Read Online The Year of the Jackpot by Robert Heinlein - Free Book Online

woman’s work. That’s fair.” She shaded her eyes. “What a sunset! We ought to have volcanoes blowing their tops every year.”
    “Sit down and we’ll watch it.”
    She sat beside him.
    “Notice the Sun spot? You can see it with your naked eye.”
    She stared. “Is that a Sun spot? It looks as if somebody had taken a bite out of it.”
    He squinted his eyes at it again. Damned if it didn’t look bigger!
    Meade shivered. “I’m chilly. Put your arm around me.”
    He did so with his free arm, continuing to hold hands with the other.
    It
was
bigger. The spot was growing.
    What good is the race of man? Monkeys, he thought, monkeys with a touch of poetry in them, cluttering and wasting a second-string planet near a third-string star. But sometimes they finish in style.
    She snuggled to him. “Keep me warm.”
    “It will be warmer soon—I mean I’ll keep you warm.”
    “Dear Potty.” She looked up. “Potty, something funny is happening to the sunset.”
    “No, darling—to the Sun.”
    He glanced down at the journal, still open beside him. 1739 A. D. and 2165. He did not need to add up the two figures and divide by two to reach the answer. Instead he clutched fiercely at her hand, knowing with an unexpected and overpowering burst of sorrow that 1952 was…
    The End.