hen the man gasped.

"Good Lord!" he whispered. "It ... it's Gerry Norton!"

Then the man swung the light so that it swung on himself. Gerry saw a
tall, gaunt man in the tattered remains of a blue and silver uniform. It
was Major Walter Lansing, once of the Interplanetary Fleet, who had
commanded the ill-fated _Stardust_ when she set out on her voyage into
space!

"Norton!" he gasped in a hoarse whisper. "Man, I never expected to see
anyone from Earth again!"

"We thought you were dead."

"I might as well be!" Lansing said grimly. "But tell me how you come to
be here."

As they squatted there in the darkened cell, Gerry whispered the story
of the _Viking's_ expedition and of his own capture. Lansing told him
how the _Stardust_ had been wrecked on the rim of the mountains when
landing, and how the Scaly Ones had captured all the crew.

"They have kept me alive because the signs pointed that way when they
cast the omens before the Serpent Gods," Lansing said, "but all the rest
of the crew were used as bait for hunting the giant Dakta. They died.
You and your companions will probably meet the same fate."

"Pleasant prospect!" Gerry said grimly. Lansing gripped his arm.

"There's a chance, Norton! Listen! I've been able to get these scaly
devils to bring me a good many things from the wreck. I couldn't get a
ray-tube, they were too wise for that, but I did get a portable radio by
telling them it was my tribal god. I have it in my cell. We'll go over
and you can phone your ship to come after us." He eyed Gerry eagerly.

"Let's go!"

They both crawled through the gap in the wall. It was like Gerry's own,
but it was piled with an assortment of junk from the wrecked space-ship.
In one corner stood a compact two-way radio telephone set with its tubes
still intact.

"Think you can tell them how to come?" Lansing whispered.

"I'm not sure. They marched us along the roads, and the route was
winding, and...."

"I'll draw you a map!" Lansing interrupted. "You hold the light."

While Gerry held the flash, the other man spread out a piece of crumpled
paper on the floor and began to draw on it with the stub of a graphite
stylus. He talked as he wrote, in a shrilly, excited whisper. Gerry had
never liked the man in the old days, considering him excitable and
undependable, and it was evident that the long captivity had not
improved Walter Lansing's self-control. That did not matter. The main
thing was to get out of this