reatures waiting for them.
Any hopes that Tom Watkins had had of rooting around the big hall for a
way of escape died with a dejected grunt. There must be well over a ton
of enemies there, with their caverned red eyes peering down at the
humans. No chance to explore under those gazes.

The boss of the alien scientists--Watkins recognized it, or him (or was
it her?), by the clothing and by certain differences in facial
structure--came and bent over them. Watkins was smoking a cigarette he
had bummed from Villa, Summersby's having given out the day before. He
took a hearty drag and blew out the smoke, which unfortunately lifted
right into the creature's eyes. It shook its head and made a squawking
sound, "Hwrak!" and flipped its green prodder into his belly. He
abruptly sat down, with the sensation of having stuck his finger into a
lamp socket. "My God!" he said. Cal helped him up.

Summersby walked off toward a twenty-foot-high door. None of the beings
tried to stop him. The boss motioned Watkins to go with it, so he rather
shakily followed it across the room.

Before him was a gadget that resembled a five-manual organ console. The
banks of keys were broad and there was a kind of chair, or stool, fixed
on a horizontal bar in front of them. The giant indicated that he was to
get onto it.

"Now what?" he said, when he had been stopped directly in front of the
apparatus. "Expect me to play this? Look, Buster, I'm tone deaf, I
haven't had my coffee yet, and I'd just as soon dance a polka as play
you a tune."

The thing pressed down two of the keys--they were of an amethyst color,
longer and more tapered than those of an organ--and looked at Watkins.

"Drop dead," he said to it. He was always bitterly antagonistic to
everything and everybody if he didn't have three cups of coffee before
he got out of bed. "Go on, you big ape, make me play."

It hit him on the head with a couple of its big rubbery fingers. He felt
as if a cop had sloshed him with a blackjack, and all the hostility went
out of him. He leaned forward and pushed down half a dozen keys at
random.

There was no sound, at least none that he could hear, though he
remembered the whistle he had at home to call his dog, and wondered if
the notes of this organ were sub- or supersonic. Certainly there was no
reason to suppose this race of creatures was limited to the same range
of hearing that humans were.

The thing went down the hall some yards and folded its