My heart leaped. Yet it was hardly a surprise. Knowledge of it all had been coming to me little by little for weeks; fragments here and there, like the meaningless parts of a puzzle which now his words, adding nothing new, pieced together to make my premonitions a complete realization. He spoke swiftly, fronting me with his squared, heavy shoulders; his dark eyes holding me with his somber gaze. "No use to worry you, son, or to frighten Hulda--you could be of no help--and we're all in it together--the whole world. . . . They've lifted the censorship. The time has come when it is best for everyone to know it--this inevitable thing. Peter, you can give it to your organization to-night, and to the world. The widest publicity--this statement from me and my organization--" He stopped abruptly, seeming to realize the incoherence of his words, striving to master his emotions and tell me calmly. He seized a chair and sat facing me, smiling at Freddie; and he lighted a cigar. But his fingers trembled. He was a man of sixty at this time; a squarely solid, commanding figure; a smooth-shaved face, square-jawed, dark, restless eyes, with gray-black, bushy brows and a shock of iron-gray hair. A crisp, forceful speaker. But he had not been so to-night. I have never seen him look so old, almost haggard. And the usual clear-white of his eyes was shot with blood. I understood it as he talked; past weeks of anxiety, nights of sleepless observation at the telescope, watching Xenephrene, the new world; watching it come in to join our little solar family; observing by night--and all day busy with unending calculations of Xenephrene's changing orbit as it rounded the sun and took its place among us. Watching. At first with interest, surprise, awe; then with a dawning fear. Then, his hurried conferences with other scientists. He had been three times to London, I now learned--and once, a consultation of astronomers was held at the Chan observatory, in Tibet. And then, conferences of the scientists with the world governments, at which time the censorship was ordered. And father went back to his post, to observe and calculate the daily abnormal changes in our sunrise and sunset. Until at last the truth could no longer be escaped. The future could be prognosticated, to a mathematical certainty; the censorship must be lifted and the world told. Father's voice, with its old dominating ring now, boomed at me. "The world must be told, Peter. We cannot, dare not, hide it any longer. This new planet Xenephrene--I'll give you all the technical details; I have them here." He waved a sheaf of typewritten papers at me. "Your office can prepare it in any form you like. The coming of Xenephrene--its new bulk so near us--has disturbed, is now disturbing, our earth. You know it--everybody knows it instinctively, though they do not realize it or understand it." "The weather--" I began; and my pounding heart seemed nearly smothering me.