"_And that division means death for Earth and almost all its sister-planets!_ For when the sun divides into two great new suns, the first force of their division will send those two mighty balls of fire apart from each other, and pushing thus apart from each other, they will inevitably engulf in their fiery masses all the inner planets and most of the outer ones! Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars will undoubtedly be engulfed in the fires of the two dividing suns upon their first separation, their first division. Jupiter and Saturn and very probably Uranus will be drawn inevitably into fiery death also in one or another of those great suns, if they too are not overwhelmed in the first separation. Neptune alone, the outermost of all the sun's planets, will be far enough out to escape annihilation in the dividing suns when the terrific cataclysm occurs. For if the sun continues to spin faster, as it is now doing, that cataclysm must inevitably occur, and must as inevitably plunge our Earth to fiery doom and wreck our solar system, our universe!" CHAPTER II To Neptune! "Doom faces us, a fiery doom in which the dividing sun will annihilate Earth and most of its sister-planets! Panic even now grips all the peoples of Earth, such panic as has never been known before, as that doom marches inevitably toward them! Yet inevitable, inescapable as that doom seems, we of the World Congress, we who represent here all the gathered peoples of Earth, must endeavor to find even now some last chance of lifting this awful menace from us!" The World President paused, his dark, steady eyes searching out through the great room at whose end, upon a raised platform, he stood. Behind him on that platform sat a row of some two-score men and women, garbed like himself and all others in the modern short and sleeveless garments of differing colors, while before him in the great room stretched the rows of seated members of the great World Congress, the twelve hundred men and women who represented in it all the peoples of Earth. Just beneath the great platform's edge sat Markham, the Intelligence Chief, and myself; before us were the switches that controlled the communication-plates throughout the room that broadcast all proceedings in it to the world. And sitting there, I could glance up and see among those two-score behind the World President two figures well known to me; the strong figure of Dr. Marlin, with his intense gray eyes and gray-touched hair; and the lounging, dark-haired form of Dr. Robert Whitely, his somewhat sardonic countenance and cool eyes turned now with keen interest toward the World President before him. And as the latter began again to speak my own gaze shifted toward him.