emained fixed, like the first one.

Soames went to look. The metal beam was deeply imbedded in the ice which
somehow did not chill the air above it.

He heard a small sound. One of the boys, the one in the brown,
tunic-like shirt, swept something across the plating of the crumpled
vessel. The plating parted like wet paper. Soames watched in a sort of
neither believing nor unbelieving detachment. A whole section of plating
came away. The boy in the brown tunic very briskly trimmed plating away
from a strength-member and had a third metal beam. Whatever instrument
he used, it cut metal as if it were butter.

Both boys brought the third beam to where the others leaned to form a
tripod. But this third bit of metal was curved. They lowered it, and the
boy in the brown tunic matter-of-factly sliced through the metal, took
out a V-shaped piece, and obviously made the rest of the metal whole
once more. They raised it again, the boy moved his hand over the ice, it
sank into it, they held it a moment only, and went off to the ship.

Soames went numbly to see what had happened. He picked up scraps of the
trimmed-away metal.

Soames puzzled over the metal scraps. They did not look cut. They had
mirror-bright surfaces, as if melted apart. But there'd been no
flame....

The boys reappeared with the dented case that Soames guessed was a
communication device of some sort. They carried it to the new tripod.
One of them carried, also, a complicated structure of small rods which
could be an antenna-system to transmit radiation of a type that Soames
could not conceive of.

Captain Moggs came towards him from the 'copter.

"I called Base," she said. "Two snow-weasels will start here within the
hour. Another 'copter is due in from an advanced observation post at any
moment. It will be sent here as soon as it arrives."

Soames wondered numbly just how indiscreet she'd been, in a short-wave
conversation that could be picked up by any of the other-nation bases
that cared to listen in. But, just then, Gail came out of the ship.

"Brad," she said anxiously, "what are the boys doing?"

Soames knew only too well. If the dented case contained a communicator,
which would use so complicated an antenna as lay ready for use, there
could only be one answer. And there could be only one thing for him to
do, considering everything.

"They're shipwrecked. They're setting up something to signal for help
with. They've landed on a world of rather