In the East, where there was, perhaps, less actual hysteria, millions of men, women, and children clamored with but a single voice for passage to Europe or to any port upon the other side of the world. At Boston, New York, and Baltimore, the congestion from incoming and outgoing ships was so great that passengers could speak from vessel to vessel until they were well out to sea. The same situation prevailed at San Francisco. For every mere thousand who escaped through the Golden Gate, there were millions more who either could secure no passage or who had not the means of paying for it. To be sure, the daily papers were still published, and a pretense was made at keeping office-hours. But most people were actively engaged in excavating subcellars in their houses, to which they might take refuge from the prophesied deluge of rock and slag. The minds of many, of course, refused to grasp the situation. This was particularly the case with the very old, who remembered having been fooled before by these scientists. Hadn't the papers, only ten years before, stated that the earth was going to pass through the tail of Halley's Comet? And hadn't everybody sat up for three whole nights without even _seeing_ a comet? And, after it was all over, the scientists had said that the event had really occurred, only nobody had known about it. They nodded their heads, averring that it would be the same way with this asteroid business that everybody was shouting about. Anyhow, there was no use worrying yet a while. But, in spite of these octogenarian wiseacres, by the first of April, the population of Canada had increased, at the expense of the United States, by twenty million people, and, as the weeks passed and the new green star burned brighter every night, people began to ask why something was not done--why the Ring did not start upon its journey. Unmindful of the conflicting emotions which he inspired, Bennie Hooker quietly and calmly went about his work, with no thought of posing as a modern Perseus about to attack and slay a fiery Medusa. IV At last, the great day--the greatest day in the scientific history of mankind--dawned clear and still. Not a cloud broke the calm continuity of the blue. It seemed almost as if one could see into the distant infinity of space--whither the newspapers all said it was Professor Hooker's genuine intention to go. These papers also announced that it was the purpose of the space-flyer ("aviator" being an obviously inaccurate _descriptio personae_) to wait until the earth's revolution upon its axis should bring the asteroid directly above the Ring, thus avoiding the necessity, once he had started, of altering the direction of flight. This would not occur until about midnight.