"Another bolide," answered Barbican, his eye as calm as ever, though a faint tremor was quite perceptible in his voice.
"A bolide? Burning in vacuo ? You are joking!"
"I was never more in earnest," was the President's quiet reply, as he looked through his closed fingers.
He knew exactly what he was saying. The dazzling glitter did not deceive him . Such a meteor seen from the Earth could not appear much brighter than the Full Moon, but here in the midst of the black ether and unsoftened by the veil of the atmosphere, it was absolutely blinding. These wandering bodies carry in themselves the principle of their incandescence. Oxygen is by no means necessary for their combustion. Some of them indeed often take fire as they rush through the layers of our atmosphere,
