nfused impression of conflicting emotions: curiosity, rage, hate, and
a cold ferocity that bound them into one powerful, vindictive whole.

Again the leader quieted the rest; again he laid open the minds of Walt
and Diane for his exploring questions, while Chet mentally listened and
tried to picture what manner of thing this was that held two Earth-folk
helpless, that called them "creatures of an inferior race."

Super-men? No? Super-beasts, these must be. Chet was chilled with a
nameless horror as he sensed the cold deadliness and implacable hate in
the traces of emotion that clung and came to him with the thoughts. And
his imagination balked at trying to picture thinking creatures so
abominably vile as these thinkers must be.

The questions went on and on. Chet lost all sense of time. He had the
feeling that the two helpless prisoners were being mentally flayed. No
thought, no hidden emotion, but was stripped from them and displayed
before the mental gaze of these inhuman inquisitors. No physical torture
could have been more revolting.

And at list the ordeal was ended. Chet had forgotten Schwartzmann's men
until the "Master's" order recalled them to his mind. "Bring the other
captives!" the unspoken thought commanded.

* * * * *

Chet crouched low to see from under the hanging leather. Naked feet
shuffled aimlessly; they were raised and put down again in the same
position, until the dazed and hypnotized blacks received their orders
and drew Diane and Harkness to one side. Then other leather-shod feet
came into view as Max and his companions were brought forward.

But there was no more questioning. "Perhaps another day we shall amuse
ourselves with them," a thinker said. Chet, for the first time was
paying no attention.

A slit in the leather--it might bare been where a spear had entered to
slay a dinosaur in some earlier age--served now as a peep-hole from
which Chet saw two gray and lifeless faces that were expressionless as
stone. And, as if their bodies, too, were carved from granite, Diane and
Harkness stood motionless.

He saw the blacks, saw that all eyes were on the other prisoners. Only
Harkness and Diane stood with lowered gaze, staring stonily at the floor
where the leather hung. And through Chet's mind flashed a quick impulse
that set his nerves thrilling and quivering, though he checked the
emotion in an instant lest some other mind should sense it.

Those other m