December 28, 2025 • 28 mins
A mysterious new star appears in the night sky after colliding with Neptune, the resulting fireball begins a journey toward the inner Solar System. Earth lies directly in its path, and the world is about to learn how small it truly is, and how unimportant the universe deems Earth and humanity to be.
IN THIS EPISODE: “The Star” by H.G. Wells (‘The Graphic’ magazine, November 21, 1897)
MORE Stories Like This: https://www.auditoryanthology.com
=====Originally aired: December 28, 2025
EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/thestar
ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.
#WeirdDarkness, #HGWells, #TheStar, #ClassicSciFi, #CosmicHorror, #ApocalypticFiction, #VintageSciFi, #PublicDomain, #ExistentialHorror, #SciFiStories
IN THIS EPISODE: “The Star” by H.G. Wells (‘The Graphic’ magazine, November 21, 1897)
MORE Stories Like This: https://www.auditoryanthology.com
=====Originally aired: December 28, 2025
EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/thestar
ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.
#WeirdDarkness, #HGWells, #TheStar, #ClassicSciFi, #CosmicHorror, #ApocalypticFiction, #VintageSciFi, #PublicDomain, #ExistentialHorror, #SciFiStories
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The following is the story I narrated for the Auditory
Anthology podcast a few months ago. If you'd like to
hear the fully produced version with music and sound effects,
I've pleased a link to the full version in the
episode description. And if you're a fan of classic sci
fi stories from the fifties and sixties, or quirky, short,
creepy stories, you'll want to subscribe to Auditory Anthology, which
you can do at auditoryanthology dot com. The Star by H. G. Wells,
(00:33):
published by Experimenter Publishing Company in nineteen twenty six. It
was on the first day of the new year that
the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that
the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all
the planets that wield about the Sun, had become erratic.
(00:55):
Ogilvie had already called attention to a suspected retardation in
its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was
scarcely calculated to interest the world, the greater portion of
whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune,
nor outside the astronomical profession. Did the subsequent discovery of
a faint, remote speck of light in the region of
(01:16):
the perturbed planet cause any great excitement. Scientific people, however,
found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known
that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter,
that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress
of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune that
(01:36):
its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few
people without training in science can realize the huge isolation
of the Solar System. The Sun, with its specks of planets,
its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in
vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit
(01:59):
of Neptune, there is space vacant, so far as human
observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank
emptiness for twenty billion times a million miles. That is
the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before
the nearest of the stars is attained, and saving a
(02:22):
few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter
had ever to human knowledge crossed the gulf of space
until early in the twentieth century. This Wanderer appeared a
vast mass of matter. It was bulky heavy, rushing without
warning out of the black mystery of the sky into
(02:43):
the radiance of the sun. By the second day it
was clearly visible to any decent instrument as a speck
with a barely sensible diameter in the constellation Leo near Regulus.
In a little while, and opera glass could attain it.
On the day of the New Year, the newspaper readers
of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time
(03:05):
of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the
heavens a planetary collision. One London paper headed the news
and proclaimed Duchine's opinion that this strange new planet would
probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers enlarged upon the topic,
so that in most of the capitals of the world
on January third, there was an expectation, however vague, of
(03:30):
some eminent phenomenon in the sky, And as the night
followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned
their eyes skyward to see the old, familiar stars, just
as they had always been. Until it was dawn in
London and Pollock's setting and the stars overhead grown pale
(03:53):
the winter's dawn. It was a sickly filtering accumulation of
daylight and a light of gas, and candles shown yellow
in the windows to show where people were astir But
the yawning policeman saw the thing. The busy crowds in
the market stopped agape, workmen going to their work, betimes, milkmen,
(04:13):
the drivers of news carts, dissipation going home, jaded and pale,
homeless wanderers sentinels on their beats. And in the country,
laborers trudging afield, poachers slinking home. All over the dusky,
quickening country. It would be seen and out at sea
by seamen watching for the day. A great white star
(04:33):
comes suddenly into the westward sky. Brighter it was than
any star in our skies, brighter than the evening star
at its brightest. It still glowed out, white and large,
no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small, round, clear,
shining disc. An hour after the day had come, and
(04:55):
where science had not reached, men stared and feared, telling
on another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed
by these fiery signs in the heavens. Sturdy Boers, Dusky Hottentots,
gold Coast Negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese stood in the glow
of the sunrise, watching the setting of this strange new star.
(05:19):
And in one hundred observations there had been suppressed excitement,
rising almost to shouting pitch. As the two remote bodies
had rushed together. There had been a hurrying to and
fro to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, to gather this appliance,
in that to record the novel astonishing sight, the destruction
(05:39):
of a world, For it was a world, a sinister
planet of our Earth, far greater than our Earth, indeed,
that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune it was,
which had been struck fairly and squarely by the planet
from outer space, and the heat of concussion had incontinently
(06:00):
turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence
round the world that day, two hours before the dawn
wet the pallid, great white star, fading only as it
sank westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere man
marveled at it. But of all those who saw it,
(06:21):
none could have marveled more than those sailors habitual watchers
of the stars, who far away at sea had heard
nothing of its advent, and saw it now rise like
a pygmy moon, and climb zenithward and hang overhead, and
sink westward with the passing of the night. And when
next it rose over Europe, everywhere were crowds of watchers
(06:43):
on hilly slopes, on house roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward,
waiting for the rising of the new star. It rose
with a white glow in front, like the glare of
a white fire, and those who had seen it come
into existence the night before cried out at the side
of it. It is larger, they cried, it is brighter.
(07:04):
And indeed the moon, a quarter full and sinking in
the west, was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but
scarcely in all its breadth, had it as much brightness
now as the little circle of the strange new star.
It is brighter, cried the people clustering in the streets.
But in the dim observatories, the watchers held their breath
(07:26):
and peered at one another. It is nearer, they said, nearer,
and voice after voice repeated, it is nearer, and the
clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires,
and in a thousand cities, grimy compositors fingered the type,
it is nearer. Men riding in offices, struck with strange realization,
(07:49):
flung down their pens. Men talking in a thousand places
suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, it
is nearer. It hurried along awakening street. It was shouted
down the frost stilled ways of quiet villages. Men who
had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in
yellow lit doorways, shouting the news to the passers by.
(08:11):
It is nearer. Pretty women flushed and glittering, heard the
news told jestingly between dances, and feigned an intelligent interest.
They did not feel nearer. Indeed, how curious, how clever
people must be to find out things like that. Lonely
tramps faring through the wintery night murmured those words to
(08:32):
comfort themselves, Looking skyward, it has need to be nearer,
for the nights as cold as charity, don't seem much
warmth from it. If it is nearer, all the same,
what is a new star to me? Cried the weeping woman,
kneeling beside her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for his
examination work, puzzled it out for himself, with the great
(08:55):
white star shining broad and bright through the frost flowers
of his window. Centrifugal centri pedal, he said, with his
chin on his fist, Stop a planet in its flight,
rob it of its centrifugal force. What then, centri pedal
has it? And down it falls into the sun? And
this do we come in the way? I wonder? The
(09:19):
light of that day went the way of its brethren,
and with the later watches of the frosty darkness, rose
the strange star again, and it was now so bright
that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost
of itself, rising huge in the sunset hour. In a
South African city, a great man had married, and the
(09:40):
streets were a light to welcome his return with his bride.
Even the skies have illuminated, said the flatterer. Under capricorn,
two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits
for love of one another, crouched together in a cane
break where the fireflies hovered. That is our star, They
whispered word and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliancy
(10:03):
of its light. The master mathematician sat in his private
room and pushed the papers from him. His calculations were
already finished in a small white file. There still remained
a little of the drug that had kept him awake
and active for four long nights. Each day, Serene, explicit,
(10:23):
patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students,
and then had come back at once to his momentous calculation.
His face was grave, a little drawn, and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought.
Then he went to the window, and the blind went
(10:44):
up with a click. Halfway up the sky, over the
clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city hung the star.
He looked at it as one might look into the
eye of a brave enemy. You may kill me, he said,
after silence, But I can hold you in all the universe.
(11:04):
For that matter, in the grip of this little brain
I would not change. Even now, he looked at the
little vial. There will be no need of sleep again,
he said. The next day, at noon, punctual to the minute,
he entered his lecture theater put his hat on the
end of the table, as his habit was, and carefully
(11:25):
selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke
among his students that he could not lecture without that
piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, And once
he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply,
he came and looked under his gray eyebrows at the
rising tears of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed,
(11:45):
studied commonness of phrasing. Circumstances have arisen, circumstances beyond my control,
he said, and paused, which will debar me from completing
the course I had designed? It would seem, gentlemen, if
I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that man
(12:08):
has lived in vain. The students glanced at one another
had they heard aright, mad raised eyebrows and grinning lips.
There were but one or two faces remained intent upon
his calm, gray fringed face. It will be interesting, he
was saying, to devote this morning to an exposition, so
(12:29):
far as I can make it clear to you of
the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let
us assume he turned toward the blackboard, meditating a diagram
in the way that was usual to him. What was
that about? Lived in vain, whispered one student to another. Listen,
said the other, nodding toward the lecturer, and presently they
(12:51):
began to understand. That night the star rose later, for
its proper eastward motion had carried it some way crossed
Leo toward Virgo, and its brightness was so great that
the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and
every star and planet was hidden save only Jupiter near
the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius, and the pointers of the Bear.
(13:16):
It was white and beautiful in many parts of the
world that night. A pallid halo encircled it about it
was perceptibly larger in the clear, refractive sky of the tropics.
It seemed as if it were nearly a quarter of
the size of the moon. The frost was still on
the ground in England, but the world was as brightly
(13:38):
lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see
to read quite ordinary print by that cold, clear light.
And in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan
and everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout Christendom.
A somber murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside,
like the buzzing of the bees in the heather, and
(14:00):
this murmurous tumult grew to a clangor in the cities.
It was the tolling of the bells and a million
belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more,
to sin, no more, but to gather in their churches
and prey. And overhead, growing larger and brighter. As the
Earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose
(14:22):
the dazzling star, and the streets and houses were alight
in all the cities, the shipyards glared, and whatever roads
led to high country were lit and crowded all night long,
and at all the seas about the civilized lands, ships
and throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with
(14:42):
men and living creatures were standing out to ocean and
the north. For already the waning of the master Mathematician
had been telegraphed over the world and translated into a
hundred tongues. The new planet and Neptune, locked in a
fiery embrace, were whirling headlong ever faster and faster toward
(15:03):
the Sun. Already, every second this blazing mass flew one
hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. As
it flew its course, it must pass one hundred million
miles wide of the Earth and scarcely affect it. But
near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun
(15:24):
the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid around
the Sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery
star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger, and
the result of that attraction, inevitably, Jupiter would be deflected
from its orbit to a new elliptical path, and the
burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush,
(15:49):
would describe a curved path and perhaps collide with and
certainly pass close to our Earth. Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones,
sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to
I know not what limit, so prophesied the master mathematician,
(16:09):
an overhead to carry out his words. Lonely and cold
and livid blazed the star of the coming doom to
many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached.
It seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night too,
the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all
(16:30):
central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw.
But you must not imagine, because I've spoken of people
praying through the night, and people going aboard ships, and
people fleeing towards mountainous country, that the whole world was
already in a terror because of the star. As a
matter of fact, use and want still ruled the world.
(16:54):
And save for the talk of idle moments and the
splendor of the night, nine human beings out of ten
were still busy at their common occupations in all the cities.
The shops save one here and there, opened and closed
at their proper hours. The doctor and the undertaker plied
their trades, and workers gathered in the factories. Soldiers drilled,
(17:17):
scholars studied, Lovers sought one another. Thieves lurked and fled.
Politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared
through the nights, and many a priest of this church
and that would not open his holy building to further
what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on
(17:39):
the lesson of the year one thousand, For then two
people had anticipated the end. The star was no star,
mere gas, a comet, and were at a star, it
could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent
for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornfuled
(18:00):
a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night,
at seven point fifteen, by Greenwich time, the star would
be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would
see the turn things would take. The master Mathematician's grim
warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate
self advertisement. Common sense, at last, a little heated by argument,
(18:26):
signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. So too,
barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about
their nightly business, and say for a howling dog here
and there. The beast world left the star unheated. And yet,
(18:47):
when at last the watchers and the European states saw
their star rise an hour later, it is true, but
no larger than it had been the night before. There
was still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician,
to take the danger as if it had passed. But
hereafter the laughter ceased, the star grew. It grew with
(19:09):
a terrible steadiness, hour after hour, a little larger each hour,
a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter,
until it had turned night into day. Had it come
straight to the Earth instead of in a curved path,
had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have
leapt the intervening Gulf in a day. But as it was,
(19:33):
it took five days altogether to come by our planet.
The next night. It had become a third the size
of the Moon before it set to English eyes, and
the thaw was assured. It rose over America, nearly the
size of the Moon, but blinding white to look at,
and hot, and a breath of hot wind blew now
(19:55):
with its rising and gathering strength. And in Virginia and Brazil,
and down the Saint Lawrence Valley it shone intermittently through
a driving reek of thunder clouds, flickering violet lightning, and
a hail unprecedented in Manitoba, were a thaw and devastating floods,
and if on the mountains of the Earth, the snow
and ice began to melt that night, and all the
(20:17):
rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid,
and soon in their upper reaches, with swirling trees and
the bodies of beasts and men. They rose steadily, steadily
in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks
at last, behind the flying population of their valleys, and
along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic.
(20:39):
Tides were higher than they had ever been in the
memory of man, and the storms drove the waters, in
many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And
so great grew the heat during the night that the
rising of the sun was like the coming of a shadow.
The earthquakes began and grew, until all down America, from
the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn hillsides were sliding, fissures
(21:03):
were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. China
was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and
all the islands of Eastern Asia, the Great Star was
a ball of dull red fire. Because of the steam
and smoke and ashes, the volcanoes were spouting forth to
salute its coming. Above were the lava hot gases and ash,
(21:27):
and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed
and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows
of Tibet and the Himalayas were melting and pouring down
by ten million, deepening converging channels upon the plains of
Burma and Hindustan. The tangled summits of the Indian Jungles
were a flame and a thousand places, and below the
(21:49):
hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that struggled
feebly and reflected the blood red tongues of fire. And
in an unforgivable confusion, a multitude of men and women
fled down the broad riverways to that one last hope
of men. The open sea larger grew the star and larger,
(22:12):
hotter and brighter, with a terrible swiftness. Now the tropical
ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose
in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly,
speckled with storm tossed ships, and then came a wonder.
It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the
(22:33):
rising of the star that the world must have ceased
its rotation in a thousand open spaces of down and
upland the people who had fled thither from the floods
and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched
for that rising in vain. Hour followed hour, through a
terrible suspense, and the star rose not once again. Men
(22:58):
set their eyes upon the old constantly they had counted
lost to them forever. In England it was hot and
clear overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually. But in the tropics,
Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam.
And when at last the great Star rose near ten
(23:18):
hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in
the center of its white heart was a disk of black.
Over Asia. The star had begun to fall behind the
movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung
over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain
(23:38):
of India, from the mouth of the Indus to the
mouths of the Ganges, was a shallow waste of shining
water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces,
mounds and hills black with people. Every minaret was a
clustering mass of people who fell one by one into
the turbid waters. As heat and terror overcame them. The
(24:00):
whole land seemed awailing, And suddenly there swept a shadow
across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind,
and a gathering of clouds out of the cooling air.
Men looking up nearly blinded at the star, and saw
that black disk creeping across the light. It was the Moon,
coming between the star and the Earth. And even as
(24:22):
men cried to God at this respite, out of the east,
with a strange, inexplicable swiftness, sprang the Sun, and then star,
Sun and Moon rushed together across the heavens. So it
was that presently to the European watchers, Star and Sun
rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space,
(24:46):
and then slower, and at last came to rest. Star
and Sun merged into one glare of flame at the
zenith of the sky. The Moon no longer eclipsed the star,
but was lost to sight and the brilliance of the sky.
And though those who were still alive regarded it for
the most part with that dull stupidity, that hunger, fatigue,
(25:09):
heat and despair and gender there were still men who
could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and Earth
had been at their nearest, had swung about one another,
and the Star had passed already it was receding swifter
and swifter in the last stage of its headlong journey
(25:31):
downward into the sun. And then the clouds gathered, blotting
out the vision of the sky. The thunder and lightning
wove a garment around the world. All over the earth
was such a downpour of rain as men had never
seen before, and where the volcanoes flared red against the
cloud canopy, their descended torrents of mud everywhere. The waters
(25:53):
were pouring off the land, leaving mud stilted ruins, and
the earth littered like a storm worn beach with all
that had floated and the dead bodies of the men
and brutes its children. For days, the water streamed off
the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in
the way, and piling huge dikes and scooping out titanic
(26:17):
gullies over the countryside. Those were the days of darkness
that followed the Star and the heat all through them,
And for the many weeks and months the earthquakes continued
but the star had passed, and men, hunger driven and
gathering courage, only slowly might creep back to their ruined cities,
(26:41):
buried granaries, and sodden fields. Such few ships as had
escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered,
and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and
shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided,
men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore,
(27:03):
and the sun larger, and the moon shrunk to a
third of its size, took now four score days between
its new and new. But of the new brotherhood that
grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and machines,
of the strange change that had iceland and greenland the
(27:24):
shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there
presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe
their eyes. This story does not tell nor of the
movement of mankind now that the earth was hotter northward
and southward towards the poles of the Earth. It concerns
(27:44):
itself only with the coming and the passing of the star.
The Martian astronomers, for there are astronomers on Mars, although
they are different beings from men, were naturally profoundly interested
by these things them from their own standpoint. Of course,
considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was
(28:05):
flung through our solar system into the Sun, one wrote,
it is astonishing what little damage the Earth, which it
missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings,
and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed
the only difference seems to be a shrinking of the
white discolouration supposed to be frozen water round either pole,
(28:29):
which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes
may seem at a distance of a few million miles.
The following is the story I narrated for the Auditory
Anthology podcast a few months ago. If you'd like to
hear the fully produced version with music and sound effects,
I've pleased a link to the full version in the
episode description. And if you're a fan of classic sci
fi stories from the fifties and sixties, or quirky, short,
creepy stories, you'll want to subscribe to Auditory Anthology, which
you can do at auditoryanthology dot com. The Star by H. G. Wells,
(00:33):
published by Experimenter Publishing Company in nineteen twenty six. It
was on the first day of the new year that
the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that
the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all
the planets that wield about the Sun, had become erratic.
(00:55):
Ogilvie had already called attention to a suspected retardation in
its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was
scarcely calculated to interest the world, the greater portion of
whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune,
nor outside the astronomical profession. Did the subsequent discovery of
a faint, remote speck of light in the region of
(01:16):
the perturbed planet cause any great excitement. Scientific people, however,
found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known
that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter,
that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress
of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune that
(01:36):
its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few
people without training in science can realize the huge isolation
of the Solar System. The Sun, with its specks of planets,
its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in
vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit
(01:59):
of Neptune, there is space vacant, so far as human
observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank
emptiness for twenty billion times a million miles. That is
the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before
the nearest of the stars is attained, and saving a
(02:22):
few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter
had ever to human knowledge crossed the gulf of space
until early in the twentieth century. This Wanderer appeared a
vast mass of matter. It was bulky heavy, rushing without
warning out of the black mystery of the sky into
(02:43):
the radiance of the sun. By the second day it
was clearly visible to any decent instrument as a speck
with a barely sensible diameter in the constellation Leo near Regulus.
In a little while, and opera glass could attain it.
On the day of the New Year, the newspaper readers
of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time
(03:05):
of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the
heavens a planetary collision. One London paper headed the news
and proclaimed Duchine's opinion that this strange new planet would
probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers enlarged upon the topic,
so that in most of the capitals of the world
on January third, there was an expectation, however vague, of
(03:30):
some eminent phenomenon in the sky, And as the night
followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned
their eyes skyward to see the old, familiar stars, just
as they had always been. Until it was dawn in
London and Pollock's setting and the stars overhead grown pale
(03:53):
the winter's dawn. It was a sickly filtering accumulation of
daylight and a light of gas, and candles shown yellow
in the windows to show where people were astir But
the yawning policeman saw the thing. The busy crowds in
the market stopped agape, workmen going to their work, betimes, milkmen,
(04:13):
the drivers of news carts, dissipation going home, jaded and pale,
homeless wanderers sentinels on their beats. And in the country,
laborers trudging afield, poachers slinking home. All over the dusky,
quickening country. It would be seen and out at sea
by seamen watching for the day. A great white star
(04:33):
comes suddenly into the westward sky. Brighter it was than
any star in our skies, brighter than the evening star
at its brightest. It still glowed out, white and large,
no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small, round, clear,
shining disc. An hour after the day had come, and
(04:55):
where science had not reached, men stared and feared, telling
on another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed
by these fiery signs in the heavens. Sturdy Boers, Dusky Hottentots,
gold Coast Negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese stood in the glow
of the sunrise, watching the setting of this strange new star.
(05:19):
And in one hundred observations there had been suppressed excitement,
rising almost to shouting pitch. As the two remote bodies
had rushed together. There had been a hurrying to and
fro to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, to gather this appliance,
in that to record the novel astonishing sight, the destruction
(05:39):
of a world, For it was a world, a sinister
planet of our Earth, far greater than our Earth, indeed,
that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune it was,
which had been struck fairly and squarely by the planet
from outer space, and the heat of concussion had incontinently
(06:00):
turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence
round the world that day, two hours before the dawn
wet the pallid, great white star, fading only as it
sank westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere man
marveled at it. But of all those who saw it,
(06:21):
none could have marveled more than those sailors habitual watchers
of the stars, who far away at sea had heard
nothing of its advent, and saw it now rise like
a pygmy moon, and climb zenithward and hang overhead, and
sink westward with the passing of the night. And when
next it rose over Europe, everywhere were crowds of watchers
(06:43):
on hilly slopes, on house roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward,
waiting for the rising of the new star. It rose
with a white glow in front, like the glare of
a white fire, and those who had seen it come
into existence the night before cried out at the side
of it. It is larger, they cried, it is brighter.
(07:04):
And indeed the moon, a quarter full and sinking in
the west, was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but
scarcely in all its breadth, had it as much brightness
now as the little circle of the strange new star.
It is brighter, cried the people clustering in the streets.
But in the dim observatories, the watchers held their breath
(07:26):
and peered at one another. It is nearer, they said, nearer,
and voice after voice repeated, it is nearer, and the
clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires,
and in a thousand cities, grimy compositors fingered the type,
it is nearer. Men riding in offices, struck with strange realization,
(07:49):
flung down their pens. Men talking in a thousand places
suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, it
is nearer. It hurried along awakening street. It was shouted
down the frost stilled ways of quiet villages. Men who
had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in
yellow lit doorways, shouting the news to the passers by.
(08:11):
It is nearer. Pretty women flushed and glittering, heard the
news told jestingly between dances, and feigned an intelligent interest.
They did not feel nearer. Indeed, how curious, how clever
people must be to find out things like that. Lonely
tramps faring through the wintery night murmured those words to
(08:32):
comfort themselves, Looking skyward, it has need to be nearer,
for the nights as cold as charity, don't seem much
warmth from it. If it is nearer, all the same,
what is a new star to me? Cried the weeping woman,
kneeling beside her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for his
examination work, puzzled it out for himself, with the great
(08:55):
white star shining broad and bright through the frost flowers
of his window. Centrifugal centri pedal, he said, with his
chin on his fist, Stop a planet in its flight,
rob it of its centrifugal force. What then, centri pedal
has it? And down it falls into the sun? And
this do we come in the way? I wonder? The
(09:19):
light of that day went the way of its brethren,
and with the later watches of the frosty darkness, rose
the strange star again, and it was now so bright
that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost
of itself, rising huge in the sunset hour. In a
South African city, a great man had married, and the
(09:40):
streets were a light to welcome his return with his bride.
Even the skies have illuminated, said the flatterer. Under capricorn,
two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits
for love of one another, crouched together in a cane
break where the fireflies hovered. That is our star, They
whispered word and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliancy
(10:03):
of its light. The master mathematician sat in his private
room and pushed the papers from him. His calculations were
already finished in a small white file. There still remained
a little of the drug that had kept him awake
and active for four long nights. Each day, Serene, explicit,
(10:23):
patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students,
and then had come back at once to his momentous calculation.
His face was grave, a little drawn, and hectic from
his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought.
Then he went to the window, and the blind went
(10:44):
up with a click. Halfway up the sky, over the
clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city hung the star.
He looked at it as one might look into the
eye of a brave enemy. You may kill me, he said,
after silence, But I can hold you in all the universe.
(11:04):
For that matter, in the grip of this little brain
I would not change. Even now, he looked at the
little vial. There will be no need of sleep again,
he said. The next day, at noon, punctual to the minute,
he entered his lecture theater put his hat on the
end of the table, as his habit was, and carefully
(11:25):
selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke
among his students that he could not lecture without that
piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, And once
he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply,
he came and looked under his gray eyebrows at the
rising tears of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed,
(11:45):
studied commonness of phrasing. Circumstances have arisen, circumstances beyond my control,
he said, and paused, which will debar me from completing
the course I had designed? It would seem, gentlemen, if
I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that man
(12:08):
has lived in vain. The students glanced at one another
had they heard aright, mad raised eyebrows and grinning lips.
There were but one or two faces remained intent upon
his calm, gray fringed face. It will be interesting, he
was saying, to devote this morning to an exposition, so
(12:29):
far as I can make it clear to you of
the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let
us assume he turned toward the blackboard, meditating a diagram
in the way that was usual to him. What was
that about? Lived in vain, whispered one student to another. Listen,
said the other, nodding toward the lecturer, and presently they
(12:51):
began to understand. That night the star rose later, for
its proper eastward motion had carried it some way crossed
Leo toward Virgo, and its brightness was so great that
the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and
every star and planet was hidden save only Jupiter near
the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius, and the pointers of the Bear.
(13:16):
It was white and beautiful in many parts of the
world that night. A pallid halo encircled it about it
was perceptibly larger in the clear, refractive sky of the tropics.
It seemed as if it were nearly a quarter of
the size of the moon. The frost was still on
the ground in England, but the world was as brightly
(13:38):
lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see
to read quite ordinary print by that cold, clear light.
And in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan
and everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout Christendom.
A somber murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside,
like the buzzing of the bees in the heather, and
(14:00):
this murmurous tumult grew to a clangor in the cities.
It was the tolling of the bells and a million
belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more,
to sin, no more, but to gather in their churches
and prey. And overhead, growing larger and brighter. As the
Earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose
(14:22):
the dazzling star, and the streets and houses were alight
in all the cities, the shipyards glared, and whatever roads
led to high country were lit and crowded all night long,
and at all the seas about the civilized lands, ships
and throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with
(14:42):
men and living creatures were standing out to ocean and
the north. For already the waning of the master Mathematician
had been telegraphed over the world and translated into a
hundred tongues. The new planet and Neptune, locked in a
fiery embrace, were whirling headlong ever faster and faster toward
(15:03):
the Sun. Already, every second this blazing mass flew one
hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. As
it flew its course, it must pass one hundred million
miles wide of the Earth and scarcely affect it. But
near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun
(15:24):
the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid around
the Sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery
star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger, and
the result of that attraction, inevitably, Jupiter would be deflected
from its orbit to a new elliptical path, and the
burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush,
(15:49):
would describe a curved path and perhaps collide with and
certainly pass close to our Earth. Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones,
sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to
I know not what limit, so prophesied the master mathematician,
(16:09):
an overhead to carry out his words. Lonely and cold
and livid blazed the star of the coming doom to
many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached.
It seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night too,
the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all
(16:30):
central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw.
But you must not imagine, because I've spoken of people
praying through the night, and people going aboard ships, and
people fleeing towards mountainous country, that the whole world was
already in a terror because of the star. As a
matter of fact, use and want still ruled the world.
(16:54):
And save for the talk of idle moments and the
splendor of the night, nine human beings out of ten
were still busy at their common occupations in all the cities.
The shops save one here and there, opened and closed
at their proper hours. The doctor and the undertaker plied
their trades, and workers gathered in the factories. Soldiers drilled,
(17:17):
scholars studied, Lovers sought one another. Thieves lurked and fled.
Politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared
through the nights, and many a priest of this church
and that would not open his holy building to further
what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on
(17:39):
the lesson of the year one thousand, For then two
people had anticipated the end. The star was no star,
mere gas, a comet, and were at a star, it
could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent
for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornfuled
(18:00):
a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night,
at seven point fifteen, by Greenwich time, the star would
be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would
see the turn things would take. The master Mathematician's grim
warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate
self advertisement. Common sense, at last, a little heated by argument,
(18:26):
signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. So too,
barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about
their nightly business, and say for a howling dog here
and there. The beast world left the star unheated. And yet,
(18:47):
when at last the watchers and the European states saw
their star rise an hour later, it is true, but
no larger than it had been the night before. There
was still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician,
to take the danger as if it had passed. But
hereafter the laughter ceased, the star grew. It grew with
(19:09):
a terrible steadiness, hour after hour, a little larger each hour,
a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter,
until it had turned night into day. Had it come
straight to the Earth instead of in a curved path,
had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have
leapt the intervening Gulf in a day. But as it was,
(19:33):
it took five days altogether to come by our planet.
The next night. It had become a third the size
of the Moon before it set to English eyes, and
the thaw was assured. It rose over America, nearly the
size of the Moon, but blinding white to look at,
and hot, and a breath of hot wind blew now
(19:55):
with its rising and gathering strength. And in Virginia and Brazil,
and down the Saint Lawrence Valley it shone intermittently through
a driving reek of thunder clouds, flickering violet lightning, and
a hail unprecedented in Manitoba, were a thaw and devastating floods,
and if on the mountains of the Earth, the snow
and ice began to melt that night, and all the
(20:17):
rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid,
and soon in their upper reaches, with swirling trees and
the bodies of beasts and men. They rose steadily, steadily
in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks
at last, behind the flying population of their valleys, and
along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic.
(20:39):
Tides were higher than they had ever been in the
memory of man, and the storms drove the waters, in
many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And
so great grew the heat during the night that the
rising of the sun was like the coming of a shadow.
The earthquakes began and grew, until all down America, from
the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn hillsides were sliding, fissures
(21:03):
were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. China
was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and
all the islands of Eastern Asia, the Great Star was
a ball of dull red fire. Because of the steam
and smoke and ashes, the volcanoes were spouting forth to
salute its coming. Above were the lava hot gases and ash,
(21:27):
and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed
and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows
of Tibet and the Himalayas were melting and pouring down
by ten million, deepening converging channels upon the plains of
Burma and Hindustan. The tangled summits of the Indian Jungles
were a flame and a thousand places, and below the
(21:49):
hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that struggled
feebly and reflected the blood red tongues of fire. And
in an unforgivable confusion, a multitude of men and women
fled down the broad riverways to that one last hope
of men. The open sea larger grew the star and larger,
(22:12):
hotter and brighter, with a terrible swiftness. Now the tropical
ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose
in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly,
speckled with storm tossed ships, and then came a wonder.
It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the
(22:33):
rising of the star that the world must have ceased
its rotation in a thousand open spaces of down and
upland the people who had fled thither from the floods
and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched
for that rising in vain. Hour followed hour, through a
terrible suspense, and the star rose not once again. Men
(22:58):
set their eyes upon the old constantly they had counted
lost to them forever. In England it was hot and
clear overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually. But in the tropics,
Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam.
And when at last the great Star rose near ten
(23:18):
hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in
the center of its white heart was a disk of black.
Over Asia. The star had begun to fall behind the
movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung
over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain
(23:38):
of India, from the mouth of the Indus to the
mouths of the Ganges, was a shallow waste of shining
water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces,
mounds and hills black with people. Every minaret was a
clustering mass of people who fell one by one into
the turbid waters. As heat and terror overcame them. The
(24:00):
whole land seemed awailing, And suddenly there swept a shadow
across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind,
and a gathering of clouds out of the cooling air.
Men looking up nearly blinded at the star, and saw
that black disk creeping across the light. It was the Moon,
coming between the star and the Earth. And even as
(24:22):
men cried to God at this respite, out of the east,
with a strange, inexplicable swiftness, sprang the Sun, and then star,
Sun and Moon rushed together across the heavens. So it
was that presently to the European watchers, Star and Sun
rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space,
(24:46):
and then slower, and at last came to rest. Star
and Sun merged into one glare of flame at the
zenith of the sky. The Moon no longer eclipsed the star,
but was lost to sight and the brilliance of the sky.
And though those who were still alive regarded it for
the most part with that dull stupidity, that hunger, fatigue,
(25:09):
heat and despair and gender there were still men who
could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and Earth
had been at their nearest, had swung about one another,
and the Star had passed already it was receding swifter
and swifter in the last stage of its headlong journey
(25:31):
downward into the sun. And then the clouds gathered, blotting
out the vision of the sky. The thunder and lightning
wove a garment around the world. All over the earth
was such a downpour of rain as men had never
seen before, and where the volcanoes flared red against the
cloud canopy, their descended torrents of mud everywhere. The waters
(25:53):
were pouring off the land, leaving mud stilted ruins, and
the earth littered like a storm worn beach with all
that had floated and the dead bodies of the men
and brutes its children. For days, the water streamed off
the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in
the way, and piling huge dikes and scooping out titanic
(26:17):
gullies over the countryside. Those were the days of darkness
that followed the Star and the heat all through them,
And for the many weeks and months the earthquakes continued
but the star had passed, and men, hunger driven and
gathering courage, only slowly might creep back to their ruined cities,
(26:41):
buried granaries, and sodden fields. Such few ships as had
escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered,
and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and
shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided,
men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore,
(27:03):
and the sun larger, and the moon shrunk to a
third of its size, took now four score days between
its new and new. But of the new brotherhood that
grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and machines,
of the strange change that had iceland and greenland the
(27:24):
shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there
presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe
their eyes. This story does not tell nor of the
movement of mankind now that the earth was hotter northward
and southward towards the poles of the Earth. It concerns
(27:44):
itself only with the coming and the passing of the star.
The Martian astronomers, for there are astronomers on Mars, although
they are different beings from men, were naturally profoundly interested
by these things them from their own standpoint. Of course,
considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was
(28:05):
flung through our solar system into the Sun, one wrote,
it is astonishing what little damage the Earth, which it
missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings,
and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed
the only difference seems to be a shrinking of the
white discolouration supposed to be frozen water round either pole,
(28:29):
which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes
may seem at a distance of a few million miles.
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