ought. Why this Zara woman had
not made away with them at once was a mystery. Perhaps they were being
reserved for an even more terrible fate than that of the hunchback.
They were being carried along a dim-lit passage now, and Tom was
cursing his captors in a never-ending stream of invective.

A metal door opened and then clanged shut behind them. They were dumped
unceremoniously on metal tables that resembled those of a hospital
operating-room on Earth. Woven bands, quickly adjusted by the bronze
giants held them fast. Blaine turned his head and saw that Tommy was
still struggling against the inevitable. A gag had been placed in his
mouth; that was why he had ceased reviling the Zara's servitors.

The room was cluttered with elaborate and complicated mechanisms that
Blaine could not recognize in the slightest detail, excepting that
there were many banks of slender glass cylinders which bore some
resemblance to the vacuum tubes used on the inner planets for radio
communication and television. One of the bronze giants, he saw, was
bringing a metal cap from which a cable extended to one of the strange
machines. This cap was forced down over his head with a none too gentle
pressure and he could see no more.

There came a sharp buzz from the machine and a million stinging needles
drove into his brain. There was a moment of fleeting visions; strange
places he viewed, and strange creatures parading in a fantasmagoria of
delirium before his aching eyes. Voices, harsh and guttural, spoke in
his drumming ears; voices that were dimly understandable, though
uttered in the tongue spoken by Antazzo and the Zara. Then came sudden
and merciful unconsciousness.

CHAPTER III

_Ilen-dar_

When Blaine Carson opened his eyes it was to stare at the blue-white
radiance of an illuminated ceiling. He lay on a downy cot and it seemed
he had just recovered from a long illness. Weak and sick, he turned his
head listlessly to gaze at the ornate embossed designs on a wall of
gleaming silvery metal. What place was this? His mind was wool-gathering;
dim memories of unspeakable things struggled for mastery over a hazy
consciousness. Suddenly then he remembered, and he sat up in his
unfamiliar bed, senses acutely alert.

Across the room he saw a figure hunched in a chair; a twisted
man-creature who was oddly like someone he had seen. Antazzo! But this
one had none of the other's ferocity as he returned Blaine's stare.
Rather, there was