She was watching Wanno. “Do they . . . do you ever change those measurements?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

“To change a Model is the heresy of Invention.”

That ended that. “My father wanted me to tell you the Shop will be shut tomorrow.”

“Shut? Why’s that?”

“The College has announced there’s a west wind rising, and the Sun may come out tomorrow.”

“Good! A good beginning for the spring, eh? Thanks.” And he turned back to the model.

The Priests of the College had for once been right. Weather prediction, on which they spent most of their waking hours, was a thankless task. But once in ten tries or so they caught a Sun, and this was one of the times. By noon the rains had ceased and the cloud-cover was paling, beginning to boil and flow slowly eastward. By mid-afternoon all the people of Edun were out on the streets and squares, on chimneypots and roof-trees, on the wall and the fields beyond the wall, watching; the Priests of the College had begun their ceremonial dance, bowing and interweaving on the great forecourt of the College; priests stood ready in every temple to pull chains that would open the roofs so that the Sun’s light might strike the altar-stones. And in late afternoon at last the sky opened. Between ragged smoking edges of yellow-grey appeared a streak of blue. A sigh, a soft tremendous murmur rose up from the streets, squares, windows, roofs, walk of the city of Edun: “Heaven, heaven . . .”

The rent in the sky widened. A shower of rain spattered over the city, blown aslant on the fresh wind, and suddenly the raindrops glittered, as at night in torchlight; but this glory they reflected was the glory of the Sun. To westward it stood, all alone in heaven, blinding.

Ganil stood with the others, face lifted. On his face, on the scar of his burn, he felt the heat of the Sun. He stared at it till his eyes swam with tears, the Circle of Fire, the face of God. . . .

“What is the Sun?”

That was Mede’s soft voice, remembered. A cold midwinter night, he and Mede and Yin and the others talking before the fire in Yin’s house. “Is it a circle, or a sphere? Why does it cross the sky? And how big is it—how far away is it? Ah, to think that once all a man had to do to see the Sun was lift up his head. . . .”

Flutes and drums throbbed, a gay faint sound, away off at the College. Sometimes cloud-fragments blew across the intolerable face and the world turned grey and chill again, the flutes stopped; but the west wind blew, the clouds passed and the Sun reappeared, always a little lower. Just before it sank into the heavy cloud-rack in the west it was growing red and one could look at it without pain. In those moments it certainly looked to Ganil’s eyes not like a disk but like an enormous, haze-warped, slowly falling ball.