empered and refined by the inexorable process of evolution and
environment. Already animal life had reappeared, drastically changed
and ruthlessly weeded out by the most severe Ice Age the world had
ever known, and now Man stood once more on a new threshold of time.

Something of this may have passed through the minds of the refugees
luxuriating in the strong sunlight of this mountain meadow, and in
active and alert brains the foundations of a new civilization were
already being built.

They were preparing to go into the valley below when there was a dull
concussion. The glacier over the Frozen Gate rose slightly, then
disappeared completely out of sight, leaving a yawning hole in the
mountainside. Ice and rocks slid down, filling the hole. The refugees
gazed at the scene in fear and wonder.

"They have blown up the gate! And the chambers leading to it!" Senator
Mane--now only Leo Mane--said slowly. "There goes our last chance to
save them!" His tones were deeply sad. He could not look upon these
people as an experiment that Nature had abandoned, although he knew
that history is thronged with the shadows of vanished races, culled by
the process of natural selection.

But Youth looks only ahead. The majority of the rescued technies were
young, and with eagerness and anticipation, they followed Mich'l and
Nida Ares down into the valley to build their first homes.

The Midget From the Island

A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

_By H. G. Winter_

[Illustration: _"For God's sake, Hagendorff, what's come over you?"_]

[Sidenote: Garth Howard, prey to half the animals of the forest,
fights valiantly to regain his lost five feet of size.]

In the chill of an early morning, a rowboat drifted aimlessly down the
Detroit River. It seemed to have broken loose from its mooring and
been swept away; its outboard motor was silent and it swung in slow
circles as the currents caught at it. But the boat carried a
passenger. A man's nude body stretched face downward in it.

It was a startling figure that lay there. The body was fully matured
and had a splendid development of rounded muscles--and yet it was not
more than three feet in length. A perfectly formed and proportioned
manikin! The two officers in the harbor police launch which presently
slid alongside to investigate were giants in comparison.

They had not expected to find such weird cargo in a drifting rowboat.
They stared at the naked, unconscious midget in utter amazeme