Blazing Star

“ But the difficulties are considerable, and some astronomers prefer to think that the blazing star may merely have lit up a dark nebula which already existed. It is one of those problems on which speculation is most tempting but positive knowledge is still very incomplete. ”

“ Tidal interaction between them will diminish the eccentricities of their orbits, and, if continued long enough, will cause them to revolve in circular orbits round their centre of inertia.” [19] This conclusion was pointed out many years ago by Dr. Johnstone Stoney.
VII. Sudden Outbursts of Stars. The case of a star suddenly blazing forth and then fading away, such as that observed by Tycho Brahe in 1572, may be accounted for by supposing that the star had been struck by one of the dark bodies—an event not at all impossible, or even improbable. ”

“ Solar Cloud would die. But Devil Star would live—would grow old beyond death.
At once he was transformed back into a creature of cunning.
The green light disappeared into a hyper-space. The purple light appeared bewildered. Then he too disappeared, and Devil Star, bitterly frightened that already he had lost them, felt the click in his thought swirls which transported him into the second band of the universe's forty-eight faces. Here was cosmos in wild, disordered motion. Spasms of pain ripped through Devil Star as eating vibrations impinged on him. ”

“ The glowing star fell with the swiftness of a sunbeam when it flashes over the horizon in the morning and its first rays shoot across the world. The Splendor became clearer and grew larger; presently I beheld the cloud of glory in which the angels move—a shining vapor that emanates from their divine substance, and that glitters here and there like tongues of flame. A noble face, whose glory none may endure that have not won the mantle, the laurel, and the palm—the attribute of the Powers—rose above this cloud as white and pure as snow. ”

“ Solar Cloud remained behind, bewilderedly searching for her. A wild excitement shook Devil Star. He must get closer. Solar Cloud knew nothing of a forty-eighth band, but surely the green light would somehow draw him into it. And Devil Star would inadvertently be drawn with him! ”

“ He strove not to read concern in the gaze of Moon Flame.
"I do not remember it," said Moon Flame slowly. "Birth? Death? Father? You speak in riddles, Devil Star. Come now, faster! I see the others in the galaxy beyond. Forget that silliness!"
For a clairvoyant second in his time-scale, the raging thoughts of Devil Star swelled. And subsided.
He flung himself into Moon Flame's path.
"You must listen," he said tensely. "We must all beware. For all of us will die!"
Moon Flame did not lessen his speed. "Die?"
"You do not understand, Moon Flame. Death is our destiny. ”

“ A vast flare of dazzling light. A streaming burst of white flame across the dark void. For an indefinite while, it soared outward—a gigantic mushroom of fire. It ceased to grow. Then, as time went by, it began to sink backward, slowly. I saw, now, that it came from a huge, glowing spot near the center of the Dark Sun. Mighty flames, still soared outward from this. Yet, spite of its size, the grave of the star was no more than the shining of Jupiter upon the face of an ocean, when compared with the inconceivable mass of the Dead Sun. ”

“ At the same moment, I saw a thin line of livid flame, far in the night. An instant, it seemed, and it had grown into a great clot of fire; beneath which, the world lay bathed in a blaze of emerald green light. Steadily it grew, until, presently, the whole of the green star had come into sight again. But now, it could be scarcely called a star; for it had increased to vast proportions, being incomparably greater than the sun had been in the olden time.
"Then, as I stared, I became aware that I could see the edge of the lifeless sun, glowing like a great crescent-moon. ”

“ Frozen with horror, Devil Star—the bodiless entity of him—saw that sudden, senseless explosion, watched a hundred suns shot like vast bullets in a hundred flaming paths. Those suns plowed through nearby galaxies, drove relentlessly to new positions in other galactic accretions. The universe bubbled and seethed with irregularity. There were more explosions, more frantic exchanges. The universe was alight with flaming cores of brilliance. ”

“ They were massing around us and hanging motionless while beneath us the palely glowing gigantic dark star swept on, out into the darkness of trackless space until it hung like a titanic feeble moon in the heavens before us, retreating farther and farther from the shining stars of our Galaxy, carrying with it the glowing cities and the hordes of the tentacle-peoples, never to return. ”

“ The pattern of play in this surging universe concerned the helter-skelter rearrangement of galaxies themselves. But Dark Fire often explored more novel avenues of play. Out of a nebula's heart she would come racing, trailing hot streams of excess energy—would circle him—dance—afire with some tremendous importance.
But that friendship was to end.
"Come, Devil Star, look what I've done!"
He saw the planet she had made, and marvelled. A planet whose surface crawled with beings made of solid matter. An incredible kind of actual life whose base was silicon—or carbon ”

“ Astronomers tell us that sometimes a star that has shone inconspicuous, and stood low down in their catalogues as of fifth or sixth magnitude, will all at once flame out, having kindled and caught fire somehow, and will blaze in the heavens, outshining Jupiter and Venus. And so some poor, vulgar, narrow nature, touched by this Promethean fire of pure love that leads to perfect sacrifice, will 'flame in the forehead of the morning sky' an undying splendour, and a light for evermore. ”

“ Blaze’s progress grew slower and slower. At times he would stop and howl dismally for some one to come and help him. Then, after a grim and expectant period of waiting, he would crawl on again, floundering and tumbling down the steep flanks of the mountain. In time he reached the plain, where they had started up after the ram. Here was Sid’s pinto, and the animal whinnied eagerly for he was already thirsty and weary of waiting for their return. Blaze’s nose led him back to the tracks of the main party, where the familiar scent of Big John’s white mustang at last smote his nostrils. ”

“ When some temporary star blazed up in the sky, we inferred some such collision as this. It may very well be that from a planet in some other system men may catch sight of this tiny blaze of ours—and wonder. It will be relatively a very small affair. Some of those we’ve seen must have been many thousand times greater.
“But the point is that this experiment of making men upon the Earth is now proved to be negligible. ”

“ What old and new thoughts did those swinging "suns" evoke, what memories and dreams, in the slumbering conscious mind of that being who was called Oldster? Which configuration of "stars" and "galaxies" and what motion in and between them, called forth the haunting remembrances of Moon Flame, of Comet Glow and her twin child Dark Fire—of World Rim and the countless lost names of his unmeasured past?
Mind had mechanism. It could not be otherwise. And he inhabited, moved through, that band of decision. ”

“ The sorrowing thoughts of Comet Glow came. "You are young. Live as life must live."
She pressed closer, laving him with her anxiety. "Do you seek to change the natal matrix of the vast universe? Ten thousand billion years ago—and perhaps even longer, Devil Star! ”

“ The friendship of Dark Fire and Devil Star was truly done. For even when they were members of the same playing group, there was this cold thought: I am destined to die, and to die in a certain manner. I shall therefore turn destiny aside. I shall not die! ”

“ Occasionally, as you know, a star of the twelfth or fifteenth magnitude, or one that has been invisible, flares up for several months to the fourth or fifth, through a collision with some dark giant, and then returns to what it was in the beginning, a gaseous, filmy nebula. These innumerable hosts of dark monsters, though dead, are centres of systems, like most of the stars you can see. ”

“ In shape they are not always quite spherical, though this is their normal appearance; and although their contours are usually clearly defined, they are sometimes encircled by a kind of luminous vapour, such as we often see encircling the moon. Sometimes they are furnished with a red flame like a fuse that has been lit. Sometimes their course is simply that of a falling star. Sometimes they leave behind them a luminous trail which remains visible long after they themselves have disappeared. ”

“ I know those miserable fellows, and I hate them, who see a black star always riding through the light and colored clouds in the sky overhead: waves of light pass over and hide it for a moment, but the black star keeps fast in the zenith. ”

“ Instead of imagining an observer on the earth, let us suppose him removed to a great distance away in the plane of the two orbits; and let us suppose that the sun is now lighted up again as suddenly as the new star blazed up in February 1901. Then such an observer would first see this blaze in the centre; eight minutes afterwards the illumination would reach the earth, a little speck of light near the sun would be illuminated, just as we saw a portion of the dark nebula round Nova Persei illuminated; eighty minutes later another speck, namely, Saturn, would begin to shine. ”

“ But a Dark Star, speeding unseen through space, known to the ancients, by them called Erlik, after the Prince of Darkness, ruled at the birth of those myriad souls destined to be engulfed in the earthquake of the ages, or flung by it out of the ordered pathway of their lives into strange byways, stranger highways—into deeps and deserts never dreamed of. ”

“ He has suggested that the sudden outbreak in brilliancy might be accounted for on the same principles as those by which we explain the ignition of meteors in our atmosphere. If a dark star, moving along with terrific speed through space, were suddenly to plunge into a dense region of the nebula, heat and light must be evolved in sufficient abundance to transform the star into a brilliant object. ”

“ And high among the planets sped the dark star, Erlik, unseen by men, rushing through viewless interstellar space, hurled out of nothing by the Prince of Hell into the nothing toward which all Hell is speeding, too ”

“ It has been one of the most difficult problems of cosmogony to form a theory to63 account for the origin of the Galactic system. We may, almost yearly, witness how new stars blaze into existence only to fade rapidly and in a few years return to their old insignificance—that is, they become invisible to the naked eye although through powerful lenses we may frequently discover an exceedingly faint star in their position. ”

“ Whence came it that a new blazing spheroid, hitherto unknown to astronomy, now appeared suddenly in the firmament, though it were but to lose itself immediately behind masses of accumulated cloud?
What phenomenon was this that had produced a cataclysm so tremendous in its effects upon earth, sky, and sea?
Was it possible that a single human being could have survived the convulsion? ”

“ It was morning now in the cañon. Heroes and heroines require sleep—in that they resemble other more commonplace individuals. Perhaps Blaze had slept some; but, wearied as he had been for some days with a constant round of dangerous adventures and hairbreadth escapes, at daylight he was wide awake, ready to face whatever dangers and difficulties the morning might bring. The woman was still as a statue. Her breath came quietly; her slumber was sweet. Blaze sat at a little distance from her, just by the horses, with his rifle close at hand, and looked at his fair charge. ”

“ Here, the fire outlines a sort of chessboard in red squares, there it has a sheen like velvet; little blue flames start up and flicker and play about in the glowing depths of the brasier. A mysterious artist comes and adapts that flame to his own ends; by a secret of his own he draws a visionary face in the midst of those flaming violet and crimson hues, a face with unimaginable delicate outlines, a fleeting apparition which no chance will ever bring back again. It is a woman’s face, her hair is blown back by the wind, her features speak of a rapture of delight ”

“ Now is the time; in the name of the devil who is leaving you in this world, be your own Providence! Every one knows that the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been to and fro across it these thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the first time to-night?"
He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat and at the sea and sky in turn.
"The skipper always laughs at everything," muttered Thomas.
"Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched creatures?" ”

“ The star twinkled, trembled and turned, at first with a slow gyratory motion, then faster and faster, increasing its circumference at every rotation until it formed a brilliant disk, and we no longer saw the dwarf, who seemed absorbed into its light. Having gradually attained an extremely rapid velocity, as the girl had done when whirled by the dervish, the motion began to decrease and finally merged into a feeble vibration, like the shimmer of moonbeams on rippling water. ”

“ Seeing its extreme faintness, therefore, the effulgence of the star would render it totally invisible, provided that it could traverse the vast immensity of intervening space, without feeling the influence of that extinction, which Struve has proved does actually diminish the number of visible stars. ”