200 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



respondingly toward the distant stationary one? And 

 when, finally, the moving body comes close up, while the 

 other continues still as distant as ever, don't you know, 

 as well as you can reason yourself to any knowledge, 

 that the tube will stand altogether erect, as did the sol- 

 dered cubes? 



But our picture is not yet complete, for if we do not 

 speedily find some way to support the tube against the 

 major attraction, there will presently be a collision and 

 the contents of our vessel will be ingloriously spilled. 

 For this sustaining purpose, let us invoke the vortical 

 suction of the Prime Kesultant, and, incidentally, let the 

 sun's powerful attraction supply the place of the proxi- 

 mate body. Then we shall have the odd spectacle of a 

 great long rod circling the sun veritably a visualized 

 vector. Alas for our oddly constructed planet! In 

 nearing perihelion, the sun's heat has proved too much 

 for it; the mercury, indeed, has weathered the test, but 

 the water and benzol have evaporated and, expanding, 

 burst the tube and behold a comet ! 



In the next chapter I shall explain how the real 

 comets are formed by the explosion of neighboring stars 

 spraying their molten materials in all directions, some 

 of them toward us. One such big spray, being hurled 

 with great force, quickly finds itself in a region of in- 

 tense cold, where its globules soon congeal, sealing within 

 their chilled exteriors all sorts of stellar gases cooled 

 down to inaction. Continuing onward in our direction, 

 at high velocity, the comet, once fairly caught in our 

 systemal vortex, acquires an orbit, necessarily greatly 

 elongated, but varying in inclination and direction of 

 motion according to the angle at which it made its entry. 



During transit from its old home to its new, a jour- 

 ney which consumes literally thousands of years, the com- 

 et (because its motion is one of explosive and not gravita- 

 tional origin) soon finds itself so far away from strong 

 rival attractions that it is able to make its integral at- 

 traction among its scattered parts dominantly felt, and, 

 eventually, though its aggregate mass be slight, to con- 



