“Comet,” said Bettsack, and sank down about Trumpel-man’s ankles.

The exhausted children saw the old man in tatters; they wobbled to a halt. Mann Lifshits, whose heavy cabbage represented Jupiter, simply dropped, as did his eleven moons. One by one the others collapsed. They lay on their backs, with their coats spread, their breath coming up in a mist. Only the man from Vilna, for all his scratches and bruises, remained on his feet. Then he sat down, too. Tushnet caught his breath before anyone else and addressed the schoolmaster.

“Sir, what will happen when the sun goes out?” He was some way off, but it was so still you could easily hear him.

Bettsack said, “What do you mean, Tushnet? It goes down. It does not go out.”

“I mean, when it burns up. Will we burn up, too?”

A high voice broke in. “It can’t just go on forever. Sometime it has to run out of fuel.”

“That is only a theory, Flicker. It has not been proved.”

“But what if it’s true? What then? Everything will be dark. It makes me nervous.” That was Rose Atlas.

“I don’t think it will burn up,” said Mann Lifshits, from his spot on the ground. “It’ll just get colder and colder. Everything on earth will get colder, too. It will be like the ice age. Nothing but ice.”

“But it scares me,” Rose replied.

“Listen,” said Bettsack. “This is speculation. In any case, it won’t happen for thousands of years.”

“See? You said it was going to happen! It’s going to happen!”

“We’ll all be frozen to death!”

“Please!” their instructor said. “Why do you worry? In a thousand years none of us will be alive.”

“I don’t care! I don’t want it to go out! I hate the idea of the cold!”

“I do, too!”

“No one alive! No one! There won’t even be animals on the earth. It’s terrible!”

“Don’t talk about it! Don’t think about it!”

The children began to whimper and moan. So Bettsack spoke in a loud, firm voice. “Pay attention, if you please. The sun is not going to stop burning. It is made in a certain way. And even if it should go out after all, by then men will have invented spaceships, and they will fly off to live somewhere else. To other planets, to other worlds. There is nothing that science cannot achieve. Perhaps in the universe we shall meet other forms of life. Perhaps even people just like ourselves. Think of that! What a wonderful day that will be! How much we shall learn!”

The moaning had completely stopped. Everything was quiet. Then, so that everyone’s heart leaped and pounded, there was an awful wail from Leibel Shifter. “Help! I’m so far away! Help! I’m afraid!”

Trumpelman, sitting upright, answered. “Come. All of you. Come closer.”

Silently, on all fours, the boys and girls began to crawl toward the center. They drew near to Trumpelman, who, through his swollen eyes, his single lens, was staring off to the west. They looked, too.