rrible silence of the flier. The air within it bore still more
strongly the unpleasant fetor.

Thad hesitated on the steps. The hold was not inviting. But at the
thought that he must sleep, unguarded, while taking the flier to Mars,
his resolution returned. The uncertainty, the constant fear, would be
unendurable.

He climbed on down, feeling for the light button. He found it, as his
feet touched the floor. Blue light flooded the hold.

It was filled with monstrous things, colossal creatures, such as
nothing that ever lived upon the Earth; like nothing known in the
jungles of Venus or the deserts of Mars, or anything that has been
found upon Jupiter's moons.

They were monsters remotely resembling insects or crustaceans, but as
large as horses or elephants; creatures upreared upon strange limbs,
armed with hideously fanged jaws, cruel talons, frightful, saw-toothed
snouts, and glittering scales, red and yellow and green. They leered
at him with phosphorescent eyes, yellow and purple.

They cast grotesquely gigantic shadows in the blue light....

* * * * *

A cold shock of horror started along Thad's spine, at sight of those
incredible nightmare things. Automatically be flung up the welding
tool, flicking over the lever with his thumb, so that violet electric
flame played about the electrode.

Then he saw that the crowding, hideous things were motionless, that
they stood upon wooden pedestals, that many of them were supported
upon metal bars. They were dead. Mounted. Collected specimens of some
alien life.

Grinning wanly, and conscious of a weakness in the knees, he muttered:
"They sure will fill the museum, if everybody gets the kick out of
them that I did. A little too realistic, I'd say. Guess these are the
'stuffed monstrosities' mentioned in the page out of the log. No
wonder the cook was afraid of them. Some of then do look hellishly
alive!"

He started across the hold, shrinking involuntarily from the armored
enormities that seemed crouched to spring at him, motionless eyes
staring.

So, at the end of the long space, he found the treasure.

Glittering in the blue light, it looked unreal. Incredible. A dazzling
dream. He stopped among the fearful things that seemed gathered as if
to guard it, and stared with wide eyes through the opened face-plate
of his helmet.

He saw neat stacks of gold ingots, new, freshly smelted; bars of
silver-white iridium, of argent platinu