r struggling in a loathsome grip.

* * * * *

Forgetting everything, forgetting the deadly ray in Miro's hands, he
sprang to her rescue. The next instant he was in the grip of a similar
hand, a frail, dead-white naked arm, yet endowed with the strength of
steel. Struggle as he might, dash his fist as hard as he could against
the unresisting blank face, he could not loose that grip. Miro watched
his futile strugglings mockingly.

"Take these traitors over to the Gorm and let me look at their faces,"
he ordered.

Grant and Nona were picked up in those emaciated, powerful arms as
easily as though they were children, and the unhuman creatures
proceeded at a slow, awkward pace away from the hall, toward the outer
edge of the island. From his uncomfortable vantage point, Pemberton
noticed that they were passing clumps of intricate stone machinery.
Dead-faced automatons, similar to their captors, were tending the
whirring machinery with ordered, stiff-legged movements.

Then, straight ahead, Grant saw the edge of the island, against which
beat and billowed in furious, gigantic heaves, the reddish overarching
clouds of the Great Spot. Strangely enough, though they whirled and
eddied, they could not seem to break through the invisible barrier.
And then the lake of fire sprang into view--the mysterious place of
flame they had seen from afar, that had pulled the hapless _Althea_
out of its course down to destruction on Jupiter. This then was the
Gorm!

A wide circular pool it was, of an unearthly yellow-orange brilliance.
The midday sun was no more dazzling to the eye. Out it stretched from
the island into the vapors of the Great Red Spot, only touching the
stone rim of the island at one thin point. Its liquid fires were
waveless now, oily, yet there was something horrible, too, about its
smooth quiescence.

Miro whistled. The rigid guards dropped their burdens roughly and
stood at attention. One was an Earthman, the other a fish-faced
Venusian. Yet the queer dead look of their eyes was exactly the same.

"Will you remove your helmets, or shall I ask the Doora to assist
you?" Miro's voice was silky.

* * * * *

Because there was nothing else to do, Grant unscrewed his helmet and
let it fall back on its hinge. Then he looked very calmly and steadily
at the Inspector of the Service for Ganymede.

A dull flame leaped into Miro's eyes at the sight of his capti