Where One Stopped

They go through. That is nearly all they do: through the planet, through the man on the phone from Wisconsin saying he didn't expect it, through the hand that held the phone.

So he asked the ice at the Pole to wait. Not to catch them. Ice catches nothing. Clear, old, with no earthquakes in it, it was only asked to keep still

while somebody lowered glass eyes two kilometres into holes melted with hot water and let them freeze in, string by string, a cubic kilometre of looking.

Nearly every one passes untouched. Once in a great while one strikes a nucleus, the ice lights where it struck, and the line it came on can be traced back

out past the solar system, toward whatever out there burns hard enough to throw it. They read the path only where it ended. The rest kept going and told no one.