A Pail of Air
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| "A Pail of Air" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Fritz Leiber | |
 | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Galaxy Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Galaxy Publishing |
| Media type | Print (magazine, hardback & paperback) |
| Publication date | December 1951 |
"A Pail of Air" is a
Plot
The story is narrated by a ten-year-old boy living on Earth after it has become a rogue planet, having been torn away from the Sun by a passing "dark star". The loss of solar heating has caused the Earth's atmosphere to freeze into thick layers of "snow". The boy's father had worked with a group of other scientists to construct a large shelter, but the earthquakes accompanying the disaster had destroyed it and killed the others. He managed to construct a smaller, makeshift shelter called the "Nest" for his family, where they maintain a breathable atmosphere by periodically retrieving pails of frozen oxygen to thaw over a fire. They have survived in this way for a number of years.
At the end, they are found by a search party from a large group of survivors at
Collections
The story is collected in
See also
External links
- A Pail of Air title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Leiber, Fritz (1951). "A Pail of Air". Retrieved 2012-10-14.
- Listen to A Pail of Air on X Minus One, NBC, 1956
- A Pail of Air at Project Gutenberg
 | This article about a science fiction short story (or stories) published in the 1950s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |