Presently he was saying with
infinite satisfaction:
"The chemical compounds here are bound to be the same! It's a new world,
bigger than the glacier planet. Those beasts last night--if they're good
food-stuff--will make this a place like the old west, and everybody
envies the pioneers! This is a new Earth! Everything's so nearly the
same--."
"I never," observed Babs, "heard of blue sand on Earth."
He frowned at her. He stooped and picked up a handful of the beach
stuff. It was not blue. The tiny, sea-broken pebbles were ordinary
quartz and granite rock. They would have to be. Yet there was a
blueness--The blue grains were very much smaller than the white and tan
and gray ones. Cochrane looked closely. Then he blew. All the sand blew
out of his hand except--at last--one tiny grain. It was white. It
glittered greasily. Cochrane moved four paces and wetted his hand in the
sea. He tried to wet the sand-grain. It would not wet.
He began to laugh.
"I did a show once," he told Babs, "about the old diamond-mines. Ever
hear of them? They used to find diamonds in blue clay which was as hard
as rock. Here, blue clay goes out from the land to under the waves.
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