d been the funeral pyre of a man of science; even the
mound of ashes at its top which the moving air was blowing in dusty
puffs until spouting mud fell back to hide them from sight.

Chet cursed the gas for the dimness that clouded his eyes, and he rubbed
at them savagely as he turned and walked to a side lookout.

Through the riot of impressions of the fight outside the port, he had
known that there was a human body over which he stumbled at times. He
saw it now--the body of Schwartzmann's henchman, killed these long weeks
before but preserved in the ceaseless flow of gas.

But now, sprawled across it, was another and bulkier shape. Sightless
eyes stared upward from a face turned to the cruel gas clouds and the
hideous green moon above. The mouth sagged open in a black, bearded
face, and one hand still clutched a pistol. It would have shattered his
human opponent had the man been given an instant more, but against the
enemy that rolled down and overwhelmed him in billowing clouds no weapon
could prevail. Herr Schwartzmann had fought his last fight.

* * * * *

The package--the last gift of Kreiss--was still securely wrapped. It lay
on the metal floor. Chet stooped to lift it, to work at the knotted
vines and lay off the thick wrappings of fibrous leaves, until he stood
at last, under the white glare of the bubbling nitron bulb, to stare and
stare wordlessly at the cage of metal bars in his hand.

Crude!--yes; no finely polished mechanism, this; no one of the many
connection clips that the other had had, either. But Chet knew he could
solder on the hundreds of wires that made the nervous system of the
control and fed the current to the cage; and Kreiss had believed it
would work!

There was no thought of delay in Chet's mind, no waiting for daylight.
This was the fourth night since he had been in that place of horror,
since, above him in that Stygian pit, an inhuman satanic _something_ had
said: "... the captives ... a sacrifice to Vashta ... on the sixth
night...."

Chet threw off the rags that once had been a trim khaki jacket and went
feverishly to work. And through the time that was left he drove himself
desperately. The hours so few and each hour so short! As he worked with
seemingly countless strands of heavy cables, where each strand must be
traced back and its point of connection determined, he knew how long
each dreadful minute must be for the two captives deep inside the