.
Well, that would be enough. I was hurried. Alan might discover me.
Polter might put Babs back in the cage and close its door. We might be
near the island already, and the confusion, the activity of disembarking
would defeat me. A thousand things might happen.

I touched the pellet to my tongue. In a few seconds the drug action had
come and passed. The cushion top loomed well over my head. The side was
a ridged, indescribably unnatural vista of cliff wall. The fabric was
coarse with hairy strands, dented into little ravines and crevices. I
climbed and I came panting to the pillow surface. The golden cage was
six or eight feet away and was now two feet high.

Again I touched the drug to my tongue; held it an instant. The cage drew
away; grew to a normal six-foot height; then larger, until in a moment
it stopped. I stood peering at it, trying to gauge its size in relation
to me. I wanted so intensely now to appear normal in Babs' eyes. The
cage seemed about ten feet high. A little less, possibly. I barely
tasted the pellet, and replaced it carefully in the vial. I could only
hope its efficacy would be preserved.

I had to chance that I wouldn't be seen while crossing this billowy
expanse. I ran. The rope strands of the fabric now had spaces between
their curving surfaces. The cage was a shining golden house, set on this
wide rolling area. Far in the distance there was a blur--Polter's
reclining body.

I reached the cage. It was a room about ten feet square and equally as
high. Walled solid, top and bottom, and on three sides. The front was a
lattice of bars, with a narrow six-foot doorway, standing open now.

I dashed in. The interior was not wholly bare. There was a metal-wrought
couch fastened to the wall, with a railing around it and handles. It
suggested a ship's bunk. There was a railing at convenient height all
around the wall.

I sought a hiding place. I saw just one--under the couch. It was
secluded enough. There was a grillelike lattice extending down from the
seat to the floor. I squeezed under one end, and lay wedged behind the
grille.

How much time passed I don't know. My thoughts were racing. Babs would
be coming.

I heard the distant approaching rumble of Polter's voice. Through the
grille I could see across the floor of the ten foot cage to the front
lattice bars. Outside, there appeared a huge, pink-white, mottled
blob--Polter's hand, a ridged and pitted surface with great, bristling
black sta