is ears.

"You will be pleased, Blaine Asher, to turn around! And do not make
any foolish moves, I warn you."

"Lee Wong! Krenski!" Asher turned, face to face with the
super-scientists of whom he had spoken to R. Briggs Johns the day
before. Asher shook his head. More of the terrible dream, this meeting
two humans down in the earth's core.

* * * * *

"Most right, honorable Asher." Lee Wong bowed mockingly. He and
Krenski were garbed in loose-fitting garments of much the same style
as Asher. In their hands, they carried static guns. Not the small gun,
such as Asher had concealed in his pocket. More like heavy air drills,
they were.

Asher frowned at the lamps they carried. He knew by the dazzling
action of the rays that they were pressure lamps. But they gave off
much better light than those of his own invention. They had gone him
one better there.

"Did--did you see them?" Asher gulped. "And how--how did you get down
here? Tell me!" He took a step toward Lee Wong, intending to lay his
hand on the Chinaman, to make sure he was live flesh and blood, and
not a figment of his disordered brain.

"Stand where you are!" Lee Wong snapped. He held the heavy static gun
up and Asher felt a light charge tingle his body. "Those Things of
which you speak--I assume you mean the Petrolia. Ah, yes, we see them.
Every day, we see them. For us they work. They work, my dear Blaine
Asher, tapping upward into the oil sands; sands that are burial places
of countless millions of generations of Petrolia; of lost races that
once ruled supreme over these underground worlds.

"How simple, to take the oil from below--the oil you want so much
above. Someone must do the work. I and Krenski found the Petrolia
ready and willing. Being creatures of feeling, with little sense, we
were able to bend their dying wills to do our work. You see, we made
them feel we would save them, a dying race, from extinction! They do
our bidding."

Asher was bewildered by the enormity of the thing. "You mean these
Things you have called Petrolia actually work for you? And that you
saved them from becoming extinct?"

* * * * *

"Exactly," Lee Wong nodded, seeming to be enjoying himself. "Like
humans of the surface, Petrolia live on the dead. I mean, wherever we
get our living food from the earth, we plant our dead back in that
earth. Petrolia are spawned in beds of petroleum. Just as eels seek
de