ead face of Sheriff Downer was staring at him
from red, eyeless sockets as with one leap Rawson threw himself over
the golden wall. Ten leaping strides away was his gun. In that instant
of realization, he knew why his life had been spared.

In the room of fire he had destroyed their priest. They had saved him
for further torture.

* * * * *

To get his hands on the gun, to die fighting--the thought was an
unspoken prayer in his mind. Behind him the room echoed with demoniac
shrieks. Before him was the metal stand. His outstretched hands fell
just short of the blue .45 as he crashed to the floor. The copper ones
were upon him.

Half stunned by the fall, he hardly knew when they dragged him to his
feet. He was facing the golden figure of Phee-e-al, but now the
ruler's indecision had vanished. He was exercising his full authority
and even Rawson's throbbing brain comprehended the doom that was being
pronounced.

"Gevarro!" he was shrieking. "Gevarro!"

Beside him a priest swept the metal table clear. Rawson's clothing,
the gun, the radio receiver, all were snatched up and hurled into one
of the massive chests. Phee-e-al was still shouting shrill commands.
An instant later Rawson was lifted in air, rushed to the barrier and
thrown bodily from the sacred premises he had invaded. Then the hands
of the red guard closed about him before he could struggle to his
feet. A shining object swung down above his head. It was the last he
knew.

* * * * *

His dreams were of falling. Always when he half roused to
consciousness he was aware of that smooth, even descent, and he knew
it had continued for hours.

Once he saw black walls slipping smoothly past, upward, always upward.
Gropingly he tried to marshal his facts into some understandable
sequence. He was falling, falling toward the center of the earth, and
this that he saw was not rock, or any metal such as he knew.

"It's all different," he told himself dully, "new kind of matter. Rock
would flow; this stands the pressure." But he knew the air pressure
had built up tremendously. The blood was pounding in his ears. He
wanted to sleep.

It was the heat that awakened him. The air was stifling him,
suffocating. He was struggling to move his heavy body, fighting
against this nightmare of heat when he opened his eyes and knew that
he was in a place of light. First to be seen were walls, no longer
black, no long