m behind
him. "Joyce! Joyce!"

He found that he could talk, that the paralysis that gripped the rest
of his muscles had not extended to the vocal cords. "Dorn! Thank God
you're alive! I couldn't see you, and I thought--"

"I'm alive, but that's about all," said Wichter. "I--I can't move."

"Neither can I. We've been drugged in some manner--just as all the
other animals in here have been drugged. I must have got my dose in
the pit. I was cut, or stabbed, in the arm."

* * * * *

Joyce stopped talking as he suddenly heard steps, like human footsteps
yet weirdly different--flap-flapping sounds as though awkward flippers
were slapping along the rock floor toward them. The steps stopped
within a few feet of them; then, after what seemed hours, they sounded
again, this time in front of him.

He opened his eyes, cautiously, barely moving his eyelids, and saw at
last, in every hideous detail, one of the super-beasts that had
captured Wichter and himself.

It was a horrible cartoon of a man, the thing that stood there in the
greenish glow of the cave. Nine or ten feet high, it loomed; hairless,
with a faintly iridescent, purplish hide. A thick, cylindrical trunk
sloped into a neck only a little smaller than the body itself. Set on
this was a bony, ugly head that was split clear across by lipless
jaws. There was no nose, only slanted holes like the nostrils of an
animal; and over these were set pale, expressionless, pupil-less eyes.
The arms were short and thick and ended in bifurcated lumps of flesh
like swollen hands encased in old-fashioned mittens. The legs were
also grotesquely short, and the feet mere shapeless flaps.

It was standing near one of the smaller animals, apparently regarding
it closely. Observing it himself, Joyce saw that it was moving a
little. As though coming out of a coma, it was raising its bizarre
head and trying to get on its feet.

Leisurely the two-legged monster bent over it. Two long fangs gleamed
in the lipless mouth. These were buried in the neck of the reviving
beast--and instantly it sank back into immobility.

Having reduced it to helplessness--the monster ate it! The lipless
jaws gaped widely. The shapeless hands forced in the head of the
animal. The throat muscles expanded hugely: and in less than a minute
it had swallowed its living prey as a boa-constrictor swallows a
monkey.

* * * * *

Joyce closed his eyes, fee