*

After long, long uncounted centuries, a time came when the days grew
noticeably colder. Slowly the winters became longer, and the summers
diminished to but a month or two. Fierce storms raged endlessly in
winter, and in summer sometimes there was severe frost, sometimes there
was only frost. In the high places and in the north and the
sub-equatorial south, the snow came and would not go.

Men died by the thousands in the higher latitudes. New York became,
after awhile, the furthest habitable city north, an arctic city, where
warmth seldom penetrated. And great fields of ice began to make their
way southward, grinding before them the brittle remains of
civilizations, covering over relentlessly all of man's proud work.

Snow appeared in Florida and Italy one summer. In the end, snow was
there always. Men left New York, Chicago, Paris, Yokohama, and
everywhere they traveled by the millions southward, perishing as they
went, pursued by the snow and the cold, and that inevitable field of
ice. They were feeble creatures when the Cold first came upon them, but
I speak in terms of thousands of years; and they turned every weapon of
science to the recovery of their physical power, for they foresaw that
the only chance for survival lay in a hard, strong body. As for me, at
last I had found a use for my few powers, for my physique was the finest
in that world. It was but little comfort, however, for we were all
united in our awful fear of that Cold and that grinding field of Ice.
All the great cities were deserted. We would catch silent, fearful
glimpses of them as we sped on in our machines over the snow--great
hungry, haggard skeletons of cities, shrouded in banks of snow, snow
that the wind rustled through desolate streets where the cream of human
life once had passed in calm security. Yet still the Ice pursued. For
men had forgotten about that Last Ice Age when they ceased to reckon
time, when they lost sight of the future and steeped themselves in
memories. They had not remembered that a time must come when Ice would
lie white and smooth over all the earth, when the sun would shine
bleakly between unending intervals of dim, twilight snow and sleet.

Slowly the Ice pursued us down the earth, until all the feeble remains
of civilization were gathered in Egypt and India and South America. The
deserts flowered again, but the frost would come always to bite the tiny
crops. For still the Ice came. All the world now, but for a