n the pyramid! You went down there?" Herr Kreiss forgot even his
absorbing experiments to exclaim incredulously at Chet's report.

Guided by Towahg, Chet had returned to Happy Valley. There had been six
days and nights to be spent, and he felt that he should tell Kreiss what
he had learned.

"Yes," said Chet dully; "yes, I went down."

He was seated on a rock in the enclosure they had built. He raised his
deep-sunk, sleepless eyes to stare at the house where he and Walt had
worked. There Walt and Diane were to have made their home; Chet found
something infinitely pathetic now in the unfinished shelter: its very
crudities seemed to cry aloud against the blight that had fallen upon
the place.

"And what was there?" Kreiss demanded. "This hypnotic power--was it an
attribute of the ape-men themselves? That seems highly improbable. Or
was there something else--some other source of the thought waves or
radiations of mental force?"

Chet was still answering almost in monosyllables. "Something else," he
told Kreiss.

"Ah," exclaimed the scientist, "I should have liked to see them. Such
mental attainment! Such control of the great thought-force which with us
is so little developed! Mind--pure mentality--carried to that stage of
conscious development, would be worthy of our highest admiration. I
should like to meet such men."

"They're not men," said Chet; "they're--they're--"

He knew how unable he was to put into words his impression of the unseen
things, and he suddenly became voluble with hate.

"God knows what they are!" he exclaimed, "but they're not men. 'Mind',
you say; 'mentality!' Well, if those coldly devilish things are an
example of what mind can evolve into when there's no decency of soul
along with it, then I tell you hell's full of some marvelous minds!"

He sprang abruptly to his feet.

"I've got to get out of here," he said; "I can't stand it. Four more
days, and that's the end of it all. I'm going back to the ship. I saw it
from up on the divide. Still buried in gas--but I'm going back. If I
could just get in there I might do something. There's all our
supplies--our storage of detonite; I might do some good work yet!"

* * * * *

He was pacing up and down restlessly where a path had been worn on the
grassy knoll, worn by his feet and the pitiful, bruised feet he had seen
from his shelter in the pyramid; worn by Walt and Diane--his comrades!
And they were helpless;