before he repeated:

"Imprisonment for life!--and you didn't know that you were sentencing
yourself. For you're staying too, Schwartzmann, you contemptible,
thieving dog! You're staying with us--here--on the Dark Moon!"

(_To be continued._)

If The Sun Died

_By R. F. Starzl_

[Illustration: Crack! Again Mich'l's fist caught him.]

[Sidenote: Tens of millenniums after the Death of the Sun there comes
a young man who dares to open the Frozen Gate of Subterranea.]

By our system of time we would have called it around 65,000 A. D., but
in this cavern world, miles below the long-forgotten surface of the
earth, it was 49,889. Since the Death of the Sun. That legendary sun
was but a dim racial memory, but the 24-hour day, based on its
illusory travel across the sky, was still maintained by uranium
clocks, by which the myriads who dwelt in the galleries and maze of
the under-world warrens regulated their lives.

In the office of the nation's central electro-plant sat a young man.
He was unoccupied at the moment. He was an example of the marvelously
slow process of evolution, for, to all outward appearances he differed
little from a Twentieth Century man. Keen intelligence sat on his
fine-cut, kindly young face. In general build he was lighter, more
refined than a man of the past. Yet even the long, delicately colored
robe of mineral silk which he wore could not detract from his obvious
virility and strength.

His face flashed in a smile when a girl suddenly appeared in the
middle of the room, materializing, so it seemed, out of nowhere. She
resembled him to some extent, except that she was exquisitely
feminine, dark-haired, with a skin of warm ivory, while he was blond
and ruddy. Her tinkling, silvery voice was troubled as she asked:

"Have I your leave to stay, Mich'l Ares?"

The look of adoration he gave her was answer enough, but he answered
with the conventional formula, "It is given." He rose to his feet,
walked right through the seemingly solid vision and made an adjustment
on a bank of dials. Then he walked through the apparition again and,
standing beside his chair, looked at her inquiringly.

"You haven't forgotten, Mich'l, this is the day of the Referendum?"

Mich'l smiled slightly. It would be a day of confusion in Subterranea
if he should forget. As chief of the technies he was in direct charge
of the tabulating machines that would, a few seconds after the vote,
give the result in the matte