inimical to
man. Earth is a nice, comfortable planet, most of the time, but
Antarctica just doesn't cater to Man at all.

Still, it just happens to be the _worst_ spot on the _best_ planet in
the known Galaxy.

Eisberg is different. At its best, it has the continent of Antarctica
beat four thousand ways from a week ago last Candlemas. At its worst, it
is sudden death; at its best, it is somewhat less than sudden.

Not that Eisberg is a really _mean_ planet; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or
Neptune can kill a man faster and with less pain. No, Eisberg isn't
mean--it's torturous. A man without clothes, placed suddenly on the
surface of Eisberg--_anywhere_ on the surface--would die. But the
trouble is that he'd live long enough for it to hurt.

Man can survive, all right, but it takes equipment and intelligence to
do it.

When the interstellar ship _Brainchild_ blew a tube--just one tube--of
the external field that fought the ship's mass against the space-strain
of the planet's gravitational field, the ship went off orbit. The tube
blew when she was some ninety miles above the surface. She dropped too
fast, jerked up, dropped again.

When the engines compensated for the lost tube, the descent was more
leisurely, and the ship settled gently--well, not exactly _gently_--on
the surface of Eisberg.

Captain Quill's voice came over the intercom.

"We are nearly a hundred miles from the base, Mister Gabriel. Any
excuse?"

"No excuse, sir," said Mike the Angel.

20

If you ignite a jet of oxygen-nitrogen in an atmosphere of
hydrogen-methane, you get a flame that doesn't differ much from the
flame from a hydrogen-methane jet in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A
flame doesn't particularly care which way the electrons jump, just so
long as they jump.

All of which was due to give Mike the Angel more headaches than he
already had, which was 100 per cent too many.

Three days after the _Brainchild_ landed, the scout group arrived from
the base that had been built on Eisberg to take care of Snookums. The
leader, a heavy-set engineer named Treadmore, who had unkempt brownish
hair and a sad look in his eyes, informed Captain Quill that there was a
great deal of work to be done. And his countenance became even sadder.

Mike, who had, perforce, been called in to take part in the conference,
listened in silence while the engineer talked.

The officers' wardroom, of which Mike the Angel was becoming heartily
sick, seem