n spite of himself
at the contact.

Instantly the thing that bore him stopped. Joyce held his breath. He
felt an excruciating, stabbing pain in his arm, after which the
journey through the water was resumed. Stubbornly he kept up his
pretence of lifelessness.

The splashing ceased, and he heard flat wet feet slapping along on dry
rock, indicating that they had emerged from the pit. Then he sank into
real unconsciousness.

The next thing he knew was that he was lying on smooth, bare rock in a
perfect bedlam of noises. Howls and grunts, snuffling coughs and
snarls beat at his ear-drums. It was as though he had fallen into a
vast cage in which were hundreds of savage, excited animals--animals,
however, that in spite of their excitement and ferocity were
surprisingly motionless, for he heard no scraping of claws, or padding
of feet.

Cautiously he opened his eyes....

* * * * *

He was in a large cave, the walls of which were glowing with greenish,
phosphorescent light. Strewn about the floor were seemingly dead
carcasses of animals. And what carcasses there were! Blubber-coated
things that looked like giant tadpoles, gazelle-like creatures with a
single, long slim horn growing from delicate small skulls, four-legged
beasts and six-legged ones, animals with furry hides and crawlers with
scaled coverings--several hundred assorted specimens of the smaller
life of Zeud lay stretched out in seeming lifelessness.

But they were not dead, these bizarre beasts of another world. They
lived, and were animated with the frenzied fear of trapped things.
Joyce could see the tortured heaving of their furred and scaled sides
as they panted with terror. And from their throats issued the
outlandish noises he had heard. They were alive enough--only they
seemed unable to move!

There was nothing in his range of vision that might conceivably be the
beings that had captured them, so Joyce started to lift his head and
look around at the rest of the cavern. He found that he could not
move. He tried again, and his body was as unresponsive as a log. In
fact, he couldn't feel his body at all! In growing terror, he
concentrated all his will on moving his arm. It was as limp as a rag.

He relaxed, momentarily in the grip of stark, blind panic. He was as
helpless as the howling things around him! He was numbed, completely
paralyzed into immobility!

The professor's voice--a weak, uncertain voice--sounded fro