en left five years ago! What does it
mean?"

Nor did he pause to realize that through his amazement was woven a
thread of another hue, tinged faintly with jealousy that demanded of
him: "Frithjof! Who is Frithjof who was taken away?"

Chet's mind was filled with a confusion of questions that jostled one
another to silence when he tried to give them expression. And there was
little time for questioning.

* * * * *

He saw other floating eggs whose membraneous coverings had turned
leathery and opaque. And he saw white phantom figures who gathered those
eggs. One came near till Chet could make out the repulsive face and
black, staring eyes with their fiery red center. It was one of the
things that had captured him; he saw it move swiftly on broad wings. It
held a leathery egg in its curled-claw hands while its long tail whipped
around and laid the egg open with one slash of a sharp spiked point.

One more of the young of this horrible species was liberated and went
winging away into the dark, only the whirls of light in the atmosphere
marking the beating of its wings.

Chet's eyes followed it to see far out beyond a light that expanded as
it drew near. The beaten atmospheric gas was whipped to cold flame where
some ten or a dozen phantom demons came swiftly on toward the waiting
humans.

They were swarming about in an instant. Chet had no time for even a
shouted warning before he felt himself seized by their long, bony claws.
Then a net of rough-fibered rope was flung about him, and he felt it
draw tight as the winged beasts lifted him up and out into the void.

"Wrong again!" Chet told himself ruefully. "We don't die at the center
of the Moon, after all!" But, as the whipping wings drove whirling
blasts of violet light back upon him he could find nothing of comfort in
the thought that some different experience still lay ahead.

CHAPTER VII

_The Gateway to Hell_

Spud O'Malley, at the controls of the ship, held the craft in a vertical
lift while his eyes clung in horrible fascination to the mirrors that
showed from a lower lookout the volcanic floor falling away. Amazement
had almost stifled his breathing, until at last he let go a long breath
that ended in a curse.

"The outrageous, damned things!" he breathed. "Jumping, they were, and
leaping, and flying on their leather wings like a lot of black bats out
o' hell! And I'm thinkin' that's where they've taken Chet Bull