ferocious of savages might have devised had they been
scientifically equipped to add contrivances of supercivilization to
the furthering of their primitive lust for cruelty.

There were great benches--head-high to the Earthman--to accommodate
the height of the Rogan workmen. There were numberless metal
instruments, and glass coils, and enormous retorts; and in one corner
an orange colored flame burnt steadily on a naked metal plate, seeming
to have no fuel or other source of being.

There was a long rack of cruelly pointed and twisted instruments.
Under this was a row of long, delicate pincers, with coils on the
handles to indicate that they might be heated to fiendish precision of
temperatures. There were gleaming metal racks with calibrated
slide-rods and spring dials to denote just what pull was being exerted
on whatever unhappy creature might be stretched taut on them. There
were tiny cones of metal whose warped, baked appearance testified that
they were little portable furnaces that could be placed on any desired
portion of the anatomy, to slowly bake the selected disk of flesh
beneath them.

* * * * *

Dex shuddered; and a low moan came from Greca, whose clear blue eyes
had rested on the contents of this vast room before in her capacity as
hostage and interpreter for the inhuman Rogans.

And now another sense of Dex's began to register perception on his
brain.

A peculiar odor came to his nostrils. It was a musky, fetid odor, like
that to be smelled in an animal cage; but it was sharper, more acrid
than anything he had ever smelled on Earth. It smelled--ah, he had
it!--_reptilian_. As though somewhere nearby a dozen titanic serpents
were coiled ready to spring!

Looking about, Dex saw a six-foot square door of bars in one wall of
the laboratory--like the barred entrance to a prison cell. It was from
the interstices of this door that the odor seemed to emanate; but he
had no chance to make sure, for now the Rogan leader approached him.

"I will first show you," he said, through his mouthpiece, Greca, "what
happens to those who oppose our orders. We have a slave who tried to
run away into the surrounding jungles three suns ago...."

A man was dragged into the chamber. He was slightly taller and more
stockily muscled than an Earthman might be; but otherwise, in facial
conformation and general appearance, he might have come here straight
from New York City. Dex felt a great p