e you. Winslow will figure some way to do
it.... We'll be back...."

The girl was silent. She touched Jerry's arm, and shook her head
slowly, doubtfully.

He reached for the hand. It trembled, he felt, in his. The impulse to
take the slim form within his arms, to hold her close, was strong upon
him. Would he ever see her again ... would he?

"Won't you say good-by, Marahna?" he asked.

But she smiled, instead--a friendly smile, and encouraging. Then
dropped in silence to her knees to press with both her trembling hands
his hand upon her forehead. And, still in silence, she rose to vanish
from the room.

The men entered the narrow opening to start forward into the dark. But
Jerry Foster was puzzled, puzzled and more than a trifle hurt. Marahna
could at least have said good-by. She knew the word, for he had taught
it to her. And she had let him--them--go....

"Oh, well," he thought, "how can I know how a princess feels--a
princess of the moon? And why should I care--why should she? But...."
He refused to complete the thought. He hurried instead, as best he
could, to follow Winslow, fumbling ahead of him in the dark.

* * * * *

Jerry had used plenty of muttered invective with the massage he had
given his arm, but he cursed his handicap wholeheartedly at the end of
some several hours.

They were standing, he and Winslow, in a dark tunnel. They had climbed
and clawed their way through the absolute dark, over broken fragments,
through narrow apertures, down and up, and up again through a
tortuous, winding course. And now they had reached the end. They had
found the source of the fresh air, had come within reaching distance,
it seemed, of sunlight and all that their freedom might mean. And they
had come, too, to a precipitous rock wall.

They stared long and hopelessly at the shaft that reached, vertical
and sheer, high, high over their heads. And a curse like that of
Tantalus was theirs. For, far at the top, slanting in through some
off-shooting passage, there was sunlight. It was unmistakable in its
clear glare, beautiful, glorious--and unattainable.

There were roughnesses in the wall, footholds, handholds here and
there. "It might be ... it might be...." Jerry tried to believe, but
the ache in his arm made the thought hopeless and incomplete. He
turned to his companion.

"I believe you can do it," he said steadily.

* * * * *

Winslow's dark