In the year 2144, a group of four friends who call themselves the Honorable Society of Ananias meet for lunch once a month, during which one of the members tells a story.
The story Hayes weaves involves complex astronomical observations and theories, and at the end of the tale, he hands around pieces of exposed film-negative, through which the members gaze into the sky and see - or think they see - a small dark spot against the sun.
He calmly announces the destruction, first of Mercury, then of Venus, and finally counts down the last thirty seconds to the end of the Earth.
When the Earth is not destroyed, Hayes theorizes that this is because the Sun is like a cadmium nucleus among the uranium nuclei of other stars—able to absorb the super-neutron without undergoing fission.
Out of sheer relief, the members vote him in as Perpetual President of the Society, but the narrator has misgivings.