"I got rid of it, Adam, and here's Jake. He's all right, I guess." "Everyone attention," said Adam, picking himself up. "Make toward the direction where that explosion came from. Then join hands and get back into the ship, quick!" A few moments later, when the space suits had been put away, and the men were dispersing along the corridors to their cabins, Paulette touched Adam's arm. "What was the idea of keeping asking for those compass bearings?" she said. "We found the main lock all right, didn't we?" "Yes," replied Adam shortly, "thanks to your compass. And thanks to you, too, Jake's life was saved. But didn't you hear the reports from those others? Every one of those compasses was wrong, sometimes wrong by a whole degree, and every one was different." "I don't understand," replied the girl. "Didn't you have the compasses checked before you started?" "That's just the point. I did have them checked and adjusted. And Professor Reuter was the man who adjusted them. If you hadn't been with us--" * * * * * "_Hello, Earth! This is Paulette de Vries, speaking to you from Pluto. In about an hour or more we'll be through, one way or another. The digging has gone down to a depth of fifty feet, sheathed in its steel casing, and there's no sign of beryllium yet. We haven't enough fuel to try another dig. I've just been down in the well the men have sunk, looking it over. They're working at the bottom with the new atomic power diggers, that compress the material taken out of the well into a fused, rocklike substance with which the walls of the well itself are lined as they go down, making it safer the deeper they get. One strange thing about the digging so far is that the temperature has advanced sharply as we go down. The ocean from which we're working is two hundred below zero as you know. Down there they struck rock colder than any ice on Earth at the start and had to work in warm air supplied from the ship. Now the temperature has gone up at least a hundred degrees, and it's rising faster with every foot. Just a minute. People are hurrying past me, there's been some kind of an accident at the dig. I'll have the details for you...._" The girl snapped off her key and hurried down the corridor to the open lock. Above her the loudspeaker system was booming: "All watches. Summon all watches. Second Mate Wayland report to Captain McCausland. Diggers have broken through into a cavern. Seven men have fallen. All watches." Two or three men were standing at the edge of the air-lock, gazing down the spiral staircase that wound its way into the digging. "Who's down there?" asked Paulette. The man saluted. "First Mate Longworth," he replied. "Six men with him. We're trying communication by radio, but haven't got in touch with him yet." An icy hand gripped tightly at Paulette's heart.