With his hands pressed to his temples as though his brain were reeling under the frightful intelligence that had just been conveyed to it, he stood in front of the board and gasped in short, broken sentences-- “God of mercy, can that be really true! Has the world only four months more to live? Surely I have made some mistake--and yet everything has worked as usual. There has been no hitch. It has been a splendid night for transmission and they--no, they had not made a mistake for a thousand years, they are past it. It must--but no, I can do nothing more this morning. I should go mad if I did. I must think of it quietly and sleep a little if I can, and then I will transcribe it.” He left the telescope tower and went out on to a little platform at the rear of the observatory which commanded a view of the whole Valley. He looked out over the lovely landscape lying calm and silent beneath the paling stars, and involuntarily exclaimed aloud-- “Is it for this that we have conquered the earth and bridged the abysses of space--for this that we have made ourselves as gods among men and throned ourselves here in this lovely land, lords of the world and masters of the nations? “How shall I tell them down yonder? And yet, has not the Master told them already: ‘His shape shall be that of a flaming fire.’ ‘Your children of the fifth generation shall behold his approach’? Yes, the two exiles we welcomed back last night are the fifth generation from the Angel, and _that_ will truly be a flaming fire, and truly it will go hard with this world and the men of it in the hour of its passing, as the Master has said.” After a vain attempt to seek refuge from his thoughts in sleep he boarded his aerial yacht and went to the city to mingle with the merry-makers, more for appearance’ sake than from inclination, but he kept his own counsel strictly, for more reasons than one. The next night, as soon as Mars was high enough in the heavens, about half-past ten, the dwellers in the Valley saw the great lights on the mountain tops flash out and darken at irregular intervals time after time and hour after hour, until all but those in the sentinel ships went to rest, saying-- “Vassilis is talking to our neighbours in Mars. He will have something to tell us to-morrow.” But when the next day came he had nothing to tell. He had spent the night repeating the message, sign for sign and word for word, and asking for confirmation lest he should have made any mistake in receiving it. Then in agonised anxiety he had waited for the reply on which he now felt the fate of mankind depended. It came with a terrible clearness and brevity, which left no room for doubt-- “Message read correctly. There is no error in our calculations. Terrestrial humanity is doomed, and must prepare to meet its fate.”