de us around the place if
he weren't busy. I put over the idea by pointing back at the buildings
and then at him and us.

"Well, apparently he wasn't too busy, for he set off with us, leading
the way with one of his hundred and fifty-foot nosedives that set Leroy
gasping. When we caught up, he said something like 'one, one, two--two,
two, four--no, no--yes, yes--rock--no breet!' That didn't seem to mean
anything; perhaps he was just letting Leroy know that he could speak
English, or perhaps he was merely running over his vocabulary to refresh
his memory.

"Anyway, he showed us around. He had a light of sorts in his black
pouch, good enough for small rooms, but simply lost in some of the
colossal caverns we went through. Nine out of ten buildings meant
absolutely nothing to us--just vast empty chambers, full of shadows and
rustlings and echoes. I couldn't imagine their use; they didn't seem
suitable for living quarters, or even for commercial purposes--trade and
so forth; they might have been all right as power-houses, but what could
have been the purpose of a whole city full? And where were the remains
of the machinery?

"The place was a mystery. Sometimes Tweel would show us through a hall
that would have housed an ocean-liner, and he'd seem to swell with
pride--and we couldn't make a damn thing of it! As a display of
architectural power, the city was colossal; as anything else it was just
nutty!

"But we did see one thing that registered. We came to that same building
Leroy and I had entered earlier--the one with the three eyes in it.
Well, we were a little shaky about going in there, but Tweel twittered
and trilled and kept saying, 'Yes, yes, yes!' so we followed him,
staring nervously about for the thing that had watched us. However, that
hall was just like the others, full of murmurs and slithering noises and
shadowy things slipping away into corners. If the three-eyed creature
were still there, it must have slunk away with the others.

"Tweel led us along the wall; his light showed a series of little
alcoves, and in the first of these we ran into a puzzling thing--a very
weird thing. As the light flashed into the alcove, I saw first just an
empty space, and then, squatting on the floor, I saw--it! A little
creature about as big as a large rat, it was, gray and huddled and
evidently startled by our appearance. It had the queerest, most devilish
little face!--pointed ears or horns and satanic eyes that seemed