thing
we came to getting across it--including cabbages and rhubarb. But we
had to search for ten minutes, and even then we didn't find the ball.

What we found was a hole in the ground that could have been a
small-scale meteor crater. It was a good twenty feet deep. But at the
bottom, no ball.

* * * * *

I stared wildly at it for a full minute before I focused my eyes
enough to see, at the bottom, a thousand little gray fragments.

And immediately it came to both of us at the same time. A poor
conductor, the ball had used up all its available heat on that final
impact. Like a golfball that has been dipped in liquid air and
dropped, it had smashed into thin splinters.

The hole had sloping sides and I scrambled down in it and picked up
one of the pieces, using my handkerchief, folded--there was no telling
just how cold it would be.

It was the stuff, all right. And colder than an icicle.

I climbed out. "Let's go home," I said.

Farnsworth looked at me thoughtfully. Then he sort of cocked his head
to one side and asked, "What do you suppose will happen when those
pieces thaw?"

I stared at him. I began to think of a thousand tiny slivers whizzing
around erratically, richocheting off buildings, in downtown San
Francisco and in twenty counties, and no matter what they hit, moving
and accelerating as long as there was any heat in the air to give them
energy.

And then I saw a tool shed, on the other side of the pasture from us.

But Farnsworth was ahead of me, waddling along, puffing. He got the
shovels out and handed one to me.

We didn't say a word, neither of us, for hours. It takes a long time
to fill a hole twenty feet deep--especially when you're shoveling
very, very carefully and packing down the dirt very, very hard.

--WALTER S. TEVIS

+----------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's Note: |
| |
|The spelling of "richochet" has been retained as in |
|the original. |
| |
|This etext was produced from Galaxy February 1958. |
|Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that|
|the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. |
+----------------------------------------------------+

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK