"The Neptunian races had come to their last stand! Crowded upon our refuge of Triton, striving with all our power to keep upon it the warmth, without which we could not live, we saw at last that some new and radically different plan must be found, or we could no longer exist. So all the greatest of our Neptunian scientists were called together by us, the Council of Thirty. Into a great conclave here on Triton they were called, and to them, without equivocation of any sort, and to the races of the Neptunians, the situation that confronted us was stated. We had been driven from Neptune by the relentless growing cold, and now that same cold was upon us here at Triton, was threatening us here also with annihilation. How were we to meet this great menace that threatened to wipe us out? * * * * * "Countless were the plans that were advanced in answer to that menace by our scientists. The first, and most obvious plan, was migration to another planet. But here we were checked by the same considerations that had made us unwilling to try that before, for we knew by observation of the other planets that upon none of them could we live as we lived upon Neptune. Some of them were greater in size than Neptune, with greater gravitational power, and that was a difficulty that could not be overcome by us since upon those planets our weight would be so increased as to make us helpless, even had those planets been fit for our life. Some planets were peopled by intelligent and powerful races which we might be able to conquer after terrible struggles. Others were too near the sun for us to ever inhabit them, who had evolved on the dim, cool world of Neptune, the outermost world. Other planets, as far as we could tell, were quite uninhabitable. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus--not one of them was suitable as a world for us Neptunians. And we had, also, no desire to move to another planet, in truth, since so many ages had it taken for us to build our great compartment-cities upon Neptune and Triton, to shield them with their great roofs, that it was impossible for us to leave them, even had we been able, to start anew upon another world. "We must remain with our own great world, it was plain, but how then could we continue to live? Innumerable were the suggestions that were advanced, but even those who advanced them were forced to admit them impracticable. Scores upon scores of useless plans were submitted to us, but none held even a shadow of hope for us, and it was not until we of the Council of Thirty had come to despair almost of warding off the doom that threatened us, that a plan was finally advanced by which that doom could indeed be halted.