EARTH IS MISSING! By CARL SELWYN 87th Century Earth, entombed in a relentless, mile-thick coat of ice--its buried cities groaning in slow-congealing despair--still dreaded far more a bestial horror, known only as The Bear. For that monster with a human brain was threatening to _steal the world_! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The searchlights playing across the building's dark windows, the police cordon holding back the crowd--the telenews cameras ate it up. The telenewsmen never seemed to care whether they got in the way of a stray shot or not. They had the video cameras set up right out in the middle of the icy street. The announcer was talking rapidly into his portable mike. "They've got the building surrounded now, folks! For those who faded in late, this is your teletabloid reporter bringing you an on-the-spot picture...." The picture was being reproduced on television screens throughout the ice-bound world, in London, Moscow, Singapore, New York--in New York's buried city in particular. It was happening there. New Yorkers crowded around their screens in the bright plastic salons deep in the vita-lamped society levels, in the tidy middle-class apartments several miles nearer the surface, even in a dingy hovel just under the earth's frozen crust, a few blocks from where the scene was being enacted, a sallow-faced tenement family was gathered around an ancient Eightieth Century television set. "It's one of The Bear's gang, folks! Although the rest of the gang got away after this morning's Radium Bank stick-up, the police wounded one of them. They've trailed him to this vacant building high in the upper levels and--Wait! What's this! A plainclothes man just went in the building! He went in there _alone_...." * * * * * ... It was dark inside. Johnny Steel flashed his light on the stairs. There was the same red trail that had brought them here--blood, frozen as it fell. He cut the light off again instantly, pausing till his eyes got used to the darkness again. The heavy pistol was cold in his hand. Perhaps he _was_ crazy, coming in here alone! The Homicide Squad had certainly thought so when he'd ordered them to wait outside. The stairs were a vague outline slanting up into the deserted building's gloom. At the top, a corridor cut off to the right. "Floyd ..." Steel called softly. He'd told no one that he knew the man they were hunting down. "Floyd, this is Johnny Steel. I'm coming up alone...." His voice echoed through the chill corridor above. There was no answer.