om
all sides, and it was not long before some five hundred persons, men,
women and children, were assembled. Many of them were pale and
frightened looking, for they were staking everything on an ideal, a
theory. There would be no coming back. The statute books of
Subterranea decreed only one penalty--death--for even the merest
tampering with the Frozen Gate. It was not like this that they had
visioned the opening of the Gate. Under properly controlled
conditions, it would have been possible to open the gate for
preliminary explorations. But not now. They were outside the law.

* * * * *

Nida, standing beside Mich'l, shivered and pulled her over-robe closer
around her. There was sadness in her voice as she said:

"These children.... They remind me of the thousands of children we
must abandon with our people. If I could, I'd steal a few to take with
us."

Mich'l grinned without mirth.

"And be damned as a kidnapper of a particularly horrible sort, as long
as Subterranea lasts!"

"I know. I know. But what will happen to them all when the automatic
machinery fails?"

"They may learn to run it, if they have to. Or if we succeed in
establishing ourselves in the outer world we can tunnel back to them
around the Gate in a year or so. Don't worry about them too much.
We're taking the big risk, not they."

Gobet Hanlon, accompanied by Flos Entine and Mila Mane, approached. He
was loaded down with a huge case of concentrated food.

"I've given orders to bring with us all the cold resisting fabrics we
could carry. Got 'em loaded down, eh?"

"All here?"

"Every last one."

"Let's go, then." Mich'l stepped to a small door that led into the
main corridor close to the Gate. This door had not been used by the
technies when assembling. Through a tiny hole the guard, four
soldiers, could be seen about a blanket, tossing sixteen-sided dice.
Mich'l opened the door, his needle-ray pointed.

"Don't move, or you burn!" he commanded harshly.

* * * * *

The guards, taken completely by surprise, did not move. In a few
moments they were bound, gagged, and dumped into a corner of 37X.
Eager technies were swarming over the complicated mechanism that they
had dared to touch, before, only for inspection and maintenance. The
Frozen Gate was like a huge stopper in a bottle, made of chromium
steel. It was thirty feet in diameter, and thirty feet thick from its
well insu