"It sounded like a shell from a big gun, except that it didn't explode. Let's get over and see!"
We ran to where the thing had struck, three hundred yards across the field. We found a great funnel-shaped pit torn in the naked earth. It was a dozen yards across, fifteen feet deep, and surrounded with a powdery ring of white sand and pulverized rock.
"Something like a shell-hole," I observed.
"I've got it!" Charlie cried. "It was a meteor!"
"Yes. Lucky for us it was no bigger. If it had been like the one that fell in Siberia a few years ago, or the one that made the Winslow crater in Arizona--we wouldn't have been talking about it. Probably we have a chunk of nickel-iron alloy here."
"I'll get some of the men out here with digging tools, and we'll see what we can find."
Our mechanics were already hurrying across the field. I shouted at them to bring picks and shovels. In a few minutes five of us were at work throwing sand and shattered rock out of the pit.
Suddenly I noticed a curious thing. A pale bluish mist hung in the bottom of the pit. It was easily transparent, no denser than tobacco smoke. Passing my spade through it did not seem to disturb it in the least.
I rubbed my eyes doubtfully, said to Charlie, "Do you see a sort of blue haze in the pit?"
He peered. "No. No.... Yes. Yes, I do! Funny thing. Kind of a blue fog. And the tools cut right through it without moving it! Queer! Must have something to do with the meteor!" He was very excited.
We dug more eagerly. An hour later we had opened the hole to a depth of twenty feet. Our shovels were clanging on the gray iron of the rock from space. The mist had grown thicker as the excavation deepened; we looked at the stone through a screen of motionless blue fog.
We had found the meteor. There were several queer things about it. The first man who touched it--a big Swede mechanic named Olson--was knocked cold as if by a nasty jolt of electricity. It took half an hour to bring him to consciousness.
As fast as the rugged iron side of the meteorite was uncovered, a white crust of frost formed over it.
"It was as cold as outer space, nearly at the absolute zero," Charlie explained. "And it was heated only superficially during its quick passage through the air. But how it comes to be charged with electricity--I can't say."