He went back to the main building to get Gail and Captain Moggs. They went out to the 'copter hangar together.
"I've talked to the radar and loran operator," said Soames. "I explained that you wanted to see some crevasses from the air, and I'd be wandering around looking for them on the way to the rookery. He will check on us every fifteen minutes, anyhow."
The 'copter went up the long, sloping, bulldozed snow-ramp. Soames checked his radio contact. He nodded. The engines hummed and roared and bellowed, and the ship lifted deliberately and floated away over the icy waste.
The little helicopter was very much alone above a landscape which had never known a growing thing.
Soames kept in radar contact and when he was ready he told the base, "I'm going down now, hunting crevasses."
He let the 'copter descend. The waste was featureless, then and for a seemingly interminable time afterward. Then his estimated position matched the site of the static-earth-shock-concussion-wave-occurrence. There seemed nothing about this part of the snow-desert which was different from any other part. No. Over to the left. A wind-pattern showed in the snow. It was already being blown away; its edges dulled. But it was rather far from a probable thing. There were lines—hollows—where gusts had blown at the snow's surface. They were spiral lines, tending toward a center. They had not the faintest resemblance to the crater of an explosion which might have made an earth-shock.
Soames took a camera out of its place in the 'copter. Gail stared down.
"I've seen something like that," she said puzzledly. "Not a picture. Certainly not a snow-field. I think it looks like a diagram of some sort."
"Try a storm-wind diagram," said Soames drily. "The way a cyclone ought to look from directly overhead. The meteorology boys will break down and cry when they see this picture!"
He took pictures. The shadows of the wind-made indentations would come out clearly in the film.
"Unless," said Soames, "unless somebody got a snap of a whirlwind touching a snow-field and bouncing up again, this will be a photographic first. It's not an explosion-pattern, you'll notice. Wind and snow weren't thrown away from the center. They were drawn toward it. Momentarily. It's an explosion inside out, an implosion-pattern to be more exact."
"I don't understand," said Gail.
"An explosion," said Soames grimly, "is a bursting-out of a suddenly present mass of gas. An implosion is a bursting-in of a suddenly present vacuum. Set off a firecracker and you have an explosion. Break an electric bulb and you have an implosion. That pattern behind us is an implosion-pattern."
"But how could such a thing be?"
"If we knew," said Soames wrily, "maybe we'd be running away. Maybe we should."
The 'copter droned on and on and on. The ice-sheet continued unbroken.
"There!" cried Gail, suddenly.
She pointed. Blowing snow hid everything. Then there was a hole in the whiteness, a shadow. The shadow stirred and an object too dark to be snow appeared. It vanished again.
"There's a sheltered place!" said Gail, "and there's something dark in it!"
Soames pulled the microphone to his lips.
"Calling base," he said briefly. "Calling base.... Hello! I'm well beyond the last radar-fix. I think I'm bearing about one seven oh degrees from base. Get a loran fix on me. Make it quick. I may have to land."
He listened, pressing a button to activate the loran-relay which would transmit a signal on signal from the base, so the bearing and distance could be computed back at base. It was wiser to have such computations done aground. He readied the camera again.
Gail looked through the 'copter's binoculars. The peculiar shadow—hole—opening in the blowing snow reappeared. Something in it looked like a missile, only it was bright metal and much too large. It lay askew on the ice. A part of it—a large part—was smashed.
"Spaceship?" asked Gail, "do you think that's it?"
"Heaven forbid!" said Soames.
There was movement. One—two—three figures stared up from beside the metal shape. A fourth appeared. Soames grimly took pictures. Gail gasped suddenly:
"They're not men!" she said shakily. "Brad, they're children! Queerly dressed children, with bare arms and legs! They're out there on the snow! They'll freeze! We've got to help them!"
"Calling base," said Soames into the microphone. "I'm landing. I have to. If I don't report in twenty minutes come with caution—repeat with caution—to see what's happened. I repeat. If I do not report in twenty minutes come with caution, caution, caution to see what is the matter."
The 'copter made a loud, loud noise as it went skittering down toward the object—and the children—on the ice.
CHAPTER 2
The snow-mist blew aside and there was plainly a ship lying partly crushed upon the snow. Half its length was smashed, but he could see that it had never flown with wings. There weren't any.
"It looks like a spaceship," said Gail breathlessly.
Soames spoke between set teeth.
"That would finish things for all of us!"
And it would, without any qualifications. On a world already squabbling and divided into two main power-groups and embittered neutrals; on a world armed with weapons so deadly that only the fear of retaliation kept the peace.... Contact with a farther-advanced race would not unite humanity, either for defense or for the advantages such a contact might reasonably bring. Instead, it would detonate hatred and suspicion into madness.
A higher civilization could very well tip the scales, if it gave one side weapons. The world outside the Iron Curtain could not risk that the Iron Curtain nations become best friends of possible invaders. The communist leaders could not risk letting the free nations make alliance with a higher technology and a greater science. So actual contact with a more-advanced race would be the most deadly happening that could take place on the world as it was today.
Soames jumped out. He looked at the ship and felt sick. But he snapped a quick photograph. It had no wings and had never owned any. It had been probably a hundred feet long, all bright metal. Now nearly half of it was crushed or crumpled by its fall. It must have been brought partly under control before the impact, though, enough to keep it from total destruction. And Soames, regarding it, saw that there had been no propellers to support it or pull it through the air. There were no air-ducts for jet-motors. It wasn't a jet.
There were no rockets, either. The drive was of a kind so far unimagined by men of here and now.
Gail stood beside Soames, her eyes bright. She exclaimed, "Brad! It isn't cold here!"
The children looked at her interestedly. One of the girls spoke politely, in wholly unintelligible syllables. The girls might be thirteen or thereabouts. The boys were possibly a year older, sturdier and perhaps more muscular than most boys of that age. All four were wholly composed. They looked curious but not in the least alarmed, and not in the least upset, as they'd have been had older companions been injured or killed in the ship's landing. They wore brief garments that would have been quite suitable for a children's beach-party in mid-summer, but did not belong on the Antarctic ice-cap at any time. Each wore a belt with moderately large metal insets placed on either side of its fastening.
"Brad!" repeated Gail. "It's warm here! Do you realize it? And there's no wind!"
Soames swallowed. The camera hung from his hand. It either was or it could be a spaceship that lay partly smashed upon the ice. He looked about him with a sort of total grimness. There was a metal girder, quite separate from the ship, which had apparently been set up slantingly in the ice since the landing. It had no apparent purpose.