A CAPTIVITY IN SERPENS

Chapter I

“This world,” said Volmar, “plainly belongs to the Mercurian type. One side is always presented to the sun; the other confronts eternal night; though it may be that there is a very slow and incomplete diurnal rotation. One hemisphere, as we have seen, is a blazing desert, and the other is sheeted with ice and frozen snow, except for the twilight zone in which we have landed.”

After eight unbroken months of ether-voyaging, in their attempted circuit of the universe, Captain Volmar and his men had felt the need of stretching their legs again on some sort of Terra Firma. The cramped quarters of the ether-ship Alcyone, the monotony of a never-ceasing flight through spatial emptiness and darkness, with only far-strewn suns and systems and nebulae for mile-posts, had palled on everyone, even the ascetically ardent Volmar. A brief respite on some planetary body was deemed advisable. They had made a number of such pauses during their half-decade of journeying.

They were nearing a lesser, unnamed sun in Serpens when this decision was made. Of course, the sun might not possess a planetary system. However, as they drew closer, the Alcyone’s telescopic reflectors revealed four planets that were circling it in wide-flung orbits. In the position which it then occupied, the innermost world was nearer to the space-ship than the others; and it soon attracted the curiosity of the voyagers by its odd markings.

Between the deserts of the sunlit hemisphere and the ice-fields and mountains that glimmered palely on the nightward side beneath two diminutive moons, a dark, narrow zone suggesting vegetation was visible—a zone that encircled the planet from pole to pole. Clouds and vapors above this penumbral belt had proved the presence of an atmosphere. A landing had been made; and Captain Volmar, Jasper the mate, Roverton, and the other members of the crew, had emerged cautiously from the flier’s man-hole after determining the temperature and chemical constituents of the outside air.

The temperature was moderate—about 60°. But the existence of one or two unknown, uncertain gases in the air had denoted the advisability of wearing masks and carrying oxygen-tanks. Equipped with these, and armed with automatics, the party sallied forth into a strange landscape.

The Alcyone had descended on a low, level, open hill-top. The ground resembled a coarse turf, and was pale-blue in color. When the men trod upon it for the first time, they found that it was not covered with anything in the least related to grass, but with a peculiar growth, two or three inches high, like a thin, branching fungus. It was not rooted in the soil; and it fell over or crumbled readily beneath the footsteps of the explorers.

They could see plainly enough in the weird twilight, strengthened as it was by the glimmering of the two moons, one of which was crescent and the other gibbous. Far-off, a row of mound-like hills, interspersed with sharp dolomites, was outlined on an afterglow of torrid saffron that soared in deepening rays to assail the green heavens. A few stars, and the other planets of the system, were visible.

Volmar and his men approached the edge of the hill-top. Below them, a long, undulant slope descended to a plain covered with the dark vegetation which they had descried from afar in space.

It was a mass of purples and blues and mauves, ranging from the palest to the darkest tints, and it seemed to vary in height from shrub-like growths to things that presented the size, if not the natural aspect, of full-grown forest trees. Some of the smaller forms, like an advance guard, had climbed mid-way on the acclivity. They were very heavy at the base, with dwindling boles like inverted carrots and many nodular outbranchings of an irregularity more grotesque than that of any terrene cacti. The lower branches appeared to touch the ground, with the ungainly sprawl of crab or tarantula legs.

“I’d like to have a look at those things,” said Volmar. “Do you want to come with me, Roverton? The rest of you fellows had best remain within sight of the flier. We haven’t seen any sort of animate life yet; but there’s no telling what might be lurking in the neighborhood.”

He and Roverton went down the slope, with the fungoid turf crunching beneath their feet. They neared the foremost plant-forms rather cautiously, remembering their unpleasant experiences with flesh-eating trees and vegetables in other worlds. These forms, however, though they were extremely uncouth and even ugly, displayed none of the usual characteristics of carnivorous plants.

“What are they?” Volmar was frankly puzzled. “Cacti? Fungi? Aerophytes? I don’t believe they have any root-systems at all—they look as if one could knock them over very easily.”

He approached one of the short, heavy boles, and pushed it with his foot. It fell to the ground and lay sprawling with its thick, ungainly limbs in the air. Unlike the tiny growths underfoot, it was very tough and rubbery, and none of its branches were broken or in any wise injured by the fall. On the contrary, they had bent with elastic ease where they were caught underneath the bole.

“The thing must be an air-plant,” said Volmar. “I don’t see any sign of root-attachments.”

He was turning away, when Roverton touched his arm.

“What do you think of that, Captain?”

The overthrown plant was moving, albeit with great slowness and sluggishness, in a manifest effort to right itself. The top heaved, the branches that were doubled beneath it seemed to straighten and lengthen, while those beneath the base contracted. The thing was plainly trying to secure a sort of leverage. At last, after several vain attempts, it resumed an upright position, on the very same spot from which Volmar had displaced it.

“That’s interesting,” Volmar commented. “These things have the power of mobility when such is needed. I wouldn’t be surprised if all this vegetation were migratory. Doubtless it has developed the ability to move from place to place on account of the severely changing climatic conditions. In all likelihood the habitable twilight zone shifts more or less during the planet’s annual rotation, and these plants follow it, to avoid the extreme heat of full daylight or the utter cold of darkness. If there is any animal life, it is probably nomadic also.”

“Shall we go on?” asked Roverton. “That forest at the bottom of the hill should be worthy of study.”

“Alright,” assented Volmar. “But we mustn’t wander too far from the others. There’s no use taking chances in an unexplored world—we’ve done that before and have gotten into some tight places.”

A hundred yards, and they were among the outposts of the strange forest. Many of the growths resembled the first shrubs in type, though they were heavier and taller. Others grew in recumbent positions, like vast vegetable centipedes or many-legged monsters. Some retracted their outer limbs in a sluggish caution before the approach of the men; but most of them did not appear to move at all. There seemed to be nothing to fear from these plants; so Volmar and Roverton went on among the irregularly scattered groups, examining them with much curiosity. So far, they had seen no evidence whatever of animal or insect life.

In their scientific absorption, the explorers did not realize how far they had wandered, till they saw that the plants around them were becoming higher and thicker. Many of them were twenty or thirty feet tall; and they stood so close that further progress among them was difficult.

“I guess we’d better turn back,” said Volmar.

He and Roverton started to retrace their steps, which were plainly marked in the trodden fungi. To their surprise, when they had gone only a little distance, they found that the path was now blocked in many places by thickets of the strange trees, which must have closed in stealthily behind their passing, though no movement of this sort had been discernible at the time. Perhaps these plants had been impelled to follow them by some obscure instinct or stirring of curiosity. But evidently they were not aggressive or dangerous; and their motor activity was of the most torpid kind.

Because of this re-arrangement of the growths, however, the men were compelled to divagate from their direct route as they returned toward the Alcyone. But they did not anticipate any real difficulty, and were not likely to go astray, since the low hill from which they had descended was visible in many places above the tops of the vegetation.

Presently they came to some old footmarks, characterized by three toes of preternatural length and sharpness. The prints were very far apart, suggesting that their originator was possessed of phenomenally long legs.

Volmar and Roverton followed the tracks, insomuch as these appeared to be going in the general direction of the space-flier. But a little further on, in the lee of a dense clump of vegetation, the tracks entered a huge burrow, into which the men could almost have walked without stooping, on a gentle incline. Both eyed it rather warily as they passed; but there was no visible sign of its occupant.

“I’m not sure that I’d care to meet that customer, whatever it is,” observed Roverton. “Probably it’s some loathsome overgrown insect.”

They had gone perhaps seventy feet beyond the burrow’s entrance, when the ground suddenly caved in beneath Volmar, who was in the lead, and he disappeared from Roverton’s sight. Hastening to the edge of the hole into which his companion had fallen, Roverton met a similar fate, for the ground crumbled beneath him and he was precipitated into a dark pit seven or eight feet deep, landing beside Volmar. Both were a little bruised by the fall but were otherwise unhurt. They had broken through into the burrow, whose entrance they could now see from where they were lying. The place was filled with a noisome, mephitic smell, and was damp with disagreeable oozings. Picking themselves up, the men started toward the entrance at once, hoping that the burrow’s owner had not been aroused by their involuntary intrusion.

As they approached the mouth, they were startled by a medley of shrill, piping sounds which arose from without—the first sounds they had heard in this fantastic world. As they drew still nearer, they saw the silhouettes of two figures that were standing just outside the cave. The figures were bipedal, with thick legs of disproportionate shortness, and arms that reached almost to the ground. The heads could not be seen from within the tunnel. These extraordinary beings were stretching a narrow, heavy-stranded net, weighted at the ends with balls of metal or mineral, which they held between them across the entrance. They continued their piping noise; and their voices grew shriller still and took on an odd, cajoling note.

Volmar and Roverton had paused.

“Now what?” whispered Roverton.

“I think,” Volmar whispered in reply, “that those creatures, whoever or whatever they are, must be waiting for the owner of the burrow to come out. They have tracked it, or perhaps have even driven it here. Probably they’re planning to wind that net around its long legs when it emerges.”

“Or,” suggested Roverton, “maybe they saw us fall into the pit and are planning to take us captive.”

They returned cautiously toward the caved-in portion of the burrow, and stopped when they saw that several more of the weird hunters, some of them equipped with nets and others armed with trident-headed lances, were grouped around the opening above and were peering down. The heads of these beings were even more peculiar than their limbs, and were quite hideous from a human stand-point. They possessed three eyes, two of which were set obliquely in close juxtaposition to a slit-like mouth surrounded with waving or drooping tentacles, and the other near the top of a long, sloping brow that was lined with sparse bristles. There were rudimentary projections from each jowl, that might have been either ears or wattles; but nothing even remotely suggestive of nostrils was detectible. The whole expression was supremely wild and ferocious.

“Can’t say that I admire the looks of those customers,” murmured Roverton. “Plainly they’re a hunting-party; and we, or the occupant of this burrow—or both—have been marked out as their meat.”

The guards at the entrance had continued their piping song. Suddenly it seemed to find a far-off echo in the depths of the cavern. The sound approached and grew louder and shriller. Volmar and Roverton could see the gleaming of two greenish, phosphorescent eyes in the darkness beyond the circle of dim light that fell from the caved-in roof.

“The hunters are luring that beast,” said Volmar, “by imitating the voices of its own kind.”

He and Roverton, with their automatics ready, now retreated slowly toward the entrance, watching over their shoulders as they went to the phosphoric eyes that continued to advance from the gloom.

Now they could see two enormous, spraddling, many-jointed legs, and a squat, shaggy face and globe-like body; and then the two hind-legs, as the creature came into the light. Somehow, it was more like an insect than an animal—like some Gargantuan, over-nourished arachnid. As the monster passed beneath the opening, the two men saw the flash of a spear cast by one of the watchers above. It sank into the dark, hairy body, and the piping rose to a harsh scream, as the creature leapt forward upon Volmar and Roverton.

With their automatics flaming and crackling in the gloom, the men turned and ran toward the entrance. Their maddened pursuer, seemingly undeterred by the bullets, was close upon their heels.

The weighted net was still stretched across the burrow’s mouth, and Volmar and Roverton now fired their last cartridges at the legs of the two beings who held it. Both of these creatures fell sprawling and dropped the net. The men burst forth into the light, only to find themselves confronted by a dozen similar beings, all armed with nets or spears. These bizarre hunters gave no evidence of fear or surprise at the appearance of the earthlings, but proceeded with calm, methodical swiftness to form in a ring. The men rushed upon them hoping to break through, but with ineluctable speed and deftness each was entangled in the heavy meshes cast about him, and went to the ground with pinioned arms and legs. Their automatics had fallen from their fingers and were beyond reach. Lying helpless, they saw the emerging of the monster that had driven them from the burrow. It was neatly trapped in its turn by the guards; and it lay palpitating on the ground, bleeding a thick bluish fluid from the spear and bullet wounds it had received.

Chapter II

The two men could scarcely move, so closely were the weighted meshes wound about them.

“This is a pretty tight situation,” remarked Roverton, whose wit was unquenchable by any hardship or danger, no matter how desperate.

“Yes, and it may be tighter before we are through,” added Volmar grimly, as he lay staring up into the strange faces of their captors, who had gathered in a circle about the earth-men and were surveying them with manifest curiosity. Seen close at hand, these beings were truly hideous and repulsive, though it was likely that they represented an evolutionary type similar in mental endowment to aboriginal man. They were of gigantic stature, averaging seven or eight feet. Their naked, dark-grey bodies were covered with a hairless skin marked off into rudimentary scales or plates, possibly denotive of some reptilian origin or affinity. Their three eyes, their sloping brows and tentacle-fringed mouths gave them an indescribably weird appearance. Their long arms were triple-jointed, in opposition to the squat, single-jointed legs, which ended in webbed feet. Their fingers were seemingly boneless, but extremely powerful and supple, and were wrapped like tentacles about the terrific trident spears which they carried. The heads and shafts of these weapons were both made of the same copper-colored metal.

The hunters began to gibber among themselves, in guttural growling voices that were evidently their natural tones, and were quite unlike the shrill pipings with which they had lured the monster from its burrow. Their speech seemed to consist of monosyllabic sounds whose exact phonetic nature would have defied human imitation or classification.

After what was plainly a sort of debate two of them stepped forward and proceeded to unbind the legs of the earth-men, leaving their arms tied by the knotted nets, and prodded them roughly with spear-butts to make them stand up.

Volmar and Roverton scarcely needed this urging. They rose awkwardly and stiffly. Then, bearing them along in its midst, the whole party started off through the woods in an opposite direction from the hill on which the flier had landed. Some of the hunters had tied the trussed monster to a sort of light metal frame with handles and were carrying it among them. The two that had been wounded by the earth-men limped along in the rear. Short-legged as they were, these beings made rapid progress, and Volmar and Roverton were soon compelled to quicken their pace.

“Now whither?” asked Roverton. “I suppose you and I are going into the tribal pot along with that monster.”

Volmar did not answer. He was examining the net by which his arms were bound. It was made of a finely linked metal, like highly tempered copper, and was very strong. The workmanship was so delicate and regular as to arouse wonderment. Also, the spears carried by the giants were exquisitely wrought.

“I wonder,” soliloquized Volmar, “if these nets and weapons were made by their owners?”

“Probably,” said Roverton. “Of course, the work seems to betoken a considerable degree of manual skill and civilization; and these beings are a pretty low and bestial-looking lot from a human aesthetic viewpoint. But after all we can’t tell much about them from their appearance. All the extraplanetary peoples we have met were more or less monstrous according to our standards.”

“That’s true,” assented Volmar slowly. “But somehow I have a hunch that our captors aren’t the only beings on this world.”

“Maybe; but I’m not very curious to know. I hope Jasper and the others will follow our trail—they must be worrying about us by now. A little rescue party would certainly be welcome.”

“We may have to rescue ourselves—it all depends on what we get into. Our captors are doubtless nomads who roam from place to place in the twilight zone, like the vegetation. There’s no telling what sort of abodes they have—if any. It is possible that they may dwell underground.”

“Christ! I’ve had enough burrows for one day,” ejaculated Roverton. “Also, I’m not likely to forget the experience that Deming, Adams and myself had with those troglodyte pygmies in Andromeda.”

Several miles were traversed by the party. The way led deviously over a flat plain, amid clumps of the rootless vegetation. The row of mound-like hills and sharp dolomites which the men had seen from the Alcyone’s landing-place was now very near. The trees became sparser, and ended on the verge of a shallow, rock-strewn valley where thin streams of water ran tortuously down to a long, winding lake. Crossing this valley, whose soil was covered by small fungi, and fording one of the streams, the party entered a deep gorge which wound slowly upward among the further hills. Here there were deep chasms, and crags of roughly splintered stone with outcroppings of unknown metal, and dark torrents that fumed with iridescent vapors. However, there was a well-marked path, and progress was not difficult.

Now the path began to slope downward. Soon the party emerged in an amphitheater surrounded by crags and pinnacles. Here an unexpected sight awaited the earth-men. To one side, in the lee of a cliff, were a number of rude stone huts; and in the middle of the amphitheatre there reposed a huge, glittering object, perfectly oval in form, and plainly of an artificial nature.

“I’ll wager,” cried Roverton, “that that thing is some kind of air-vessel, or even space-craft.”

“I never bet,” rejoined Volmar. “But I shouldn’t be surprised if you were right.”

Many figures were moving about the oval object; and as the party drew nearer, it could be seen that they were not all of the same type or species. Many were like the hunters who had captured Volmar and Roverton; but others differed as widely from these as the hunters differed in their turn from the earth-men. They were about four feet tall, with spindling limbs and delicate bodies, pinched in the center like those of ants, and heads of such disproportionate size as to give at once the impression of artificial masks. These creatures were gorgeously colored, with all the hues of the harlequin opal, and contrasted extremely with the dark giants. Seen closer at hand, the oval object revealed a series of small ports filled with a vitreous, violet-hued material, and an open circular door in its side from which a stair-case of light aerial structure, doubtless collapsible, ran to the ground.

The two groups of unearthly beings were engaged in a lively conversation, and the gruff gutturals of the giants were surmounted by the sweet, piercing sibilants of the dwarfs. Several strange animals of varying size and monstrosity, bound with nets, were lying on the ground at one side, and some of the dwarfs were bringing copper-colored nets and spears and other weapons or implements of more doubtful use from the interior of the oval vessel. When some of these articles were handed over to the giants, the earth-men surmised that they were being bartered in exchange for the trussed animals.

“What did I tell you?” cried Volmar. “I knew that those nets and tridents weren’t made by our captors. And I doubt very much if the dwarfs are natives of this planet at all. I believe they have come from a neighboring world of this same solar system. Possibly they are zoologists, and are collecting specimens of the local fauna. I think those head-pieces of theirs are respirative masks—they don’t seem to fit with the rest of their anatomy. No doubt they are unable to breathe the atmosphere of this world, at least in its pure state; and it is probable that those masks include some sort of filtering apparatus. There is nothing to be discerned in the nature of air-tanks.”

Seeing the approach of the hunters with Volmar and Roverton in their midst, the two groups interrupted their bargaining and stared in silence at the new-comers. The heads, or masks, of the dwarfs were fitted with two pairs of green eyes, set vertically and far apart; and their gaze was uncannily intent and wholly unchanging. The eyes were divided into many facets, like those of an insect, and blazed with emerald light. Between and below the eyes there was a short, trumpet-like attachment, which doubtless served as a mouth-piece; and its hollow tube might well have contained the filtering apparatus surmised by Volmar. Two curving horns, perforated like flutes, arose from the sides of those curious heads, and suggested an auditory mechanism. The limbs and torsos of the dwarfs were seemingly nude, and glittered like the shards of bright-colored beetles, with nacreous lights that ran and melted into each other with every movement.

A brief interval of silence, as if all these beings were overcome with amazement at the appearance of Volmar and Roverton; and then the dwarfs began to talk and gesticulate excitedly among themselves, pointing at the earth-men with their thin, pipe-like arms, which ended in rather intricate-looking hands whose fingers were fine as antennae. Then they addressed the giant hunters in tones of interrogation, and a long discussion followed. Some of the dwarfs approached Volmar and Roverton and examined their clothing, masks and oxygen-tanks with minute attention. The tanks, which were built into the suits of flexible vitriolene, were apparently a source of special interest. There was much argument among the dwarfs in their sweet, hissing voices; and it was plain that some were maintaining one theory and some another. Their whole air was one of great puzzlement and perplexity.

“I’ll bet,” said Roverton, “that they think we’re some new species of animal native to this world, and are trying to classify us.”

“They have the look of investigative scientists,” agreed Volmar. “And it must be giving them a lot of trouble to place us in their system of biology or zoology.”

Now the dwarfs addressed themselves again to the hunters. There was much voluble expostulation on both sides.

“Guess they’re trying to drive a bargain for us,” conjectured Roverton. “And the hunters want full value in trade before they part with such rare specimens.”

A little later, to confirm this surmise, the dwarfs brought out a pile of odd but exquisitely wrought implements, some of which were perhaps designed for culinary use, and several large bell-shaped receptacles of semi-vitreous earthen-ware filled with varicolored materials that resembled roughly-ground farinaceous food-stuffs. These were laid before the hunters, who continued to demur and chaffer; and then some huge, abdominous bottles, made of an unidentifiable substance that was neither glass nor metal nor porcelain, were brought forth and added to the pile. Their contents were past the conjecture of the earth-men, but obviously they were prized by the giants and were considered as clinching the bargain. The chaffering came to an end, and attention was now turned to the wounded monster which the giants had captured with Volmar and Roverton. The dwarfs appeared to be rather dubious about purchasing this creature, and examined its wounds in a somewhat cursory manner. Their decision was plainly negative; for after a little while the captors of the earth-men, as well as the other group of giants, broke up and went away in the direction of the stone huts, bearing the various articles of barter and the dying animal as well as several other curious creatures which the dwarfs for one reason or another had declined to buy.

“Sold!” laughed Roverton, as he peered at the unique menagerie of which he and Volmar were seemingly a part. There were at least a dozen of these quaint monsters, who represented the fauna of the planet. Some were undreamable mixtures of serpentine, insect and mammalian forms, others were loathsome, enormous annalids, and others still were not alliable with any known genus or combination of genera. Many were plainly ferocious, and were still struggling convulsively against their bonds. Anyone who came within reach of their dart-like talons or saw-like teeth would have fared badly.

“I wonder how the dwarfs are going to handle them?” questioned Volmar, as he eyed the contrast between these monsters, many of which were quite huge and bulky, and the frail iridescent beings.

As if in answer to his query, a tackle of strong metallic-looking ropes was lowered from the door of the vessel. Then two dwarfs, armed with long rods of a dull bluish material terminating in circular disks covered with blunt prongs of some brighter substance, came forward from amid the group. Each applied the end of his rod to the spine of one of the struggling animals. Instantly, with a single shudder, the monsters lay still, as if dead. Manifestly some paralyzing force was emitted by the rods. The lowered ropes were then fastened about the inert monsters by other dwarfs, and they were hauled up by a sort of mechanical windlass and disappeared within the oval vessel. Two more were treated in the same manner; and then the rod-bearers approached Volmar and Roverton.

“Hell! They’re going to lay us out too,” cried Roverton. He and Volmar looked about at the dwarfs, who surrounded them in a circle. Many of these frail beings were armed with the strange rods or with other instruments of dubious nature. But with their attenuated arms and pinched bodies they did not seem very formidable.

“Let’s make a break for it,” said Volmar. He and Roverton leapt back from the advancing rod-bearers, and hurled themselves at the circle. The dwarfs gave way, avoiding them with agility; and one of them reached out with his rod and touched Volmar on the chest while another caught Roverton in the abdomen. Neither was aware of any shock from the contact: the effect was more that of some narcotic or anaesthetic, pervading the entire body with instant numbness and insensibility. Darkness seemed to rush upon them from all sides, and both men became totally unconscious.

Chapter III

Emerging from the bournless midnight of oblivion, Roverton heard a deep thrumming sound which conveyed at once to his reviving brain the idea of some powerful mechanism. The sound was incessant and appeared to come from above. Roverton could feel its vibration in all the tissues of his body.

Opening his eyes, he received a series of visual impressions which for the moment were altogether confusing and were quite meaningless. There was a bright chaos of lights, of unearthly forms and angles, which baffled his brain. Then his eyes began to establish a sort of order, and he realized that he was lying on the floor of an unfamiliar structure, made of transparent panes in a frame-work of massive metal bars. The structure was perhaps seven feet in height by nine in diameter, and was shaped like a huge box or cage. Volmar, still unconscious, was lying beside him; and both Volmar and himself were no longer bound by the copperish nets. Between the bars he could see other structures of a similar type, in which the monsters trapped by the giant hunters and sold to the dwarfs were reposing. Some of these creatures were beginning to recover from their paralysis, while others were still insensible and immobile. The cages were in a long room with curving walls and a low, arched ceiling. There were numerous ports in the walls, which gave a rich purple light through their stained transparency.

Roverton was still bewildered as he studied these details. Then, as remembrance returned, he understood. He and Volmar were on board the oval vessel; and the deep thrumming sound was the noise of the engines. If, as he had surmised, the vessel was an ether-ship, they were now in the midst of interplanetary space on their way to some unknown world!

Stunned and overwhelmed by the situation, he turned again to Volmar, and saw that the Captain was beginning to revive. His eyes opened, his fingers stirred; and then he lifted his right arm, rather feebly. A moment more, and he spoke.

“Where are we, Roverton?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But we’re all boxed up and ready for delivery to the zoo, wherever it is. And I think we are now in mid-space. In all likelihood the planet to which we are being taken is one that belongs to this same system. There are four worlds, as you will remember, and there’s no telling which one is our destination. Our chances of ever seeing the Alcyone again are none too gaudy under the circumstances. Hell, what a prospect!”

“The situation is rather dubious, to say the least,” assented Volmar. “Apart from our ignorance as to where we are being taken, and the practical impossibility of escape or rescue, we shall soon have the problems of air and food to cope with—problems for which there is no solution as far as I can see. “Our air-masks and tanks have not been tampered with; and we had a twelve-hours’ supply of compressed air when we left the Alcyone. But since we do not know how long we have been unconscious, we cannot compute how much of the supply still remains; and in any case asphyxiation is highly probable at no remote time.”

Roverton had been inspecting the cage with careful attention. He now noticed a curving metal tube which entered it through the floor at one end. Putting his hand over the mouth of the tube, he felt an air-current.

“I think,” he remarked, “that our cage, and doubtless the others, are being supplied with some sort of compressed air—probably the atmosphere of the Mercurian world on which we were captured. No doubt the air in the room itself is that of the world to which the dwarfs are native, and is not respirable by these monsters.”

The room had been untenanted, save for the earth-men and their fellow-captives. Now Volmar and Roverton saw that five of the opalescent dwarfs had suddenly appeared, carrying receptacles of exotic forms, some of which were filled with liquids and others with objects resembling truffles and tubers. The dwarfs proceeded to open a panel worked by some hidden spring in the side of each cage and then introduced into each a vessel filled with fluid and one filled with the unknown foodstuffs. This was done very quickly and cautiously, and a mechanical arm-like apparatus was used in the actual transmission of the vessels. Afterwards the panels were closed immediately. When all the cages had been supplied in this manner, the dwarfs stood watching their occupants, who in most cases were greedily absorbing the food and water. The earth-men perceived that the dwarfs were now without their masks, revealing a physiognomy with elaborate eyes, proboscides and antennae, such as might well be looked for in connection with their delicate bodies.

When they noticed that Volmar and Roverton made no effort to touch the provender, the five dwarfs gathered about their cage, eyeing them curiously and carrying on an eager discussion or disputation.

“I’m hungry and thirsty enough,” confided Roverton to the Captain. “But how is one to eat and drink through a respirative mask—even granting that that stuff is fit for human consumption? However, I suppose the dwarfs think the masks are part of our anatomy, along with the suits and tanks. They must be pretty dumb not to realize that we are intelligent beings, who make use of artificial contrivances even as they themselves.”

“Literal-mindedness isn’t confined to human beings, I suspect,” said Volmar. “These fellows are evidently taking us at our face value. They found us on the Mercurian world, along with the zoological specimens they were collecting; and doubtless it never occurred to them that we might have come there in a space-ship, like themselves. Anyway they are probably so conceited as to believe that their own world is the only one capable of producing highly evolved and intelligent life-forms. Such conceit, as you know, is not unusual. I remember, back in my boyhood, before space-travel became an actuality, how many of our own astronomers and other scientists argued that the earth was the only world in all the universe that was inhabitable by any kind of organic life.”

Presently the dwarfs departed; and time wore on. Overcome by their strange and perilous situation, the earth-men talked in a desultory manner, and lapsed into lengthening intervals of silence. They studied the interior of their prison, wondering if it would be possible to break out. The panes, whether of glass or some other transparent material, were enormously thick and were manifestly very strong; and anyway, escape would have been futile under the circumstances. Nevertheless, the idea appealed to them. Any sort of action, no matter how desperate or hopeless, seemed preferable to the monotony of supine waiting.

Roverton now inspected the vessel containing the tuber-like objects. It was made of earthen-ware and was quite heavy. Roverton emptied the contents on the floor, and then hurled the object with all his strength at one of the vitreous panes. There was a terrible crash; but to the amazement of himself and Volmar, neither the vessel nor the pane was broken or even splintered or cracked by the impact. Both the earthen-ware and the transparent material, it was obvious, were possessed of an iron toughness not characteristic of such substances in their mundane forms.

“Well, that’s that.” Roverton’s tone was rueful. “I guess we’re not going to bust out in a hurry.”

He and Volmar were consumed by growing thirst and hunger. They began to eye the water and food-stuffs avidly.

“What do you say we try it?” Roverton suggested.

“Go ahead. If you survive, I’ll experiment myself. But be careful.”

Roverton unfastened his helmet and removed it very cautiously. He took a deep breath. The air in the cage was heavy, with a queer smell that stung his nostrils and smarted in his lungs. It was breathable enough, as far as he could tell, though its cumulative effect on the human respiratory mechanism was an uncertain quantity.

He raised the deep vessel containing the water to his lips, and sipped it. The fluid was semi-opaque and flavorless. Then, gingerly, he picked up one of the tubers, which was about the size and shape of a large potato, and bit into it. The thing was tough-skinned, with a porous, fungoid-looking interior, and its taste was unpleasantly bitter. Roverton made a wry face, as he swallowed a scanty mouthful.

“Can’t say that I care for the grub.” He returned to the water and sipped a little more of it while Volmar proceeded to remove his own mask. Roverton then passed him the water and Volmar drank some of it cautiously and afterwards sampled one of the tubers but rejected it summarily without swallowing any of the unpalatable substance.

“I’m dubious of that stuff,” he observed. “As you know, lots of things which are perfectly good foods for ultra-terrestrial life-forms are sheer poison for us. I hope you didn’t swallow much of it.”

“Only a little,” rejoined Roverton. “And maybe the stuff is poisonous—I don’t believe I feel so very well.” A sudden sickness had come upon him, with vertigo and violent internal pains and he sat down on the floor of the cage.

Volmar began to feel a little sick himself; and since he had not eaten any of the tuber, he concluded that the unfamiliar water, and perhaps the air, were contributing to this condition. However, he did not develop the agonizing pains, fever and delirium which progressively characterized Roverton’s case. Writhing convulsively, moaning, and out of his head half the time, Roverton lay on the floor while Volmar watched beside him, totally unable, for lack of medicinal remedies or even precise knowledge, to do anything that would palliate his sufferings.

An hour or two passed in this manner without bringing any marked change in the sick man’s condition. Absorbed in his vigil, Volmar did not perceive the approach of two dwarfs who had entered the room, till he heard the excited babble of their shrill voices. They were standing beside the cage and were gesticulating with much animation as they peered at himself and Roverton. Volmar was puzzled by their excitement, till he remembered that he and Roverton were now without their masks and the dwarfs had never seen them before in such disattire. Evidently the discovery that the masks were artificial and removable had provoked much interest.

After a minute or so the dwarfs hastened from the room, and soon returned in company with half a dozen others, who surrounded the cage and peered at the earth-men with their bulging, many-angled orbs. Much debate was going on among them; but Volmar was too deeply worried about his comrade’s condition to give more than a perfunctory attention to their gestures and crowding faces. Also he was beginning to feel a little light-headed, probably from some element in the air that was ill-suited to human respiration. His brain attached no significance to the re-departure of one of the dwarfs; and even when this being came back a minute later, bearing two of the strange anaesthetic rods, Volmar remembered with apathetic slowness and indifference the former use which had been made of these instruments.

Very quickly and cautiously, one of the dwarfs opened a panel in the cage. Two others, standing in readiness with the rods, thrust their weapons with equal quickness through the opening and applied them to the two men. Instantly, as before, Volmar fell senseless; and the sick, delirious Roverton ceased to moan and mutter and lapsed into merciful oblivion.

Chapter IV

The men awakened simultaneously from their second plunge into this mysterious anaesthesia. The circumstances under which they found themselves were even more baffling and more incredible than their confused senses could at first comprehend. It was evident at once that they were no longer on the ether-ship, for the room in which they were lying was very spacious and was walled and roofed and floored with an alabaster-like stone of great luster and beauty. There were many open windows, of an oval form, through which bewildering glimpses of an intricate alien architecture were visible against a violet sky. The impression conveyed was that they were in an upper story of some lofty edifice. The air was pervaded with a tropic warmth.

They were lying on a broad couch, covered with a flossy, mottled material of red and saffron, and inclined at an angle of perhaps fifteen degrees. The room was furnished with several small tables, supported on frail, spidery legs and littered with outlandish implements and quaintly shaped vials such as the surgeons or chemists of an unknown world might employ. Except for Volmar and Roverton, the room was seemingly untenanted.

More curious even than their surroundings, however, were the sensations of the two men. Contrary to all natural expectation, there was no least trace of illness, hunger, thirst or fatigue on the part of either. Also, with a feeling that amounted to stupefaction, both realized that they were breathing a pure, well-oxygenated air—and that they were wearing their masks, which must have been replaced during their period of unconsciousness. It seemed as if the air-supply in the tanks must in some unaccountable manner have been renewed by their captors. Both men were conscious of a singular buoyancy, a remarkable alertness and bodily well-being.

“Are you all right?” asked Volmar, as he sat up on the couch and turned to Roverton.

“Never better in my life. But I can’t understand why I should feel that way. The last I can remember is being deadly sick in that infernal menagerie cage. And where are we, anyway? It certainly looks as if we had arrived somewhere.”

“I judge,” answered Volmar, “that we are on the particular planetary body to which our captors belong. Plainly, when they found us with our masks off, they realized that we were intelligent beings like themselves, and not mere monsters; and they have been treating us since with more consideration. They must have analyzed the remaining air in our tanks, and then replenished it with a synthetic substitute of their own. What else they’ve done to us I don’t know. But probably we’ll find out before long.”

“Speaking for myself,” said Roverton, “I feel as if I had been well-dined and wined, and had received a shot in the arm to boot. They must have found some way to feed us while we were unconscious—and something non-poisonous and assimilable by the human organism to feed us with.”

“Truly,” admitted Volmar, “it is a remarkable situation. I don’t know how it will all end; but we are lucky to be alive under the circumstances. And no doubt there are some even more extraordinary experiences in store for us.”

“I don’t care how extraordinary they are,” returned Roverton. “I’d rather be back on board the Alcyone. What do you suppose Jasper and Deming and the rest are doing anyway? There isn’t one chance in a billion that they could follow us or find out what has happened to us. Probably they are combing that damned Mercurian planet in an effort to discover what has swallowed us up.”

“They may have seen the departure of the strange ether-ship. Whether or not it would occur to them that we were on board is another matter. And even if they did figure this out, it would be a miracle if they could have done it quickly enough to follow the alien flier, keep it in sight, and locate its destination.”

Before Roverton could reply, he and Volmar saw that three dwarfs were standing beside them. These beings were taller, with a more authoritative bearing, with more delicate antennae and proboscides than the ones they had seen on the space-vessel; and their coloration partook of deep red and orange and Tyrian tones. With queer, jerky genuflections, like nodding insects, they addressed the men. Their words were scarcely articulate to human ears; but an idea of formal courtesy and obeisance was somehow conveyed.

Volmar and Roverton, rising to their feet, returned the greeting in the best manner they could muster.

Plucking the sleeves of the mens’ clothing with their antennal fingers, with elaborate gestures whose meaning was obvious, the dwarfs led the way through an odd, elliptical door that had been concealed from sight in an angle of the wall. Thence, at the end of a short passage, the party emerged on a sort of balcony.

The earth-men gave an involuntary gasp of amazement and were seized by a slight dizziness as they approached the verge; for the balcony was merely a scant ledge without walls, railings or hand-holds of any kind; and below, at an awful depth, were the streets of a monstrous city. It was like looking down from a precipice into some alpine chasm.

All around and above there soared other buildings of the same white material and the same bizarre structure as the one on whose balcony the earth-men were standing. These edifices were of colossal extent and many of them culminated in airy spires and pinnacles of a fairy delicacy, thronging the bright purple heavens like a host of shining obelisks. At frequently recurring intervals, the buildings were connected by bridges of gossamer thinness and fragility, which formed a gleaming web-work in the air. They were wrought of that pale, alabastrine substance; and one of them issued, without sign of jointure, from the narrow ledge at the earth-men’s feet, and ran to the midway story of a titan pile that was more than fifty yards distant.

The scene, in its crowding, multiform strangeness, was such as to bewilder and baffle human vision. All was incognizably foreign—a teeming babel of undreamt and baroque architectural forms. Far down in the abysmal streets, and on the lofty bridges, the frail people of the city passed like iridescent motes. All was weirdly silent, apart from certain recurrent rumblings and mutterings which seemed to come from underground, like the pulsing of hidden, gigantic engineries.

Spell-bound by the vision, and dazed by its vistas, Volmar and Roverton became slowly aware that one of their guides had stepped from the balcony to the bridge and was signing them to follow.

“Holy smoke!” was Roverton’s exclamation. “Are we supposed to walk on that?”

The railless bridge was barely a yard in width, and the drop to the street was terrific—at least a full half-mile. The guide, however, seemed to possess the equilibrium of a bird or an insect. His two companions were standing behind the earth-men, and were armed with weapons like double-pointed goads. As Volmar and Roverton hesitated, these beings came forward, lifting the formidable points in a gesture of menace.

“Well,” said Volmar, “I guess we’d better move along. After all, the bridge isn’t quite so bad as a tight-rope.”

The earth-men followed their guide, who was tripping lightly and unconcernedly before them. Accustomed though they were to cosmic elevations, they still did not care to peer downward at the dreadful gulfs on either hand, but kept their eyes on the balcony ahead. With short and careful paces, they managed to cross the long, attenuated span. It seemed to take them a long time; and they gained their goal with much relief.

Looking back from their new vantage, they saw that the building they had left was much lower than those around it, and possessed a flat, towerless roof. Several glittering vessels, similar to the one in which they had travelled through space from the Mercurian world, were lying on the edge of this roof, which was plainly a landing-stage for such craft. Beyond, were rows of high towers, some of which were inclined at oblique angles and were inter-connected in the same fashion as the main structures.

They were now conducted into the heart of the edifice in which that precarious bridge had ended. Through labyrinthine corridors, and down slanting floors and serpentining stairs with awkward little steps, they were led for a distance impossible to estimate. They soon passed from purple daylight to the red, unflickering glare of columnar flames that issued from black, funnel-shapen vases.

The building appeared to be a sort of scientific laboratory. On every hand, in rooms of an asymmetrical construction, they saw the curious apparatus of a foreign and inconceivably advanced chemistry. People of the dwarf race were busy everywhere with arcanic tests and abstruse labors. They paid little heed to the earth-men, and were intently absorbed in the queer crucibles, vats, alembics and other mechanisms of a less classifiable nature which they tended.

At last the earthlings and their guides entered a vast room, filled with transparent cages, most of which were occupied by fearsome and variegated monsters. Among these, the men recognized certain of their former companions in captivity. Some of the creatures had been rendered unconscious; and dwarfs wearing atmospheric masks had entered their cages and by means of little suction-pumps attached to crystalline vials were extracting various amounts of the life-fluids, or perhaps of certain special glandular secretions, from the moveless monsters. Somewhat sickened, Volmar and Roverton watched the flowing of diverse-colored fluids into the vials as they went by.

“So that’s the game,” was Roverton’s comment. “But I wonder what they use the stuff for.”

“There’s no telling. Those fluids may provide valuable serums for aught we know; or they may be used in the compounding of drugs, or even be employed as food.”

Passing between endless rows of cages, they reached an open space at the center of the huge apartment. Here, from floor to ceiling, there ran a great circular upright tube of the same transparent material as the cages. It was at least eight feet in diameter. Pausing before it, the guide touched its apparently unbroken surface with his fingers, and a section of the wall swung open on almost invisible hinges, leaving a small doorway. Volmar and Roverton were motioned to enter.

They obeyed, with much wonder and dubiety, and the door was closed upon them. They found that they were standing on a floor of some nacreous mineral. Above them, where it met the ceiling at a height of thirty feet, the tube ended in a dull, greyish disk.

“Now what?” Roverton’s voice was unnaturally loud and resonant in the closed columnar space.

A number of the laboratory attendants had gathered and were standing about the tube with their fantastic faces pressed against its wall. As if in answer to Roverton’s query, one of them raised his arm with a swift and sweeping gesture.

It must have been a signal. Immediately, as if some hidden switch had been turned on, the earth-men were dazzled by a ruddy light that fell upon them from above. Glancing up, they saw that the grey disk had become luminous as a great fiery jewel. Soon the radiance changed from red to green, and then from green to blue, from blue to violet, from violet to an insupportable whiteness fraught with the imminence of ultra-spectral hues. Looking down, through the blurs of color that clung to their vision, the men saw that the floor was glowing like molten metal and was becoming translucent beneath the weird ray.

Then, all at once, they perceived an even stranger thing. Each saw that the vitriolene of his companion’s suit had grown transparent, revealing every feature of head and body. Then the flesh itself grew gradually diaphanous, showing every bone and internal organ as if floating in some clear solution. Stage by stage, not with the mere shadowing of the X-ray, but with full color and minutest detail, the process went on, while the outer portions turned to a ghostly outline. Simultaneously, the men were aware of an icy sensation, that seemed to pierce their very vitals inch by inch along with the penetrating beam.

They felt a strange faintness, as if they were becoming actually insubstantial. All about them seemed to waver and recede, and they saw as from a fluctuating distance the intent, unreadable staring of the dwarfs.

The white ray was suddenly turned off, and the men resumed their normal tangibility of aspect. Both, however, were still faint and chilly from the unfamiliar force to which they had been subjected.

The door was opened, and they were signalled to come forth. They tottered with a queer weakness as they stepped out into the main room.

The dwarfs began to disperse, till only the three guides remained. Volmar and Roverton, reeling with a sickness that persisted and grew upon them, were led through halls and chambers of which they were hardly half-cognizant, and were thrust into a small room whose door was then closed with a gong-like clang. The room was occupied by four dwarfs who wore atmospheric masks, and was filled with mysterious implements that were sinister as those of a torture-chamber.

Here the men were directed to remove their suits and helmets. They obeyed, recovering sufficient mental clarity to realize that the air in the shut room was the same that they had been breathing from their tanks. Evidently it had been prepared for their reception.

Neither could remember fully afterwards the complicated and peculiar tests through which they were put during the next hour. Ill and confused and faint, they were dimly conscious of multiform instruments that were applied to their bodies, of changing lights that blinded them, of the purring and clicking of coiled mechanisms, and the high sibilant voices of their examiners conferring together. It was an ordeal such as no human beings had ever before undergone.

Toward the end, through clouds of numbness and confusion, they felt a stinging sensation in their chests, and each realized vaguely that an incision had been made in his flesh with a tiny tusk-like knife and that suction-pumps of the same type as those employed in drawing animal fluids from the caged monsters were being applied to these incisions. Dully and half-obliviously, they watched the blood that was drawn slowly through thin black elastic tubes into squat-bellied bottles of gill capacity. Their brains were unable to attach any real meaning to this process; and it would not have occurred to them to resist. They accepted it as part of a senseless and troublous delirium.

Both were on the point of virtual collapse from increasing malaise. They scarcely noticed when the tubes were withdrawn and the filled bottles corked and laid carefully aside. Nor did they perceive the subsequent action of their examiners till there came a sharp prickling in their shoulders. Almost instantly their senses cleared, and they saw that a light-green fluid was being injected into their veins by transparent hypodermics with double needles curved like serpents’ teeth.

The fluid must have been a powerful drug, for every sign of illness or even nervousness disappeared within a minute or two after its administration. Both men felt the same sense of well-being, of mental alertness and physical fitness and buoyancy, with which they had awakened from their last period of unconsciousness. They surmised that they were not experiencing the effects of the drug for the first time.

“Well,” remarked Roverton, “that dope is what you might call an all-round panacea. I don’t feel as if there ever had been or ever could be anything the matter with me. The stuff seems to take the place of food, drink and medicine.”

“It’s a pretty fair tonic,” agreed Volmar. “But watch out for the possible hang-over.”

Now, with returning normality, they observed the vials of drawn blood; and the memory of what had happened came back to them with a new potentiality of significance.

“I hope,” said Roverton, “that these people will be satisfied before they reach the dissection stage. Apparently they mean to learn all they can about us. Do you suppose they are trying to determine our fitness to become citizens of their world?”

“That’s not so unlikely. Or perhaps they are trying to find out what use they can make of us, what particular sort of serum or gland-extract we might afford. Personally, I have an intuition that there is something pretty horrible behind all this.”

Chapter V

The examination was seemingly over. The men were signalled to resume their clothing and helmets. Then the door was opened, and they were permitted to emerge. Their examiners followed, bringing the vials of blood, and removing the masks which had been worn for protection in that specially prepared atmosphere.

Many of the dwarfs in the outer room thronged curiously around and seemed to be questioning the examiners. These beings, however, were intent on some purpose of their own, and gave brief answers to the inquiries as they led Volmar and Roverton through the clustering laboratory workers and down a hall where the customary red flames that illumined the building were succeeded by others of a cold lunar blue.

Their destination proved to be a circular apartment with similar lighting. Here a dozen dwarfs were gathered, as if to await the earth-men and their conductors. All were the usual type in regard to size, formation and markings, with the exception of two who appeared to represent a cruder and more primitive tribe of the same race, with duller coloring and less finely developed proboscides and antennae.

Most of them were seated on spidery-looking stools arranged in a semi-circle. Some were armed with anaesthetic rods, and others carried instruments or weapons that consisted of thin ebon-black shafts with glowing cones of a cold green fire, possibly radio-active, at one end. The two who suggested an aboriginal type were standing, and neither carried any weapon or implement. Near them was a little table on which hypodermics and other instruments were displayed.

“What’s all this? Another test?” muttered Roverton.

“We’ll soon see.”

Two of the examiners, each bearing one of the vials of human blood in his delicate, sinuous fingers, came forward and conferred with the seated beings.

Then, by the former, two crystal hypodermics were filled with blood from the vials. Their bearers approached the aboriginals, who maintained a stolid and indifferent air, and proceeded to puncture the abdomens of their ant-shapen bodies with the fang-like needles and inject the blood till the hypodermics were empty.

All the assembled beings looked on in attentive silence, like a medical conclave. Volmar and Roverton, fascinated and a little horrified by this mysterious experiment, were unable to speak.

“Trying it on the dogs, eh?” Roverton finally whispered.

Volmar made no answer; and the words had barely passed Roverton’s lips when the two aboriginals suddenly lost their impassivity and began to leap and twist as if in terrible pain. Then they fell to the floor with vehement cries that were half hisses, half shrieks. Both were swelling visibly, as if from the effects of some deadly poison; and the dull-hued integument of their bodies was blackening moment by moment. The injected venom of a hundred cobras could not have produced a more immediate or more appalling result.

“Who could have imagined that?” said Volmar, in low tones of dismay and consternation.

“It certainly looks as if human blood didn’t mix very well with the life-fluid of these creatures.” Roverton was too horrified to make any further or crisper comment.

The convulsions of the agonized victims were lessening by ghastly degrees; and their cries grew fainter, like the hiss of dying serpents. Their heads, bodies, and even their antennae, were puffed beyond recognition and had turned to a putrid purple-black. With a few final spasms and twitches, they lay still and did not stir again.

“Ugh! I hope the doctors are satisfied with their experiment.” It was Roverton who spoke. He and Volmar tore their eyes away from the ghastly sight on the floor in time to see that one of the seated conclave-members had risen and was moving toward them, lifting as he came the ebon shaft with fiery terminal cone which he carried.

The use of this implement, the nature of the cold green flame, and the purpose of its bearer, were all equally uncertain. As the men afterwards reflected, the dwarf’s intentions were not necessarily hostile, and may have been those of mere curiosity. But their nerves were on edge with all the cryptical, uncanny adventures and experiences they had gone through, and following on the hideous outcome of the experiment they had just beheld, the sudden movement of the dwarf was fraught with connotations of unknowable menace.

Roverton, who stood a little in advance of Volmar, sprang to one side before the dwarf, and seized the fragile-looking table that was supported on tarantula-like legs. Hypodermics, vials, and other utensils of an unknown medical art clattered on the floor, as he lifted the table and held it in front of him like a shield. Then, facing the suspected assailant, he began to retreat toward the open door with Volmar at his side.

The dwarf, it would seem, was puzzled or confounded by this action for an instant. He paused, then came on with a loud, sibilant cry, waving his weapon. His confreres, rising from their seats in a body, also followed, and ran to intercept the men before they could escape from the room. Their movements were quick as the darting of angry insects.

Swinging the table aloft, Roverton hurled it in the face of his attacker. The creature was beaten down, releasing the lambent-headed wand as he fell; and it shot forward and dropped at Roverton’s feet. In a flash, Roverton picked it up, and he and Volmar sprang for the door.

Two dwarfs, fleeter than the others, had managed to head them off and were standing on the threshold. Both were armed with the familiar anaesthetic rods.

Not knowing the properties of the implement which he had snatched from its fallen bearer, but surmising that it must have some efficacious use, Roverton charged the two beings in the doorway. His superior length of arm enabled him to smite one of them on the breast with the green cone, while he himself avoided their paralyzing weapons. The effect of his blow was amazing and terrific: the glowing cone, whatever it was, seemed to burn an instant way through the bodily substance of the dwarf, like white-hot iron in butter. The creature fell dead with a dark and gaping hole in his bosom, and Roverton, surprised and thrown off his balance, barely evaded the outflung rod of the other.

However, with a deftness that would have done honor to a professional swordsman, he swerved his weapon, almost continuing its initial movement, and smote the body of the second dwarf, who went down beside the first.

All this had occurred in a mere fraction of time, and a split-second of faltering or a single misstep would have been fatal. The earth-men leapt across the fallen bodies and cleared the threshold just in time to evade the main group of their pursuers.

They were in a long corridor, wholly deserted for the nonce, which led on one hand to the huge room of monster-cages, and on the other to parts as yet unknown. They chose the latter direction. Their situation was irredeemably desperate, and even if they could escape from the building, they would find themselves hemmed in at every turn by the perils and pitfalls of a world inevitably hostile to human life through its very strangeness. But, after their captivity, and the queer ordeals to which they had perforce submitted, it was good to move freely again, even though their flight could only end in recapture or the unconceived horror of some strange death.

They sprinted down the corridor, with a dozen dwarfs at their heels, and found that their longer legs would enable them to distance their pursuers by degrees. At intervals they met others of the laboratory attendants, mostly unarmed, who all leapt back in obvious terror before the lethal wand that Roverton brandished in their faces.

The earth-men also encountered a sleepy-looking monster, like a sort of wingless dragon, which was probably a pet. It was lying stretched across the hall; and it gave a torpid and protesting bellow as they hurdled its spiny back and continued their flight.

The corridor, lit by unwavering rubescent flames, ran straight for an interminable distance, and then turned at a sharp angle. Through open doors, or either side, the fleeing earth-men caught outlandish glimpses of incomprehensible activities.

Again the corridor turned, at a reverse angle; and its ruddy flames were succeeded by the glaring mauve of daylight. Volmar and Roverton emerged on a narrow balcony as the ever-swelling swarm of their pursuers came in sight.

Before them again was the vast, bewildering vision of the white city, with its web of alabaster bridges woven gossamer-wise between buildings that were alabaster mountains with multi-angled scarps and strange pinnacles. It was noon in this world, for the sun which they knew as an unnamed star in Serpens, poured down from a vertical elevation the cruel and tyrannic splendor of its super-tropic beams to illumine the vertigo-breeding depth of the chasmal streets below.

The balcony, or ledge, was barely seven feet in width, and like all others in this preternatural architecture, was void of walls or railings. Doubtless it circled the whole edifice; and at frequent intervals there were bridges which connected it with the balconies of other mammoth piles.

Blinded by the glare and shrinking from the dreadful gulfs, the men followed the ledge for some distance, but paused in consternation when a horde of dwarfs issued from a door-way just ahead. These beings, it was plain, had been sent to intercept them.

The first group of pursuers, which now numbered at least a score, was closing in from behind. There were no accessible doors or windows by which to re-enter the building; and the only means of continuing their flight was to cross one of those appalling bridges.

“Here goes,” cried Roverton, panting, as he led the way along the slender span. The bridge was unoccupied; but it seemed preferable that he, being armed, should go first in case of possible opposition.

It was a mad race. The men dared not slacken their speed, for their pursuers, two abreast, were crowding the bridge behind them like ants. The danger of being overtaken gave them an added coolness and poise, and they ran with flying leaps on a path where even the least indecision or miscalculation might have plunged them into the abyss.

They were nearing the opposing pile, when three dwarfs armed with the paralyzing rods, emerged from a door in its cyclopean mass and ran forward to meet them on the bridge.

Holding his own weapon like a lance, Roverton faced these beings without hesitation. It was a perilous combat, for two of them were side by side, and he could dispose of only one at a time. He struck and parried with lightning agility; and the two, with yawning holes in their thoraxes from the impact of the fearsome igneous cone, went down in swift succession and hurtled into the half-mile chasm beneath. The third, however, had advanced within reach of Roverton, and thrust viciously with his rod.

Roverton dodged, and would have lost his footing as he teetered within an inch of the verge, if Volmar, standing close behind, had not put out an arm to steady him. Missing, the third dwarf ran headlong upon Roverton’s weapon, which pierced him through till his body hung impaled on the ebon shaft. Roverton disengaged it, and kicked the falling corpse aside to join its companions in the gulf.

The earth-men reached the opposite building without further interruption; but their pursuers had gained appreciably during the combat and were dogging them closely as they plunged into the new edifice.

This building, as far as they could tell, was wholly deserted; and it differed materially in its furnishings and apparent use from the one they had left. The unpeopled rooms into which they glanced as they hurried along a main hall, were panelled with fantastic paintings and designs that might have been astronomical maps. In some of them, there were huge globes and hemispheres of metal, and appliances like alien cosmospheres and planispheres.

An angle of the hall took the men temporarily beyond sight of their pursuers.

“Quick! Let’s find a hiding-place or a stairway,” whispered Roverton.

They hesitated before a little door which gave on a dark chamber where the beams of the red fires in the hall were powerless to penetrate. Then, in an alcove, they perceived a flight of stairs.

Trusting that their pursuers would continue along the corridor, they began to ascend the stairs, taking three or four of the tiny steps at a leap. They would have preferred to descend, with the hope of eventually finding themselves on some sort of Terra Firma, but were deterred by an inexplicable noise, a metallic whirring and jarring, that suddenly started on the floors below. Above, there was utter silence.

“Haven’t these people any elevator systems?” asked Roverton, after they had climbed steadily for several minutes. “It must take them all eternity to go up and down in their skyscrapers like this.”

“There may be some other method of transit, though probably it wouldn’t be of any use to us without special knowledge regarding its mechanism.”

For hours, it seemed, the earth-men toiled from story to story of that interminable edifice. The sounds of pursuit had died out; and apparently the dwarfs were still seeking them on lower levels. They met no one in all that endless range of red-lit stairs and rooms. All had grown silent, except for the subterranean rumblings from beneath the city, which became fainter as they went upward. They must have been in the heart of the building; and at no time did they approach the outer rooms and balconies or attain even a far-off glimpse of sunlight. They ceased to count the number of floors they had ascended, and it seemed to them that they were lost in some awful, topless tower of eternity and infinity. They marvelled at the mania for space and magnitude which must have prompted this tiny people to rear such colossal structures.

Their legs were turning to lead, and each added step was like the heaving of a mighty weight. They gasped for breath within their aerated helmets, and heard the pounding of heavy pulses in their temples like the roar of driven torrents.

“Where are we going, anyway?” questioned Roverton, as they paused for a momentary respite. “And why are we going there? The end is a foregone conclusion, with all the cards that are stacked against us. There must be about a million deadly contingencies, I should think. We’ll do well if we live long enough to exhaust our present supply of air.”

“The air of this particular world might not be fatal to us,” said Volmar. “We haven’t sampled it yet, if you’ll remember. Our dwarf friends were considerate enough, evidently, to re-fill our tanks with a chemical synthesis of the same air that they found in them.”

“Well, I’d rather not try the local atmosphere till I have to. But what’s the use of climbing any further? We’ve got the whole planet against us. Probably there are billions of these dwarfs with their devilish chemistry, all of them ready to hunt us down like wild beasts.”

“Why worry about a little thing like that? Come on—there should be a good view from the top of this tower of Babel, when we get to it.”

Following the slow, tedious spiral of the stairs, at length they saw a gleam of purple daylight above them, and came out on the building’s roof, where a single central spire continued to escalade the heavens. The flat roof itself was crowded with orb-like mechanisms that were perhaps used for the observation of solar and stellar force. Crystal wheels and spheres were turning silently within larger spheres of the same substance.

No one was in sight, and the roof was seemingly unoccupied. But several air-craft were approaching, and fearing to be seen by their occupants, the earth-men entered a door in the great spire. Here they found a staircase, and resumed their eternal climb.

At the top they emerged in a curious open cupola whose lofty dome was filled with large perforations. The place was lined with instruments that were doubtless astronomical. There were cosmolabes and armillaries designed for a universe not measured heretofore by man; there were strange double and triple mirrors of white mineral with surfaces of baffling convex angles; there were lenses arranged behind each other in curving, semi-circular frames, and adjusted to an unhuman vision. In the center of the alabastrine floor, the men perceived a sable disk, perhaps four feet in diameter, and depressed about six inches below the floor-level. From the middle of the disk, and close together, there rose two upright rods.

At first they did not see that the cupola was occupied. Then, behind the litter of strange appliances, they perceived a wizened and aged-looking dwarf, bowed above a sort of dial on which was slanting rows of rubricated ciphers. He was unarmed, and did not hear the earth-men till they were close upon him. Then he turned and saw them.

Ungovernably startled, it would seem, by the apparition of beings who must have been supremely monstrous from his view-point, he darted away from the dial and sprang toward the black disk. Roverton intercepted him, being dubious on general principles regarding the intention of this movement. Terrified by the glowing weapon which the earth-men waved in his face, the dwarf circled back among the crowded instruments and contrived to elude both Volmar and Roverton and win the head of the stairs. There he disappeared from their ken at breakneck speed.

“Too bad we didn’t get him,” said Roverton. “I wasn’t anxious to hurt that fellow, but now he’ll spread the good word among the others as to where we are hiding. The whole pack will be here presently, if not sooner.”

“Well, let’s take a look at the view anyway, being as we’re here.”

They stepped to the verge of the open cupola, which was supported on a circle of thin pillars, and looked out on a staggering scene. They could see the whole extent of the mighty city, which reached for many miles in every direction, lying below them at a depth which turned the people in its streets to microscopic motes. Around the city was a landscape of ineffable bizarrerie, with wide canals of blood-red water that intersected each other to form terraced isles, and then wound away through fields and forests of a vegetation whose coloring was more violent than that of futuristic paintings. Beyond it all, in sharp, airless outline on the violescent heavens, were horn-like mountains of jetty black and others of a whiteness more dazzling than that of Pentelic marble.

“Golly,” was Roverton’s ejaculation. “The outlook is almost worth the climb. But I’d rather be seeing it from the Alcyone.”

There came a confused babel of shrilling voices, and a horde of dwarfs emerged on the roof below them and streamed toward the central spire.

“They couldn’t have been so very far behind us, after all,” Volmar commented. “And of course our friend the astronomer had told them how we invaded his observatory and dispossessed him.”

Roverton was considering the various instruments in the cupola with an estimating eye. Some of them were set in the floor by means of metal bars and pivots, but many others were detached or loosely mounted. He picked up a singular object consisting of no less than seven concave lenses framed among rods and wires of a malachite-colored metal. It was satisfyingly heavy and would make an effective missile.

“We can hold the stairs while the ammunition lasts,” he said.

Volmar was lifting a small armillary to try its weight. Between them, the men collected everything movable in a great pile at the stair-head. They had no sooner finished doing this, when the foremost of their pursuers came in sight. The winding steps were packed with these creatures, most of whom were furnished with anaesthetic rods, ignescent wands, and other odd weapons.

The men began to hurl their fantastic missiles at the throng—a barrage of metal orbs and mirrors, and queer-angled things which may have served the purpose of telescopes, eye-glasses, and spectroscopes. The front rows of assailants were driven back with crushed heads and broken limbs, and many were slain or paralyzed by their own weapons as they went down in a tangled mass that blocked the stairway.

In an orderly manner, seemingly unperturbed by all these casualties, the dwarfs proceeded to clear away their dead and wounded, and then came on as before. More were swept down by the remainder of the observatory’s detachable paraphernalia; and much havoc in particular was inflicted by two armillaries which Volmar raised in his arms and sent crashing into the vanward files.

The supply of missiles was now exhausted; but Roverton still retained his death-dealing wand, and Volmar had reserved a sort of lens-apparatus which he intended to use as a mace when their attackers came within reach.

With the same hideous, unhuman imperturbability, after halting long enough to remove the victims of that final barrage, the dwarfs resumed their advance, while the earth-men awaited them at the stair-head.

Roverton, quick-eared and alert, as he watched the thronging onset, was aware of an odd noise from behind, as if something had clashed lightly against the cupola. Turning, he perceived that an air-vessel, shaped somewhat in the fashion of a long, crescent-prowed barge, but without wings or any visible agency of levitation, had attached itself by coiling tendril-like chains to the cupola-columns, and was discharging a dozen dwarfs into the observatory.

Roverton called Volmar’s attention to the new danger.

“If you can hold the stairs, Captain, I’ll tend to these customers,” he said, and sprang to meet the invaders. These latter were furnished with weapons of a kind which the earth-men had not hitherto encountered—long, trumpet-like tubes, which they levelled immediately at Roverton. Their curling fingers played on certain knobs which studded the tubes, and from the mouth of each weapon there issued a jet of pearly vapor. All were aiming at Roverton’s head, and he surmised that the vapor was some sort of deadly gas or anaesthetic. The goggles of his mask were blinded by the fumes, and he could see nothing as he groped among the strange paraphernalia in the dome.

Tripping against some unseen object, and trying to save himself from a fall, he lurched forward and stepped down with a terrific jar on the broad central disk that was set below the floor-level.

Clear of the pearly fumes, which still played overhead, he saw his assailants for an instant, crowding toward him with their weird weapons, as he clutched with his free hand at one of the upright rods which rose from the disk. Then he heard Volmar cry out, and turned his head toward the Captain, jerking the rod involuntarily as he did so. He saw in the merest flash of time that Volmar had fallen, and was half-hidden by the dwarfs who thronged about him from the stairs. Then the scene vanished, as if a black curtain had rushed upward from it, and Roverton realized that the disk was dropping away beneath him with dizzy velocity in a long, dark shaft.

Chapter VI

He surmised that he was in a sort of elevator. The jerking of the rod as he steadied himself in turning toward Volmar had started its downward flight. The thing was falling like a plummet, and he clung to the rod to keep from striking the walls of the shaft.

Soon, in the darkness, there came a series of red flashes, almost merging with one another. These must indicate openings from the shaft into the various floors of the main building. Doubtless, by manipulating one or other of the rods, he could check or reverse his descent. For a moment, he thought of trying to do the latter. He would go back to the tower and die fighting beside the fallen Volmar. But Volmar was dead—and what was the use? Heart-sick, lost, unutterably confused and bewildered, he felt a black weariness descend upon him like the clinging of some material thing. His remaining will was broken, his initiative was crushed beneath it.

With a dull fatalism, a leaden despair, he watched the red flashes. There must be hundreds of them, he thought. He was plunging down to a world whose actual soil neither he nor any other man had yet trodden; before the end came, he would perhaps attain a glimpse of maddening, insuperable mysteries, and would pierce a little further among the all-encompassing terrors and perils of a hostile planet. He resigned himself. He was not yet weaponless, for the lethal wand, with its green cone glowing brightly in the darkness, was still clutched in his right hand.

Abruptly, with no noise or jarring, the elevator came to a full stop. Roverton’s limbs and body were inundated by a stream of saffron light which poured into the shaft through a low doorway. At the same time, his ears were assailed by a medley of rumbling sounds and deep metallic throbbings which appeared to come from all around him. He had the feeling that he was underground, that his descent had precipitated him from that topmost tower into the nether vaults of the colossal city.

Cautiously he stooped and squeezed himself through the opening, which could afford ample passage for beings like the opalescent dwarfs but was rather scanty for a full-grown earth-man. Blinking in the saffron brilliance, he peered about him on a chamber so enormous, of such indeterminate scope that it seemed to partake of infinitude. It was filled with gigantic engines that appeared to use and combine every possible geometric form in their overbeetling bulks of dark stone and burnished metal. The yellow light emanated from a sort of open vat or furnace in which was a glowing mass of molten substance. There were other flaming furnaces at intervals, and great red eyes that burned in many of the machines, pouring down a lurid effulgence.

From some of the mechanisms, huge, ramifying pipes went up and vanished in the darkness of a funnel-like dome. In the wildly flickering patches of light, and monstrous masses of shadow, Roverton saw dim, titanic figures, but did not realize at first that they were living beings. They were ten or twelve feet in height, and were strange and uncouth as the mechanisms which they tended. There were also two or three dwarfs among them, who appeared to be supervising their labors.

Roverton surmised that he had stumbled into a power-plant of some unknown kind. The giants, mayhaps, were members of a subject people enslaved by the dwarfs and compelled to toil in their subterranean vaults.

The nearest furnace, watched by a single giant, was fifty feet away, and its warder had his back to Roverton. Hoping to escape observation in the vastness and gloom of the chamber, the earth-man started to make his way toward certain of the towering mechanisms that were dark and seemingly untended. He had no idea where he was going or what he would find; and he had reached the exhaustion point, both physically and mentally. The drug injected by the dwarfs seemed to be dying out in his veins, and he tottered with an intermittent weakness. Also, he was stunned by the loss of Volmar, his Captain and comrade. His brain, his senses, his muscles, were no longer functioning normally. It did not even occur to him that he might have stayed in the elevator shaft and found his way back to some other level where escape would not offer so many hazards.

He had nearly reached the shadow of a huge pyramidal mechanism, when one of the giants saw him and started in pursuit. The creature came on with lumbering, elephantine paces, and looking back as he fled, Roverton saw its face for the first time in the lurid furnace-glare. The thing was a biological nightmare, with one swollen, blazing, sulphur-yellow eye where the mouth would be in a human face, and all the rest a mass of writhing, viperish tentacles around a central slit. The limbs and body were no less monstrous than the face.

Roverton ran, in an access of horror-stimulated strength; and doubling in and out among the dark machines, he contrived to throw his clumsy pursuer off the track. But there were harsh roarings, audible above the noise of the engines, which indicated that others were joining in the chase. Also, he heard the shrill, sweet sibilation of one of the supervising dwarfs.

Luckily, this part of the chamber was untenanted. He ran madly, interminably in the semi-darkness, and came at last to the chamber’s end. Here he discovered a dimly yawning exit, and plunged headlong through it on an inclined plane, going downward at an angle of twenty degrees. The plane led to another vault, deserted and perhaps disused, where he would have found himself in utter darkness if it had not been for the glowing wand which he still carried. By its weird light, he saw the looming bulks of other massive engineries.

Hastening on between rows of these mechanisms, he heard the roar of pursuit and saw the red flare of moving lights behind him in the gloom. He fled on through an eternity of cyclopean metal cones and cylinders, of black retorts and flameless furnaces, and reached another exit. This led into what was plainly a natural cavern, with rough nodular walls in which he caught the glistening of pale, mercurial ores.

The cavern turned and twisted like a serpent, and soon began to narrow. Its floor and sides were damp with drippings, were mottled with a soft, oozy marl. His feet slipped in puddles from which loathly creatures, half-batrachian, half-insect, writhed and wriggled in sluggish alarm to avoid his feet.

With dimming senses and failing muscles, he still went on. His mind was becoming a partial blank: he had almost forgotten everything that had happened, and the horror of it all was a vague amorphous blur. Even his own identity was doubtful as a half-remembered dream. He was only a dying atom of consciousness, lost in a monstrous world without meaning or reason, without boundary or end.

Slowly, obscurely, he perceived that something was retarding his progress. Long, whitish ropes and tendrils were hanging in a curtain from the cavern-roof; and he had blundered into them without seeing. What they were he could not imagine. His brain groped for analogies, for similes that he could not recall.

The ropes and tendrils seemed to be twining about him, growing over him, enmeshing him from head to foot like a web of whip-snakes; and some of them recoiled and twisted with an undulating motion at the touch of the fiery-headed wand in his hand.

Roverton fought instinctively to free himself, in a nightmare of dim terror and exhaustion. He swayed back and forth but the ropy meshes held tenaciously. He sank into a half-swoon, and the wand fell from his fingers; but he himself did not fall, but was supported by the clinging growths. What these were he never knew; but doubtless they belonged to some type of organism mid-way between the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

He heard voices, and saw a flash of light on the pale, hundred-stranded web that held him. With a start of returning consciousness, he knew that his pursuers had found him. But it did not seem to matter greatly. Nothing mattered, now that he had lost Volmar and had gone astray in the clueless labyrinth of a dark infinity.

Chapter VII

Roverton’s memories of what followed were partial and fragmentary. There were starts of full awareness during a period of semi-oblivion, in which he realized that he was being carried by the boa-thick arms of one of the giant laborers who had pursued him. By flashes of sullen, lurching light, he saw the unthinkable face of this creature above him, and saw the indistinct bulks of the subterranean mechanisms.

He seemed to go on for aeons in some underground avenue, cradled by an ever-swaying movement that lulled him to a troubled drowsiness. Then, all at once, though he knew not how nor where, he was going upward in a great abyss of darkness toward some far-off, watching eye of light, and metal chains were about him in lieu of the giant arms. He closed his lids to avert a feeling of dizziness. Then, after a little, his swoon became complete; and he saw no more till he opened his eyes in a glaring radiance.

For awhile he could recall nothing of all that happened to him, could understand nothing on which he gazed. His eyes were half-blinded by a pitiless light, were assailed and stabbed by stupendous imageries. He seemed to be looking down into a violet-purple gulf, in which hung the inverted alabaster walls and portals and towers of a gigantic architecture; and he himself was suspended, as if by some reverse gravitation, from the bottom of this topsy-turvy world.

Then, all at once, he had the feeling that he was not alone. Turning his head with a great effort, he found to his incredulous amazement that Volmar, bound with thick leathery-looking cords to pegs in a metallic surface, was hanging beside him.

Whether Volmar was dead or alive, he could not yet know. The closed lids beneath the goggles of the Captain’s mask were wan and still as marble. But Roverton felt a joyous surprise that they were together again, and the emotion served to revive him and clarify his muddled faculties. Yet he feared to speak, lest Volmar should not answer him.

There was an instant of uncanny bouleversement, while all about him seemed to whirl and circle like a mighty wheel. Then he knew that he was lying on his back and was staring up at the heavens between the buildings of that city to which he and Volmar had been conveyed in the alien ether-ship.

He tried to sit up, and discovered that he also was bound by means of leathery cords to the metal surface. His head alone was free, and twisting as far as he could, he saw that the Captain and himself were in the center of a wide street or square, with the people of the city standing about them in a solemn, silent crowd. The men were tied to something that appeared to be a sort of platform. Its area was indefinite, but it could not have risen more than a foot above the street-level.

Roverton, felt the enigmatic gaze of the nacre-colored dwarfs, who were all looking on in absolute stillness. Beyond their crowding heads, beyond the myriad structures, at the end of an almost infinite avenue, he beheld a sinking sun that had nearly touched the horizon and was ringing the white towers with supernal rose and amethyst.

What was to happen, he wondered? Were he and Volmar destined as a sacrifice to some ultra-sidereal deity? Were they to be the victims of some occult, unknowable scientific experiment? The silence of the throng about them was laden with a meaning which he could not apprehend, and was ominous with unreadable secrets of a trans-cosmic psychology. He knew nothing, never would know anything, of this incomprehensible race.

The dead, utter silence was broken by a loud click, followed by a whirring sound as of some metal wheel or spring. The world beneath Roverton seemed to quiver and surge, the staring faces disappeared from his vision, and he saw that the thing to which Volmar and himself had been bound was rising rapidly in air among the fantastic bridges and structures of the white city.

Balconies rushed by him, he caught flying glimpses of the dwarf people who were passing to and fro on slender spans. Then he was level with the roofs and towers, and as these fell away beneath him, he had once more that horrible sensation of hanging downward, and felt that he was sinking into some unfathomable gulf. About him now there was nothing but empty space.

“Where are we?” A feeble voice had spoken at his side.

“Are you really alive?” cried Roverton, as he turned toward Volmar and saw that the pale eyelids had opened.

“Apparently we’re both alive, incredible as the fact may be. But that isn’t answering my question as to where we are.”

“As far as I can tell, we are on some sort of anti-gravitational raft and are headed for outer space. Our hosts, it would seem, have definitely decided that you and I are undesirable aliens in their world…. But what happened to you in the tower? The last I saw, you had fallen; and I thought surely you were dead.”

“I’ve certainly been dead to the particular planet which you say we are quitting. Those fellows started throwing their anaesthetic rods at me, while you were fighting the crew from the air-ship. One of them got me with the business-end—and that is the whole story as far as I am concerned. I suppose yours is about the same.”

Roverton gave the Captain a brief outline of his own adventures, as well as he could recollect them.

“Then there was an elevator,” said Volmar. “I wondered about that black disk the astronomer was in such a hurry to reach.”

“It’s a wonder they didn’t kill us outright, considering all the damage we inflicted,” was Roverton’s comment after a minute of silence. “Maybe they didn’t mean to hurt us at all, in the beginning.”

“Yes,” said Volmar sadly, “we may have misunderstood them. Certainly that can happen all too easily, between members of such wholly divergent races, who have no medium of communication and, in all likelihood, no ideas or motivations in common.”

Their ascent had continued at an undiminished rate. Though they were soaring into full sunlight, the sky had darkened rapidly and was taking on the ebon of ultra-atmospheric space. Stars were visible everywhere. They must be penetrating the planet’s envelope of air; and they would soon reach the interstellar ether. The warmth of the world below had given place to a boreal cold that made itself felt through their insulated clothing.

“Well, I guess this is the end,” said Volmar. “You and I will continue our spatial voyage indefinitely—but we won’t be in a condition to know anything about it. A few more minutes and we will freeze so stiff that we could be broken into powder with a hammer. Then we will drift on in space, among the whirling suns and systems, and perhaps afford a third-rate meteor for some world whose gravitational influence is strong enough to attract the mechanism on which we are bound.”

“Yes, I suppose it’s the end. Well, good-bye, Captain.”

“Good-bye, Roverton.”

The cold stung like a million needles, then the stinging became blunted and both men began to feel drowsy. They would have fought the drowsiness, but there seemed to be no use in prolonging their period of suffering. Numbly, somnolently, they resigned themselves to the inevitable Lethe and closed their eyes on the black circle of space with its myriad suns.

A far-off thrumming, faint as with the gulfs of incomputable distance, but mechanically persistent, seemed to draw them back from the deadly depth into which they were sinking.

They opened their eyes. A long, shining bulk was poising above them in the heavens. It was the Alcyone! They rose toward it, they saw it veer and dip and soar again to keep pace with their ascent. It came close, it paralleled their flight with looming sides in which a man-hole had opened. Grappling-irons were thrown out, and the thing on which they rode was caught and drawn level with the ether-ship. Then, incredibly, someone had emerged from the man-hole, was standing above them, was cutting their bonds with a knife. Strong arms lifted them, and carried them through the air-lock into the warm interior of the Alcyone.

Half an hour later, after a course of vigorous massage to ward off possible frost-bite, and a good meal to fortify their starved and exhausted systems, they lay in their bunks and exchanged narratives with Jasper and the crew.

Jasper, it seemed, had been impelled by an intuition of evil to follow them with three of the men when they did not return to the ship within an hour after starting for that saunter among the woods of the Mercurian world.

They had traced Volmar and Roverton readily by their footprints, and had found their automatics near the animal-burrow. From there on, the trail was even plainer, with the multitude of strange tracks which gave evidence of capture by unknown beings.

Jasper and his companions had hastened on, running most of the way, and had sighted the alien space-flier in time to see the two men lifted aboard. The vessel had risen immediately afterwards and had flown slowly away in the twilight heavens, heading apparently for an orb which they identified as the second planet of the unnamed sun.

Hastening back to the Alcyone, they had given pursuit, and had managed to come in sight of the strange vessel once more, after many hours, as it landed in the white city at dawn. They had carefully located the huge, central spireless building on whose roof it had gone down. Then, during the short, nine-hour day of the planet, they had hung aloof in space, waiting for darkness, with the intention of descending and making some effort to find Volmar and Roverton and rescue them.

Nursing this heroic and wholly desperate plan, they had seen the mechanism on which Roverton and the Captain were bound, floating up from the city like a mote in the fiery sunset, and had flown to investigate.

“Of all the lucky breaks!” said Roverton, when the tale was finished.

“With that kind of luck,” added Volmar, “I don’t think that anything can keep us from navigating one or two more solar systems, at least.”