-four hours in the
same part of the heavens, both of the fourth magnitude! But his surprise
was as nothing when on the succeeding night, even while he watched, a
third new star appeared in line with these, but much closer.

At midnight he first noticed a pin-point of faint light; by one o'clock
the star was of eighth magnitude. At two it was a brilliant sun of the
second magnitude blazing away from Earth like the others at a rate of
twelve hundred miles per second. And on the next evening, and the next,
and the next, other new stars appeared until there were seven in all,
every one on a line in the same constellation Hercules, every one with
the same radiance and the same proper motion, though of varying size!

* * * * *

Phobar had broadcast his discovery to incredulous astronomers; but as
star after star appeared nightly, all the telescopes on Earth were
turned toward one of the most spectacular cataclysms that history
recorded. Far out in the depths of space, with unheard-of regularity and
unheard-of precision, new worlds were flaming up overnight in a line
that began at Hercules and extended toward the solar system.

Phobar's announcement was immediately flashed to Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn, the other members of the Five World Federation. Saturn
reported no evidence of the phenomena, because of the interfering rings
and the lack of Mercia's nullifier. But Jupiter, with a similar device,
witnessed the phenomena and announced furthermore that many stars in the
neighborhood of the novae had begun to deviate in singular and abrupt
fashion from their normal positions.

There was not as yet much popular interest in the phenomena. Without
Mercia's nullifier, the stars were not visible to ordinary eyes, since
the light-rays would take years to reach the Earth. But every astronomer
who had access to Mercia's nullifier hastened to focus his telescope on
the region where extraordinary events were taking place out in the
unfathomable gulf of night. Some terrific force was at work, creating
worlds and disturbing the positions of stars within a radius already
known to extend billions and trillions of miles from the path of the
seven new stars. But of the nature of that force, astronomers could only
guess.

* * * * *

Phobar took up his duties early on the eighth night. The last star had
appeared about five hundred light-years distant. If an eighth new sta