A Pail of Air

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"A Pail of Air"
Author	Fritz Leiber
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction short story
Published in	Galaxy Magazine
Publisher	Galaxy Publishing
Media type	Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date	December 1951

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.

[edit] Plot

It is narrated by a boy living on Earth after it has been torn from the Sun's gravity and captured 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 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 ionosphere). 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 or in the Congo.