oss the living room the window sash went up with a thump. A black
shape was there, huddled in a great loose cloak which was over the head
so that the thing inside was shapeless.

For an instant Lee and his two companions stood stricken. The shapes
seemed babbling with weird unintelligible words. Then from the window
came words of English:

"_We--want--_" Slow words, strangely intoned. Young Tom Franklin broke
in on them.

"Say--what the devil--who do you people think you are, comin' in here--"
He took a swaying step over the threshold. There was a sudden sharp
command from one of the shapes. Lee jumped in front of the girl. On the
verandah the gliding figures were engulfing Franklin; he had fallen.

Lee went through the door with a leap, his fist driving at the cowled
head of one of the figures--a solid shape that staggered backward from
his blow. But the others were on him, dropping down before his rush,
gripping his legs and ankles. He went down, fighting. And then something
struck his face--something that was like a hand, or a paw with claws
that scratched him. His head suddenly was reeling; his senses fading....

* * * * *

How long he fought Lee did not know. He was aware that the girl was
screaming--and that he was hurling clutching figures away--figures that
came pouncing back. Then the roaring in his head was a vast uproar. The
fighting, scrambling dark shapes all seemed dwindling until they were
tiny points of white light--like stars in the great abyss of
nothingness....

He knew--as though it were a blurred dream--that he was lying inert on
the verandah, with Franklin and the girl lying beside him.... The house
was being searched.... Then the muttering shapes were standing here. Lee
felt himself being picked up. And then he was carried silently out into
the darkness. The motion seemed to waft him off so that he knew nothing
more.

CHAPTER II

_The Flight Into Size and Space_

Lee came back to consciousness with the feeling that some great length
of time must have elapsed. He was on a couch in a small, weird-looking
metal room--metal of a dull, grey-white substance like nothing he had
ever seen before. With his head still swimming he got up dizzily on one
elbow, trying to remember what had happened to him. That fingernail, or
claw, had scratched his face. He had been drugged. It seemed obvious. He
could remember his roaring senses as he had tried to fight, with