ge as
the first. They could dimly see the fantastic shapes of hundreds of
stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Clumps of stalagmites made the
floor a maze which they threaded painfully. The strong steady draft
guided them like a radio beacon, leading them to their only faint hope
of escape and life. Guinness, very tired, staggered along
mechanically, a heavy weight on Phil's supporting arm; James Quade ran
here and there in frantic spurts of speed. Sue was silent, but the
hopelessness in her eyes tortured Phil like a wound. His shirt had
long since been ripped to shreds; his face, bruised in the first place
by the borer he had crashed in, now was scratched and bloody from
contact with rough stalagmites.

* * * * *

Then, without warning, they suddenly found among the rough walls on
the far side of the cavern, the birthplace of the draft. It lay at the
edge of the floor--a dark hole, very wide. Black, sinister and clammy
from the draft that poured from it, it pierced vertically down into
the very bowels of the earth. It was impassable.

James Quade crumpled at the brink; "It's the end!" he moaned. "We
can't go farther! It's the end of the draft!"

The hole blocked their forward path completely. They could not go
ahead.... In seconds, it seemed, the slithering that told of the
monster's approach sounded from behind. Sue's eyes were already fixed
on the awful, surging mass when a voice off to one side yelled:

"Here! Quick!"

It was Phil Holmes. He had been scouting through the gloom, and had
found something.

The other three ran to him. "There's another draft going through
here," he explained rapidly, pointing to an angled crevice in the
rocky wall. "There's a good chance it goes to the cavern where the
sphere and the hole to the surface are. Anyway, we've got to take it.
I'd better go first, after this--and you, Quade, last. I trust you
less than the monster behind."

He turned and edged into the crack, and the others followed as he had
ordered. Quickly the passageway broadened, and they found the going
much easier than it had been before. For perhaps ten minutes they
scrambled along, with the draft always on their backs and the blessed,
though faint, fire of hope kindling again. In all that time they did
not see their pursuer once, and the hope that they had lost it brought
a measure of much needed optimism to drive their tired bodies onward.
They found but few time-wasting obs