ssion about her mouth.

"Are you all right?" Kirby whispered.

"Yes. But--Well, are both of _you_ all right? Gori says we have reached
here in time, but I--" A gasp of uneasiness escaped her, and Kirby heard
Ivana echo it. "There is something about that black, silent hole out
there in the clearing, and about those poles sticking up like fangs,
that makes me terribly, terribly afraid. Oh, what are they planning?
Where is Naida? What are they going to do to her?"

Kirby whistled in a low key. He had not thought about the black hole in
the clearing.

"Hum," he muttered, "that's interesting. Ivana, Nini, what do you
suppose--"

But he got no answer. Gori's twitching lips grimaced them to silence.

The next instant, the stillness of the night was hurled aside by a
howling, gurgling shout from a hundred, a thousand hysterically
distended ape throats. With the sickening sound came from the village
the sullen roaring of drums.

* * * * *

Ten minutes later, a Kirby who was cold with apprehension and wonder
looked down from his leaf-crowned height at such a spectacle as he knew
human eyes had never before seen. The shouting had died away, the drums
were silenced. Crammed into the clearing, their foul, hairy bodies
packed close together, the silver light glinting against rolling red
eyes and grinning white teeth, stood fully a thousand apes!

Once the first tumult of shouting in the village had died, they had come
on in silence, and in orderly procession. Those who bore the
drums--huge gourds with heads of stretched skin--had formed a line
entirely around the outer diameter of the circular clearing. Then
others, lugging vats of a dark, heady-smelling liquor, had deposited
their burden beside the drums, and formed a second circle. The balance
of the thousand had crowded itself together as best it might, leaving
bare the center of the clearing with its black hole and fangs of poles.
Kirby, looking down at these legions, did not wonder that cold sweat
wetted his back.

Capable of thinking about only one thing--Naida--he was trying with all
his strength not to think. Ivana, her face blanched in the light which
filtered their camouflage of leaves, sat rigid, her hands locked about
her cold rifle. On the branch above, Nini and Gori were as still as
mummies. No one had spoken since the vanguard of apes had appeared.

But at last Nini leaned close to Kirby.

"Have you any idea of what all thi