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a square of night blackness, with the shade not drawn above it. His eyes went to the large round face of
the windup alarm clock that stood before the mirror on his dresser. The hands stood at five minutes to
ten. He had been asleep at least four hours.
In the mirror his sleep-tousled dark hair, fallen down over his forehead, gave him a wild and savage
look. He shoved the hair back and forced himself to his feet. He stumbled across the room, stepped out
of the door, and walked numbly down the hall to the upstairs extension phone, which was lying out of its
cradle. He picked it up.
"Miles!" It was the soft voice of Marie Bourtel. "Have you been there all this time?"
"Yes," he muttered, still too numb from sleep to wonder why she asked.
"I called a couple of times for you earlier, but Mrs. Arndahl said you hadn't come in yet. I finally had her
check your room anyway." The usually calm, gentle voice he was used to hearing on the phone had an
unusual edge to it. An edge of something like fear. "Didn't you remember you were going to meet me for
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dinner at the Lounge?"
"Lounge?" he echoed stupidly. He scrubbed his face with the back of his hand that held the phone, as if
to rub memory back into his head. Then contrition flooded him. He remembered the plan to have dinner
with Marie at six thirty at the Lounge, which was an off-campus restaurant on the east bank of the river.
"Sorry, Marie I guess I did it again. I was painting this afternoon, and I came back and lay down. I
must've fallen asleep."
"Then you're all right." There was relief in Marie's voice for a second; then tension returned. "You don't
know what's been happening?"
"Happening?"
"The sun's changed color! About five o'clock this afternoon "
"Oh, that?" Miles rubbed the back of his hand again over his sleep-numbed face. "Yes, I saw it change.
I'd just finished painting what about it?"
"What about it?" Marie's voice held a sort of wonder. "Miles,the sun's changed color !"
"I know," said Miles a little impatiently. But then, rousing him from that first impatience to sudden near
anger, came recognition of the relief in Marie's voice a few seconds before, when she had said:"Then
you're all right."
Those remembered words jarred unpleasantly back to mind his own first few moments of alarm when he
had seen the sun's changed color. He heard the edge in his own voice as he answered her.
"I know the sun's changed color! I said I saw it happen! What of it?"
"Miles " Marie's voice broke off, oddly, as if she were uncertain of what to say to him. "Miles, I want
to see you. If you've been asleep all this time you haven't had dinner yet, have you?"
"Well . . . no. I haven't." Miles was abruptly reminded of the emptiness inside him. Come to think of it,
he had not eaten since breakfast, thirteen hours before.
"I'll meet you at the Lounge in ten minutes then," said Marie swiftly. "You can have some dinner, and we
can talk. Ten minutes?"
"All right," he said, still somewhat numb with sleep.
"Good-bye, Miles."
"Good-bye."
He hung up.
Slowly waking up in the process, Miles went back to his room, washed his face, put on a fresh shirt and
a sport coat, and left the rooming house for the half-mile walk back across the two campuses and their
connecting walkway to the business section beyond the east campus. As he passed the landlady's living
room, the door was still ajar, and from within he heard the voice of a television announcer, still talking
about the change, and saw the backs of a number of people sitting and listening.
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The irritation which Marie's concern for him had awakened in him expanded again to include these
people. It was ridiculous, almost superstitious of them, to be stampeded into fear just because of what
seemed to be a change undoubtedly temporary, undoubtedly freakish in the color of the sun.
"Latest reports over Honolulu say that the redness persists "The TV announcer's voice was cut off
sharply as Miles softly closed the front door of the house behind him. He headed up the darkened street
under the towering, dark-leaved branches of the elms toward the footbridge and the east bank of the
river where the Lounge was.
His walk across the campus and over the footbridge was like a walk though an evacuated city. There
seemed to be nobody about. But once on the far side of the river, when he pushed open the door of the
Lounge, he found the place crowded; only the crowd was all clustered at one end, around the television
set at the front of the bar. Forty or fifty people, many of them students, were seated and standing there,
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