epped over to the nude body of the Croen. I inserted the needle
carefully in the artery at her inner elbow, pushed the plunger slowly
home, my eyes on her face with a deep awe.

The prince bent beside me, watching her face intently, and both of us
stood rapt, waiting for I knew not what except that it would be more
marvelous to meet such a god-like creature as this face to face than
anything else that had ever happened to me.

But a sound of feet up the corridor made Prince Genner spring to his
feet.

"Quick, man, help me get these dead horrors out of sight! I do not trust
all those warriors, though most of them are in sympathy with us."

We sprang to the dead things. I bent and picked one up by the shoulders.
Surprisingly, frighteningly light they were, as if filled with cotton.
Their limbs were truly skeletal, and curiously I tugged the white robe
from the strange insect body as I followed the prince. The thorax, the
wasp-waist, the long pendulous abdomen, the atrophied center limbs
folded across the wasp-waist--the whole thing was like a great white
wasp without wings. As we flung them into an empty chamber, I turned the
burden face down, and on the back were two thin wisps of residual wings.
Once these things had been winged!

We sped back to the side of the sleeping Croen.

I stopped ten feet from the giant figure, surprise, awe, a thrill of
admiration filling me! She was sitting up, her hands at her temples,
peering about with her great eyes distracted. On her face, even in this
condition of tension, still unaware of her surroundings, was the
greatest evidence of intelligence I had ever sensed. This Croen race, I
realized, was something truly beyond an earthman's understanding.

But the prince had no time for the awed, stupefied condition into which
sight of her had struck me.

"Come, Cyane, great one, we have released you, but you must flee at
once. I know how weak you must be, but if you can, please rise and flee.
This man will accompany you. He is alien to us, and it is better that he
be out of the hands of the Jivros as quickly as possible. Go, dear one,
swiftly, swiftly--we will find you later!"

The great body moved, gathered itself, stood tottering, gazing wildly
about. The prince pointed at the cavern entrance where our footprints
still showed in the dust. To me he cried: "Go up the rocky side as far
as you can when you reach the slopes. The north side, earthman. Keep
going, and conceal yoursel