e _practically_ no temperature.
Which meant--again in practice--all but absolute zero.

John Endlich knew. He'd heard the lectures at the Homesteaders' School.
Here was a ghost-land, hundreds of square miles in extent--a region that
had been shifted in a few seconds, from the full prime of life and
motion, to moveless and timeless silence. It was like the mummy of a
man. In its presence there was a chill, a revulsion, and yet a
fascination.

* * * * *

The kids continued to jabber--more excitedly now than before. "Pop!
Mom!" Bubs urged. "Let's go look inside them buildings! Maybe the
_things_ are still there! The people, I mean. All black and dried up,
like the one in the showcase at school; four tentacles they had instead
of arms and legs, the teacher said!"

"Sure! Let's go!" Evelyn joined in. "I'm not scared to!"

Yeah, kids' tastes could be pretty gruesome. When you thought most that
you had to shelter them from horror, they were less bothered by it than
you were. John Endlich's lips made a sour line.

"Stay here, the pair of you!" Rose ordered.

"Aw--Mom--" Evelyn began to protest.

"You heard me the first time," their mother answered.

John Endlich moved to the great box, which had come with them from
Earth. The nervous tension that tore at him--unpleasant and chilling,
driving him toward straining effort--was more than the result of the
shameful and embarrassing memory of his very recent trouble with Alf
Neely and Companions, and the certainty of more trouble to come from
that source. For there was another and even worse enemy. Endlich knew
what it was--

The awful silence.

He still looked shamefaced and furious; but now he felt a gentler
sharing of circumstances. "We'll let the snooping go till later, kids,"
he growled. "Right now we gotta do what we gotta do--"

The youngsters seemed to join up with his mood. As he tore the pinchbar,
which had been conveniently attached to the side of the box, free of its
staples, and proceeded to break out supplies, their whimsical musings
fell close to what he was thinking.

"Vesta," Evelyn said. "They told us at school--remember? Vesta was the
old Roman goddess of hearth and home. Funny--hunh--Dad?"

Bubs' fancy was vivid, too. "Look, Pop!" he said again, pointing to a
ribbon of what might be concrete, cracked and crumpled as by a terrific
quake, curving away toward the hills, and the broken mountains beyond.
"That was a road