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a thick, greenish-black juice gushed from the stump, distorted as if in the
ghastliest pain.
Here was one of the monster beasts with countless arms, seized by a tree and
seeking in vain with desperate contortions to free itself from the fatal
embrace: it was squeezed, strangled, and crushed into a shapeless mass.
And then slender vermin shot up out of the morass, sailed through the air, and
bored through the body of a no less repulsive beast, finally to vanish
completely into its bulk,
there to commence on its entrails its ghastly work of destruction.
It was blood-curdling to watch such a monster-beast, itself gruesome in
appearance, leaping about in terrific pain, to see it writhe madly and finally
collapse in the throes of death, while its shapelessly swollen bulk suddenly
burst open and revealed a mass of serpentine vermin which had devoured its
still living body from within.
Then the livid flames shot up again through these teeming masses, singeing and
devouring the bodies which vainly sought to escape: even these infernal
fire-serpents seemed to be alive and to pursue their victims with
bloodthirstiness.
Heliastra was deathly pale and filled with horror: "Is this what the earth
looks like?" she asked uneasily.
"No," Hank consoled her. "This ghastly spectacle fills us also with a horror
we have never known before!"
"Yes," the Professor reassured her. "Even scientific investigation revolts
here and turns away in disgust. This is a realm of darkness in the fullest
sense of the word, and I propose to give it the name 'Sheol,' as the Hebrews
called their inferno."
"It is enough," said Flitmore. "Rather into the eternal night of solitary
space than watch such a spectacle any longer!"
And he switched the centrifugal power on at full force.
L THE END OF A WORLD
IF I may permit myself to make an observation on my own account," began John,
as the
Sannah started to move away from the appalling planet, "I see there another
dark sphere coming our way, plunging down, so to speak." "That might become
dangerous to us," cried Schulze, looking out in the direction indicated by
John. "A collision actually seems to impend between two enormous bodies. I
judge Sheol to be ten times the size of the earth, and the body
plunging down upon it at such a furious speed seems to be almost as large."
Lord Flitmore spoke not a word, but switched the parallel power on at full
force and the
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Sanndh moved away from the threatened spot with the velocity of light.
Suddenly everything became glaringly bright; a light, like that of ten suns,
filled the room with blinding rays: the two spheres had crashed against each
other and in less than a second they had fused into a glowing white mass from
which flaming pieces were flung in all directions while tongues of flame,
millions of miles high, shot out into space.
All life, with its dreadful struggles, must have been wiped out on Sheol in a
flash; but the occupants of the
Sannah were threatened with the same fate; the World-Ship was bathed in
glowing gases, a tongue of flame had reached her;
at the same time, however, she was flung ahead at a speed
which surpassed anything she had hitherto been able to achieve.
The craft was shaken from one end to the other, and for a
time they all lay unconscious, suddenly thrown to the floor. Only Heliastra
floated lightly above the floor and now helped the others to their feet.
A terrific crash and the rolling of thunder was heard. Once more the
Sanndh quivered in every part, shaken by exploded world-matter. A terrific
heat developed in the An-tipode room and all fled for dear life to the
innermost chambers of the craft.
Here they could still stand it and the unimaginable fury with which the
World-Ship was flung forward by the repulsion of collided planets soon brought
her outside the range of the fiery tongues, so that she gradually cooled down
again without having suffered serious damage. For this they had Gabokol to
thank, who had covered the casing with his protective material.
"We have seen the end of a world," said Flitmore finally, "and it is far from
a rare occurrence."
"To be sure," Schulze corroborated him. "Ever since the fixed stars have been
studied closely and we have learned to look for such manifestations, we have
observed the birth of new stars.
"Characteristic of this phenomenon is the Nova Persei, that is, the new star
which flashed up in 1901 in the constellation of Perseus. At first, it
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