and legs
with sweeping strokes, as though swimming. It was like being under
water.

It was a strange, weird scene, the vessel wavering above us; the
flashing lights; waving beams of radiance. A fantastic structure
nearby reared itself several hundred feet with lights on top and
outlining its many lateral balconies one above the other. The air was
full of the leaping, swimming insect-like figures. The brains, the
masters, were not in evidence; then I saw one of them being carried,
and others, floating down like distended falling balloons, to be
caught by the workers in small nets and thus saved from jarring
contact.

Snap was suddenly whispering: "That fellow back of us is our guard. I
can feel his ray. Some form of attraction; it's pulling at me."

Snap was a little behind me. I turned and saw the faint radiance of a
narrow light-beam upon him. It came from an instrument in an upper
shoulder hand of the insect figure following us, no doubt the reverse
form of the same ray which had been used to thrust the wrecked
_Cometara_ toward the Moon.

We reached the bottom. I saw now that the group of workers in advance
of us were carrying metal cubes, seemingly of considerable weight;
they also had to use the incline.

We stood presently on a smooth ground surface. We had not seen Anita
and Venza, nor Molo and his sister. The insect figure who was our
guard came forward. "You stand here. Molo comes."

"Where is he?" I demanded. "I want to see him." I stopped myself
quickly; I had very nearly mentioned the girls. "And talk with him."

"He comes soon."

"I'm hungry." I gestured to my stomach. "Food. You know what that is?"

The brown scaly face contorted for a smile, a ghastly grimace. "Yes.
You shall have food and drink."

It seemed that the hollow voice came not from the neck but from the
shell-like, bulging chest. He stood aside, with the globular weapon of
the ray in a pincer hand.

We waited, standing gingerly together, wavering with our slight
weight. A wind would have blown us away, but there was no wind.
Instead, there was a heavy, sultry air, warm as a mid-summer Earth
night, warmer even than the Neo-time of Venus.

Snap and I were dressed much the same, wearing heavy boots, for which
weight we were thankful, tight, puttee-like trousers, flaring at the
top, and high-necked white blouses. Both of us were bare-headed.
Doubtless we were as fantastic a sight to these Wandlites as they to
us. Some of the work