Mich'l dragged his captive down the rocky tunnel, the floor of which dipped gently away from the Gate; for drainage, no doubt. Around a bend, the source of the greenish light was apparent. The fugitives were in an ice cavern. The light seemed to emanate from roof and walls. The air was uncompromisingly chill, for the blast of warm air from Subterranea had stopped. But the cold of the air was nothing to the icy chill that settled on the heart of Mich'l Ares, and the hearts of Senator Mane, and the other leaders of this desperate enterprise. So this, this was the Outside! A cavern of ice--small, hemmed-in! Those ancient folk-legends of a Sun-- "I arrest you, Mich'l Ares!" Mich'l laughed shortly. What a single-minded fellow this Captain Ilgen was! Still groggy, of course. Didn't know where they were. He left the soldier with the red, blistered face. "Mich'l! Mich'l!" a voice echoed shrilly from the ice walls. It was a high-pitched voice, and an excited one. A boy came flying out of a narrow crevice, his short robe flying, his cloth-wrapped legs twinkling. "Mich'l!" he shouted. "I saw it! I saw the Sun, the beautiful Sun!" Lucky it was that in the rush no one was hurt. The small cleft opened into a wide tunnel, a low-roofed cave through which milky-white water flowed. The cave opened upon a vista of blue sky and towering mountains whose tops were burdened with snow and upon whose sides glaciers slid down and melted; and the milky-white stream brawled down into a green valley, far, far below. On a mountain meadow, not far from the glacier that still buried the Frozen Gate, they rested.... * * * * * And so came a new strain of humanity upon the surface of the earth--a strain tempered 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.