Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 1 (1926-07).djvu/125

124 been overcome by the intensity of the cold, during his labors for his fellow-men. The last overwhelming cold had descended so swiftly that many had been unable to reach shelter in time.

Next came the sad task of burying our dead. Prompt action was necessary, for the ever growing disk of the great sun hastened the process of decay. The simplest of ceremonies were all that could be employed by men and women struggling to return the living world to pre-catastrophic normality.

The sun grew terrible to behold, as large in diameter as our old sun. Still it seemed good to be once more in the open! The children scampered about and Ed and I had a race to the square and back. Scorch to death we might in a very short time, but it was certainly a pleasant thing to spend a few days in this solar glow which we had been denied so long.

Came a time when we could no longer be ignorant of the fact that it was growing uncomfortably warm. Finally we decided to do as everyone else was doing; pack up our earthly possessions and move to a part of the Earth's surface where the heat was not so direct.

Ed came over, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

"You folks about ready?" he queried. "We're all packed up. The Mardens are going in our car."

I walked to the door and gazed across the seared landscape toward the mammoth fiery orb. Suddenly I gave a startled cry. The new sun was not in its accustomed place in the heavens. It was several degrees lower down, and to the east!

"Look!" I cried, pointing with trembling finger. "My God—do you see?"

I think Ed concluded I had gone insane, but he followed the direction of my gaze.

"Jim, old fellow, you're right," he ejaculated, "as sure as Mars was farther from the sun than we were, that sun is setting, which means"

"That we are rotating on our axis and probably revolving around the new sun," I finished triumphantly. "But we are turning from east to west instead of from west to east as formerly. If the whole world wasn't temperate nowadays I should think I had been imbibing some of the poisonous drink of our ancestors!"

HAT evening the townspeople who had not already migrated to cooler regions, held a jubilee in Central Park Square. The principal speaker of the evening was Oscar Marden, who explained to the people what capers our planet had been cutting during the past three years. After his address I noticed that he kept gazing skyward as if unable to bring his attention to Earth.

"Say, will you come to the observatory with me now?" he asked as I was talking to a group of friends shortly afterward.

"I'll be right along," I replied. Scarcely half a block away we saw Ed Zutell going in the general direction of home.

"Do we want him?" I asked, not a little annoyed. "Can't we beat it up an alley? I'd like this conference alone, for I know by your manner you have something important to tell me."

"In the last part of what you say you are right," responded Marden, "but in the first part, wrong. I do want Ed, for I have something to show him, too."

When the three of us were again in the familiar setting of the past three years, Marden gazed for quite some time at the heavens through the great instrument. Finally he turned