ically at the
switches on the wall-plate until door and window were gone, and only
the cabin's soft illumination was around him again. Then he crouched
on the floor, his back against the wall, shaking with a terror he
could hardly have imagined before.

He knew what the catch was now. He had understood it completely in the
instant of glancing up and seeing that tiny brilliant blue-white point
of light glare down at him through the incandescent cloud layers
above. Like a blazing, incredibly horrible insect eye....

_This_ world's sun.

THE END OF YEAR ONE

Barney Chard came up out of an uneasy sleep to the sudden sharp
awareness that something was wrong. For some seconds he lay staring
about the unlit cabin, mouth dry, heart hammering with apprehension.
Then he discovered it was only that he had left the exit door open and
the window switched on.... Only? This was the first time since they
had left him here that he had gone to sleep without sealing the cabin
first--even when blind drunk, really embalmed.

He thought of climbing out of bed and taking care of it now, but
decided to let the thing ride. After all he knew there was nothing in
the valley--nothing, in fact, on this world--of which he had a
realistic reason to be afraid. And he felt dead tired. Weak and sick.
Feeling like that no longer alarmed him as it had done at first; it
was a simple physical fact. The sheet under him was wet with sweat,
though it was no more than comfortably warm in the room. The cabin
never became more than comfortably warm. Barney lay back again, trying
to figure out how it had happened he had forgotten about the window
and the door.

It had been night for quite a while when he went to sleep, but
regardless of how long he'd slept, it was going to go on being night a
good deal longer. The last time he had bothered to check--which,
Barney decided on reflection, might be several months ago now--the
sunless period had continued for better than fifty-six hours. Not
long before dropping on the bed, he was standing in front of the big
clock while the minute hand on the hour dial slid up to the point
which marked the end of the first year in Earth time he had spent in
the cabin. Watching it happen, he was suddenly overwhelmed again by
the enormity of his solitude, and it looked as if it were going to
turn into another of those periods when he sat with the gun in his
hand, sobbing and swearing in a violent muddle of self-pity and