tretched
in sonorous slumber. It was, Norman reflected, exactly the existence
of domesticated animals--to eat and sleep and give food to their
masters. A deeper horror of the frog-men shook him, and a deeper
determination to escape them. He waited until all in the room were
sleeping before beckoning to Sarja and Hackett.

"Quiet now," he whispered to them. "If these others wake they'll make
such a clamor we won't have a chance in the world. Ready, Sarja?"

The green man nodded. "Yes, though I still think such a thing's
impossible."

"Probably is," Norman admitted. "But it's the one chance we've got,
the immensely greater strength of our Earth-muscle that the frog-men
must have forgotten when they put us in here."

They moved silently to the room's great barred door, outside which a
frog-guard paced. They waited until he had passed the door and on down
the hall, then Norman and Hackett and Sarja grasped together one of
the door's vertical bars. It was an inch and a half in thickness, of
solid metal, and it seemed ridiculous that any men could bend it by
the sheer strength of their muscles.

Norman, though, was relying on the fact that on the second satellite,
with its far lesser gravitational influence, their Earth-muscles gave
them enormous strength. He grasped the bar, Hackett and Sarja gripping
it below him, and then at a whispered word they pulled with all their
force. The bar resisted and again, with sweat starting on their
foreheads, they pulled. It gave a little.

* * * * *

They shrank back from it as the guard returned, moving past. Then
grasping the bar again they bent all their force once more upon it.
Each effort saw it bending more, the opening in the door's bars
widening. They gave a final great wrench and the bent bar squealed a
little. They shrank back, appalled, but the guard had not heard or
noticed. He moved past it on his return along the hall, and no sooner
was past it than Norman squeezed through the opening and leaped
silently for the great frog-man's back.

It went down with a wild flurry of waving webbed paws and croaking
cries, stilled almost instantly by Norman's terrific blows. There was
silence then as Hackett and Sarja squeezed out after him, the
momentary clamor of the battle having aroused no one.

The three leaped together toward the stairs. In two great floating
leaps they were on the floor above, Hackett and Norman dragging Sarja
between them.