the new earth
below took on outline and form as the sun's glow crept over it.

What would the light disclose? His mind held irrationally to thoughts
his reason would have condemned. He found himself watching for people,
for houses, lights gleaming from windows. This, in a region of cold
that approached the absolute zero. The reality came as a shock.

The first rays that crept into vision were silvery fingers of light.
They reflected up to the heights in glittering brilliance. They
gathered and merged as the ship drove on toward the sunrise, and they
showed to the watching eyes a wondrous, a marvelous world. A world
that was snowbound, weighted and blanketed with a mantle of white.

* * * * *

To Jerry the truth came as a crushing, a horrible blow. He turned
slowly to look at his companion; to look and be startled anew by the
happiness depicted on the lean face.

"I knew it," the pilot was saying. "I always knew it. But
now--now...." He was speechless with joy.

"It's terrible!" said Foster. He almost resented the other's elation.
"It's a hell! Just a frozen hell of desolation."

"Man--man!" was the response, "can't you see? Look! The whiteness we
see is snow, a snow of carbon dioxide. The cold is beyond guessing.
But the clear places--the vast fields--it's ice, man, it's ice!"

"Horrible!" Jerry shuddered.

"Beautiful," said the other. "Marvellous! Think, think what that
means. It means water in the hot lunar day. It means vapor and clouds
in the sky. It means that where that is there is air--life, perhaps.
God alone knows all that it means. And we, too, shall know...."

The ship settled slowly to the surface of the new world. Black blobs
of shadow become distinct craters; volcanoes rose slowly to meet them,
to drift aside and rise above as they sank to the floor of a valley.
They came to rest upon a rocky floor.

On all sides their windows showed a waste of torn and twisted rock.
Volcanic mountains towered to the heights, their sides streaked with
masses of lava, frozen to stillness these countless years from its
molten state. The rising sun, its movement imperceptible, cast long
slanting rays between the peaks. It lighted a ghostly world, white
with thick hoar-frost of solid carbon dioxide. A silent world, locked
in the stillness of cold near the absolute zero. Not a breath of air
stirred; no flurry of snow gave semblance of life to the scene. Their
generator was stillen, a