eft a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she
told him.

* * * * *

Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very
hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her
wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.

A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What
is it?" he said. "Read for me."

She looked at the printing on the front. _Dynamo_ she spelt out, and
shrugged. "A name I don't know."

"If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with
it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying."

"I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her
on. "What's this?"

The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words
were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "_Man of the 21st
century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and--_"

"Never mind." He left the big shining case, which was oblong and
featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her
gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away: _Held in
suspended animation._ What could the words mean?

They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand.
Here and there were ordinary objects--plates, hides of animals under the
near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck
vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles--but in the main it was a
place of mystery.

"The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin,
"put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it
could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number
of keen brains."

"Nobody has more than one brain," she snapped.

He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was
totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put
a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through
her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal,
that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused
in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.

His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came
near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not
fight the instinct that racked her.

It's a strange place for passion, she thought dazedly; an unknown
c