"For Neptune alone will escape the cataclysm that will take place when the sun divides, and it is from Neptune, from intelligent beings on Neptune, there can be not the slightest doubt, that this great force-ray comes. For it cannot be doubted for an instant that this mighty force-ray is the work of intelligent creatures upon Neptune. Never in all the many discussions concerning the possibility of life on the other planets have astronomers conceded any possibility of life on Neptune, the outermost of the sun's worlds, for though we have always known it to have air and water, its great distance from the sun must needs make it so cold a world as to be unable to sustain life. That was our belief before, but now with this great ray from Neptune swiftly wrecking our solar system before our very eyes, we can no longer doubt that life, intelligent life, exists there!
"It is the beings of Neptune, therefore, the creatures of the sun's outermost world, who are making the sun spin faster and faster, who are deliberately planning to make our sun divide into a double star, to wreck its universe! What their reason is for doing this, we cannot now guess. We know that Neptune, almost alone among the sun's planets, will survive the great cataclysm of its division, and we can but hazard the thought that it is for some great advantage to themselves that the Neptunians are engaged upon this colossal task. Neither can we guess just how, exactly, they are doing it, how they are able to push against the sun with such colossal force without Neptune itself being pushed out into the void by the tremendous reaction from that push. But these things are not of the greatest interest to us now.
"The thing of greatest interest to us now is this: Can we halt this acceleration of the sun's rotation, can we thwart the doom which the Neptunians would loose upon us? To do that there is but one remedy! That is to bring to an end this great force-ray which the beings of Neptune are playing upon our sun's edge, with which they are making that sun turn faster. And to bring that ray to an end, to destroy it, it is necessary that we go out to Neptune, to the source of that great ray. For it is only at its source, whatever that source may be, that this force-ray can be destroyed! And it is only by destroying that force-ray that Earth and its sister-planets can be saved!
"This proposition, this plan to go out to Neptune itself, may seem to you impossible. For greatly as our scientific knowledge has risen in the last decades, we have been unable to bridge the gulf to even the nearest of the planets. True, we have managed to send rockets to our moon and explode flares there by means of them, but never yet have any of us reached even the nearest of our neighboring planets. And thus to propose to go out to Neptune, the farthest and outermost of all the planets, the last outpost of our solar system, may appear to you quite senseless. But it is not so, for now, at last, there is given to us the power to venture out into the gulf of space to other planets! And that power is given to us by the very doom that now threatens us, since it is the force-ray or vibration with which the beings of Neptune are turning our sun faster, which we can use to cross the gulf of space!
"For since his instruments first received and recorded that vibration, the weak reflected pulsings of the great ray, Dr. Whitely has studied it intensively, and has been able, by reversing the hook-up of his receiving and recording instruments, to produce similar vibrations, a similar ray, himself! He has been able to devise small generators which produce the same force-ray, and on that principle larger generators also can be devised and constructed, to shoot forth a force-ray of immense power. With such a force-ray, generated from inside a strong, hermetically-closed flier, one could shoot out at will into the great void! For if such a flier, resting on Earth, turned its powerful ray down upon Earth, that ray would strike Earth with terrific force. Being so vast in mass, and the flier from which the ray is shot down being so small, it would not be Earth that would be perceptibly moved by the ray, but the flier itself would be shot instantly up and outward into space by the ray's great pushing reaction!
"It would be necessary only to head the space-flier out toward the desired planet upon starting, and the pushing force of the great ray, constantly turned on, would so accelerate the flier's speed that it would be pushed out toward that planet at a terrific velocity, a speed which could be controlled by the power of the pushing ray. To escape the attraction of other planets among which it might pass, the space-flier would need only to shoot a similar great force-ray out toward whatever planet was attracting it, and the pushing force of that ray would hold the flier out from it. And when the space-flier neared the planet that was its goal, it could gradually slow its progress by means of a ray shot ahead toward that planet, braking its forward rush thus, and being able to land smoothly and without harm upon that planet!
"Such a space-flier as that might be built and operated in that way, with the great force-ray or vibration of the beings of Neptune to propel it, and in such a flier it would be possible to go out across the gulf to Neptune itself! Such a flier, pushing itself out into space with a great ray, could be brought to such colossal speeds that the journey out through the gulf to the distant planet could be accomplished in but a score or more of days. We have the power to build that flier, we have at last, at this tense moment, the power to send such a space-flier out into the void. And I propose that such a space-flier be built with the greatest speed possible and be sent out to Neptune to locate and if possible to destroy the source of the mighty force-ray whose colossal power is spinning our sun ever faster, threatening Earth and most of its sister-planets with a final doom!
"A single space-flier capable of holding three or four men and their equipment and supplies, could be built in a month or more, if all energies were concentrated upon it, and if the great generators of the force-ray which it would need could be constructed in that time. That single flier, when built, should be sent out to Neptune at once! For little enough time remains to us before the break-up of our sun; little more than four months indeed. And that single flier, going out with its occupants at once, could locate the source of the mighty force-ray on Neptune, and if it could not destroy that ray's source, could at least return to Earth with exact knowledge of its position. And in the interval, there could be constructed here on Earth a fleet of such space-fliers, so that with a knowledge of the great ray's source these might be able to destroy it. All depends, however, upon constructing and sending out that first space-flier, while there is yet time!
"It would not be possible to construct a large space-flier in the short time of a month that I have mentioned, but a small one capable of holding four men, say, could be built in that time if all efforts were concentrated upon it. And I myself will be one of those four! For upon disclosing this plan to the World President, I was asked by him to be the commander of such a space-flier on its venture out to Neptune; and I accepted! Another of that four must be Dr. Whitely, whose discovery of the great force-ray from Neptune has shown us whence our doom is coming, and which discovery has alone made such a space-flier possible. It is my intention to take as a third my own assistant, Allen Randall, and as the fourth person to make this momentous voyage it would be best, no doubt, to have some younger member of the Intelligence Bureau, so that a complete report on the great ray's source and on all else encountered could be brought back, in case we were unable to destroy the ray ourselves.