ran through his veins. He felt strength flooding back into him--and he
remembered horror.

"That's better," a mellow voice said, close above him. "Drink just a
little more." The cool liquid came up against Allan's lips again,
pungent, and he drank. Once more strength surged warmingly within him.
"That's a good fellow. A little more now."

Fingers were on Allan's wrist, life-warm. There was friendliness in
the voice that was speaking to him, and solicitude. He dared to look.

A skull-like head was right before him. But seen thus closely, the
terror of it was lessened. Fleshless indeed it was. But a parchment
skin was tightly drawn over the bones, and Allan could see that its
true shade was a sere yellow. It was the bluish light that had given
it the green of decay. The deep-sunk eyes were kindly; they gleamed
with pleasure as Allan's opened; and the voice asked:

"How do you feel?"

Allan made shift to reply, though a strange lassitude still enervated
him, and his mouth was full of tongue. "Much better, thank you. But
who--who...?"

With a sudden access of energy Allan sat up on his couch. He looked
about him, and his fears were back full flood.

He was in a chamber with neither door nor window--floor, walls, and
arched ceiling entirely formed of the palely lustrous, glasslike
substance. The room was perhaps twenty by forty feet, its ceiling
curving to about five yards from the floor at its highest point, and
the spectral blue glow that filled it was apparently sourceless. It
lit three vacant couches to his left. To his right were the four he
had already seen. The woman was ministering to the occupants of
these--living skeletons that lay flaccid, but whose heads were moving,
barely moving from side to side. Like nothing else but a sepulcher the
place seemed, a tomb in which the dead had come to life!

* * * * *

Allan clutched at Anthony's arm, grasped textured fabric that was cold
to his frantic touch, and thin bone beneath. "In Heaven's name," he
mouthed, "tell me what sort of place this is before--" He stopped,
appalled by a sudden thought. Perhaps he was insane, this seeming tomb
really some hospital ward transformed by his crazed brain. A wave of
weakness overcame him, and he fell back.

"Careful," the other spoke soothingly, "you must give the plasma time
to act or you may harm yourself."

If Allan shut out sight with his eyelids, and listened only to the
resonance of