THE SHADOW OF THE STONE The five of us were in a little circle on the dark-glinting surface of that pool of dreadful darkness, each of us helpless in the tentacles of a silver robot. The Earthman no longer moved. Moaning, herself almost insensible, the girl was staring at him with horror-widened eyes. It was to be an infinitely frightful thing that happened next. The robot-captors of Rogo Nug and Zerek Oom were searching them. Deft silver appendages relieved them of weapons, spare converter-tubes, the little engineman's worn metal cannister of _goona-roon_, the cook's half-empty flask. Zerek was sobbing, quivering, gasping a voiceless plea for mercy. His wizened face grim, Rogo chewed silently, unexpectedly jetted a purple stream into the crystal eye of the thing that held him. Ignoring both plea and jet, the white robots methodically completed the search. Silver ropes released the men and they fell! The last quavering shriek of Zerek Oom was cut abruptly off, as his hairless head went beneath the film of darkness. Cold with an icy chill, I followed their twisting bodies. They were sucked down, as the ship had been, past the dim-seem, crimson reflections of the mirror. And they vanished. A tremendous brazen clangor, reverberating like distant thunder against the cyclopean columns and the far-off walls and the sky of black stone that vaulted that incredible hall, drew my eyes back from the giddy, awesome mystery of the pit beneath us. I saw that all the host of white robots were dropping swiftly out of the air. They fell upon the mirror, and upon the far-sweeping floor of ebon stone that rimmed it, and bowed their silver heads. All the hall throbbed again to that mighty thunder. "Malgarth!" A whisper of awe murmured among the robots. "The Master comes!" Then I saw that vast doors of black metal had opened in the end of that hall, miles away. Through the portal came a clangoring throng of the old robots--many-formed machines of red-and-black, clumsy, grotesquely ugly, so queerly different from our silver captors. "The Master!" rippled that murmur. "Malgarth comes!" My strained eyes blinked. In that dusky light, I distinguished at last a monstrous stalking thing--a robot ten times taller than the rest. Its black, colossal body bore scores of fantastic, vari-formed appendages. The armored dome of its lofty head was crimson, and it gleamed blue with the myriad lenses of two immense multiple eyes. This metal giant, I knew, was Malgarth. The dark film beneath us spun and shimmered queerly to the impacts of his ponderous approaching tread. Was it to swallow the three of us, I wondered sickly, as it had Zerek Oom and Rogo Nug? And what could lie beneath it? "Barihorn--" * * * * * My name sighed from the pale lips of Verel, and her body went limp in the silver tentacles that held her. Kel Aran had not moved again. I was left alone to face the stalking monster.