r. Here and there ran strange rivers
of deep blue which poured into great lakes and seas of blue liquid.
There were mighty mountains of deep blue crystal looming high, and in
the hollows and cracks of these crystal mountains lay silent, motionless
seas of deep blue, unruffled by any breeze in this airless world. It was
a world that lay frozen under a dim, dead sun.

They continued over the broad sweep of the level, crystalline plain as
the bleak rock disappeared behind them. This world was about ten
thousand miles in diameter, and its surface gravity about a quarter
greater than that of Earth.

On and on they swept, swinging over the planet at an altitude of less
than a thousand feet, viewing the unutterably desolate scene of the
cold, dead world.

Then, ahead of them loomed a bleak, dark mass of rock again. They had
crossed the frozen ocean and were coming to land again--a land no more
solid than the sea.

Everywhere lay the deep drifts of snow, and here and there, through
valleys, ran the streams of bright blue.

"Look!" cried Morey in sudden surprise. Far ahead and to their left
loomed a strange formation of jutting vertical columns, covered with the
white burden of snow. Arcot turned a powerful searchlight on it, and it
stood out brightly against the vast snowfield. It was a dead, frozen
city.

As they looked at it, Arcot turned the ship and headed for it without a
word.

It was hard to realize the enormity of the catastrophe that had brought
a cold, bleak death to the population of this world--death to an
intelligent race.

Arcot finally spoke. "I'll land the ship. I think it will be safe for us
all to leave. Get out the suits and make sure all the tanks are charged
and the heaters working. It will be colder here than in space. Out
there, we were only cooled by radiation, but those streams are probably
liquid nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and there's a slight atmosphere of
hydrogen, helium and neon cooled to about fifty degrees Absolute. We'll
be cooled by conduction and convection."

As the others got the suits ready, he lowered the ship gently to the
snowy ground. It sank into nearly ten feet of snow. He turned on the
powerful searchlight, and swept it around the ship. Under the warm
beams, the frozen gasses evaporated, and in a few moments he had cleared
the area around the ship.

Morey and the others came back with their suits. Arcot donned his, and
adjusted his weight to ten pounds with the molecu