the
not-men, with their impossible powers, had created to torture him?

His eyes sought the end of the hall, saw the turn at the end, saw the
light which seemed to come from the end; and then in an instant he was
running down the damp passageway, his pulse pounding at his temples,
until he could hardly gasp enough breath as he ran. Finally he reached
the turn in the corridor where the light was brighter, and he swung
around to stare at the source of the light, a huge, burning, smoky torch
which hung from the wall.

Even as he looked at it, the torch went out, shutting him into inky
blackness. The only sound at first was the desperation of his own
breath; then he heard little scurrying sounds around his feet, and
screamed involuntarily as something sleek and four-footed jumped at his
chest with snapping jaws.

Shuddering, he fought the thing off, his fingers closing on wiry fur as
he caught and squeezed. The thing went limp, and suddenly melted in his
hands. He heard it splash as it struck the damp ground at his feet.

_What were they doing to his mind?_

He screamed out in horror, and followed the echoes of his own scream as
he ran down the stone corridor, blindly, slipping on the wet stone
floor, falling on his knees into inches of brackish water, scraping back
to his feet with an uncontrollable convulsion of fear and loathing, only
to run more--

The corridor suddenly broke into two and he stopped short. He didn't
know how far, or how long, he had run, but it suddenly occurred to him
that he was still alive, still safe. Only his mind was under attack,
only his mind was afraid, teetering on the edge of control. And this
maze of dungeon tunnels--where could such a thing exist, so perfectly
outfitted to horrify him, so neatly fitting into his own pattern of
childhood fears and terrors; from where could such a _very individual_
attack on his sanity have sprung? From nowhere except....

_Except from his own mind!_

For an instant, he saw a flicker of light, thought he grasped the edge
of a concept previously obscure to him. He stared around him, at the
mist swirling down the damp, dark corridor, and thought of the rat that
had melted in his hand. Suddenly, his mind was afire, searching through
his experience with the strange not-men he had learned to detect, trying
to remember everything he had learned and deduced about them before they
began their brutal persecution.

They were men, and they looked like men, bu