of absolutely no use.
When he did locate Neptune after a brief search, he discovered it more
than eighty million miles from its scheduled place! This was at
one-forty. At two-ten he was thunderstruck by a special announcement
sent from the Central Bureau to every observatory and astronomer of note
throughout the world, proclaiming the discovery of an ultra-Plutonian
planet. Phobar was incredulous. For centuries it had been proved that no
planet beyond Pluto could possibly exist.

* * * * *

With feverish haste, Phobar ran to the huge telescope and rapidly
focused it where the new planet should be. Five hundred million miles
beyond Neptune was a flaming path like the beam of a giant searchlight
that extended exactly to the eighth solar planet. Phobar gasped. He
could hardly credit the testimony of his eyes. He looked more closely.
The great stream of flame still crossed his line of vision. But this
time he saw something else: at the precise farther end of the flame-path
a round disk--dark!

Beyond a doubt, a new planet of vast size now formed an addition to the
solar group. But that planet was almost impervious to the illuminating
rays of the sun and was barely discernible. Neptune itself shone
brighter than it ever had, and was falling away from the sun at a rate
of twelve hundred miles per second.

All night Phobar watched the double mystery. By three o'clock, he was
convinced, as far as lightning calculations showed, that the invader was
hurtling toward the sun at a speed of more than ten million miles an
hour. At three-fifteen, he thought that vanishing Neptune seemed
brighter even than the band of fire running to the invader. At four, his
belief was certainty. With amazement and awe, Phobar sat through the
long, cold night, watching a spectacular and terrible catastrophe in the
sky.

As dawn began to break and the stars grew paler, Phobar turned away from
his telescope, his brain awhirl, his heart filled with a great fear. He
had witnessed the devastation of a world, the ruin of a member of his
own planetary system by an invader from outer space. As dawn cut short
his observations, he knew at last the cause of Neptune's brightness,
knew that it was now a white-hot flaming sun that sped with increased
rapidity away from the solar system. Somehow, the terrible swathe of
fire that flowed from the dark star to Neptune had wrenched it out of
its orbit and made of it a molten inferno.