A pale
luminosity dimmed the stars. I did not doubt that, as seen from the
earth, the comet was already flinging the splendors of its train upon
the bosom of the night.
While I was wondering at my immunity amid such a rain of
death-threatening bolts, I became aware that their velocity was sensibly
diminishing. This fact I explained by supposing that I was drawn along
with them. Notwithstanding the absence of any collision with my body,
the overpowering attraction of the whole mass of meteors was overcoming
my tangential force and bearing me in their direction. At first I
rejoiced at this circumstance, for at any rate the comet would save me
from the dreadful fate of becoming an asteroid. A little further
reflection, however, showed me that I had gone from the frying-pan into
the fire. The direction of my expulsion from Menippe had been such that
I had fallen into an orbit that would have carried me around the sun
without passing very close to the solar body. Now, being swept along by
the comet, whose perihelion probably lay in the immediate neighborhood
of the sun, I saw no way of escape from the frightful fate of being
broiled alive. Even where I was, the untempered rays of the sun scorched
me, and I knew that within two or three hundred thousand miles of the
solar surface the heat must be sufficient to melt the hardest rocks. I
was aware that experiments with burning-glasses had sufficiently
demonstrated that fact.
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