CHAPTER XXIII

_Doomed Little Planet!_

The last scenes upon the planet Mita, as it was given to me to witness them, were unfolded now beyond this window through which I was gazing. I suppose it took another hour. It might have been far longer.

Tremendous fearsome drama! I saw, far below this window, a toy lake--a scene in miniature of a lake with little green islands. I must have been near the stern of the ship. Looking down, I could see that our tremendous hull was jutting into the air, high above the water. Our growth had pushed us back toward the city at the lakeshore. I saw the city now come into view beneath me.

A brief glimpse. It was full daylight. Our hull was jutting a thousand feet perhaps above the tiny houses. I saw the wrecked and littered streets where the giants had passed.

The glimpse of a minute or two, no more. But what I saw down there is stamped with indelible horror upon my memory. It was a city of wild confusion, black with surging, tiny people, trampling over the dead and dying unheeded. Fires broke out in the shattered buildings. The great black shadow of our looming hull overhead lay for a moment like a finger of death upon the scene. In the gloom down there, the fires showed lurid yellow and red, with black smoke rising in tiny wisps.

A minute, then the scene had dwindled and passed beneath us beyond my sight. Our hull did not touch the city; upon this shrinking little globe--this surface becoming every moment more visibly convex--we were balanced amidships somewhere off in the lake, with the curving world falling away from under our bow and stern.

My window soon was high above a toy landscape of miniature forests and scattered dwellings; and ribbons of roads. There seemed people running along the roads.

A line of mountains showed; the sunset was on them; and to one side I could see a curving ocean. All shrinking--small, but sharp and clear in every detail as though I were gazing through a diminishing glass.

The mountains came down under me. The sunlight faded from them; beyond them I saw the stars.

I heard Togaro give an order. Our ship lifted a trifle and hung poised. The sharply curving landscape lowered. Then, with a gasp I realized how monstrously large we had become. Why this was the top of a little globe beneath me! It was not far away--only a few miles down; but it was so small that I could see all the curve of its upper surface--all the configurations of land and water; and the stars gleaming beyond it. A little ball, hanging here in space close under me. Its entire diameter was not much longer now than the hull-length of our ship.

Another few minutes. The scene from an earthly landscape, was turning celestial. We were in space. Black space, with blazing, glittering stars. Mita's sun was visible--a fiery globe with a vivid corona of mounting flames. Still, close under us, the planet Mita, like a child's ball, hung attached to us by gravitation.

The heavens were visibly rotating. We clung to Mita, so that the rotating planet carried us around. We were a monstrous weight, larger than the planet now, but still gravitationally attached to it. I could fancy the planet lurching. Its axial rotation lurching wildly. Its orbital swing about its little sun suddenly altered.

We rose presently and swung away from Mita. The sun was over my head--I could not see it. But beneath me I saw the planet. A ball--like a ball of steel magnetized, following a monstrous magnet. It followed us. It clung to our giant bulk, with the force of gravity irresistibly drawing it after us.

Now all my vague understanding of Togaro's purpose burst upon me with full realization. We were swooping toward Mita's little sun! A moment, and then the ship echoed with Togaro's vehement commands. We swung away from the sun. With speed and size gigantic, we swooped sidewise and darted away.

My window showed celestial space. But I saw how small it was! Distant tiny stars, all disturbed, chaotic with this giant bulk of our ship come among them! The sun and Mita were close to us, directly before my window. A ball of yellow-red blazing gases, and a little lurching planet!

We had shaken Mita off, flung it like a pitched ball. Upon that side of our hull we were repulsive now to gravity. Mita's orbital revolution about its sun was checked. It staggered--and then began falling.

A slow movement at first. I stared. Then I could see the movement: a crazily spinning little ball, lurching, falling--

Doomed little planet, falling toward its flaming sun!