I dragged myself out of the bunk and tottered forward to the compact pilot-room in the nose of the _Barihorn_. With black, impassive eyes, the big Saturnian was staring through a port. Husky-voiced, stricken, the Earthman was gasping into the ship's phone, begging Rogo Nug for power. Clutching a rail, beside Jeron Roc, I looked out upon that dreadful tableau in space. The Sun filled a vast flaming circle. Softened by filter-screens, it still was blinding. Against its intolerable face I could see the small dark disk of the Earth, still blurred with that haze of sinister force; and, cruising about it, the tiny red stars of the fleet. The Earth was dwindling swiftly. "What awful power!" whispered the tall Saturnian, "They're driving it like a ship--straight into the Sun!" Kel Aran was beside us. His hard fingers were on my arm, unconsciously contracting until I thought the bone would snap. For the red stars drew suddenly away from the diminishing planet. For an instant, as the haze vanished, it was a sharp black dot against that ocean of merciless white. And then it struck. A tiny pock of darkness spread on the face of the Sun. It closed again, and in its place was a hotter whiteness. A tongue of white flame lifted and dissolved--oddly like the splash where a raindrop has fallen. And I knew that the planet Earth, after all its varied millions of years, had come to an end. "Verel!" It was a dry choked sob from Kel Aran. "Verel, we have failed!" PART TWO VI COSMIC STORM Be it proclaimed to all technomatons and men, in the name of Tedron Du, Emperor of the Galaxy, by Gugon Kul, Admiral of the Twelfth Sector Fleet of the Galactic Guard: That all human natives of the planet Earth who escaped the recent destruction of that planet in accordance with the decree of the Emperor, their very escape being overt treason, shall be seized wherever found and dealt to death in the manner reserved for traitors against the Empire of technomatons and men and the person of the Lord of the Stars. That ominous proclamation had been printed on the recordstrip of the telescreen. Rogo Nug had just completed repair of the burned-out circuits; and big Zerek Oom had suggested, a little apprehensively, that we had better leave the solar system. "Both you and Barihorn are native Earthmen," he argued. "That is obvious to anyone familiar with the evolutionary adaptations of the natives of the different planets. If we should happen to be seized by old Gugon Kul--" His big white hands made an unpleasant gesture. But Kel Aran shook his yellow head. His gray eyes were cold and clear as polar ice, and there was something startling in their impact.