Meditações - a longa noite

Someone clawed at the torch, and it fell and snuffed out. In the instant, the awful splendor of the indifferent Stars leaped nearer to them. On the horizon outside the window, in the direction of Saro City, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun. The long night had come again. 

Isaac Asimov, in “Nightfall” (1941)