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that in itself, told us the Sun had a finite life and must die
("The Custodian" by William Tenn) but not for billions of
years, we believe.
The manner of that death has changed since Helmholtz's
day. For nearly a century, it was taken for granted that the
Sun was, one way or anqther, a huge bonfire that would
flicker, die down and cool. It would take longer for the Sun
to do so than an ordinary bonfire but it was just as inevitable
("Phoenix" by Clark Ashton Smith).
By the 1930s, however Hans A. Bethe and Carl von
Weizsacker had worked out the details of the nuclear fires
of the Sun and it began to seem that our luminary would go
out in a deadly blaze rather than a pitiful flicker ("Run from
the Fire" by Harry Harrison).
Judgement Day
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
Lem Dyer was used to being talked about. For years people
had thought him a bit touched in the head, or a harmless
dreamer, or maybe some kind of soothsayer, and in Glenn
Center when folks thought something they said it. Lem never
minded.
They were saying other things about Mm that evening,
foul, vicious things. Lem heard some of them, spewed up from
the crowd that gathered below his cell window. He tilted the
battered old chair baek against the cement-block wall and
sat there in the dark, puffing slowly on his corncob pipe and
only half listening to the arguments, and the coarse shouts,
and the jeers. "Shucks," he told himself, "They don't mean
nothin' by it."
And after a while he heard the sheriff's booming voice
talking to the crowd, telling the men to go home, telling them
they had -nothing to worry about, and they might as well
leave Lem Dyer alone with his conscience.
"He'll hang at sunrise, just as sure as there'll be a sunrise,"
Sheriff Harbson said. "Now go on home and get to bed. You
don't want to oversleep, do you?"
There was more talk, and then the men drifted away, and
things got quiet, The sheriff came back in the jail and barred
the front door, and Lem heard him talking to the deputies,
allowing that Lem Dyer might or might not be the things
people said he was, but he sure was an odd one.
"Going to hang in the morning," the sheriff said, "and he's
sitting back there in his cell smoking his pipe just like he
always used to do out in his shack, of an evening. To look at
him you'd think nothing had happened or was going to hap-
pen."
Lem chuckled softly to himself. The sheriff was a good
man. He'd gone out of his way to make Lem comfortable and
bring him little things like tobacco and even a drink of whisky
now and then. And when Lem had thanked him, he'd said,
"Hell, I've got to hang you. Isn't that punishment enough?"
Lem puffed contentedly on his pipe and decided he should
do something for the sheriff. But later on, after all this was
over with.
He'd wanted to tell the sheriff that there wouldn't be any
hanging, and he was wasting a lot of money building that
scaffold and getting everything ready. But he couldn't with-
out telling him about the pictures, and the looking and choos-
ing, and he'd never told anyone about that. And perhaps it
was just as well that he hadn't told him, because the scaffold
was in the pictures.
He'd looked at so many pictures it'd given him a headache,
and the scaffold was in all of them, and the people crowding
around it, and Lem Dyer dangling by his neck. And then the
deputy running out of the jail and shouting, stop, the governor
just telephoned, Lem Dyer is granted a reprieve, and the
people laughing at Lem hanging there and shouting back,
cut him down and reprieve him.
It was nice of the governor, Lem thought, to take such an
interest in him, and he'd gone on looking at pictures, trying
to find one where the governor telephoned in time. There was
one where Sheriff Harbson got sick just as he was leading
Lem up to the scaffold, and he lay there on the ground looking
terrible, and Lem didn't like that even if it did hold things
up until the governor telephoned. And there was a picture
where the Glenn Hotel caught on fire, but some people got
hurt, and Lem didn't want that. He'd gone on looking, and
finally he found a picture where the rope broke, or came
untied, and he fell right through the trap to the ground. It
took some time to get things ready again, and the deputy
came out shouting stop before they got Lem back up on the
scaffold. Then the sheriff led Lem back toward the jail, with
all the people following along behind. Lem liked that picture,
and it was the one he chose.
He knew it wouldn't get him out of jail, and he'd have to
look at pictures again. But he wasn't in any hurry. Looking
at pictures made him terribly tired, now that he was getting
old. He didn't like to do it unless he had to.
That was why he'd gotten into trouble. If he'd looked at
pictures he wouldn't have jumped into the river to pull out
the little Olmstead girl, and he wouldn't have carried her
over to Doc Beasley's house, thinking the doctor might be
able to help her, Or he would have made it come out some
other way. But he hadn't looked at pictures, and people had
started talking about haw maybe it was Lem who killed the
little girl, and finally they'd taken him to court and had a
trial.
Even then Lem hadn't looked at pictures. He hadn't done
anything wrong, and he thought he didn't have anything to
worry about. But the jury said he was guilty, and Judge
Wilson said he waa to hang by his neck until he was dead,
and Ted Emmons, who'd grown up to be a lawyer and was
looking after things for Lem,.stopped smiling when he came
to see him.
So Lem had looked at pictures again, and now he'd made
his choice and everything would be all right.
He got up and fumbled in the dark for his can of tobacco.
Suddenly the lights came on in the corridor, and footsteps
shuffled in his direction.
"Visitors, Lem," the sheriff called. He stepped into sight,
keys jangling, and unlocked the cell door.
Reverend Meyers, of the Glenn Center First Baptist
Church, sounded a deep-toned, "Good evening, Lem," gripped
his hand, and then backed off into a corner and fussed with
his hat. District Attorney Whaley nodded jerkily and tried
to grin. He was middle-aged and getting a little fat and bald,
but Lem remembered him as a tough kid stoning rats over
at the town dump. Lem thought maybe he was feelmg a little
proud of the way he talked the jury into finding Lem guilty,
but then that was his job, and the people had elected him
to do it.
Mr. Whaley's grin slipped away, leaving him tight-lipped.
He cleared his throat noisily and said, "Well, Lem, being as
it's the last night, we were that is, I was wondering if
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