hips were forming in a
giant hollow cylinder, and as the sphere of the Nigrans retreated, their
beams playing behind them, the cylinder moved forward until it
surrounded them, and they raced together toward the distant lightless
sun. The Solar end of the cylinder swiftly closed, blocked by a group of
huge ships which had taken no visible part in the battle. The Nigrans
had stopped using their rays; and the Solarians followed in armed
readiness, not molesting as long as they were not molested.

Many days this strange flight lasted, till at last the great yellow sun,
Sol, had faded in the distance to an unusually brilliant star. Then,
suddenly visible out of the darkness, a strange black world loomed
ahead, and the Nigran ships settled swiftly toward it. Through the
airlocks the great liners settled to their planet. No action was taken
so long as the Solarian ships were not menaced, but for eight long
months the darting ships hung above the four englobed worlds of Nigra.

Then at last the astronomers of Earth and Venus sent through the
billions of miles of ether their message of safety. The guard could
return home, for the sun they had been guarding would soon be too far
from Earth or Venus to make any attack logical. Despite this, for years
to come the fleet would guard the rim of the System, just to be sure;
but it appeared that the suns had passed, never again to meet.

A strange thing had happened during the passing of the stars. Pluto no
longer circled Sol; it had been captured by Nigra! The great fleet
returned to a changed Solar system. Sol was still at its center, but
there were now ten planets, including two new ones that the sun had
captured from Nigra in return for Pluto; and all the planets had shifted
a bit in their orbits.

What the ultimate effect on the planets will be, we cannot say as yet.
The change thus far is certainly not very great, though a somewhat
warmer climate exists now on Earth, and it is a bit cooler on Venus. The
long-range difference, however, will be exceedingly interesting.

The Solar System has just passed through an experience which is probably
unique in all the history of the mighty nebula of which our sun is an
infinitesimal part. The chances that one star, surrounded by a system of
planets, should pass within a hundred billion miles of another star,
similarly accompanied, was one in billions of billions. That both
systems should have been inhabited by intelligent races--

It i