them in unison. We
darted into a doorway, crouched behind a balustrade. Nearer came the
feet, and I peered between the interstices of the screening balustrade.
The feet came on; slow, rhythmic, marching without zest or pause or
break, perfection without snap. As the first marching figure came into
sight in the moonlight, I shuddered to the core with something worse
than fear.

For they were men who were no longer men! When Barto and Polter and
Noldi had been carried off unconscious, Nokomee had told me:

"They are not my people. They go their way and we go ours. Time has made
us a people divided. Time, _and a cruel science_."

These were the mole-men, the crab-men, the creatures built for specific
purposes as tools are built. Each _thing_ bore on his back a bale of
goods, or a bar of metal, a burden sizeable enough for two ordinary men.
They were strong, and they were silent and smooth-moving as machines. I
realized they _were_ machines--made out of flesh.

"Are these slaves, or what?" I asked Carna.

"These were once the slaves, or workmen of the race of Zervs. They now
serve the Schrees, for they are mindless, in a way. They are not
important. It is those who guard and guide them I wait to see. I have
not yet seen a Schree, but only heard the Zervs describe them."

The nightmare procession went on for minutes, long minutes that were to
me a nightmare. Yet I realized that if I had been raised to the idea of
humankind made into machines, it would not be revolting--not after they
had been hereditarily moulded for centuries into what they were. Yet
what a crime it was, what they might have been if left to develop as
nature intended, rather than as man cruelly mal-intended. They must have
been once specially selected for strength as well as beauty, for about
them was a sad and terrible grace, a remainder of noble chiseling of
brow and nostril, distorted as by a fiend into the horror that it
was--these had once been a noble race!

"Do you feel the terrible horror of this sight?" I asked Carna.

"Always I have felt the horror that was done to them in the past. It is
_still_ done to man. Look, there are the three who came with you, and
fell into the hands _of the priests_. They are the thing that the Zervs
_really fear_, yet they live with it, and have done so for centuries.
They can despise the Schrees, but they are as bad themselves--look!"

I followed with my eye her pointing finger. Yes, that figure _was_
hulki