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significant in a chill way, darkening the perimeter of her consciousness with a sense of the unexplained.

Back in her office Aubretia struggled to recall Gallardia's terse description of the discovery of the body, and the anatomical and cytological evidence that proved beyond doubt the incredible fact of maleness. It was necessary to draft a report for submission to the Mistress of Information in the Department of the Written Word. The man was not yet public domain, and it was for the Mistress to determine whether the news could be released to the world.

It seemed that the Fourteenth Arctic Geophysical Expedition, while carrying out a radar survey of the ice layer close to the North Pole, had recorded a strong localized echo at a depth of some twenty-five feet below the surface. Further tests with spectrum analyzers had revealed a mass of metal in roughly cylindrical form, pointing downwards at a steep angle into the frozen mass of the polar cap. There were traces of aluminium and beryllium and copper, and, surprisingly, distinct evidence of radioactivity.

Thermonuclear heaters were then used to melt a funnel in the ice, and presently the members of the expedition uncovered the strange object. It was a rocket. This was an exciting discovery, for no rocket had been launched or even made on Earth for more than four thousand years. The earlier groping efforts at interplanetary flight had been quickly abandoned after preliminary radar and video surveys of the moon and the nearer planets by small robot rockets had revealed nothing to justify the enormous expenditure which an attempt to launch manned rockets across space would involve. It seemed more logical to womankind to devote worldly wealth on the development of the Earth and its inhabitants, and the feminine mind saw neither sense nor sanity in space travel.

But it was part of the mythology of history that men had taken the problem of interplanetary flight seriously. Nobody