on that brilliant yellow
star, the brightest object in the heavens. It was that star, noticeably
brighter within a few centuries, that had awakened a few men from their
mental slumbers.

They were throwbacks, men who had the divine gift of curiosity; and
sparked by their will to know, they had gone to the museums and looked
carefully at the ancient directions for the use of the telectroscope,
the mighty electrically amplified vision machine, had gazed through it.
They had seen a great sun that seemed to fill all the field of the
apparatus with blazing fire. A sun to envy! Further observation had
revealed that there circled about the sun a series of planets, five,
definitely; two more, probably; and possibly two others.

Taj Lamor had been with that group, a young man then, scarcely more than
forty, but they had found him a leader and they had followed him as he
set about his investigation of the ancient books on astronomy.

How many, many hours had he studied those ancient works! How many times
had he despaired of ever learning their truths, and gone out to the roof
of the museum to stand in silent thought looking out across the awful
void to the steady flame of the yellow star! Then quietly he had
returned to his self-set task.

With him as teacher, others had learned, and before he was seventy there
were many men who had become true scientists, astronomers. There was
much of the ancient knowledge that these men could not understand, for
the science of a million centuries is not to be learned in a few brief
decades, but they mastered a vast amount of the forgotten lore.

They knew now that the young, live sun, out there in space, was speeding
toward them, their combined velocities equalling more than 100 miles
each second. And they knew that there were not seven, but nine planets
circling about that sun. There were other facts they discovered; they
found that the new sun was far larger than theirs had ever been; indeed,
it was a sun well above average in size and brilliance. There were
planets, a hot sun--a home! Could they get there?

When their ancestors had tried to solve the problem of escape they had
concentrated their work on the problem of going at speeds greater than
that of light. This should be an impossibility, but the fact that the
ancients had tried it, seemed proof enough to their descendants that it
was possible, at least in theory. In the distant past they had needed
speeds exceeding that of light