ls of a city. Toll, the
reptilian captain, pointed across the valley.

"Yonder lies the city of Vaaka-hausen. Soon you will stand before the
Lord Lansa, and then," he added with a grim and ghoulish humor, "neither
I nor anybody else will be bothered with you any more."

The countryside immediately around the city of the Scaly Ones was better
kept and more cultivated than what they had seen of the rest of
Giri-Vaaka. There were a number of small villages. Then they passed in
through the walls, gray stone ramparts that seemed to be very old and
were in poor repair. The muzzles of heavy caliber gas-guns peered over
the battlements here and there.

The crowds in the streets stared curiously as Toll led his prisoners
toward the center of the city. Tall reptile men swaggered through the
crowds with their swords slung on their hips, but the shorter Green Men
were in the great majority. Most of them, men and women alike, stared at
the captives without any particular sign of emotion. This gray and
crowded city of Vaaka-hausen had none of the atmosphere of pleasant
friendliness that Gerry had noticed in Larr. It seemed a place of fear
and oppression.

* * * * *

The palace of the ruler of the Scaly Ones was a squat gray building in
the center of the city. An arm of the river swept along beneath one
wall, with the muddy waters lapping at the aged gray stones. An iron
gate swung aside to let the newcomers into the courtyard. Men who wore
black metal breast-plates over their scales took over the prisoners from
Toll, leading them down a long flight of stairs into the dungeons
beneath the palace. They waited in a vaulted chamber where the only
light was a shaft of yellow radiance that came from a narrow slit high
up near the ceiling.

"It won't be long now!" Gerry muttered.

Then a gong sounded somewhere nearby. It was a very resonant and
deep-throated gong, and instantly the rock-walled chamber became filled
with a green light. It had no visible source, seeming to come from the
walls or from the very air itself. Again the gong rolled.

"The Lord Lansa comes!" barked the captain of the guards, "the overlord
of Venus is at hand. Down on your knees, captives and slaves."

Closana went to her knees, though otherwise holding herself proudly
erect with her hands tied behind her back. In the greenish light her
long blonde hair looked like molten gold. Angus McTavish muttered
savagely in his beard an