and scarcely affect it, but near its destined path,
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  Speaker 1: as yet only slightly perturbed, spun the mighty planet Jupiter
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  Speaker 1: and his moons sweeping splendid round the Sun. Every moment.
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  Speaker 1: Now the attraction between the fury star and the greatest
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  Speaker 1: of planets grew stronger, and the result of that attraction, inevitably,
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  Speaker 1: Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path,
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  Speaker 1: and the burning Star, swung by his attraction wide of
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  Speaker 1: its sunward rush, would describe a curved path and perhaps
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  Speaker 1: collide with and certainly pass very close to our Earth. Earthquakes,
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  Speaker 1: volcanic outbreaks, cyclone sea waves, floods, and a steady rise
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  Speaker 1: in temperature to I know not what limit, so prophesied
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  Speaker 1: the master mathematician, and overhead to carry out his words.
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  Speaker 1: Lonely and cold and livid blazed the Star of the
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  Speaker 1: coming doom. To many who stared at it that night
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  Speaker 1: until their eyes ached it seemed that it was visibly approaching.
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  Speaker 1: And that night too, the weather changed, and the frost
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  Speaker 1: that had gripped all central Europe in France and England
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  Speaker 1: softened towards a thaw. But you must not imagine, because
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  Speaker 1: I have spoken of people praying through the night, and
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  Speaker 1: people going aboard ships, and people fleeing toward the mountainous country,
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  Speaker 1: that the whole world was already in a terror because
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  Speaker 1: of the star. As a matter of fact, use and
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  Speaker 1: wants still ruled the world. And save for the talk
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  Speaker 1: of idle moments and the splendor of the night, nine
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  Speaker 1: human beings out of ten were still busy at their
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  Speaker 1: common occupations. In all the cities, the shops, save one
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  Speaker 1: here or there, opened and closed at their proper hours.
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  Speaker 1: The doctor and the undertaker plied their trades. The workers
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  Speaker 1: gathered in the factories. Soldiers drilled, scholars studied, Lovers sought
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  Speaker 1: one another. Thieves lurped and fled. Politicians planned their schemes.
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  Speaker 1: The presses of the newspapers roared through the nights, and
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  Speaker 1: many a priest of this church and that would not
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  Speaker 1: open his holy building to further what he considered a
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  Speaker 1: foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the
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  Speaker 1: year one thousand. For then, too people had anticipated the end.
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  Speaker 1: The star was no star, mere gas, a comet, and
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  Speaker 1: were it a star, it could not possibly strike the earth.
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  Speaker 1: There was no precedent for such a thing. Common Sense
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  Speaker 1: was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute
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  Speaker 1: the obdurate, fearful. That night, at seven fifteen, by Greenwich time,
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  Speaker 1: the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then
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  Speaker 1: the world would see the turn things would take. The
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  Speaker 1: master mathematicians grim warnings were treated by many as so
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  Speaker 1: much mere elaborate self advertisement. Common sense, at last, a
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  Speaker 1: little heated by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going
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  Speaker 1: to bed. So too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of
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  Speaker 1: the novelty, went about their nightly business, and, save for
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  Speaker 1: a howling dog here and there, the beast world left
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  Speaker 1: the star unheeded. And yet when it last, the watchers
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  Speaker 1: in the European State saw the star rise an hour later,
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  Speaker 1: it is true, but no larger than it had been
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  Speaker 1: the night before. There were still plenty awake to laugh
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  Speaker 1: at the master mathematician, to take the danger as if
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  Speaker 1: it had passed. But hereafter the laughter ceased, the star grew.
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  Speaker 1: It grew with a terrible steadiness. Hour after hour, a
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  Speaker 1: little larger each hour, a little nearer than midnight, zenith,
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  Speaker 1: and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into
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  Speaker 1: a second day. Had it come straight to the Earth
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  Speaker 1: instead of in a curved path, had it lost no
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  Speaker 1: velocity to Jupiter, it must have left the intervening gulf
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  Speaker 1: in a day. But as it was, it took five
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  Speaker 1: days altogether to come by our planet. The next night.
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  Speaker 1: It had become a third the size of the Moon
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  Speaker 1: before it set to English eyes, and the thaw assured.
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  Speaker 1: It rose over America, near the size of the Moon,
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  Speaker 1: but blinding white to look at, and hot in a
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  Speaker 1: breath of hot wind blew now with its rising and
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  Speaker 1: gathering strength. And in Virginia and Brazil, and down the
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  Speaker 1: Saint Lawrence Valley it shone intermittently through a driving reek
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  Speaker 1: of thunder clouds, flickering, violent lightning, and hail unprecedented. In Manitoba,
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  Speaker 1: was a thaw and devastating floods, And upon all the
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  Speaker 1: mountains of the Earth the snow and ice began to
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  Speaker 1: melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of
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  Speaker 1: high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon in their
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  Speaker 1: upper reaches with swirling trees and bodies of beasts and men.
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  Speaker 1: They rose steadily, steadily, in ghostly brilliance, and came trickling
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  Speaker 1: over their banks at last, behind the flying population of
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  Speaker 1: their valleys, and along the coast of Argentina and up
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  Speaker 1: the South Atlantic. The tides were higher than they had
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  Speaker 1: ever been in the memory of man, and the storms
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  Speaker 1: drove the waters, in many cases scores of miles inland,
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  Speaker 1: drowning whole cities, And so great grew the heat during
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  Speaker 1: the night that the rising of the sun was like
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  Speaker 1: the coming of a shadow. The earthquakes began and grew,
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  Speaker 1: until all down America, from the Arctic Ocean to Cape
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  Speaker 1: Horn hillsides were sliding, and fissures were opening, and houses
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  Speaker 1: and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of Cotopaxi
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  Speaker 1: slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of
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  Speaker 1: lava poured out, so high and broad and swift and
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  Speaker 1: liquid that in one day it reached the sea. So
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  Speaker 1: the Star, with the Wan Moon in its wake, marched
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: across the Pacific, trailed the thunder storms like the hem
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that toiled
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: behind it, frothing and eager poured over island and island
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and swept them clear of men, until that wave came
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: at last, in a blinding light, and with the breath
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of a furnace, swift and terrible. It came a wall
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of water fifty feet high, roaring hungrily upon the long
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: coasts of Asia, and swept inland across the plains of China.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: For a space. The star, hotter now and larger and
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: brilliance the wide and populous country, towns and villages, with
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: And then low and growing came the murmur of the flood.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: And thus it was with millions of men that night,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: a flight no whither, with limbs heavy with heat, and breath,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall, swift
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and white behind, and then death. China was lit glowing white,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: but over Japan and Java and all the islands of
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Eastern Asia, the great Star was a bull of dull
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: red fire. Because of the steam and smoke and ashes
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. Above
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: was the lava, hot gases, and ash, and below the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows of Tibet and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burma and Hindostan.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: The tangled summits of the Indian Jungles were aflame in
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the blood red tongues of fire. And in a rudderless confusion,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: a multitude of men and women fled down the broad
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: river ways to that one last hope of men. The
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: open sea larger grew, the star and larger, hotter and brighter,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: with a terrible swiftness. Now the tropical ocean had lost
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghastly wreaths
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: tossed ships, and then came a wonder. It seemed to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: those who in Europe watched for the rising of the star,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: that the world must have ceased its rotation in a
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and the sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: in vain. Hour followed out through a terrible suspense, and
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the star rose not once again. Men set their eyes
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: upon the old constellations they had counted loss to them forever.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: In England it was hot and clear overhead, though the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: ground quivered perpetually. But in the tropics, Sirius and Capella
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. And when
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: at last that great star rose near ten hours late,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the sun rose close upon it, and in the center
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of its white heart was a disk of black. Over Asia,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: it was the star had begun to fall behind the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: of India, from the mouth of the Indus to the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: mouths of the Ganges, was a shallow waste of shining
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and hills black with people. Every minaret was a clustering
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: mass of people, who fell one by one into the
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: turbid waters. As heat and terror overcame them. The whole
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: land seemed a wailing. And suddenly there swept a shadow
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and a gathering of clouds. Out of the cooling air.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Men looking up near blinded at the star, saw that
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: a black disk was creeping across the light. It was
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the Moon, coming between the Star and the Earth. And
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: even as men cried to God at this respite, out
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: of the east, with a strange and inexplicable swiftness, sprang
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the Sun, and then star, Sun and moon rushed together
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: across the heavens. So it was that presently to the
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: European watchers, Star and Sun rose close upon each other,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: drove headlong for a space, and then slower, and at
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: last came to rest. Star and Sun merged into one
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: moonlow longer eclipsed the star, but was lost to sight
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: in the brilliance of the sky, And though those who
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: were still alive regarded it for the most part with
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat, and despair engender.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: There were still men who could perceive the meaning of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: these signs. Star and Earth had been at their nearest,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: had swung about one another, and the Star had passed
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: already It was receding swifter and swifter in the last
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. And
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: The thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Over All the earth was such a downpour of rain
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: as men had never before seen. And where the volcanoes
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: flared red against the cloud canopy, their descended torrents of
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: mud everywhere. The waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm worn
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: beach with all that had floated and the dead bodies
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: of the men and brutes its children. For days, the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and houses in its way, and piling huge dikes and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: scooping out titanic gullies over the countryside. Those were the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: days of darkness that followed the Star and the heat
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: all through them, And for many weeks and months the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: earthquakes continued, but the star had passed, and men, hunger
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: driven and gathering courage, only slowly might creep back to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields. Such few
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: ships as had escaped the storms of that time came
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: stunned and shattered, and sounding their way cautiously through the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. And as
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the storm subsided, men perceived that everywhere the days were
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: moon shrunk to a third of its former size, took
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: now fourscore days between its new and new. But of
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: saving of laws and books and machines, of this strange
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: change that had come over Iceland and Greenland, and the
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: presently found them green and gracious, and could scarcely believe
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: their eyes. This story does not tell, nor of the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: movement of mankind. Now that the earth was hotter northward
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: and southward toward the poles of the Earth. It concerns
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: itself only with the coming and the passing of the Star.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: The Martian astronomers, for there are astronomers on Mars, although
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: they are very different beings from men, were naturally profoundly
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: interested by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Of course, considering the mass and temperature of the missile
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: that was flung through our solar system into the Sun,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: one wrote, it is astonishing what a little damage the Earth,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: continental markings, and the masses of the seas remain intact,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: of the white discoloration supposed to be frozen water round
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: either pole, which only shows how small the vastest of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: million miles. End of Tales of Space and Time, Chapter two,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: The Star by H. G. Wells