"Below!" she gasped. "Malgarth's pit!" A yawning midnight chasm grew upon the screen. It must have been a hundred miles across. The instrument revealed no bottom. Interminable walls of black, incredibly massive fortifications ringed its lip. Vast fields beyond them, leveled in that cragged wilderness, were patterned with row upon row of battleships of space, their mile-long red spindles looking tiny as toys. "Where--" Kel Aran was voiceless, huskily whispering. "The robot? The Stone?" "The dark temple of Malgarth stands upon a guarded island," the girl breathed, "on the red sea that floors the pit. That is many hundred miles below the mouth. We must pass the fleet, and the forts, and the batteries in the caves below, and the robot hordes that guard the temple. The Stone will be somewhere there. Unless Malgarth--" Her low voice was cut off. Wordless, she stared at the screen. A terrible silence throbbed in the tiny control room, and became intolerable. For a thing was rising from the black circle of Malgarth's pit. Something--incredible! The trembling hand of Kel Aran touched the Earth girl's shoulder. She pulled her dread-distended eyes from the thing upon the screen, and read the question on his face, and shook her head mutely. The thing was like a ray of blackness. But I knew that it was--_palpable!_ It did not spread with increasing distance from its source. And it was not straight. It writhed and twisted like something living. It was an inconceivable tentacle of solid darkness, reaching out of the planet, groping for our ship! "Power!" Jeron gasped a frantic appeal into the engine room phone. "For man's sake, Rogo--power!" The _Barihorn_ spun fleetly aside--but all her speed was as nothing. For that Midgard Serpent recoiled. It paused, and arched its ebon coils. Its blind head seemed to watch our frantic flight. Then--it struck! [Illustration: It paused and arched its ebon coils--then, it struck!] Choking darkness filled the ship. Blackness that was absolute! It pressed upon me, so that I could move no limb. All my senses were smothered. I could hear no voice. Even the racing thrum of the engines was stilled. I knew only that we were being sucked resistlessly downward-- Into the abyss of Malgarth! XIII THE MIRROR OF DARKNESS That smothering blackness was abruptly gone. Sensation came back, and I could move again. A faint crimson light filtered through the ports. But the silence remained. The engines were stopped. I knew that the _Barihorn_ was motionless. "Where--" Kel Aran was groping through the scarlet gloom. "What--" Verel was a white wraith beside him. "We're in the temple," came her hopeless whisper. "In the power of Malgarth!"