At two in the afternoon, the enemy appeared. Enveloped in a halo of smoke, the flaming sphere moved along the shore of the Vistula, setting the forests of Belian and Mlotzin on fire. The chain of batteries, lined up in front of the fortress, was broken up in twenty minutes, the arsenal was blown to pieces and ten minutes later the sphere burst into the streets of the city. The bells were silenced, the procession was dispersed in panic, fright and horror. Cries of despair, the hissing of the flames, the crackling of breaking glass and the roar of falling walls signified the course of flight of the atomic vortex. A quarter of an hour later, having laid waste the New World and Lazenki, it disappeared in the direction of Mokotow; behind it the vast city roared and sighed in smoke and flame.

The burning of Warsaw served as an impetus to force the other nations to join the movement sponsored by Germany. Fervidly interested became the world’s greatest scientists, such as Rutherford, Bohr, Aston and many others. Laboratories worked day and night; lathes and machines roared full-throatedly in the ironworks; metal grated against metal and one after another there appeared upon the Earth iron and brass giants that were to combat the inexorable foe.

Toward the end of the week, Deriugin was commissioned to Paris to set aside all the difficulties that impeded the work in the Creusot ironworks. From there he was- supposed to go to Genoa, where the works of Italy were concentrated. The flaming sphere, meanwhile, continued its course over Europe, leaving in its wake fires, devastation and thousands of victims. Passing Warsaw, it set fire to Kovel and then disappeared for some time in the marshes of Poliesie. Thence it moved southward, flying between Kiev and Zhitomir and wiping Ouman completely off the map, it descended over the river Boog, then brushing by the eastern outskirts of Nikolaev, it wended its course over the Black Sea.

The destruction caused by it began to assume actual cosmic dimensions. Aside from the fires and victims, now it bore with it new calamities. Dreadful thunderstorms and hurricanes of unusual proportions — similar to tropical showers — were descending from the atmosphere which was pregnant with vapors from the rivers, lakes and seas, caused by the immense heat that had been radiating from the destroying globe.

Passing through the Balkan Peninsula and inflicting great damage and suffering on Belgrade, the fiery vortex, by way of Tyrol and Baxaria, entered France, and devastating the north-eastern comer, disappeared into the ocean. At this point, between Cologne and Paris, it was met by Eitel Flinder.