“How long will it be before the planet is with us?” asked Dalton of Gilbert. “About a fortnight,” he replied. “We do not wish it to come too fast, lest its revolution and atmosphere and those of this world should be disturbed.” A few hours later, there came upon the atmosphere a more sudden change; the air became perceptibly drier, hotter and more stifling, and before long, heavy clouds gathered and obliterated the stars, the distant, yet approaching world sharing the same fate, being no longer visible; and there were no means of ascertaining its position except by intricate calculations from the amount of force projected. By this time all around the ship there rested a faint phosphorescence, and the heat and dryness in the air became severely felt, filling the nostrils with such a choking as to make inspiration painful in the extreme. The enormous amount of electricity projected was slowly converting the air into allotropic oxygen, or ozone, of such intensity that it burned the lungs and made breathing a torture, and the sense of suffocation became almost intolerable. To the natives this change was deplorable, depending as they did on the air for both breathing and food; and living in the open they had no shelter, only the frail structures erected for astronomical observations and the carrying on of business—laboratories and the like. In vain they entered these in order to find coolness, then returned to the open, for in that furnace of altering elements there was no cool, everywhere was equally painful. “We cannot work in this stifling heat, and the clouds are impenetrable,” telepathed one of the native astronomers to Rollsborough. “There is some dreadful electrical disturbance around; I am glad your ship is here, for it is drawing towards itself all the local forces”; and in the air there could be seen floating beside the ship, a faint, rosy light, paling into greens and purples and moving fitfully.