the two men and the Martian
tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised
earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up
the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great,
faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless
numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that
opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their
grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.

They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm
monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly
to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long
tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and
slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense
toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised
tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of
the leader.

* * * * *

Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing
nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus
from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange
rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters
carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the
six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.

Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the
close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking
Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian
beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the
leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying
rhythmically from side to side.

Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but
semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that
grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in
which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated
cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles
waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he
noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.

And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more
swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to
hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers we