I stepped out the backdoor to have a look. Everything seemed in order to me. The Milky Way was still up there, smeared across the sky as thick as ever. The Big Dipper was shining away, and the North Star was still pointing toward Westchester. No difference. The ground was frozen under my feet, but the air was almost warm. Spring would be coming along soon, and Spring fashions. In the distance I could see the red glow of Manhattan, across the 59th Street Bridge. That seemed to settle it. The only problem I had was dresses, and I went back inside to worry about them. In a few more days the star-story had reached the front page. STARS DISAPPEARING, the headlines read. WHAT NEXT? It seemed that millions of stars were vanishing from the Milky Way every day and night. The other galaxies seemed to be unaffected, although it was hard to tell; but they were definitely dropping out of ours. Most of them were so far away they could only be caught with a high-powered telescope, or a camera; but hundreds could still be seen disappearing by anybody with a pair of eyes. Not blowing up or fading out; just click--and they were gone. This article--written by an astronomer _and_ a Phd.--reminded everybody that only the light was stopping. The stars themselves must have been snubbed out hundreds of millions of years ago, and that the light was finally stopping, after travelling all that distance across space. I think it was hundreds of millions, although it might have been thousands. The article didn't even speculate on the cause of it all. I went star-gazing that night. Everyone else in the neighborhood was out in their backyards, too. And sure enough, in the gigantic spread of stars I could see little specks of light winking out. They were barely noticeable; if I hadn't been looking for them _I_ would never have seen anything different. "Hey Jane," I called in the back door. "Come on out and have a look." My wife came out and stood, hands on hips, looking at the sky. She was frowning, as though she resented the whole business. "I don't see anything," she said. "Look carefully," I said. "Watch one section at a time. There was one! Did you see it?" "No." "Watch for little winks," I said. But it wasn't until the Thomas kid came from next door and loaned her his telescope that she saw it. "Here, Mrs. Ostersen, use this," the kid said. He had three or four telescopes in his hands, a pair of binoculars, and a handful of charts. Quite a kid. "You too, Mr. Ostersen," he said. Through the telescope I could really see it. One moment a pinpoint of light would be there, and then--bing! It was gone. It was down-right weird. For the first time I started getting worried. It didn't bother Jane, though. She went back into her kitchen. * * * * *