, and surrounded with a
powdery ring of white sand and pulverized rock.

"Something like a shell-hole," I observed.

"I've got it!" Charlie cried. "It was a meteor!"

"A meteor? So big?"

"Yes. Lucky for us it was no bigger. If it had been like the one that
fell in Siberia a few years ago, or the one that made the Winslow
crater in Arizona--we wouldn't have been talking about it. Probably we
have a chunk of nickel-iron alloy here."

"I'll get some of the men out here with digging tools, and we'll see
what we can find."

Our mechanics were already hurrying across the field. I shouted at
them to bring picks and shovels. In a few minutes five of us were at
work throwing sand and shattered rock out of the pit.

* * * * *

Suddenly I noticed a curious thing. A pale bluish mist hung in the
bottom of the pit. It was easily transparent, no denser than tobacco
smoke. Passing my spade through it did not seem to disturb it in the
least.

I rubbed my eyes doubtfully, said to Charlie, "Do you see a sort of
blue haze in the pit?"

He peered. "No. No.... Yes. Yes, I do! Funny thing. Kind of a blue
fog. And the tools cut right through it without moving it! Queer! Must
have something to do with the meteor!" He was very excited.

We dug more eagerly. An hour later we had opened the hole to a depth
of twenty feet. Our shovels were clanging on the gray iron of the rock
from space. The mist had grown thicker as the excavation deepened; we
looked at the stone through a screen of motionless blue fog.

We had found the meteor. There were several queer things about it. The
first man who touched it--a big Swede mechanic named Olson--was
knocked cold as if by a nasty jolt of electricity. It took half an
hour to bring him to consciousness.

As fast as the rugged iron side of the meteorite was uncovered, a
white crust of frost formed over it.

"It was as cold as outer space, nearly at the absolute zero," Charlie
explained. "And it was heated only superficially during its quick
passage through the air. But how it comes to be charged with
electricity--I can't say."

He hurried up to his laboratory behind the hangars, where he had
equipment ranging from an astronomical telescope to a delicate
seismograph. He brought back as much electrical equipment as he could
carry. He had me touch an insulated wire to the frost-covered stone
from space, while he put the other end to one post of a galvanometer.

I