y dropped, endlessly it seemed, while all about them, growing
gradually, a bluish glow began to make itself manifest. Sarka turned
and looked at the face of Jaska and noted that it--all her being--was
glowing with this strange radiance.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

Looking down now, to what seemed still a vast depth, they could see
figures moving, tiny, almost infinitesimal, about a great circular
cone, out of the depths of which came that strange bluish column whose
outer tip touched the Earth.

* * * * *

Some inner sense warned Sarka not to touch that column, or to permit
Jaska to do so. They dropped down beside it, while Sarka, for no
reason that he could assign, once more took his ray director in his
free hand and held it in readiness. It seemed so tiny and futile--so
foolish for two people, one of them a woman--to go into the very heart
of an alien world, against an unknown enemy, armed with such a tiny
weapon. Two people against unguessed myriads, whose very nature was an
enigma, even to Sarka.

Closer now appeared the bottom of the crater, whose floor seemed to be
covered with something that looked like blue sand, or rock. From this
bluish substance the glow which bathed the two Earthlings seemed to
emanate.

The funnel of the crater had now given away to the immensities of
space, in all directions, and the cold of outside was being replaced
by a warmth which promised soon to be even uncomfortable.

Then, without a jar, the two landed at the bottom of the crater, side
by side, close enough almost to that great cone to touch it. Out of
the cone came that bluish column, to shoot up through the funnel down
which the two had lightly dropped ... and the motion of the--whatever
it was--was accompanied by a muted moaning sound, like that of a
distant waterfall.

They paused there, in amazement, taking stock of their surroundings.
Huge tunnels, whose roofs were lost to invisibility in the bluish
haze, whose extremities could only be guessed at, reached off in all
directions. As far as the two could tell they were the only living
souls within the crater, though both knew better.

Sarka had the feeling, and he knew Jaska shared it with him, that
innumerable eyes were studying them, innumerable intellects were
cataloguing them. And somehow he sensed the presence, somewhere near,
of the traitor Dalis!

* * * * *

Then that discordant so