A Pail of Air

Infobox short story
name = A Pail of Air
title_orig =
translator =
author = Fritz Leiber
country = flag|USA
language = English
series =
genre = Science fiction short story
released_in = Galaxy Magazine
publisher = Galaxy Publishing
media_type = Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
release_date = December 1951
english_release_date =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

A Pail of Air is a science fiction short story by Fritz Leiber which appeared in the December 1951 issue of "Galaxy Magazine" and aired on the radio show "X Minus One" in March 1956.

Plot

A pail of air is about a family struggling to survive after the earth has been torn from the sun by a dead star.It is narrated by their ten year old son. It begins as the son is outside getting a pail of air. All of a sudden he sees a light in the window in the building next door. He quickly fills the pail and hurries inside. After he tells his dad the two go out side and look around. After seeing nothing they go inside and his dad jokes around about it. After a while the two children ask their dad to tell them how the earth got ripped from the sun. Apparently they saw the dark star approach from space and tried to keep it from the public but soon earthquakes and floods start and he and his scientist friends build this airtight building with insulation and airtight doors plus food and bottled air. He then says how the last of the earthquakes destroyed it and killed all his friends. So he rushed in an attempt to turn his living room into a survival place to live. He hung blankets and rugs to slow the air and layered the outside of the first layer of blankets with tin foil to keep in the heat. He also states how the earth is further than Pluto from the sun.

At the end, they are found by a search party from a large group of survivors at Los Alamos, where they are using nuclear power to provide heat and have begun using rockets to go out in search of other survivors (radio being ineffective at long range without an atmosphere). They reveal that other groups of humans had survived at Argonne, Brookhaven, Harwell and Tanna Tuva, and that plans are being made to establish uranium mining colonies at Great Slave Lake and in the Congo.

ee also

* Rogue planet

External links

*
* [http://www.archive.org/download/XMinus1_A/xminusone_560328_APailOfAir.mp3 Listen to "A Pail of Air"] on X Minus One, NBC, 1956