rom now that Dipper will be perceptibly altered, for we know the
lateral movement of Dubhe and Benetnasch will give the outer line of
the bowl a greater flare and make the crook of the handle a trifle
sharper. Even a thousand years would show change enough for
instruments to detect. And a million years will probably show the
group pretty well broken up. But the one regrettable feature, of
course, is that we will not be here to see it."

"Where will we be?" I asked Gershom.

"I don't know," he finally admitted, after an unexpectedly long
silence.

"But will it all go on, forever and forever and forever?"

"To do so is not in the nature of things," was Gershom's quiet-toned
reply. "It is the destiny of our own earth, of course, which most
interests us. And however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomy
one. Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established that its
temperature is going down one and a half degrees every thousand years.
Or its volcanic elevating forces may give out, so that the land will
subside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. Or a comet may
wipe up its atmosphere, the same as one sponge-sweep wipes up moisture
from a slate. Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our race
will stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere on the Equator. Or
as our sun rushes toward Lyra, it may bump into a derelict sun, just
as a ship bumps into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun,
astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before the collision.
For five or six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, so
that the race, or what remained of the race, would have plenty of time
to think things over and put its house in order. Then, of course, we'd
go up like a singed feather. And there'd be no more breakfasts to
worry over, and no more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires to
start in the morning, and no more children to make think you know more
than you really do, and not even any more hearts to ache. There would
be just Emptiness, just voiceless and never-ending Nothingness!"

Gershom stopped speaking and sat staring up at Orion. Then he turned
and looked at me.

"What's the matter?" he asked, for he must have felt my shiver under
the robe.

"Nothing," I said in a thin and pallid voice. "Only I think I'll go
back to the house. And I'm going to make a pot of good hot cocoa!" ...
And that's mostly what life is: making little pots of cocoa to keep
our bodies warm