countless worm monsters! All were like the
one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles
and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this
cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over
each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless
tunnels that led upward and downward from it!

* * * * *

A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles!
As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror,
physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel
openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and
remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across
the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These
were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels
and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!

"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those
scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"

"See?"

"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced
down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"

At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was
aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them
forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were
crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles,
helping to drag them forward.

Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now
holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them
and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm
monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses
of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured.
His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but
a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these
numberless things.

* * * * *

The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that
they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as
from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the
creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being
brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air
was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments
of crawlin