"Then it was that those scientists revealed to us the heart of their plan, and made clear to us the true colossal nature of their suggestion. What, they asked, if we ourselves increase the sun's rotatory speed? What if we of Neptune should reach across the void of almost three billion miles and set the sun to spinning faster, spinning it ever faster and faster until it had reached the critical point, until it turned once in one hour? Fission would result then, the sun would divide into a double star as they had calculated, and all the benefits mentioned would come to us, and Neptune and its moon would be warmed always by the heat of the two suns about which they would revolve. If we could do that, if we could reach across the void and set the sun to spinning ever faster, it would soon divide into two new suns, and thus we would have saved ourselves. Yet we were thunderstruck by this suggestion of the Neptunian scientists. To reach out across the infinite leagues of space that lay between our outermost planet and the sun, to turn that sun ever faster until it split into a double star--how ever could such a gigantic, stupefying feat as that be accomplished? "But the Neptunians who had suggested this plan now calmly explained how that colossal deed could be accomplished. Long before, indeed, we had discovered force-vibrations, finding them a vibration that exerted tangible and definite pressure or force upon whatever matter they struck. And we had used those force-rays in some ways. We had used them to propel our cylindrical vehicles out through space from Neptune to Triton, and _vice versa_. We had used them also, concentrated into slender, pencil-like rays of great power, as weapons, since those concentrated rays penetrated and destroyed all that they touched. Now our scientists proposed to use them for this huge plan--to reach across the void, across the solar system, and to turn the sun ever faster, until the desired division of it had happened.