hing of importance in back of what they had seen; but not so the
masses. The flare, they said, was caused by the release of another
meteor!

From Venus! Missiles, hurled by Venerians, menacing the Earth! The
silver planet became the subject of universal discussion; innumerable
fantastic articles about it appeared in magazine sections of Sunday
newspapers. And the astronomers of Earth turned their telescopes
toward Venus with an interest they had never felt before.

* * * * *

Four days of expectant waiting passed by after the third meteor had
fallen, while interest continued mounting at an accelerating pace. And
then, at about two o'clock in the morning of the 18th, three great
observatories, two in North America and one in England, recorded the
falling of an extraordinarily large and unusually brilliant meteor
that glowed with an intense, bluish-white light as it entered the
Earth's atmosphere. And, unlike most meteors, this one was not
consumed by its intense heat, but continued gleaming brilliantly until
it vanished below the horizon. Simultaneous with the falling of the
meteor, the Earth was rocked by one of the worst quakes in history.

Seismographs in all parts of the world recorded the tremors of the
Earth, each indicating that the disturbance had occurred somewhere
beneath the Atlantic ocean. Evidently the fourth meteor had fallen
into the ocean, for the shaking of the Earth was obviously the result
of the collision. That quakes had not followed the landing of the
first three was due to the fact that they had been far smaller than
the fourth.

And then, a short time after the earthquake, the worst storm in two
hundred years broke over the Atlantic. Waves, mountain high, piled
themselves upon each other in a wild frenzy; a shrieking wind lashed
the waters into a liquid chaos. Great ocean-liners were tossed about
like tiny chips; an appalling number of smaller ships were lost in
that insane storm.

Nor was the destruction confined to the sea, for all along the
Atlantic coast of North America and Europe, mighty walls of water
rushed in, and wrecked entire towns and cities.

Fortunately the storm was of short duration; a few hours after it
began, it subsided.

For a number of weeks public attention was centered upon the meteors
and storm; but gradually, when nothing further occurred, the fickle
interest of the masses began to wane. A month after the storm, the
strange meteor