n he could not
explain was possessing him as he advanced. Around the corridor, whose
one side was the wall reaching up to invisibility, whose other side
dropped off into the abyss, the Gnomes herded the prisoners.

* * * * *

The leader of the Gnomes was again the Gnome who had first leaped upon
Jaska to examine her curiously. Now, watching the lidless eyes of this
being, Sarka fancied he could detect a hint of some expression. The
Gnome was excited at some prospect, some climax which they were
approaching. What? On and on they moved. The blue flames from the
abyss, roaring in a way that neither of the prisoners had ever
experienced, reached upward in searing tongues toward the invisible
roof of this place.

Then, when they had progressed far from the door of entry, Sarka
gasped at a new manifestation. Out of the abyss, some distance ahead,
came a gleaming thing, something that had apparently evolved itself
out of the flames of the abyss. Blue of color it was, because of the
flames from the pit; but Sarka recognized it with a start which he
could not suppress nor understand.

It was one of those cubes, such as he and Jaska had seen at the lip of
the Moon-crater! As they approached, guided by the Gnomes, other cubes
appeared out of the abyss, others in numbers swiftly augmented, until
a veritable battalion of them had marshalled itself, there at the lip
of the abyss.

* * * * *

Straight toward these cubes the Gnomes led Sarka and Jaska, and when
they had reached the center of the group, they halted, forming a
circle, still a wall to mask the prisoners from the heat of the abyss.
The leader of the Gnomes stopped with his face, his lidless eyes,
close to one of the cubes.

For a moment he paused thus, and Sarka felt sure that somehow the
Gnome was holding thought converse with the cube; but, try as he
might, he could find no meaning in the weird conversation for himself.
It was oddly like listening to a conversation in a code beyond his
knowledge.

Then the Gnome turned back to Sarka and Jaska. By a pressure of tiny
feet, he tried to indicate that Sarka and Jaska should unclasp their
hands. But they only clung the tighter, and now threw their arms about
each other.

The Gnome desisted, much to the joy of the lovers, while Sarka studied
the cubes, wondering what their mission was with Jaska and himself.

Slowly, together, the cubes began to lose th