lar power unit.

A short time later, they stepped out of the airlock onto the ice field
of the frozen world. High above them glowed the dim, blue-white disc of
the tiny sun, looking like little more than a bright star.

Adjusting the controls on the suits, the four men lifted into the
tenuous air and headed toward the city, moving easily about ten feet
above the frozen wastes of the snow field.

"The thing I don't understand," Morey said as they shot toward the city,
"is why this planet is here at all. The intense radiation from the sun
when it went supernova should have vaporized it!"

Arcot pointed toward a tall, oddly-shaped antenna that rose from the
highest building of the city. "There's your answer. That antenna is
similar to those we found on the planets of the Black Star; it's a heat
screen. They probably had such antennas all over the planet.

"Unfortunately, the screen's efficiency goes up as the fourth power of
the temperature. It could keep out the terrific heat of a supernova, but
couldn't keep in the heat of the planet after the supernova had died.
The planet was too cool to make the screen work efficiently!"

At last they came to the outskirts of the dead city. The vertical walls
of the buildings were free of snow, and they could see the blank,
staring eyes of the windows, and within, the bleak, empty rooms. They
swept on through the frozen streets until they came to one huge building
in the center. The doors of bronze had been closed, and through the
windows they could see that the room had been piled high with some sort
of insulating material, evidently used as a last-ditch attempt to keep
out the freezing cold.

"Shall we break in?" asked Arcot.

"We may as well," Morey's voice answered over the radio. "There may be
some records we could take back to Earth and have deciphered. In a time
like this, I imagine they would leave some records, hoping that some
race _might_ come and find them."

They worked with molecular ray pistols for fifteen minutes tearing a way
through. It was slow work because they had to use the heat ray pistols
to supply the necessary energy for the molecular motion.

When they finally broke through, they found they had entered on the
second floor; the deep snow had buried the first. Before them stretched
a long, richly decorated hall, painted with great colored murals.

The paintings displayed a people dressed in a suit of some soft, white
cloth, with blond hair that rea