THE TIME MACHINE

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at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these
figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my
head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal
I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine.
But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were
soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

'I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather
of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun
was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that
the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people,
unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin,
forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into
the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze
with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had
suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the
sun was very much hotter than we know it.