trals; on a
world armed with weapons so deadly that only the fear of retaliation
kept the peace.... Contact with a farther-advanced race would not unite
humanity, either for defense or for the advantages such a contact might
reasonably bring. Instead, it would detonate hatred and suspicion into
madness.

A higher civilization could very well tip the scales, if it gave one
side weapons. The world outside the Iron Curtain could not risk that the
Iron Curtain nations become best friends of possible invaders. The
communist leaders could not risk letting the free nations make alliance
with a higher technology and a greater science. So actual contact with a
more-advanced race would be the most deadly happening that could take
place on the world as it was today.

* * * * *

Soames jumped out. He looked at the ship and felt sick. But he snapped a
quick photograph. It had no wings and had never owned any. It had been
probably a hundred feet long, all bright metal. Now nearly half of it
was crushed or crumpled by its fall. It must have been brought partly
under control before the impact, though, enough to keep it from total
destruction. And Soames, regarding it, saw that there had been no
propellers to support it or pull it through the air. There were no
air-ducts for jet-motors. It wasn't a jet.

There were no rockets, either. The drive was of a kind so far unimagined
by men of here and now.

Gail stood beside Soames, her eyes bright. She exclaimed, "Brad! It
isn't cold here!"

The children looked at her interestedly. One of the girls spoke
politely, in wholly unintelligible syllables. The girls might be
thirteen or thereabouts. The boys were possibly a year older, sturdier
and perhaps more muscular than most boys of that age. All four were
wholly composed. They looked curious but not in the least alarmed, and
not in the least upset, as they'd have been had older companions been
injured or killed in the ship's landing. They wore brief garments that
would have been quite suitable for a children's beach-party in
mid-summer, but did not belong on the Antarctic ice-cap at any time.
Each wore a belt with moderately large metal insets placed on either
side of its fastening.

"Brad!" repeated Gail. "It's warm here! Do you realize it? And there's
no wind!"

Soames swallowed. The camera hung from his hand. It either was or it
could be a spaceship that lay partly smashed upon the ice. He looked
a