human, as the eyes glowed redly from their deep black
sockets. Chet still held the suit in his hands as the black-winged ones
came toward him across the floor, and he carried it with him as he moved
unresistingly where they led him with the pull of their claw-like hands
upon his arms.

"No gun!" he told himself hopelessly. "Not a chance if I put up a fight!
They've got me and got me right. Now what I need to do is to be
good--lay low--find out something about all this, and find her!" He
could not name the girl whose eyes were haunting him in their appealing
loveliness; he could think of her only as the mystery girl, and he
accepted without surprise or denial the fact that the finding of her
outweighed all else that this new world might hold for him.

As the shuffling figures closed about him and led him away he found
relief in the thought of his ship, of Spud's safety, and of his return
to the world that they both knew as home.

"Never again for me!" said Chet softly beneath his breath. "But Spud
will get there. Perhaps he is there now--no telling how long I have
slept!"

* * * * *

He saw it all so plainly: saw the Irish pilot bringing the ship to rest
at the great Hoover Terminal. And he saw, too, a relief expedition that
would be organized by Harkness and that must arrive too late. To suppose
that any help might reach him here inside this wild world was too much;
Chet looked with judicially appraising eyes at the things about him and
could not allow himself to be deceived. There was no hope; but he made
one resolve and made it grimly in words that never reached his lips.

"Give me half a chance at them, Walt," he promised, "and if ever you do
get inside here, you'll know where I've been. I'll find the girl
first--I must do that--then I'll give these devils something to remember
me by before they put us away for good!" And now the face of the pilot
was almost happy as he stared at the snarling, twisted features of those
that led him unresistingly through a series of stone rooms that seemed
without beginning or end. He even disregarded the spiked tails that
whipped at him with heavy blows to hurry him along.

"If I had a gun," he told them inaudibly, "I'd take you on right now.
But you got that, or I lost it in the scuffle, so I'll just twist your
scrawny necks in my bare hands when the time comes. And it's coming, you
ugly devils! It's coming!"

Their claws pulled roughly at him