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capering in the icy shower.
    The beam licked out again. And again. Thirty feet of air space gaped above them where a few moments before there had been a roof of ice. But the ice seemed as thick, as dark as ever. What if it were half a mile thick? A mile?
    "Lift the elevator twenty feet, Ted," Dr. Barnes ordered. "I'm getting out of range."
    The elevator rose slowly. The power torch flared again. Rain showered down. Up. Up.
    Then the torch spurted cold fire, there was a sudden sizzle, and chunks of ice began to hail down on them, chunks six inches, a foot across.
    "The plug's breaking!" Jim yelled, shielding himself from the massive chunks.
    A moment later, the fall ceased. "Everyone okay?" Dr. Barnes asked. "I went right through the roof. Look up!"
    Jim looked. And gasped.
    The plug was broken. Fragments of ice still clung to the sides of the tunnel, but there was a gaping hole twenty feet across, through which could be seen a flat swath of blackness, and little dots of light so sharp and hard they hurt the eyes, and the edge of a great gleaming thing, painfully bright. The night sky! The stars! The moon!
    "Hoist the elevator, Ted," Dr. Barnes yelled. "Hoist it! Were at the surface! We've made it!"

4
THE WHITE DESERT
    It was a silent world of blinding whiteness.
    It was a cold world.
    Jim hoisted himself over the rim of the tunnel mouth, stepped into the new world, and fought back a surge of panic as he saw the magnitude of it all. Even at night, even by moonlight, it was possible to see how the flat ice sheet spread out to the horizon. It was a numbing, breath-taking sight for anyone who had spent his whole life in tunnels hardly higher than his head.
    And the whiteness of it! The fierce dazzle of the moonlight as it bounced and glittered from the fields of snow!
    The world blazed. It sparkled. It shimmered with light.
    One by one, the men were coming up out of the tunnel. Carl emerged, and cringed in disbelief at the immensity of the ice field. He put his hands to his eyes, shielding them against the glare of the moon and the stars, and hastily donned his goggles.
    "It's cold," he whispered. "So cold!"
    Dave Ellis appeared, looking tense and apprehensive. Roy Veeder, Chet Farrington, Dom Hannon. Dr. Barnes. Then Ted Callison, even his high spirits dampened by the sudden emergence into the world. The eight stood together, uncertain, confused.
    Jim knelt. He touched the ground-gingerly, for he remembered how the ice had burned. What he touched was stingingly cold, but he was prepared for the shock this time.
    "See," he said. "There's white powder everywhere."
    "Snow," Dave Ellis said. "Six, seven inches of snow lying on the ice. It's springtime. Most of the winter snow has melted and refrozen, and become part of the glacier." He kicked at the fluffy snow, sending a cloud of it into the air. "There's just this little layer of snow on top."
    Ted Callison bent, gathered snow in both hands, sent it soaring into the air. The flakes floated down, shining like diamonds in the bright moonlight. He scooped again, and showers of snow cascaded down.
    "Careful," Dr. Barnes said. "Put your gloves on. Your skin isn't designed for these temperatures."
    "How cold do you think it is, anyway, Dad?" Jim asked.
    "Dave can tell you that."
    The meteorologist had already started to examine his thermometer. He was carrying what amounted to a portable weather station, snug in his parka.
    "Not too bad," he reported after a moment. "It's twenty-two above zero. It may even be above freezing by morning. It's a fine spring night."
    Jim shivered. A scything gust of wind swept down on them, and seemed to cut through his bulky clothes as though they were gauze. A lucky thing they were making this trip in spring, he thought. In winter, Dave said, the temperature ranged between forty below zero and ten above. Forty below! The mere thought of it made his teeth chatter.
    But he was warm in a little while, as they busied themselves breaking out the jet-sleds and