"We must remain with our own great world, it was plain, but how then could we continue to live? Innumerable were the suggestions that were advanced, but even those who advanced them were forced to admit them impracticable. Scores upon scores of useless plans were submitted to us, but none held even a shadow of hope for us, and it was not until we of the Council of Thirty had come to despair almost of warding off the doom that threatened us, that a plan was finally advanced by which that doom could indeed be halted.
"That plan, put forth by three of our Neptunian scientists in cooperation, was one of such colossal nature that even we Neptunians, who had roofed our worlds and had fought for so long the forces of nature, were stupefied by it. These three Neptunian scientists, in stating their plan, stated first that it was apparent to all that no escape to other planets was possible for us, and that our races must remain at Neptune and its moon, for life or death. They stated that it was equally clear that no means could be found by which even Triton could be kept heated artificially, all such means suggested requiring such vast expenditures of energy as to make them impossible for any but the shortest period of time. These premises, they said, were clear indeed, and it was equally clear that unless a new source of heat were found in some way for Neptune and its moon, we races of Neptunians must swiftly die. And so these three suggested a source of heat that never even had occurred to any of the rest of us, suggested—the sun!
"The sun as a source of heat for us! The idea seemed incredible to us—the Council of Thirty. For to us of Neptune, lying so far out in space from the sun, that sun could never mean and had never meant what it does to you of the inner planets. To you it is a source of ceaseless blazing heat, of brilliant light, warming your worlds sometimes to scorching, no doubt. But to us that sun has seemed always but a tiny little disk of fire far off in the void from us, a little sun-disk that gives to us the dim light of our pale Neptunian day, but that gives to us hardly any measurable heat whatever. We had simply never thought of the sun at all as a source of heat, any more than you would think of a star as a source of heat, since we had been accustomed always to rely upon the interior heat of Neptune for our existence. But now with that interior heat gone, with Neptune cold and dead beneath the zero temperatures that reigned there, and with Triton fast approaching the same condition, these three Neptunian scientists advanced the sun as a possible source of heat that might save us.
"The sun, they admitted, was too infinitely far from us to help us any with its heat as conditions were. But what, they asked, if the sun were to divide into a double or multiple star? Countless stars of the universe, we knew, had done so, had split into a double or triple or multiple star, and in so dividing, by reason of their rotatory speed or centrifugal force growing so great as to make it impossible for them to hold together, the two or more small suns forming out of one always moved some distance apart from each other, by the first force of their division. If the sun were to divide into a double star, therefore, the two smaller suns that would be formed thus would undoubtedly follow the same course, would be pushed apart from each other by the very force of their division, some two billion miles, our astronomers had calculated.
"Pushed apart thus, the two new suns would form an ordinary double star, or binary, the two revolving around each other. And by their division almost all the planets of the solar system would without doubt be engulfed in one or the other of the two suns. The four inner planets would inevitably be annihilated when the sun split into two suns, when those two rushed apart from each other. For if they were not directly in the path of the two separating suns, they would be drawn into those separating suns almost at once by the tremendous gravitational disturbances attendant upon this tremendous cataclysm. They would have no more chance of life, indeed, than midges in a great blaze. And in the same way Jupiter and Saturn would be whirled out of their orbits, since those orbits would be fatally confused and changed by the first division of the sun, and by the loss of centrifugal force attendant upon their confused slowing they, too, would without doubt be drawn into the path of one or the other of the separating suns and perish in them. And even Uranus would meet a doom as inevitable, since with a distance of two billion miles between them the two new suns would be resting almost exactly upon Uranus' orbit, and so that world too would go to blazing death in one or the other of them.
"But Neptune would not! For Neptune, farther out than Uranus, farthest out of all the planets, would be the one planet in the solar system that would escape the tremendous cataclysm, due to its distance from the sun. When the two suns separated, Neptune's orbit would probably change a little, it would probably sweep closer in toward those suns for some distance, but except for that it would be unchanged, and would by reason of its great distance continue to circle in its curving path through space, but would circle then around these two new suns instead of around the former single sun. And with those two suns separated as they were, by a distance of two billion miles, Neptune would be near always to one of those suns, because it would undoubtedly sweep nearer to them when the cataclysm occurred, and would take up an elliptical orbit about them with the two suns as the foci of that ellipse. Thus it would always be near enough one of them to gain from it or from both a large amount of heat! For not only would Neptune in its elliptical orbit be far, far closer to them thus, but the other planets hurtling into them would tend to make them hotter. Thus Neptune, revolving close about the two suns, would gain from them the warm, life-giving heat that it had never gained from the single sun!
"That heat would thus solve the great problem that faced us; it would halt the doom that was closing down on us. For that heat would so warm Neptune, that we could go back again and take up our existence once more upon it free from all peril, could live again in that great compartment-city that covered all Neptune. And Triton, too, would be livable, then. For the great roofs that we had erected around Neptune and its moon would tend to make of both worlds great hot-houses in effect, the sun's or suns' heat being able to penetrate down through those roofs. And with those enclosing roofs about us, and with the two new suns close, we could live on in safety. For the enclosing roofs themselves would prevent any inconvenience from the fact that Neptune now and then would be farther from the two suns than at other times, those great roofs keeping a constant warmth upon Neptune and its moon.
"Thus all the great peril that confronted us would be thrust back, and we could live once more on Neptune, more warm and comfortable there than ever before; we could pour back once more to our mighty world that lay now dead and cold and deserted—could do all this, if the sun did divide into a double star. Yet what hope was there that this could happen? We knew that the reason other suns of the universe divide into double or multiple stars is because they have reached a rate of rotatory speed that makes it impossible for them longer to hold together. For when a sun is spinning its mass tends to split up by its own centrifugal force, just as a turning wheel, and the faster the sun spins the greater grows its centrifugal force, the greater its tendency to split. And then at last that rate of spin grows so great, and its centrifugal force is such that its mass can no longer hold together, and fission takes place, the sun dividing into two or three or even more stars, that push apart from each other. But what chance was there of the sun doing this? For the sun, we knew, rotated at the speed of one turn in 25 days, at its equator, and to split it would have to be rotating at a speed of one turn in an hour. That meant that it would be unthinkable eons before the sun's rotatory speed would have increased to that point. For though a sun's rotatory speed does increase as time passes, due to the shrinkage of its mass, it increases so infinitely slowly that it would be eons, indeed, before the sun's rate of spin would be so great as to cause its division. And thus there seemed small hope indeed in that plan.
"Then it was that those scientists revealed to us the heart of their plan, and made clear to us the true colossal nature of their suggestion. What, they asked, if we ourselves increase the sun's rotatory speed? What if we of Neptune should reach across the void of almost three billion miles and set the sun to spinning faster, spinning it ever faster and faster until it had reached the critical point, until it turned once in one hour? Fission would result then, the sun would divide into a double star as they had calculated, and all the benefits mentioned would come to us, and Neptune and its moon would be warmed always by the heat of the two suns about which they would revolve. If we could do that, if we could reach across the void and set the sun to spinning ever faster, it would soon divide into two new suns, and thus we would have saved ourselves. Yet we were thunderstruck by this suggestion of the Neptunian scientists. To reach out across the infinite leagues of space that lay between our outermost planet and the sun, to turn that sun ever faster until it split into a double star—how ever could such a gigantic, stupefying feat as that be accomplished?