nsters did not try to attack. On the other hand they did not give
ground, either; and as Denny got to within a few yards of them, one in
the front line suddenly opened and shut his ponderous jaws.

They clashed together a matter of inches from Denny's torso--a clear
warning to get on back in the direction he had come.

Jim came and stood beside him, heavy shoulder muscles bunched into
knots, standing on the balls of his feet as a boxer stands before
flashing in at an opponent.

"Shall we have it out with them here and now?" said Jim, his jaws set.
"We wouldn't have a chance--but I'm beginning to get awfully doubtful
about the fate these things have in store for us. I can't even guess at
what it may be--but I've an idea it may be a lot worse than a quick,
easy death!"

Denny shook his head. "Let's see it through," he muttered, looking at
the nightmare jaws of their guard. Two sweeps of those jaws and he and
Jim would lie in halves.

* * * * *

They started back down the corridor, the monstrous shepherds moving as
they did. The way descended so steeply now that it was difficult for
them to keep their footing. Then, yards below the level of the horrible
nursery, the tunnel narrowed--and widened again into a chamber which had
no other opening save the one they were being herded into. A blind end
to the passageway.

"The bug Bastille," said Jim with a mirthless grin. "Here, I guess,
we're going to wait for the powers-that-be to judge us and give us our
sentence."

The giant soldiers halted. Two of them stood in the narrowed part of the
tunnel, one behind the other, blocking it with a double, living barrier.
Their jaws commenced moving regularly, savagely back and forth, open and
closed. Blind these guards might be; but no living thing, even though it
bristled with eyes, could creep out unscathed through the animated
threshing machine those jaws made of that doorway. The two men were more
securely held in their prison cell than they would have been by two-inch
doors of nickel-steel. They could only wait there, helpless prisoners,
to learn the intentions of the unknown Something that ruled the great
city, and that held them so easily in its grasp.

CHAPTER VI

_In the Food Room_

Restlessly, Jim paced back and forth in the narrow dank cell. At the
doorway the two guards opened and closed their jaws, regularly,
rhythmically, about sixty to the minute. Hours, the two men calcu