ascertain of what substance he was made. He cried aloud as the
rock vise, like a gigantic lobster claw, squeezed tight. The thing drew
back abruptly. Then the chasm of its mouth opened a little, for all the
world as though giving vent to soundless, demoniac laughter. All three
of the vise-like hands clamped over him--lightly enough, considering
their vast size, and intimating that the colossus did not mean to kill
him for a moment or two--but so cruelly that his senses swam with the
pain of it.

He felt the grip relax. The vast stone pincers were lifted from him;
slithered to the ground beside him.

The first blinding rays of the sun were beating straight on the colossal
figure, which glittered fantastically, like a huge splintered opal, in
their brilliance.

It glared down at Harley. The abyss of a mouth opened as though again
giving vent to silent, infernal laughter. Then, with the noise of a
landslide, the giant form settled slowly to the ground. The rock
half-moons of curtains dropped over the expressionless, dull eyes. The
whole great figure quivered, and grew still. It lay without movement,
stretched along the ground like a craggy, opalescent hill.

* * * * *

Dazed, stunned by such fantastic behavior, Harley struggled wearily to
his feet. He had been a dead man as surely as though shot with a
ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock pincers would have broken him
in two pieces. It had seemed as though that deadly twitch were surely
forthcoming. And then the thing had released him--and had lain down to
go to sleep! Or was it asleep?

He took a few slow steps away from it, expecting to see the three great
tentacles flash out to capture him as a cat claws at a mouse that thinks
it is escaping. The arms didn't move. Astounding as it was, Harley was
free to run away if he chose. Why was that?

A hint of a clue to the creature's action began to unfold in his mind.
When he had first laid eyes on it, in daylight, it was asleep. It had
not pursued him during the preceding day, which argued that again it was
asleep. And now, with the first touch of dawn, it was once more quiet,
immobile.

The answer seemed to be that it was entirely nocturnal; that for some
obscure, unguessable reason sunlight induced in it a state of suspended
animation. It seemed an insane theory, but no other surmise was remotely
reasonable.

But if it were invariably sunk in a coma during daylight, why had it