aining a faintly cloudy white liquid. Apparently resigned to
their fate, the creatures docilely drained the cups.

The drugged drinks acted with startling rapidity. Scarcely a minute
passed before the rodents' eyes clouded dully, their jaws dropped
slackly open, and their bodies stiffened in almost complete
rigidity.

The bonds were quickly stripped from the two stupefied creatures.
The ceremonial rites apparently required that the victims go to
their doom unbound and of their own volition. The guards maneuvered
the two over to the rocky projection that jutted out over the pit.

Moving with the stiffly wooden steps of automatons, the two victims
started out along the narrow projection, leaving the guards behind.
On they marched, straight for the end of the rocky strip--and then,
without a second's hesitation, they plunged on and over.

Their bodies crashed to the pit's floor squarely among the group of
waiting crystals. One of the rat-men lay motionless. The other
dazedly tried to struggle to his feet--but was too late.

* * * * *

From the side of the nearest Devil Crystal, some fifteen feet away
from the dazed rat-man, a cone-shaped projection budded with
startling swiftness.

A fraction of a second more and the projection had lengthened into a
long slender arm of crystalline silver that streaked across the
intervening space with the swiftness of a spear.

There was a crashing, tinkling sound as the point of the arm struck
the furry body of the rat-man. Then the arm's point sprayed into a
web of shining filaments that laced the rodent's body inexorably in
their web.

The arm immediately contracted, jerking the victim irresistibly
toward the waiting crystal. A second later the rat-man was pinned
against the faceted crystalline side just under the opalescent
nucleus.

The moment the furry body made contact with the crystal's side a
terrifying phenomenon occurred. Crystals grew and spread all over
its form with the lightning growth of water-glass. Faster and faster
clustered the crystalline shroud, until the furry body was lanced
through and through--and all the time the air was filled with
eldritch music as of a thousand sheets of thinnest glass crashing,
tinkling and shattering.

The crystal growths over the imprisoned body rounded their contours
and merged together until they were in the form of a great
crystalline egg. The outlines of the rodent's body blurred and
vanish