After spending more than ten minutes on the Neutron Star, Thanos found it boring.
There was nothing there. Apart from a faint glow, all he could see was an unbroken expanse of white.
And without a core, he couldn't absorb any energy from it.
After a moment's thought, he dug up a chunk of the Neutron Star's matter and flew away.
If the Neutron Star's core held no energy, he would have to try its matter instead.
After all, legend told of an incredibly powerful Droplet warship made from Neutron Star matter. He wanted to see for himself.
But as he flew away, the matter in his hand continued to expand.
It quickly grew from the size of a fist to the size of a hill, then to the size of Blue Star.
As its volume increased, so did the Neutron Star's gravitational pull on it. Before long, it weighed hundreds of octillions of tons, more than even he could comfortably bear.
The farther he went, the larger and heavier it grew.
In the end, he had no choice but to pull back some of his energy and shoot through the now Jupiter-sized mass like a cannonball.
He held on to a portion of the Neutron Star matter and kept flying.
The matter no longer supported by his energy was immediately pulled back toward the Neutron Star and fell away behind him.
Soon, the Neutron Star absorbed it. It became part of the star again and vanished without a trace.
The matter in his hand was still expanding, swelling from palm-sized to the size of a hill once more.
By then, Thanos understood.
The matter in his hand was now about as dense as ordinary matter. It was nothing more than common minerals found throughout the universe.
So he let