ce of two breaths, he stared speechless, then gasped:

"Good Lord! What's that?"

Following his gaze, Stoddard saw it too.

"God knows!" he muttered, in a tense voice. "It wasn't there this
afternoon. Let's have a look at it."

Cautiously, not knowing what to expect, they advanced toward the
singular phenomenon.

Nearing, they saw that it was a mechanism some twenty feet at the base
and sixty or more feet high, pointed at the top.

"A rocket!" declared Professor Prescott. "Though I've never seen
anything larger than a laboratory model, I'll gamble that's what it
is."

"And I'll gamble you're right!" exclaimed Stoddard. "And one capable
of carrying passengers, would you say?"

"Fully."

"Then I think we have solved the mystery of how these diamonds reach
the market. The question now is, who's back of this thing? And since
our position here probably isn't any too healthy--"

He broke off and drew his automatic, as a small, ghostly figure
appeared--seemingly from nowhere.

The professor saw it, too--saw it followed by another, and
another--and now he knew his eyesight had not failed him back on that
wind-swept slope above, either, for these were actual creatures,
incredible as they seemed.

The snow people?

He did not know--had no time to find out--for with a rush, the strange
beings were all around them.

* * * * *

Stoddard levelled his pistol and called on them to halt, but they came
on--scores, hundreds now, seeming to pour out of some unseen aperture
of the earth.

Once or twice he fired, over their heads, but it failed to halt them.
They closed in, jabbering shrilly.

But though their words were a babel, their actions were plain enough.
Swarming up, they overpowered the explorers by sheer numbers, and
herded them with jabs of sharp, tiny knives toward a cavern mouth that
opened presently amid those eery crags.

Led underground, they found themselves proceeding along a frosty
passage lit every few yards by a great chunk of diamond. Their dim
glow seemed to be refracted from some central point beyond.

This point they soon reached--a great, vaulted chamber whose
brilliance was at first dazzling.

Its source, after the first moment or so, was obvious. It was coming
from the roof, which was one vast diamond.

"You see where we are?" whispered Stoddard. "Under the Diamond
Thunderbolt! These people have tunneled beneath the meteor. Or else--"

"Their tunnel was