Suddenly we saw the katonator-beams strike.
Above us a new sun blazed forth, kindling like the striking of a cosmic match. Night fled around us, and day came flaring up into noonday brilliance, and beyond. Heat poured down upon us, brilliant rays of sunlight more intense than I had ever seen. The dome behind me sparkled and glistened in the incredible radiations from the stricken planet millions of miles away, and for a moment I could almost feel the fierce actinic waves of ultraviolet, cosmics and a thousand other super-spectral radiations.
Then the peak was reached, and the light began to fade as all the hydrogen was transmuted and consumed. In a moment the flare of energies was gone, and the pale blue planet had become a glowing orange coal.
-We had seen a billion persons dying in a planetary suttee.
+We had seen a billion persons dying in a planetary sati.
The vastness of the dead stunned me. I found that I was sobbing, almost weeping as I felt myself stained with a cosmic guilt.
The officer who had destroyed a billion lives glanced at me in full understanding of what he had done. He placed a hand on my shoulder, strangely comforting.
“It couldn’t be helped,” he said in a voice that surged with emotion.