I see it all
now. The force that was dragging us out of our course was the united
pull of two dead stars approaching each other in the same orbit. They
may have been doing that for millions of years. The shock of their
meeting has transformed their motion into light and heat. They have
united to form a single sun and a nebula, which will some day condense
into a system of planets like ours. To-night the astronomers on Earth
will discover a new star--a variable star as they'll call it--for it
will grow dimmer as it moves away from our system. It has often happened
before."
Then they turned back to the conning-tower.
The needle had swung to its old position. The new star, henceforth to be
known in the annals of astronomy as Lilla-Zaidie, had already set for
them to the right of the _Astronef_ and risen on the left, and, at a
distance of more than nine hundred million miles from the Earth, the
corner was turned, and the homeward voyage began.
CHAPTER XX
A week later they crossed the path of Jupiter, but the giant was
invisible, far away on the other side of the Sun. Redgrave laid his
course so as to avail himself to the utmost of the "pull" of the planets
without going near enough to them to be compelled to exert too much of
the priceless R. Force, which the indicators showed to be running
perilously low.
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