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Hinez, however, did not rest; like a poisoned beast he ran from one City Office to the other; he rushed to the Council of professors, to editorial offices, everywhere insisting, demanding, himself not knowing what. Nobody wanted to listen to him; they shrugged their shoulders and smiled in his face. Two — three professors of the Institute, indeed, shared his alarm and were certain that the affair was not yet finished. But not one was willing to stake his reputation or risk falling into a ridiculous position, if the whole affair should perchance turn out to be a false alarm.

Deriugin did not show himself anywhere. He had apparently forgotten about the dreadful occurrence, while he worked continuously and feverishly over some research work in the laboratory of the Institute. He hadn’t even shown up at the professor’s funeral, at which all the flower of the scientific world of Berlin and Germany had gathered. So completely absorbed was he in his work.

For all that, Eitel had played a conspicuous part on that day, and strange it was to see his bright uniform in the background of black frocks of the professors and their colleagues. Here, for the first time, since that significant day, young Flinder met Hinez, now an absent- minded, ill and irresponsible person.

Eitel could not, for some time, explain to himself the meaning of the fantastic tales the young engineer had been telling him.

“You mean to say, that the air is burning over there?” he queried, bewildered, wiping his forehead.

“Not burning,” nervously replied Hinez, twitching and twisting, as if on springs, “not burning, but destroying itself. Its atoms, broken up and exploded into their infinitesimally small bulkiness by your father, are drifting with their fragments, with such rapidity, that they are gradually destroying the neighboring atoms, thereby freeing the dormant energy that is hidden within them; they, scattered into hundreds of fragments, in their turn destroy new layers of gas, thus, a terrific gangrene is gradually hemming in more and more volumes of ether…”

“Does this presage anything serious?” asked Eitel confusedly.

“This presages a world conflagration!”

"But isn’t it possible to stop that wandering sphere, somehow? Extinguish its growing flame, or — whatever you call it?”

“That’s just where the fear lies — it is impossible, absolutely impossible, at least, in the present state of science. This process is homogeneous with the phenomenon of radioactivity and upon them we can exert no influence whatever. They are absolutely beyond our control.”

The poor brain of the soldier was tangled hopelessly in the wild perspectives.

Hinez was right. On the same day, Friday evening, the first news was received from the east about the appearance of a large exhibition of ball lightning and, as described by an eyewitness, it moved in a direction towards the Polish border. The phenomenon resembled a fiery ball, five feet in diameter; it flew slowly with the wind, close to the ground. At night it emitted a dazzling bright radiance; in the daytime, it seemed like an incandescent flaming cloud. The nature of the strange appearance, doubtless, was electrical. Upon its approach, the work of the telephone and telegraph stations ceased completely; in places of weak insulation and upon the apparatus, sparks poured down in showerlike fashion; compass needles turned in all directions, as in time of severe magnetic storms.

In general, it was very difficult to pass any judgment upon the details, but from the information thus far received, it was deducible that a danger of an unknown nature was actually threatening. The path of the sphere’s movement was a streak of growing destruction. Fields and meadows stretched in wide burned- down ribbons; wherever it encountered forests, fires flashed up and long red flames rose high into the sky. Several villages were completely wiped out.

To keep silent and conceal the truth was impossible. The Sunday newspapers were filled with alarming dispatches, articles and questions addressed to the scientific societies and individual specialists working in the fields of electro-chemistry and radioactivity.