"They'll have fifty-six hours," said Keller. The need to communicate clearly made him almost articulate. "Not on the plane of the ecliptic. Their course is along the line of the sun's axis. Meeting, seven times Pluto's distance. Twenty billion miles. Two days and a half. If they miss we'll know."
Holmes growled, "If they miss, what then?"
"I stay here," said Keller, mildly. "I won't outlive everybody. I'd be lonely." Then he gave a quick, embarrassed smile. "Breakfast must be ready. We can do nothing but wait."
But waiting was not easy.
On the first day there came a flood of messages from Earth. Why had they cut off communication? Answer! Answer! Answer! What could be done about the Enemy ships? What could be done to save lives? If a few spaceships could be completed and take off before the solar system shattered, would the asteroid be shattered too? Could a few dozen survivors of Earth hope to make their way to the asteroid and survive there? Should the coming doom be revealed to the world?
The last question showed that the authorities of Earth were rattled. It was not a matter for Burke or Keller or Holmes to decide. They transmitted, in careful code, an exact description of the sending of the globes to try to intercept the Enemy gravity-ships. But it was not possible for people with no experiential knowledge of artificial gravity to believe that anything so massive as a sun could be destroyed by hurling a mere ten-foot missile at it!
Then there came a sudden revulsion of feeling on Earth. The truth was too horrible to believe, so it was resolved not to believe it. And therefore prominent persons broke into public print, denouncing Burke for having predicted the end of the world from his safe refuge in Asteroid M-387. They explained elaborately how he must be not only wrong but maliciously wrong.
But these denunciations were the first knowledge the public had possessed of the thing denounced. Some people instantly panicked because some people infallibly believe the worst, at all times. Some shared the indignation of the eminent characters who denounced Burke. Some were bewildered and many unstable persons vehemently urged everybody to do this or that in order to be saved. Get-rich-artists sold tickets in non-existent spacecraft they claimed had secretly been built in anticipation of the disaster. They would accept only paper currency in small bills. What value paper money would have after the destruction of Earth was not explained, but people paid it. Astronomers swore quite truthfully that no telescope gave any sign of the alleged sun-sized masses en route to destroy Earth. Government officials heroically lied in their throats to reassure the populace because, after all, one didn't want the half-civilized part of educated nations to run mad during Earth's probable last few days.
And Burke and the others looked at the images sent back by the observer-globes traveling with the rest. The cosmos looked to the observer-globes just about the way it did from the fortress. There were innumerable specks of light of innumerable tints and colors. There was darkness. There was cold. And there was emptiness. The globe-fleet drove on away from the sun and from that flat plane near which all the planets revolve. Every second the spheres' pace increased by one mile per second. Ten hours after Keller released them, they had covered five hundred eighty-eight thousand thousand miles and the sun still showed as a perceptible disk. Twenty hours out, the globes had traveled two billion six hundred million miles and the sun was the brightest star the observers could note. Thirty hours out, and the squadron of ten-foot globes had traveled five billion eight hundred thirty-odd million miles and the sun was no longer an outstanding figure in the universe.
Houses looked fine-drawn, now, and Pam was fidgety. Keller appeared to be wholly normal. And Sandy was conspicuously calm.