bout him with a sort of total grimness. There was a metal girder, quite
separate from the ship, which had apparently been set up slantingly in
the ice since the landing. It had no apparent purpose.

Captain Moggs said peremptorily:

"Children! We insist on speaking to your parents! At once!"

Gail moved forward. Soames saw, now, a small tripod near the ship.
Something spun swiftly at its top. It had plainly been brought out from
inside the strange vessel. For a hundred yards in every direction there
was no wind or snow. More than that, the calm air was also warm. It was
unbelievable.

"Do you hear me?" demanded Captain Moggs. "Children!"

Gail said in a friendly fashion, smiling at the girls:

"I'm sure you don't understand a word I say, but won't you invite us to
visit?"

Her tone and manner were plainly familiar to the children. One of the
two girls smiled and stood aside for Gail to enter the ship. Soames and
Captain Moggs followed.

* * * * *

It was quite as bright inside the ship as out-of-doors. There were no
lights. It was simply bright. A part of the floor had buckled upward,
and the rest was not level, but the first impression was of brilliance
and the second was of a kind of simplicity which was bewildering. And
there was a third. It was of haste. The ship seemed to have been put
together with such urgent haste that nothing had been done for mere
finish or decoration.

"I want to speak to the parents of these children!" said Captain Moggs
firmly. "I insist upon it!"

"I suspect," said Soames grimly, "that in the culture these children
came from, the proper place for parents is the home. This is a
child-size spaceship, you'll notice."

The size of the door and chairs proved it. He saw through a crumpled,
open doorway into the crushed part of the ship. There was machinery in
view, but no shafts or gears or power-leads. He guessed it to be
machinery because it could not be anything else. He saw a dented case of
metal, with an opened top. The boys had apparently dragged it into the
relatively undamaged part of the ship to work upon its contents. He
could see coils of bare metal, and arrangements which might have been
inductances. He took a sort of forlorn pride in guessing that the thing
was some sort of communication-device.

There was a board with buttons on it. It might be a control-board, but
it didn't look like it. There was a metal box with a transparent plasti