frowned unhappily in the darkness. If he sent her back, she
would know it was because he knew danger lurked here. Then she would
worry. If he did not send her back....

"I'll go back the minute you tell me," she insisted forlornly.
"Honestly. But--I was lonesome."

Tommy slipped his arm about her.

"Woman," he said sternly. "I'm going to let you stay ten minutes, so
you can brag to our grandchildren that you were the first Earth-girl
ever to be kissed in the Fifth Dimension. But I want you down in the
laboratory so you won't be in my way if I start running!"

His tone was the right one. She even laughed a little, softly, as he
pressed her to him. Then she clung to his hand and tried eagerly to
pierce the darkness all about them.

"You'll be able to see something presently," he assured her in a low
tone. "Just keep quiet, now."

* * * * *

She gazed up at the stars, then around in the so-nearly complete
obscurity. Tommy answered her comments abstractedly, after a little.
He was not quite sure that certain irregular sounds, yet far distant,
were not actually quite regular ones. The Ragged Men Smithers had shot
into had run away. But they would come back and they might come with
Jacaro and his gunmen as allies. If those distant sounds were men....

She withdrew her hand from his. Her back was toward him then, as she
tried to pierce the darkness with her eyes. Tommy listened uneasily to
the distant sound. Suddenly he felt Evelyn bump against his shoulder.
He turned sharply--and she was out of the Tube! She was walking
steadily off into the darkness!

"Evelyn! Evelyn!"

She did not falter or turn. He switched on the flashlight beneath his
gun barrel and leaped out of the Tube himself. The light swept about.
Evelyn's lithe figure kept moving away from him. Then his heart stood
still. There were eyes beyond her in the darkness, huge, monstrous,
steady eyes, half a yard apart in a head like something out of hell.
And he could not fire because Evelyn was between the Thing and
himself. Its eyes glowed unholily--fascinating, hypnotic, insane....

* * * * *

Evelyn swayed ... and the Thing moved! Tommy leaped like a madman
shouting. As his feet struck the ground a mass of sold-seeming fungus
gave way beneath him. He fell sprawling, but clutching the gun fast.
The spreading beam of the flashlight showed him Evelyn turning, her
face filled with a wakening h