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pers. It said they were thousands of times more powerful than the atom-bombs they used to have. If one of them hit any place there wouldn't be anything left of it." His voice was getting stronger. He was convincing himself. "So no super-atomic bomb could have hit us. It couldn't have been that."

"You saw that terrific flash in the sky, didn't you?" said Kenniston.

"Sure I did, but--" And then the policeman's face cleared. "Say, it was a fizzle. That's what it was. This super-atomic bomb they've been scaring the world with-- it turned out to be just a fizzle." He laughed noisily, in vast relief. "Isn't that rich? They tell for years what terrible things it's going to do, and then it just makes a big fizz and flash like a bad Fourth of July firecracker!"

It could be true, Kenniston thought with a wild surge of hope. It could be true.

And then he looked up and saw the Sun.

"It was maybe a bluff, all the time," the policeman's voice rattled on. "They maybe didn't really have any super-atomic bomb at all."

Kenniston, without lowering his gaze, spoke in a dry whisper. "They had them, all right. And they used one on us. And I think we're dead and don't know it yet We don't know yet that we're only ghosts and not living on Earth any more."

"Not on Earth?" said the policeman angrily. "Now, listen--"

And then his voice trailed away to silence as he followed Kenniston's staring gaze and looked up at the Sun.

It wasn't the Sun. Not the Sun they and all the generations of men had known as a golden, dazzling orb. They could look right at this Sun, without blinking. They could stare at it steadily, for it was no more than a very big, dull-glowing red ball with tiny flames writhing around its edges. It was higher in the sky now than it had been before. And the air was cold. "It's in the wrong place," said the policeman. "And it looks different." He groped in half-forgotten high-school science for an explanation. "Refraction. Dust that that fizzle-bomb stirred up--" < previous  next >