"It all fits," he said aloud.
"What does?" Theta asked.
"The forest, the dead trees, dead people. Something happened to everything, perhaps all at once. To the defrosters, the heaters, the bins. It must have been in winter. They crept into bed to keep warm, then starved to death. All of them."
"No, no!" Theta cried.
"But it did. And it's beginning to happen to us. Each year something stops working. The time may come when nothing works."
"We can't do anything...."
"Yes, we can."
"What?"
"Find out why—and try to stop it!"