o their families, they'll say,
and their parents will make us all rich."

Gail considered. Then she shook her head.

"It won't work. We've got newspapers and news broadcasts. People will be
too scared to allow it."

"Scared of four children?" demanded Soames.

"You don't realize what newspapers are," Gail said with a trace of
wryness. "They don't live by printing news. They print 'true' stories,
serials. 'True' crime stories, to be continued tomorrow. 'True'
international-crisis suspense stories, for the next thrilling chapter
read tomorrow's paper or tune in to this station! That's what's printed
and broadcast, Brad. It's what people want and insist on. Don't you
realize how the children will be served up in the news? 'Creatures From
Space in Antarctica! Earth Helpless!'" She grimaced. "There won't be any
demand for human-interest stories by Gail Haynes, telling about four
nicely-raised children who need to be helped to get back to their
parents. The public wouldn't like that so much.

"You'll see," Gail continued, "I'm very much afraid, Brad, that
presently you and I will be the only people in the world who don't think
the children had better be killed, for safety. You did the right thing
for us, in not letting them signal to their families. But you don't need
to worry about too much sympathy for the children!"

"And I got them into it," said Soames, morosely.

"We did," insisted Gail. "And we did right. But I'm going to do what I
can to keep it from being worse for them than I can help. If you'll join
me--"

"Naturally!" said Soames.

* * * * *

He went moodily away. He was unaware of Gail's expression as she looked
after him. She turned slowly to the girl with her.

He found the other three children. They were the center of an agitated
group of staff-members, trying to communicate by words and gestures,
while the children tried not to show disturbance at their vehemence. A
cosmic-particle specialist told Soames the trouble. Among the children's
possessions there was a coil of thread-fine copper wire. Somebody had
snipped off a bit of it for test, and discovered that the wire was
superconductive. A superconductor is a material which has no electrical
resistance whatever. In current Earth science tin and mercury and a few
alloys could be made into superconductors by being cooled below 18 deg.
Kelvin, or four hundred odd degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Above that
temperature,