shock had thrown him, in darkness beyond
description, Asher realized the lights from the Miner no longer shone
out. Frantically, he adjusted the small lights in his helmet and got
them to sending off their rays again. Then, an icy hand seemed to
squeeze his heart, turning his blood to ice-water in his veins. He
cursed himself for not foreseeing that some company might shoot a well
close by, while he was underground.

He turned. The Miner was all right, but Blaine Asher was trapped! For
the walls of the hole below the bottom of the casing had caved. Thirty
feet of rock, sand and conglomerate matter were between him and the
bottom of the pipe.

He was trapped--two miles below the earth. There was no hope of
rescue, the hope that miners feel in deep shafts. There could be no
rescue for Asher. No one could get to him. He cried out his horror,
fighting to keep from swooning.

The helmet hampered him. He turned on a small pressure lamp attached
to the belt at his waist, and chanced taking the helmet off. Dank and
nauseous was the air that he breathed, since it no longer came through
the filters in his helmet. But it was air that would serve,
nevertheless.

A crackling, rumbling sound caused him to turn quickly. Eyes wide, he
stared at the long crack that was opening before him.

Asher was between two layers of granite--one layer under him, and
another above him, just below the oil sands. Now, as the crack between
these two layers widened, he could see it slope downward until it
ended in a great cavern that stretched endlessly away beyond the beams
of his light.

* * * * *

It wasn't this crack that caused Blaine Asher, an iron-hearted man of
science, to choke and sag down to a sitting position, his knees
refusing to support him. No--it was the terrible, Godless,
unbelievable _Things_ that scurried around in the smooth rock hall
that stretched away into the cavern.

Frozen with soul-chilling fear, Asher stared with eyes that bulged.
What were they? Spawned neither of God nor Satan--what could they be?
Black-skinned--or was it skin?--like rubber, with round bodies, like
black basket balls inflated to triple size; bodies that seemed to
ripple, distort, swell and contract with life within life.

Short, foot-long stems that must have been legs, ending in round balls
that served as feet, no doubt. Tentacles, Asher would have called
them, six feet in length, thick as mighty cables and dotte