Nine-year-old Timothy has lost his parents in a sea of refugees in an airport in New York. They are all trying to escape as nuclear missiles threaten to be let loose because of an attempted Cuban coup. Timothy is getting sick and needs a doctor. Harry Malibert is at the Ambassador Club in the airport, which turns into a medic area. One of the Operations staff members tells him he saw Malibert lecture at Northwestern once and made an impression on him. The news bulletin announces that a nuclear attack has started against the United States. Malibert is put in charge of helping Timothy. The Operations staff member quietly tells him he can get him on an airplane boarding for Iceland. Malibert asks to take Timothy with him. The bombs start dropping and the sky darkens from the debris. They land in Keflavik Airport and are let in. A ten-year supply of rain falls. Parts of the world with less food stored or greater, unbombed populations start to die of starvation. Most people die. The temperature falls in Iceland, but by pumping its geothermal water, it can stay warm. Its heat is used to grow food. Though recovered, Timothy is quiet and barely eats, but he loves to hear Malibert talk about space. He learns about the Fermi paradox, which hypothesizes three possible reasons for why it is probable that other lifeforms existing in the universe have not contacted humans. The third states that when a civilization has the technology to get into space, they have the technology to self-destruct. The world is continuously dark and in a terrible drought. Timothy calls Malibert “Daddy” for the first time. Two endings to this story are put forward: in the first, the sun comes back too late and Iceland starves, ending the human race and confirming Fermi’s third answer. In the second, the sun comes back in time, and life continues.