AT ten o’clock on the following morning the great temple of Aeria was filled by a congregation of men and matrons who had been summoned together to hear what may, without exaggeration, be described as the death-sentence of the world and the funeral oration of the human race.

As had been previously decided by the President and Council, only the heads of families were present. Of these, some had but just welcomed their first-born into the world, while others, standing almost on the brink of the grave, could see their children of the fourth generation growing up from infancy to youth.

When the President commenced his address by reading in solemnly impressive tones the prophecy of Natas, those present knew instinctively what they had been called together to hear. The possibility of the world being overwhelmed by some tremendous catastrophe in the fifth generation from the year of the Peace was no new or unawaited prospect to the Aerians.

Therefore there was no panic, no sudden outburst of sorrow or dismay, among the grave, earnest congregation assembled in the temple when the President, having read the prophecy, went on to say—

“It is now my solemn duty as Chief Magistrate of Aeria to tell you, the heads of the families of our race, that, in the[304] mysterious workings of destiny, which we can only accept with reverence and resignation, the time has come for us to prepare to meet, with the fortitude worthy of our position among the races of mankind, the doom which is as inevitable as it is universal. The confirmation of the prophecy of Natas has come to us across the abysses of space from one of those sister worlds which, as the Master said, should see with fear and trembling the passing of the messenger of Fate.

“On the night of Tuesday last, Vassilis Cosmo received from the planet Mars a photogrammic message, the transcription of which into our language reads thus—

    ‘A cometary body, primarily formed by the meeting of two extinguished astral spheres at 10 hrs. 38 min. 42 sec. on the night of the 13th of October, in the year 1920, terrestrial reckoning, will cross the orbit of the earth at 11 hrs. 55 min. 22 sec. on the night of the 23rd of September next, time corrected to the meridian of Aeria.

    ‘At this hour the earth will arrive at the point of intersection, and will pass obliquely through the central portion or nucleus of the body. This portion is composed of incandescent metallic gases interspersed with semi-fluid masses, which on contact with the earth’s atmosphere will probably be vaporised.

    ‘The constituents of the incandescent nucleus are iron, gold, tellurium, chromium, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, with smaller quantities of many other substances which spectrum analysis will disclose to you on the appearance of the comet which will become visible from Aeria at 8 hrs. 13 min. P.M. on the 15th of July, when its right ascension will be 15 hrs. 24 min. 17 sec, and its declination north 10 deg. 42 min. 17 sec. Here follow the detailed calculations upon which the foregoing conclusions are based.’

“With these calculations,” continued the President, “this is neither the time nor the place to deal, for I know that all here will be satisfied when I say that for the last three days they have been submitted to the critical examination of our best astronomers and mathematicians, and that not the slightest flaw has been found in them.

“This being so, the only course left open to us as reasonable beings is to prepare to look the inevitable in the face, and to play our part in the closing scene of the life-drama of humanity as men and women who believe that the life we are living here is but a stage on our journey through infinity, and that the fiery sign which will soon appear in the heavens will[305] be to us but a beacon light on the ultimate shore of Time casting a guiding ray over the ocean of Eternity.”

He paused for a moment and looked down upon the hushed throng at his feet. The instantaneous silence was broken by a long, low, inarticulate murmur. Thousands of pale faces were upturned towards him, from thousands of eyes there came one appealing upward glance, and then every head in the great assembly was bowed in silence and resignation.

The death-sentence had been passed. There was no appeal from it, and there was no rebellion against it. The voice of Fate had spoken, and it was not for such men as the Aerians to sacrifice their reason or their dignity by cavilling at it.

The President bent his head with the rest, and for several moments there was silence throughout the vast area of the temple. Then he took up from the desk in front of the rostrum the four sheets of parchment which contained the last message and commands of Natas, and read them out to the assembly.

The perusal was listened to in breathless silence. It was like his voice speaking across the generations from the urn containing his ashes and standing there in their midst. When the President had finished, he laid the sheets down again and said—

“Thus the eye of the Master, looking across the years which separated his day from ours, has seen one gleam of light, one ray of hope piercing the black pall of desolation which is about to fall upon the world, and it is for us to follow where he has pointed the way.

“I have now discharged the first part of the solemn and terrible duty which has devolved upon me. It is now for you to communicate the tidings you have heard to your families, a task which, however awful it may be for loving parents to be charged with, you will yet find strength to perform, even as your children shall find strength to hear their inevitable doom from those lips which will best know how to soften the tidings of death to them.

“When you have done this we will set about making the[306] choice of those who, if it shall please the Master of Destiny, shall be the Children of Deliverance and the parents of the new race that shall repeople the earth when cosmos once more succeeds to chaos.

“If that shall be permitted, then we, who shall never see the new world, may yet go down to the grave knowing that we shall live again in our children, for these will be the children, not only of a few families among us, but sons and daughters of Aeria, the most perfect flower of our race, and in them, if we choose them wisely, the world, purged by fire of the dross of human wickedness, will find a new destiny, and the Golden Age shall return to earth once more.”

As the President finished speaking, he held up his hands as though in blessing, and once more every head was bent. Then the great doors of the temple swung open, the assembly divided into four streams, and passed silently as a congregation of shadows out of the building.

That night the story of the world’s approaching doom was told in every home in Aeria. Children on the threshold of youth learnt that for them youth would never come; youths and maidens on the verge of manhood and womanhood learnt that the bright promise of their lives could now never be fulfilled; and lovers just about to join hands for life saw the grave opening at their feet, and parting them in their earthly personalities for ever. That they would meet again upon a higher plane of existence was the first and most firmly held article of their faith, but so far as the affairs of this world were concerned the end was in sight.

In a less highly developed, a less perfectly organised, state of society, the almost immediate result would have been the end of all control, and the dissolution of all but the most elementary bonds of interest or affection that exist between men and men.

But in Aeria this was not possible. The firm belief, ingrained into the very being of all who had reached the age of thought, that where men left off here, whether in good or evil, they would begin their lives again hereafter, precluded[307] even the thought of such a lapse into social anarchy and individual sin.

For, happily for them, the union of true religion with true philosophy had now been accomplished in a national faith, and the result was that even the terrors of the universal end which was so near failed to shake the fortitude that was founded on a basis firmer than that of the world itself.

Though every home in the valley had its tragedy that night, a tragedy too sacred in its unspeakable solemnity for any mere words to describe it, when the next morning came the first bitterness of death had already passed.

Saving only the little children, who, too young to understand, laughed and played and sang in the sunlight as usual, in happy unconsciousness of their coming fate, the dwellers in Aeria rose with the next sunrise from their sleepless couches and went about their daily associations much as they had done the day before.

They did so rather as a matter of routine and discipline than of necessity, for now nothing more was necessary on earth. They had ample supplies of food to last them beyond the time when they would have no more need of it. It was of no use to dress the gardens and vineyards, or to till the fields that would be blasted into wildernesses before the harvest could be reaped.

There was no need to pursue further the triumphs of creative art and science which had transfigured Aeria into a paradise and a fairyland, for in a few weeks all these would be crumbled to dust with their own sepulchres—and yet they took up the work that lay nearest to their hands and went on with it as though they believed that there were still ages of life before humanity, and that the empire of Aeria was to endure for ever.

They knew that in work only lay the refuge from the torment of apprehension which might in the end drive even their highly disciplined minds into the delirium of despair and transform their orderly paradise into a pandemonium of anarchy and terror.

[308]

As soon as the first shock of inevitable horror had passed, as it did during that first terrible night when the death-sentence went from lip to lip throughout the land, their proud spirits rose superior to their physical fears and conquered them, and they resolved that, until the fatal hour came, nothing short of the dissolution of the world should put an end to social order in Aeria.

They were the royal race of earth, and when death came they would meet it crowned and sceptred in the gates of their palaces, and die as men who had solved the secret of life and death and so had no fear.

With the war that was raging beyond their borders they had now no personal concern. The quarrels of men and nations were as the bickerings of children in the presence of the fate that would so soon involve the world in ruin. And yet the rulers of Aeria were not willing that this fate should overtake their fellow-men in the delirium of blood-drunkenness.

They recognised that their duty to the nations bade them send the warning of the world’s approaching fate f............