There also existed a vague fear among many that they were not heading directly out of the nova. The shock of the exploding helium tanks had made the proximity detectors perform queer antics. Meanwhile, their speed increased.
The spaceship suddenly shot out of the nova and into the darkness of space.
"We have outsped the nova!" Professor Jameson exclaimed. "Its light has not yet reached this far. We are looking at the sun and at Ajiat as they were just before the nova took place."
Nor did the machine men again see the nova until they were far beyond the doomed system of planets and the estimated limits of the nova's spread.
Each planet, when overtaken, glowed brilliantly. The sun swelled and grew so large that at that far distance they could not bear to look upon it except with veiled lenses.
"The nova is now reaching a point where it overtook us in the spaceship," said the professor.
They watched until they saw the nova reach its maximum proportions. A hotter and more compact globe of gases was spreading gradually from the sun, and the machine men lingered in the vicinity and closely approached the outermost limits of the mammoth spectacle until they saw the inner planets reached by the spreading gases. These, they knew, were in the state of volcanic eruption, their oceans turning to dense, vaporous envelopes.
The light had ended all life in the system, and now the slower moving gases were completing the destruction. They saw smaller satellites of the planets explode into myriad fragments, their lesser bulk lacking the resistance of larger companions. The spectacle was grand—yet terrible.
"Millions of light years away, this astronomic catastrophe will be visible," Professor Jameson philosophized, "and millions of years from now peoples on the planets which will witness it shall look upon a new star swelling into sudden brilliance for a brief period, and they will wonder."