Twenty days after the Professor had resigned from the Institution, all the world's seismographs reported a serious temblor. Directionally, it was tracked down, and the calculations indicated a fairly straight line of fault.
The fault was a vertical Great Circle of the earth dividing the earth into two hemispheres.
Somewhere along this Great Circle must be Professor Milton, reasoned the many agencies seeking him. They beat the Circle from pole to pole and though finding one man in the wilderness of earth might be impossible, every available man was seeking him actively. Locating Milton was inevitable—providing Milton did not accomplish his division of the earth first.
Ten days later the earth shook again, and people looked at one another in fear.
"We must find him!" stormed Ingalls.
Edwards and Harris nodded unhappily. Edwards added: "He's down there, somewhere."
Ingalls looked out of the plane window at a million square miles of glaring ice. "A mote in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado," he grunted.
Professor Moreiko shook his head. "All Americans are crazy," he stated.
"No," grunted Edwards. "Only some of them." Moreiko laughed bitterly. Days upon end of flying over the ice was tiring to them all.
It was, however, only a matter of time before the elusive Professor Milton was located. And hours later, Moreiko gave a shout as he pointed towards a small building squat upon the ice with a tall steel tower beside it. They landed beside the building, and climbed out of the plane worriedly. Whether the professor was armed bothered them quite a bit.