them?--or would they, after the few weeks
of searching and inquiry that must follow their disappearance, at last
conclude that some nameless mountain disaster had made them victims,
and give them up for dead? No doubt. And month after succeeding month
their memory would fade from the minds of those who had loved them,
while they would be--where?...

* * * * *

A peculiar, dynamic thought came simultaneously into the minds of the
two men. It was not a word: it seemed more like a feeling; but its
unquestionable import was "Come." Together they rose, and looked at
each other wonderingly. Again came the feeling. They started for the
door.

"But that's foolish!" Jim said aloud, as if objecting to his own
thought. "The door's locked! We tried it!" He looked at Partridge, who
returned his gaze blankly--and then, in spite of what he had said, he
reached out and turned the latch.

The door swung open!

Expressions of surprise died on the men's lips as again came the
compelling urge to go to some unknown destination.

"Suggestion!" said Clee, as he passed through the doorway. "Someone's
suggesting--telepathically willing--that we come to him! And I--God
help me--I can't resist!"

His neck corded with veins and muscles with his effort to restrain his
body from obeying the mysterious command that was drawing it onward.
Wilson, one arm outstretched in a repelling gesture, his legs stiff
and tight, was also trying to resist. But the will that had sounded
within them was stronger than theirs, and slowly, inevitably, they
were drawn down the passage.

Their carpeted way took them back to the entrance chamber and then up
a steeply sloping corridor that led upward to the left. As they passed
along they saw that the hand of a master had made on the walls, in
panel effect, marvelously complicated decorations in many-colored
mosaic. No man of Earth could ever have done such work, the two men
realized--and this thought did not cheer them any.

* * * * *

At the top of their curving passage a doorway led them into a spacious
room hung with soft, finely woven tapestries with a metallic lustre
and furnished with deep-napped rugs and luxurious chairs and divans.
Through this room the intangible threads of the alien will directed
them--on into a wide-vaulted alcove about one-third its size. There,
the strange clutch on them relaxed, and they looked about, at first
apprehe