Daniel Holcomb! No! he had not come
to the station that evening! No, sorry, but they could not send out
detectives to investigate! "Don't think there's any need of that,
Ma'am," the sergeant finished. "Chances are he met some old pal and went
off for a drink, and just forgot the time."

But Lucile, as she put down the receiver, knew that Dan had not "gone
off for a drink." Realizing that he had not even reached the station,
she understood that her gravest misgivings had been justified. And then
it was that, for the first time, she broke down and wept.

* * * * *

Probably no one who lived through the summer of 1977 will forget the
consternation, the terror that convulsed the planet. It was in late May
when astronomers reported unforeseen perturbations in the earth's orbit;
and by early June it had been officially confirmed that we were off our
proper path in space. At first the variation was slight--a mere few
thousand miles. But with the passage of weeks, our distance from the sun
widened until the earth was off its course by a million, two million,
five million miles!

No hypothesis put forth by science could explain the occurrence. It was
suggested that some dead, dark sun, from the depths of space, had caught
our world in its gravitational pull. But in that case, would it not also
have affected Mars, Jupiter, and the other planets? Yet these, except
for minute variations ascribable to the earth's altered position, were
unaffected!

But few persons, those desperate days, cared much about the theory
behind the event. What concerned them was the peril to their own
existence. Already the disturbances were acute. By mid-July, New York
and London shivered in snow flurries; the frost had ruined agriculture
in half the north temperate regions; while in the Argentine and South
Africa, which were now experiencing their winter, hundreds of thousands
were freezing to death. Meanwhile blizzards and tornadoes swept the
globe; tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions testified to the
upset of the age-old equilibrium; while thunder storms of unexampled
severity, floods, and meteoric displays of a brilliance never known
before, added to the protests of the elements and the terror of the
people.

Long before the summer was over, men began to resign themselves to the
idea that life on earth was near its end. For, not only were we
receiving less solar radiation than formerly, but the years