matter, while the other, which now exists
only as the asteroids, broke up.

"But now that other flaming star has retired, wandering on through
space. The star has left its traces, for behind it there are planets
where none existed before. But remember that it, too, must have planets
now.

"All this happened some 2,000 million years ago.

"But in order that it might happen, it requires that two stars pass
within the relatively short distance of a few billion miles of each
other. Space is not overcrowded with matter, you know. The density of
the stars has been compared with twenty tennis balls roaming about
8,000-mile sphere that the Earth fills up--twenty tennis balls in some
270 billion cubic miles of space. Now imagine two of those tennis
balls--with plenty of room to wander in--passing within a few yards of
each other. The chances are about as good as the chances of two stars
passing close enough to make planets.

"Now let us consider another possibility.

"The Black Star, as I told you, has planets. That means that it must
have thus passed close to another star. Now we have it coming close to
another sun that has been similarly afflicted. The chances of that
happening are inconceivably small. It is one chance in billions that the
planets will form. Two stars must pass close to each other, when they
have all space to wander about in. Then those afflicted stars separate,
and one of them passes close by a new star, which has thus been
similarly afflicted with that one chance in billions--well, that is then
a chance in billions of billions.

"So my theory was called impossible. I don't know but what it is.
Besides, I thought of an argument the other men didn't throw at me. I'm
surprised they didn't, too--the explanation of the strange chemical
constitution of these men of a solar system planet would not be so
impossible. It is quite possible that they live on a planet revolving
about the sun which is, nevertheless, a planet of another star. It is
quite conceivable to me that the chemical constitution of Neptune and
Pluto will be found to be quite different from that of the rest of our
planets. The two filaments drawn out from the suns may not have mingled,
though I think they did, but it is quite conceivable that, just before
parting, our sun tore one planet, or even two or three, from the other
star.

"And that would explain these strange beings.

"My other ideas were accepted. The agreed-on plan for the relea