rs, and a voice said--a voice in precise
but strangely accented English:

"We have been expecting you, gentlemen, but--where is Solino?"

* * * * *

Never would Miles and Ward forget the amazement of that moment. They
were in a place which looked not unlike a huge laboratory. Then they
saw it was a lofty room containing a variety of strange mechanisms.
But it was not on these their eyes focussed. Confronting them in odd
wheelchairs, with hairless heads projecting from tubular containers
like the one they had seen encasing the man at the control board of
the submarines, were all of half a hundred crippled men!

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Miles, "I must be seeing things!"

"Where is Solino?" demanded the voice in strangely accented English.

Ward saw that the question came from an individual in a wheelchair a
few feet in front of them.

"Solino is dead," he answered.

"Dead?" A ripple of sound came from the oddly seated men.

"Yes, the submarine car was wrecked in the tunnel, and everyone aboard
was killed save us two."

The hairless men looked at one another. "This is Spiro's work," said
one of them, still in English; and another said, "Yes, Spiro has done
this."

Miles and Ward were recovering somewhat from their initial
astonishment. "What place is this?" asked the former.

"This is Apex--or, rather, the Palace of the Heads in Apex."

The Palace of the Heads! The two Americans tried to control their
bewilderment.

"Pardon us if we don't understand. Everything is so strange. First the
submarine was wrecked. Then we entered the crystal room and the tunnel
vanished. We can't understand how this place can be at the bottom of
the Atlantic."

"It isn't at the bottom of the Atlantic."

"Not at the bottom? Then where?"

"It isn't," said the voice slowly, "in your world at all."

The import of what was said did not at first penetrate the minds of
the Americans. "Not in our world?" they echoed stupidly.

"Come," said the crippled man smiling inscrutably, "you are tired and
hungry. Later I shall explain more." His strangely colored eyes bored
into their own. "Sleep," said his voice softly, imperatively; and
though they fought against the command with all the strength of their
wills, heaviness weighted down their eyelids and they slept.

* * * * *

From dreamless sleep they awakened to find that fatigue had
miraculously vanished, that their wounds