left here in the depths of a cauldron.

De Boer's flyer was outside. We had landed by the shore of the sea,
and the bandits had pushed the vehicle into an arching recess which
seemed as though made to hide it. All this camp was hidden. Arching
crags of the ridge-wall jutted out over the cave entrance. From above,
any passing flyer--even though well below the zero-height--would see
nothing but this black breathing sea, lapping against its eroded,
fantastic shore-line.

Within the cave, there was only a vague filtering daylight from the
lower entrance, a thin shaft from the rift overhead, and the blue
tube-light, throwing great shadows of the tents and the men against
the black rock walls.

There seemed perhaps a hundred of the bandits here. A semi-permanent
camp, by its aspect. Grey parchment tents were set up about the floor,
some small, others more elaborate. It seemed as though it were a
huddled little group of buildings in the open air, instead of in a
cave. One tent, just at the foot of my dome, seemed De Boer's personal
room. He went into it after leaving me, and came out to join the main
group of his fellows near the center of the cave where a large
electron stove, and piped water from a nearby subterranean freshet,
and a long table set with glassware and silver, stood these men for
kitchen and eating place.

* * * * *

The treasure had not yet been brought in from the flyer. But, from
what I overheard, it seemed that the radiumized ingots of the
ill-fated Spawn and Perona were to be stored for a year at least, here
in this cave. I could see the strong-room cubby. It was hewn from the
rock of the cave wall, its sealed-grid door-oval set with metal bars.

I saw also what seemed a small but well-equipped machine shop, in a
recess room at one side of the cave. Men were working in there under
the light of tubes. And there was a niche hollowed out in the wall to
make a room for De Boer's instruments--ether-wave receivers and
transmitters, the aerial receiving wires of which stretched in banks
along the low ceiling.

There was no activity in there now, except for one man who was
operating what I imagined might be an aerial insulator, guarding the
place from any prying search-vibrations.

The main cave was a bustle of activity. The arriving bandits were
greeting their fellows and exchanging news. The men who had been left
here were jubilant at the success of the Chief's latest en