FINAL EXAMINATION By Robert Sheckley If you saw the stars in the sky vanishing by the millions, and knew you had but five days to prepare for your judgment—what would you do? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy May 1952 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I suppose it started some time back, even before the astronomers discovered it, and certainly long before I found out. How far back I have no idea; thousands of years, perhaps, or more. But the first I knew about it was one March evening, when I opened the newspaper. Jane was in the kitchen, cleaning up, and I was settled back in the easy chair, reading through the lead articles. I skimmed through all the war talk, price controls, suicides, murders, and then glanced through the rest of the paper. One small article in the back caught my eye. ASTRONOMERS LOSING STARS, the caption read. It was a human-interest story I suppose, because it went on in that maddening coy style the newspapers use for that sort of stuff. "Dr. Wilhelm Mentzner, at the Mount St. James Observatory, says that he has been unable, in recent weeks, to find some of the Milky Way stars. It would seem, Dr. Mentzner tells us, that they have vanished. Repeated photographs of certain portions of space do not show the presence of these dim, faraway stars. They were in place and intact in photographs made as recently as April, 1942, and...." The article gave the names of some of the stars—they didn't mean a thing to me—and chided the scientists on their absentmindedness. "Imagine," it went on, "losing something as big as a star. Although," the writer summed up, "it doesn't really matter. They have a few hundred billion left to play around with." I thought it was sort of cute at the time, although in questionable taste. I don't know a thing about science—I'm in the dress line—but I've always looked upon it with the greatest respect. The way I see it, you start laughing at scientists and they come up with something like the atom bomb. Better to treat them with a little respect. I can't remember if I showed the article to my wife. If I did, she didn't say anything in particular. Life went along as usual. I went to work in Manhattan and came
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