Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation
of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of
planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that
almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is
space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth
or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million
miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed
before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few
comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to
human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the twentieth
century this strange wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was,
bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the
sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly
visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible
diameter, in the constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while an
opera glass could attain it.

On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two
hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance
of this unusual apparition in the heavens. "A Planetary Collision," one
London paper headed the news, and proclaimed Duchaine's opinion that
this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader
writers enlarged upon the topic. So that in most of the capitals of the
world, on January 3rd, there was an expectation, however vague of some
imminent phenomenon in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset
round the globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see--the
old familiar stars just as they had always been.

Until it was dawn in London and Pollux setting and the stars overhead
grown pale. The Winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of
daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows
to show where people were astir. But the yawning policeman saw the
thing, the busy crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to
their work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation
going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats,
and in the country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home,
all over the dusky quickening country it could be seen--and out at sea
by seamen watching for the day--a great white star, come sudde