midnight
Nevia , the home planet of the marauding space-ship , would have appeared peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses . High in the deep red heavens a fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon a world of water . Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky , and through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon -- a horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are accustomed -- with a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra 's dust-filled air . As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and steadily until midnight . Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as they had come into being , the torrential downpour would cease , and through that huge world 's wonderfully transparent gaseous envelope the full glory of the firmament would be revealed . Not the firmament as we know it -- for that hot blue sun and Nevia , her one planet-child , were light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood -- but a strange and glorious firmament containing few constellations familiar to Earthly eyes . Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void -- the vessel that was to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of Triplanetary and Roger 's planetoid -- plunged into the rarefied outer atmosphere , and crimson beams of force tore shriekingly through the thin air as it braked its terrific speed .