chunk: Beenay, through his friend Theremon 762, a reporter, has learned some of the beliefs of the group known as the Cult ("Apostles of Flame" in the novel). They believe the world would be destroyed in a darkness with the appearance of stars that unleash a torrent of fire. Beenay combines what he has learned about the repetitive collapses at the archaeological site, and the new theory of potential eclipses; he concludes that once every 2049 years, the one sun otherwise visible is eclipsed, resulting in a brief "night". His theory is that this "night" was so horrifying to the people who experienced it, they desperately sought out any light source to try to drive it away: particularly, by frantically starting fires which burned down and destroyed their successive civilizations. He also postulates that the "Apostles of the Flame" started out as vague surviving legends and myths after the last eclipse: small children too young to understand what was happening did not go insane but grew up