WHEN THE SUN WENT OUT

BY LESLIE F. STONE

Science Fiction Series No. 4

Published By
STELLAR PUBLISHING CORPORATION
96-98 PARK PLACE
NEW YORK

The dying Earth lay wrapped in its dismal coat of what was soon to be the complete darkness of a sunless world. Just as she no longer had the Moon, her Lamp of Ages, to light the night skies as she whirled on her course through the limitless ocean of Space, so now she was about to lose the Sun which, after billions of years, was at last burning out. Cold somber darkness of everlasting night was to engulf the eight planets to which old Sol had once given heat and light.

History tells of the Sun in all its glory, of a bright, warm Earth, of joy on the globe. It tells, too, of the moon, a shell set aglow by the sun's rays and reflecting on Earth the beauty of silvery light. But with the light from the sun growing more and more feeble through the preceding thousands of years, the Night's fixture had faded too until now it was no more than a dark body flitting past by day. Only at times during the night did a stray gleam of the sun illuminate, for a fleeting moment, the dead face, as a shadow passing across the white icecapes. Now there were only the stars, distant and aloof, smiling disdainfully upon the senile planet Earth, to light her night and her day too.

In Central City most of the few hundred thousands of people who now comprised the entire world's population had already gathered. The rest were hastening to join the multitude, so that together they might watch the sun in the throes of death. Then would they make their descent to the bowels of the Earth wherein the once proud Earthlings planned to make their last stand against their arch-enemy, Nature.

Kuila Rei was one of the tardy ones. As his name denoted, he was of the race of astronomers. He was the last to leave Mount 83 upon whose summit he and his fellow scientists had for many years kept the Sun under surveillance, publishing their minute calculations as to the hourly condition of the waning star.