re, throwing off his
jacket. And in that strange room in a strange world, under the shadow of
death and of tortures unknown, the two men stripped with all the
care-free abandon of a couple of schoolboys racing to be first in the
old swimming hole.

* * * * *

It was some time later when the door opened and a long red hand pushed a
tray of food into the room. The tray was of unbreakable crystal--he
rattled it heedlessly upon the floor--and it held crystal dishes of
unknown foods.

They were sampling them all when Sykes remarked plaintively, "I would
like to know what under heaven I am eating."

"I've wished to know that in lots of restaurants," McGuire replied. "I
remember a place down on--" He stopped abruptly, then chewed in silence
upon a fruit like a striped pepper that stung his mouth and tongue while
he scarcely felt it. References to Earth things plainly were to be
avoided: the visions they brought before one's eyes were unnerving.

They made a pretence of sleeping in case they were being observed, and
it was some hours later when the two stood quietly beside the open
window. As Sykes had seen, there were branches of a pale, twisted
tree-growth close outside. McGuire tried his weight upon them, then
swung himself out, hand over hand, upon the branch that bent low beneath
him. Sykes was close behind when he clambered to the ground to stand for
some minutes, listening silently in the dark.

"Too easy!" the lieutenant whispered. "They are too foxy to leave
a gateway like that--but here we are. The shore is off in this
direction."

The dark of a night unrelieved by a single star was about them as they
moved noiselessly away. They followed open ground at first. The building
that had been their brief prison was upon their right; beyond and at the
left was where the ship landed--it was gone now--and beyond that the
wall of vegetation.

And again, in the dark, McGuire had an uncanny sense of motion. Soft
bodies were slipping quietly one upon another; something that lived was
there beyond them in the night. No sound or sign of life came from the
house; no guard had been posted; and McGuire stopped again, before
plunging into the tangled growth, to whisper, "Too easy, Sykes! There's
something about this--"

* * * * *

He had pushed aside the fronds of a giant fern; a cautious step
beyond his hands touched a slippery, pliant vine. And his whisper
end