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The Country of the Blind and Other Stories - The Star · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section twenty of The Country of the Blind and other
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Speaker 1: stories by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recordings in the
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Speaker 1: public domain read by Peter Yearsley The Star. It was
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Speaker 1: on the first day of the new year that the
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Speaker 1: announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the
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Speaker 1: motion of the planet's Neptune, the outermost of all the
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Speaker 1: planets that wheel about the Sun, had become very erratic.
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Speaker 1: Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in
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Speaker 1: its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was
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Speaker 1: scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of
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Speaker 1: whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune.
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Speaker 1: Nor outside the astronomical profession. Did the subsequent discovery of
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Speaker 1: a faint, remote speck of light in the region of
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Speaker 1: the perturbed planet cause any great excitement. Scientific people, however,
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Speaker 1: found the intelligen and remarkable enough, even before it became
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Speaker 1: known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter,
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Speaker 1: that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress
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Speaker 1: of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and
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Speaker 1: its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few
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Speaker 1: people without a training in science can realize the huge
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Speaker 1: isolation of the Solar System. The Sun, with its specks
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Speaker 1: of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets,
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Speaker 1: swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination.
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Speaker 1: Beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is space vacant, so
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Speaker 1: far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light
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Speaker 1: or sound, blank emptiness for twenty million times a million miles.
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Speaker 1: That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be
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Speaker 1: traversed before the very nearest of the star attained, and
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Speaker 1: saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame,
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Speaker 1: no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf
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Speaker 1: of space until early in the twentieth century. This strange
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Speaker 1: wanderer appeared a vast mass of matter. It was bulky heavy,
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Speaker 1: rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the
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Speaker 1: sky into the radiance of the Sun. By the second
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Speaker 1: day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument as
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Speaker 1: a speck with a barely sensible diameter in the constellation
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Speaker 1: Leo near Regulus. In a little while, an opera glass
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Speaker 1: could attain it. On the third day of the new year,
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Speaker 1: the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for
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Speaker 1: the first time of the real importance of this unusual
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Speaker 1: apparition in the heavens a planetary collision. One London paper
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Speaker 1: headed the news and proclaimed Duchane's opinion that this strange
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Speaker 1: new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers
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Speaker 1: enlarged upon the topic, so that in most of the
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Speaker 1: capitals of the world on January the third, there was
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Speaker 1: an expectation, however vague, of some imminent 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 Pollux 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 markets stopped agape, workmen going to
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Speaker 1: their work, betimes, milk women, 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 dusky, 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 comes suddenly into the
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Speaker 1: westward 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 disc. An hour after
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Speaker 1: the day had come, and where silence 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 fiery signs in
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Speaker 1: the heavens. Sturdy boys, dusky hottentots, gold coasts, 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
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Speaker 1: observatories 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 it was,
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Speaker 1: had been struck fairly and squarely by the strange planet
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Speaker 1: from outer space, and the heat of the concussion had
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Speaker 1: incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence.
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Speaker 1: Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn
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Speaker 1: went the pallid, great white star, fading only as it
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Speaker 1: sank westward, and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere men
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Speaker 1: marveled at it. But of all those who saw it,
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Speaker 1: none could have marveled more than those sailors, habitual watchers
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Speaker 1: of the stars, who far away at sea had heard
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Speaker 1: nothing of its advent, and saw it now rise like
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Speaker 1: a pigmy moon, and climb zenithward, and hang overhead, and
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Speaker 1: sink westward with the passing of the night. And when
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Speaker 1: next it rose over Europe, everywhere were crowds of watchers
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Speaker 1: on hilly slopes, on house roofs in open spaces, staring
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Speaker 1: eastward for the rising of the great new star. It
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Speaker 1: rose with a white glow in front of it, like
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Speaker 1: the glare of a white fire, and those who had
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Speaker 1: seen it come into existence the night before cried out
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Speaker 1: 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 full
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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, grim 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 pens. Men
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Speaker 1: talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque
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Speaker 1: possibility in those words, it is nearer. It hurried along
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Speaker 1: awakening streets. It was shouted down the frost stilled ways
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Speaker 1: of quiet villages. Men who had read these things from
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Speaker 1: the throbbing tape stood in yellow lit doorways, shouting the
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Speaker 1: news to the passers by. It is nearer. Pretty women
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Speaker 1: flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances,
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Speaker 1: and feigned an intelligent interest. They did not feel nearer. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: how curious, how very very clever people must be to
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Speaker 1: find out things like that. Lonely tramps faring through the
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Speaker 1: wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves, looking skyward,
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Speaker 1: It has need to be nearer, for the nights as
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Speaker 1: cold as charity, don't seem much warmth from it. If
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Speaker 1: it is nearer, all the same, what is a news?
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Speaker 1: D are to me? Cried the weeping woman kneeling beside
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Speaker 1: her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work,
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Speaker 1: puzzled it out for himself, with the great white star
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Speaker 1: shining broad and bright through the frost flowers of his window.
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Speaker 1: Centrifugal centripetal, he said, with his chin on his fist,
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Speaker 1: Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its
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Speaker 1: centrifugal force. What then, centripetal has it? And down it
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Speaker 1: falls into the sun. And this do we come in
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Speaker 1: the way? I wonder? The light of that day went
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Speaker 1: the way of its brethren, and with the later watches
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Speaker 1: of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again, And
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Speaker 1: it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed
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Speaker 1: but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in
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Speaker 1: the sunset. In a South African city, a great man
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Speaker 1: had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his
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Speaker 1: return with his bride. Even the skies have illuminated, said
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Speaker 1: the flatterer. Under capricorn, two Negro lovers, daring the wild
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Speaker 1: beasts and evil spirits for love of one another, crouched
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Speaker 1: together in a cane brake, where the fireflies hovered. That
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Speaker 1: is our star, they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by
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Speaker 1: the sweet brilliance of its light. The master mathematician sat
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Speaker 1: in his private room and pushed the papers from him.
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Speaker 1: His calculations were already finished in a small file. There
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Speaker 1: still remained a little of the drug that had kept
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Speaker 1: him awake and active for four long nights. Each day, serene, explicit,
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Speaker 1: patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students,
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Speaker 1: and then had come back at once to this momentous calculation.
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Speaker 1: His face was grave, a little drawn, and hectic from
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Speaker 1: his drugged activity. For some time he seemed long 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 the sky, over
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Speaker 1: the clustering roofs, chimneys and steeples of the city hung
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Speaker 1: the star. He looked at it as one might look
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Speaker 1: into the eyes of a brave enemy. You may kill me,
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Speaker 1: he said, after a silence. But I can hold you,
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Speaker 1: and all the universe for that matter, in the grip
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Speaker 1: of this small brain. I would not change. Even now
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Speaker 1: he looked at the little file. It will be no
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Speaker 1: need of sleep again, he said. The next day, at noon,
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Speaker 1: punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theater, put
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Speaker 1: his hat on the end of the table, as his
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Speaker 1: 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 guiding his supply, he came and looked under
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Speaker 1: his gray eyebrows at the rising tears of young fresh 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 his 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 towards
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Speaker 1: the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was
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Speaker 1: usual 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: towards 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 towards 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, Aldebaran, 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, and throughout Christendom, a somber murmur
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Speaker 1: hung in the keen air over the countryside, like the
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Speaker 1: belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult
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Speaker 1: grew to a clangor in the cities it was the
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Speaker 1: tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples,
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Speaker 1: summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin, 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 alight in all the cities,
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Speaker 1: the shipyards cleared, and whatever roads led to the high
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Speaker 1: country were lit and crowded all night long, and in
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Speaker 1: all the seas about the civilized lands, ships with throbbing
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Speaker 1: engines and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and
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Speaker 1: living creatures, were standing out to ocean and the north.
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Speaker 1: For already the warning of the master Mathematician had been
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Speaker 1: telegraphed all over the world and translated into a hundred tongues.
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Speaker 1: The new planet and Neptune, locked in a fiery embrace,
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Speaker 1: were whirling headlong ever, faster and faster towards the Sun.
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Speaker 1: Already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles,
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Speaker 1: and every second its terrific velocity increased as it flew. Now, indeed,
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Speaker 1: it must pass a hundred million of miles wide. Of
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Speaker 1: the Earth had scarcely effected, 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 fiery star and the greatest
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Speaker 1: of the 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 Sun, would rush, would describe a curved path, and
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Speaker 1: perhaps collide with and certainly pass very close to our Earth. Earthquakes,
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Speaker 1: volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, 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 and 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 towards 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: won't 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 and 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 lurked 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 two 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 at last the watchers
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Speaker 1: in the European states 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 the 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 inner curved path. Had it lost no velocity
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Speaker 1: to Jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening Gulf in
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Speaker 1: a day, But as it was, it took five days
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Speaker 1: altogether to come by our planet. The next night it
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Speaker 1: had become a third the size of the Moon before
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Speaker 1: it set to English eyes, and the thaw was assured.
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Speaker 1: It rose over America, near the size of the Moon,
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Speaker 1: but blindingly white to look at, and hot, and 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 violet, lightning, and hail unprecedented. In
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Speaker 1: Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods, And upon all
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Speaker 1: the mountains of the Earth the snow and ice began
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Speaker 1: to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out
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Speaker 1: of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon in
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Speaker 1: their upper reaches, with swirling trees and the bodies of
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Speaker 1: beasts and men. They rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliants,
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Speaker 1: and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the
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Speaker 1: flying population of their valleys, and along the coast of
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Speaker 1: Argentina and up the South Atlantic, the tides were higher
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Speaker 1: than had ever been in the memory of man, and
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Speaker 1: the storms drove the waters, in many cases scores of
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Speaker 1: miles inland, drowning whole cities, and so great grew the
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Speaker 1: heat during the night that the rising of the sun
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Speaker 1: was like the coming of a shadow. The earthquakes began
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Speaker 1: and grew, until all down America, from the Arctic Circle
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Speaker 1: to Cape Horn hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and
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Speaker 1: houses and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of
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Speaker 1: Gotapacxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult
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Speaker 1: of lava poured out, so high and broad and swift
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Speaker 1: and liquid that in one day it reached the sea.
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Speaker 1: So the Star, with the Wan Moon in its wake,
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Speaker 1: marched across the Pacific, trailed the thunder storms like the
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Speaker 1: hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that
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Speaker 1: toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and
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Speaker 1: island and swept them clear of men, until that wave
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Speaker 1: came at last, in a blinding light and with the
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Speaker 1: breath of a furnace swift and terrible. It came a
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Speaker 1: wall of water fifty feet high, roaring hungrily upon the
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Speaker 1: long coasts of Asia, and swept in land across the
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Speaker 1: plains of China for a space. The star, hotter now
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Speaker 1: and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength,
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Speaker 1: showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country, towns
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Speaker 1: and villages, with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields,
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Speaker 1: millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the
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Speaker 1: incandescent sky. And then low and growing came the murmur
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Speaker 1: of the flood. And thus it was with millions of
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Speaker 1: men that night, a flight no whither, with limbs heavy
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Speaker 1: with heat and breath, fierce and scant, and the flood
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Speaker 1: like a wall, swift and white behind and then death.
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Speaker 1: China was lit glowing white. But over Japan and Java
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Speaker 1: and all the islands of Eastern Asia, the Great Star
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Speaker 1: was a ball of dull red fire. Because of the
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Speaker 1: steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth
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Speaker 1: to salute its coming. Above was the lava, hot gases
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Speaker 1: and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole
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Speaker 1: earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the
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Speaker 1: immemorial snows of the Thibet and the Himalaya were melting
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Speaker 1: and pouring down by ten million, deepening converging channels upon
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Speaker 1: the plains of Burma and Hindustan. The tangled summits of
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Speaker 1: the Indian Jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and
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Speaker 1: below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects
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Speaker 1: that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood red tongues
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Speaker 1: of fire. And in a rutherless confusion, a multitude of
24:29
Speaker 1: men and women fled down the broad river ways to
24:32
Speaker 1: that one last hope of men. The open sea larger
24:38
Speaker 1: grew the star and larger, hotter and brighter, with a
24:41
Speaker 1: terrible swiftness. Now the tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence,
24:46
Speaker 1: and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the
24:49
Speaker 1: black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm tossed ships,
24:55
Speaker 1: and then came a wonder. It seemed to those who
25:00
Speaker 1: in Europe watched for the rising of the star, that
25:03
Speaker 1: the world must have ceased its rotation in a thousand
25:07
Speaker 1: open spaces of down and upland the people who had
25:12
Speaker 1: fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and
25:15
Speaker 1: sliding slopes of hill watched for their rising in vain.
25:20
Speaker 1: Our followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star
25:25
Speaker 1: rose not once again. Men set their eyes upon the
25:30
Speaker 1: old constellations they had counted lost to them forever. In
25:35
Speaker 1: England it was hot and clear overhead, though the ground
25:39
Speaker 1: quivered perpetually. But in the tropics, Sirius and Capella and
25:44
Speaker 1: Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. And when at
25:48
Speaker 1: last the great Star rose near ten hours late, the
25:53
Speaker 1: sun rose close upon it, and in the center of
25:56
Speaker 1: its white heart was a disk of black over Asia.
26:00
Speaker 1: It was the star had begun to fall behind the
26:04
Speaker 1: movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung
26:07
Speaker 1: over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain
26:11
Speaker 1: of India, from the mouth of the Indus to the
26:13
Speaker 1: mouths of the Ganges, was a shallow waste of shining
26:17
Speaker 1: water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces,
26:22
Speaker 1: mounds and hills black with people. Every minaret was a
26:26
Speaker 1: clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into
26:30
Speaker 1: the turbid waters as heat and terror overcame them. The
26:35
Speaker 1: whole land seemed a wailing, And suddenly there swept a
26:39
Speaker 1: shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of
26:43
Speaker 1: cold wind, and a gathering of clouds. Out of the
26:46
Speaker 1: cooling air. Men looking up near blinded at the star,
26:51
Speaker 1: saw that a black disk was creeping across the light.
26:55
Speaker 1: It was the Moon, coming between the Star and the Earth.
26:59
Speaker 1: And even as men cried to God at this respite,
27:03
Speaker 1: out of the east, with a strange, inexplicable swiftness, sprang
27:08
Speaker 1: the Sun, and then star, Sun and Moon rushed together
27:13
Speaker 1: across the heavens. So it was that presently to the
27:18
Speaker 1: European watchers, Star and Sun rose close upon each other,
27:22
Speaker 1: drove headlong for a space, and then slower, and at
27:26
Speaker 1: last came to rest. Star and Sun merged into one
27:30
Speaker 1: glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The
27:34
Speaker 1: Moon no longer eclipsed the star, but was lost to
27:37
Speaker 1: sight in the brilliance of the sky. And though those
27:41
Speaker 1: who were still alive regarded it for the most part
27:44
Speaker 1: with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat, and despair engender,
27:51
Speaker 1: there were still men who could perceive the meaning of
27:54
Speaker 1: these signs. Star and Earth had been at their nearest,
28:00
Speaker 1: had swung about one another, and the Star had passed
28:04
Speaker 1: already it was receding swifter and swifter in the last
28:08
Speaker 1: stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. And
28:13
Speaker 1: then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky.
28:17
Speaker 1: The thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world.
28:21
Speaker 1: All over the earth was such a downpour of rain
28:24
Speaker 1: as men had never before seen. And where the volcanoes
28:28
Speaker 1: flared red against the cloud canopy, their descended torrents of mud. Everywhere.
28:34
Speaker 1: The waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud silted ruins,
28:39
Speaker 1: and the earth littered like a storm worn beach with
28:43
Speaker 1: all that had floated and the dead bodies of the
28:46
Speaker 1: men and brutes its children. For days, the water streamed
28:50
Speaker 1: off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses
28:55
Speaker 1: in the way, and piling huge dikes and scooping out
28:58
Speaker 1: titanic gullies over the countryside. Those were the days of
29:04
Speaker 1: darkness that followed the Star, and the heat all through them,
29:08
Speaker 1: And for many weeks and months the earthquakes continued, but
29:13
Speaker 1: the Star had passed, and men, hunger driven and gathering courage,
29:19
Speaker 1: only slowly might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries,
29:24
Speaker 1: and sodden fields. Such few ships that had escaped the
29:29
Speaker 1: storms of that time came stunned and shattered, and sounding
29:35
Speaker 1: their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of
29:38
Speaker 1: once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided, men perceived
29:44
Speaker 1: that everywhere the days were hotter than are of yore,
29:48
Speaker 1: and the sun larger, and the moon shrunk to a
29:52
Speaker 1: third of its former size, took now four score days
29:56
Speaker 1: between its new and new. But of the new brotherhood
30:02
Speaker 1: that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws
30:06
Speaker 1: and books and machines, of the strange change that had
30:11
Speaker 1: come over Iceland and Greenland, and the shores of Baffin's Bay,
30:15
Speaker 1: so that the sailors coming there presently found them green
30:19
Speaker 1: and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes. This story
30:24
Speaker 1: does not tell nor of the movement of mankind now
30:29
Speaker 1: that the Earth was hotter northward and southward towards the
30:33
Speaker 1: poles of the Earth. It concerns itself only with the
30:37
Speaker 1: coming and the passing of the star. The Martian astronomers,
30:42
Speaker 1: For there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very
30:45
Speaker 1: different beings from men were naturally profoundly interested by these things.
30:51
Speaker 1: They saw them from their own standpoint. Of course, considering
30:55
Speaker 1: the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung
30:58
Speaker 1: through our solar system into the Sun, one wrote, it
31:01
Speaker 1: is astonishing what a little damage the Earth, which it
31:04
Speaker 1: missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings,
31:10
Speaker 1: and the masses of the seas remain intact, And indeed
31:14
Speaker 1: the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the
31:16
Speaker 1: white discoloration supposed to be frozen water round either pole,
31:22
Speaker 1: which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes
31:28
Speaker 1: may seem at a distance of a few million miles.
31:33
Speaker 1: End of Section twenty