ne told him that he must be
especially careful just here.

He came to accept the warnings. It occurred to him that the squeaks
sounded very much like those button-shaped hollow whistles that
children put in their mouths to make strident sounds of varying pitch.
Gradually, all his senses returned to normal. Even his eyes under the
blindfold ceased to report only glare blindness, and he saw those
peculiar, dissolving grayish patterns that human eyes transmit from
darkness.

More squeakings. A long time later he moved over nearly level grassy
ground. He was led for possibly half a mile. He had not tried to speak
during all his descent. It would have been useless. If he was to be
killed, he would be killed. But trouble had been taken to bring him
down alive from a remaining bit of crumbling crater wall. His captors
had evidently some use for him in mind.

They abruptly held him still for a long time--perhaps as much as an
hour. It seemed that either instructions were hard to come by, or some
preparation was being made. Then the sound of something or someone
approaching. Squeaks.

He was led another long distance. Then claws or hands lifted him.
Metal clanked. Those who held him dropped him. He fell three or four
feet onto soft sand. There was a clanging of metal above his head.

Then a human voice said sardonically, "Welcome to our city! Where'd
they catch you?"

Lockley said, "Up on a mountainside, trying to see what they were
doing. Will you get me loose, please?"

Hands worked on the cord that bound his arms close to his body. They
loosened. He removed the blindfold.

He was in a metal-walled and metal-ceilinged vault, perhaps eight feet
wide and the same in height, and perhaps twelve feet long. It had a
floor of sand. Some small amount of light came in through the circular
hole he'd been dropped through, despite a cover on it. There were
three men already in confinement here. They wore clothing appropriate
to workmen from the construction camp. There was a tall lean man, and
a broad man with a moustache, and a chunky man. The chunky man had
spoken.

"Did you see any of 'em?" he demanded now.

Lockley shook his head. The three looked at each other and nodded.
Lockley saw that they hadn't been imprisoned long. The sand floor was
marked but not wholly formed into footprints, as it would have been
had they moved restlessly about. Mostly, it appeared, they'd simply
sat on the sand floor.

"We didn't see 'em e