the whole universe went nutty!" he added to himself in awe.

"What did that?" asked the Big Business Man. He climbed unsteadily to
his feet and sat upon a rock, holding his head in his hands.

The Doctor was up in a moment beside him. "We're not hurt," he said,
looking at his companions. "Don't let's waste any more time--let's get
into that valley." The Very Young Man could see by his manner that he
knew or guessed what had happened.

"But say; what----" began the Very Young Man.

"Come on," interrupted the Doctor, and started walking ahead swiftly.

There was nothing for his two friends to do but to follow. They walked
in silence, in single file, picking their way among the rocks. For a
quarter of an hour or more they kept going, until finally they came to
the ridge of hills, finding them enormous rocks, several hundred feet
high, strewn closely together.

"The valley must be right beyond," said the Doctor. "Come on."

The spaces between these huge rocks were, some of them, fifty feet or
more in width. Inside the hills the travelers found the ground even
rougher than before, and it was nearly half an hour before they emerged
on the other side.

Instead of the shallow valley they expected to find, they came upon a
precipice--a sheer drop into a tremendous canon, half as wide possibly
as it was deep. They could see down to its bottom from where they
stood--the same rocky, barren waste as that through which they had been
traveling. Across the canon, on the farther side, lay another line of
hills.

"It's the scratch all right," said the Very Young Man, as they stopped
near the brink of the precipice, "but, holy smoke! Isn't it big?"

"That's two thousand feet down there," said the Big Business Man,
stepping cautiously nearer to the edge. "Rogers didn't say it was so
deep."

"That's because we've been so much longer getting here," explained the
Doctor.

"How are we going to get down?" asked the Very Young Man as he stood
beside the Big Business Man within a few feet of the brink. "It's
getting deeper every minute, don't forget that."

The Big Business Man knelt down and carefully approached to the very
edge of the precipice. Then, as he looked over, he got upon his feet
with a laugh of relief. "Come here," he said.

They joined him at the edge and, looking over, could see that the jagged
roughness of the wall made the descent, though difficult, not
exceptionally hazardous. Below them, not more than twenty