.
His fist lashed out at that glittering silver instrument and the face
behind it, but Corio avoided him like a wraith, still smiling fixedly,
the horn again at his lips. Cliff cursed, and hurled himself through
the air. One hand caught a bony shoulder; he felt fingers like hooks
close on his own throat. He wrenched free, landing a stunning blow on
Corio's face--saw him reel and crash to the deck--and then he heard
Vilma scream!

He whirled. She was struggling between two of the _flabby-faced things
from_ the galley! In an instant he was upon them, his fist thudding
against icy flesh, burying itself in something horribly soft and
yielding. Startled, Cliff swung a second blow; and an arm, tomb-cold
and strong as the tentacle of an octopus, wrapped itself around him--a
vise of thin-covered bone! A dead, drowned face peered over his
shoulder, staring blankly. Other arms seized his legs, and though he
struggled and writhed with the strength of a mounting fear, he was
borne to the rail. Over they went, and dropped to the rotting deck of
the galley.

A numbness was creeping through him like a contagion, spreading from
those crushing hands of ice. His struggles ceased. With eyes that
turned stiffly in their sockets he looked for Vilma, saw her raised
high above the heads of two other pallid creatures, saw them climb
over the rail. Then the blackness of a dank and musty cabin enveloped
him; and he was dropped with jarring force. His captors bulked black
against the moonlit doorway, treading soundlessly, and were gone.

Cliff lay in rigid paralysis, every sense keenly alive, his mind
striving to clutch a single spar of reason in this chaotic whirlpool
of the incredible. This _couldn't_ be! Soon he'd awaken to laugh at
his absurd nightmare.... Yet it seemed horribly real.... It _was_
real!

From the _Ariel_ boiled a fearful bedlam. Screams of terror. Curses.
Then other shadows loomed in the doorway, and Vilma, motionless and
rigid, was dropped brutally beside him on the spongy floor.

Furiously Cliff struggled against the maddening restraint of
paralysis. He couldn't lie here helpless! Vilma needed him! He'd--he'd
_have_ to do something. With an effort that studded his forehead with
rounded drops of sweat and sent the blood throbbing through the
distended veins of his neck, he sought to move. And like a cord
snapping, his invisible bonds fell from him.

He was crouching over Vilma, rubbing her wrists, calling to her, when