ling weak and nauseated. He didn't open them
again till long after he had heard the last of the awkward, flapping
footsteps.

"Could you see it?" asked Wichter, who was lying so closely behind him
that he couldn't observe the monstrous Zeudian. "What did it do? What
was it like?"

Joyce told him of the way the creature had fed. "We are evidently in
their provision room," he concluded. "They keep some of their food
alive, it seems.... Well, it's a quick death."

"Tell me more about the way the other animal moved, just before it was
eaten."

"There isn't much to tell," said Joyce wearily. "It didn't move long
after those fangs were sunk into it."

"But don't you see!" There was sudden hope in Wichter's voice. "That
means that the effect of the poison, which is apparently injected by
those fangs, wears off after a time. And in that case--"

"In that case," Joyce interjected, "we'd have only an unknown army of
ten-foot Zeudians, the problem of finding a way to the surface of the
ground again, and the lack of any kind of weapons, to keep us from
escaping!"

"We're not quite weaponless, though," the professor whispered back.
"Over in a corner there's a pile of the long, slender horns that
sprout from the heads of some of these creatures. Evidently the
Zeudians cut them out, or break them off before eating that
particular type of animal. They'd be as good as lances, if we could
get hold of them."

* * * * *

Joyce said nothing, but hope began to beat in his own breast. He had
noticed a significant happening during the age-long hours in the
commissary cave. Most of the Zeudians had entered from the direction
of the pit. But one had come in through an opening in the opposite
side. And this one had blinked pale eyes as though dazzled from bright
sunlight--and was bearing some large, woody looking tubers that seemed
to have been freshly uprooted! There was a good chance, thought Joyce,
that that opening led to a tunnel up to the world above!

He drew a deep breath--and felt a dim pain in his back, caused by the
cramping position in which he had lain for so long.

He could have shouted aloud with the thrill of that discovery. This
was the first time he had felt his body at all! Did it mean that the
effect of the poison was wearing off--that it wasn't as lastingly
paralyzing to his earthly nerve centers as to those of Zeudian
creatures around them? He flexed the muscles of his leg. The l