Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 1 (1926-07).djvu/122

Rh upon the walk between us, but at the same time I seized a can. As Carl bent to pick up the basket I threw the can with all the strength I possessed full at his head. He crumpled up with a groan and I snatched the precious burden and fled. When I was a block away I looked back and saw him rise and stoop uncertainly. He was picking up the can with which I had hit him. I did not begrudge him the food contained therein. That can had done me more good than it could ever possibly do Carl Hovarder.

The last lap of my journey proved the most tedious, for I was suffering with cold, and depressed at the fate of humanity, but at last I spied the observatory.

grassy knoll upon which this edifice stood had an elevation of about twenty feet and the building itself was not less than forty feet high, so that an observer at the telescope had an unobstructed view of the heavens. The lower floor was equipped as a chemical laboratory, and in its two large rooms college classes had met during the school term in chemistry and astronomy. The second story, I thought, could be used as sleeping quarters for the nine souls who felt certain the observatory would eventually be their mausoleum.

“All in?” I shouted as I ran into the building and slammed the door behind me. How welcome was the warmth that enveloped me!

“Yes, we’re all in, and I suspect you are, too, judging from appearances,” laughed Vera.

I looked from one to another of the little group and somehow I felt that though each tried to smile bravely, grim tragedy was stalking in our midst.

Late in the afternoon I thought of our radio and televisio, and decided to ran over to the house and get them. The streets were deserted and covered with several inches ox snow, and the cold was intenser than I had ever experienced. A few yards from the observatory lay a dark object. I investigated and found it to he a dog frozen as stiff as though carved from wood, and that in a few hours! My lungs were aching now as I looked across the street at our home, and though I wanted the instruments badly I valued life more highly. I turned and retraced my steps to the observatory.

The men were disappointed that we were to be so cut off from communication with the outside world, but the essentials of life were of primary importance. We swallowed our disappointment then and many times in the future when from time to time we missed the luxuries of modern life to which we had been accustomed.

Later, while the children were being put to bed, we men ascended the steps to the telescope room where we gazed ruefully at the diminishing disk of the luminary that had given life to this old Earth of ours for millions of years.

“I suppose that's the way old Sol looked to the Martians before the days of our system’s disruption,” commented Ed with a side glance in my direction.

“The inhabitants of Mars saw a larger orb in their heavens than that,” replied Oscar, adjusting the instrument. “We are well beyond the confines of our solar system. What do you see there, boys?”

We looked alternately through the eyepiece and beheld a bright star slightly smaller than our once glorious sun now appeared to be.

“That is Neptune,” explained Marden, “the outermost planet of the system.”

“So we are entering the unknown! Whither are we bound. Marden?” I