Alex slammed into a worker as he progressed towards Carl's office. He didn't even stop to apologize. He had other thoughts on his mind. If what Rankin had told him was true....

No, he told himself, get that thought out of your mind, Alex. Rankin must've been playing a joke on you.

But he looked damn serious, the other side of his brain spoke.

In less than a minute he would find out the answer. He kept repeating Rankin's words in his mind. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it could be possible. Surely, the world had to end somehow. Why couldn't it be like this? Why couldn't it happen now?

Alex stopped and took a long breath. He had reached Carl's office. He grabbed the handle of the door and turned it with trembling hands.

He entered the room and glanced up to Carl's face.

One look on his face and his fears were confirmed.

But still, with a tiny bit of hope left inside him, he asked the question.

"Rankin told me that...."

"He told the truth, Alex.  We are near the end of the world now; nearer than mankind had ever imagined."

"But it can't happen, can it?"

"Why can't it happen, Alex? You yourself raised the possibility yesterday evening and now you're saying that it can't happen?"

Carl was right. Alex himself had said to him yesterday, "Can't these mysterious forces of attraction hurl Earth out of its orbit, Carl?" But he had been quite casual at that moment. He had not idea that he would turn out to be right.

"We had discovered that there was a change in the power of these forces of attraction. But what we had not discovered was that the attraction is increasing in an order; it becomes two times stronger after every six hours. If it kept on increasing at this rate, these forces would undoubtedly become strong enough to pull Earth out of its orbit."

"And you have no idea what these forces could be?"

"That's something we have not discovered yet. As far as I can tell, Earth is attracted from something far away from here; probably out of the solar system."

"I already know all that. Tell me something I don't know, like how we can fix this. Can't we track down where these attractions are coming from? We could go there and do something."

"The attractions are coming from a long distance. Even if we find it out and go there, what could we do?"

"But we can't just sit like this! We have to do something!"

"If you want to die that way, then that's fine with me. I can arrange a space trip to that place. Find someone who wants to volunteer for this, though I don't think anyone would."

Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He was sure that he could stop the attractions; whatever they were. He was not going to believe that this is the end.