The Star by H.G. Wells

0:00The Star by HG Wells, an adult brain audiobook production read to you by Graham Dunlop. It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made almost simultaneously from three observatories that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheeled about the sun, had become erratic. Olga V had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest the world, the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune. Nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any great excitement.

1:00Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few people without training in science can realize the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets swims in vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth for light or sound, black emptiness for twenty billion times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the nearest of the stars is attained.

2:00And saving a few comets, more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed the Gulf of space, until early in the twentieth century this wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument as a speck with a barely sensible diameter in the constellation Leo near Regulus, and a little while an opera glass could attain it. From the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. A planetary collision, one London paper headed the news, and proclaimed Duke Kinds' opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune.

3:05The leader writers enlarged upon the topic, so that in most of the capitals of the world on January 3rd there was an expectation, however vague of some eminent phenomenon in the sky, and as the night followed the sunset round the globe thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to sea. The old familiar stars just as they had always been, until it was dawn in London and Pollock's setting, and the stars overhead grown pale. The winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people were a stir. But the yawning policemen saw the thing, the busy crowds in the market stopped the gate, workmen going to their work be times, milkmen, the drivers of new carts, dissipation, going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beets, and in the country

4:07laborers trudging a field, poachers flinking home, all over the dusky, quickening country it would be seen, and out at sea by seaman watching for the day, a great white star comes suddenly into the westward sky. Brighter it was than any star in our skies. Mucher than the evening star at its brightest, it still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light but a small round, clear, shining disc. An hour after the day had come, and where science has not reached men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the heavens, sturdy boars, dusky hotend tots, gold coast, megroves, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, stood in the glow of the sun rise, watching the setting of the strange new star,

5:08and then a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising almost to shouting pigs. As the two remote bodies had rushed together, there had been a hurrying two and fro together photographic apparatus and spectroscope to gather this appliance and that to record the novel astonishing sight, the destruction of a world. For it was a world, a sister planet of our earth far greater than our earth indeed that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death, Neptune it was which had been struck fairly and squarely by the planet from outer space, and the heat of concussion had incontinentally turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. Around the world that day two hours before the dawn went the pallid, great white star, fading only as its sank westward and the sun mounted above it.

6:10Everywhere man marveled at it, but of all those who sought none could have marveled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pygmy moan and climbed zenith word and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. And when next it rose over Europe everywhere where crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house roofs and open spaces staring eastward, waiting for the rising of the new star. It rose with a white glow in front like the glare of a white fire, for those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. In its larger they cried, it is brighter, and indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star.

7:15It is brighter, cried the people clustering in the streets, but in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. It is nearer, they said, nearer, and voice after voice repeated, it is nearer. And the clicking telegraph took that up and it trembled along telephone wires and in a thousand cities grimy compositors figured the type, it is nearer. Men writing in offices struck with strange realization, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words. It is nearer, it hurried along awakening streets, it was shouted down the frost stilled ways of quiet villages, men who had read these things from the throbbing tapes stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passersby.

8:18It is nearer, pretty women flushed and glittering heard the news told gestingly between dances and feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel, nearer, indeed, how curious, how clever people must be to find out things like that. Lonely traps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves, looking skyward. It has to be nearer for the night says cold as charity, don't seem much warmth from it if it is nearer all the same. What is a new star to me, cried the weeping woman kneeling beside her dead? The schoolboy rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for himself, with the great white star shining broad and bright through the frost flowers of his window. Centrifugal centripetal, he said, with his chin on his fist,

9:20stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force, what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun, and this do we come in the way? I wonder, the light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. And it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, rising huge in the sunset hour. In a South African city, a great man had married, and the streets were light to welcome his return with his bride. Even the skies have illuminated, said the flatterer. Under Capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits for love of one another crouched together in a cane break where the fireflies hovered. That is our star, they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliancy of its light.

10:26The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white file, there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long nights. Each day, serene explicit patient, as ever, he had given his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to his momentous calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drug activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought, then he went to the window when the blind went up with a click. Half way up in the sky over the clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city hung the star. He looked at it as one might look into the eye of a brave enemy. You may kill me, he said after a silence, but I can hold you and all the universe for that matter.

11:27In the grip of this little brain, I would not change even now. He looked at the little file. There will be no need of sleep again, he said. The next day at noon, punctual to the minute he entered his lecture theater, but his hat on the end of the table as his habit was and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply, he came and looked under his gray eyebrows at the rising tears of young fresh faces and spoke with his accustomed studied communists of phrasing. Circumstances have arisen. Circumstances beyond my control, he said and paused. Which will debar me from completing the course I had designed.

12:28It would seem gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that man has lived in vain. The students glanced at one another and they heard a right, mad, raised eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained in tent upon his calm, gray, fringed face. Thank you for listening to this sample. To continue listening to this book and for access to all of our other full audiobooks, please subscribe for 777 per month. Go to adultbrain.ca or follow the link in the show notes. This will be a completely separate podcast with a new RSS feed and will have all the titles from this feed as well. Thank you for your help and support in bringing rare and forgotten books to audio for the world.