r seen on Earth or Moon stepped forward from
his sister's side with outstretched hand.

"I am Bullard," said the slim young man, "Master Pilot of the World--or
at least that was my rating up to the time I left in search of you. And
now, Pilot Haldgren, we've a ship outside, and, if you'd care to go back
with us--"

And with equal casualness the blond Viking replied: "You came in search
of us! You saw our signals! After all this time! Yes, we shall be glad
to go back with--we shall be glad--yes--"

But his deep, rumbling voice broke into something like a sob, and he
turned with outstretched arms to stumble blindly toward his sister, who
buried her face in his torn and ragged blouse.

* * * * *

"You came in search of us--you came through space just to find and
rescue us!" Haldgren, it seemed, could not recover from the effects of
this unbelievable fact. He was gripping hard at the hand of Chet
Bullard, while his other great arm was thrown about the shoulders of
Spud O'Malley.

"But now that you are here, what is to be done? Every exit will be
guarded; we are shut off from the outer world by a hundred locked doors
and by thousands of those beasts."

He took his arm from Spud's shoulder to point toward the great doors,
beyond which was a rising clamor of shrill sound.

"They will break in here soon; they would have been here before had they
known of the old lost entrance of the priests that Anita and I found.
We're as bad off as ever, I am afraid. There will be no holding them
now."

"I can hold some," said Chet, and touched his weapon. Haldgren nodded
his shaggy head.

"Some, but not many of the thousands we must face before ever we fight
our way through to the outer world. No, my friend Bullard, that will
never save us; we are doomed!"

But Chet, unwilling to accept or share the other's convictions, was
seeing again the great room beyond those doors--a room of vast
proportions; of high-arched, vaulted ceiling where sweeping curves all
centered and ended in one tremendous central point. It hung down, that
point, a blazing pendant--an inverted keystone; through some magic of
that ancient people all the colors of the spectrum had been made to ebb
and flow like rainbows of living light.

* * * * *

But something deeper than the beauty of this had impressed Chet. A
master pilot does not study design of structures, even structures meant
for travel