"If anything went wrong, and your engine ran down, or something happened to your machinery, you might find yourself caught between the gravitation of the moon and of the earth and whirling round and round forever through the universe."
"That would be a new kind of immortality, wouldn't it?" he remarked whimsically.
There was soon no doubt regarding Thornton's prediction. Careful observation, supplemented by independent calculations, demonstrated beyond peradventure that the asteroid Medusa would certainly pass through the head of the comet, which now blazed nightly in the sky like the beam of a huge search-light. Never had such a meteor been known before, for it surpassed in brilliancy and size the famous comet of 1811. All night long the streets of every American city were filled with crowds of people watching the huge fire-ball, the diameter of which appeared to the terrestrial observer to be nearly half that of the moon itself. From the dawn of time these dragons of the sky have caused consternation in the hearts, not only of the ignorant savage but in those of the half-civilized as well, and even among the educated classes there still lingers some echo of that fear, inherited through millions of generations of men, who, from the birth of the race, have sought to read upon the scroll of the heavens the tracings of the hand of Fate. And so the boulevards of the capital swarmed with thousands of people, who gazed in silence at this monster of the sky. Unlike the Chinese, who endeavor to scare away such celestial demons by exploding firecrackers and making all the noise humanly possible, these Occidental multitudes viewed the comet in solemn if not religious awe, realizing poignantly, for the first time, that our universe is not protected from attack by wandering celestial bodies. Had a hostile Zeppelin appeared upon the horizon, a fleet of aeroplanes would have instantly arisen to meet and destroy it. But no known human agency existed which could go forth to challenge and possibly vanquish a fire-monster appearing thus malevolently out of the infinity of space. The man in the street walked with his nose pointing to the midnight zenith, and next morning complained at breakfast of having a most unaccountable "crick" in his neck; but the crowd was still save for the new boys, who ran hither and thither shouting shrilly: "Extree! Extree! All about the comic!"