But before long the batteries of the flashlight would be drained, the cigarettes gone, the matches exhausted. When that time came, Kimball knew, he would be torn to tatters, but it didn't bother him much now. He had been almost unconscious with fatigue when the badly-adjusted master machine had dumped him into this nightmare; but the beasts, savage though they were, had been curious. For a while they had questioned him with very little hostility, and had aroused his interest enough to give him second--or had it been twenty-second?--wind. Their upsetting version of telepathy, which projected subtly different emotional states instead of ideas, had awakened him thoroughly. He had just realized that he had arrived _inside_ the Earth, probably in a space-negative state to boot, when he had felt the urge for a cigarette.... He sighed and stood up. There was no way to tell how long he had been in this midnight universe, but if he could only stick it out until a full twenty-four hours were up, the master machine would act on him again. The faulty windings of its coils would prevent it from returning him to the abandoned grocery as it was supposed to do--but at least it would throw him out of _this_ black, demon-haunted universe. At his movement, the beasts rustled eagerly back to the rim of the pit, scarcely audible in the mass echo which was as natural to the hollow world as air. He turned on the flashlight, pointing it at the ground--he did not care to hear them all scream at once. There was a thundering flurry of wings above him; then silence. Doggedly, he began to climb. _Keep moving_, he thought, _you can sleep in your next universe--wherever that'll be_. The beasts wheeled patiently. * * * * * Andreson lay tasting the sensation of being dead for several minutes before he realized that he was hardly even jarred. His eyes were open, but nothing he could see made sense to him. There was no sign of Atel. Lying flat on his back, he looked stupidly upward at a column of soft light that seemed to reach miles into the air, ending in glowing haze. The rock dome had vanished, and in its place was a pattern of gigantic, garish stalactites. Wait a minute. There _was_ something familiar here-- He rolled over cautiously and found an edge to the mysterious surface he had fallen to. He thrust his head over it and peered downward. The rock dome was below him, not above! The space-beasts, who reacted to gravity in reverse, had imposed their environment upon the city. Only the solarium platform, which had been directly above where he had been standing on the catwalk, had saved him from mashing against the dome. He wondered if the Varan gunners had been able to hit any of the borers under these conditions. He couldn't hear the buzzing sound--no, wait, there was a single buzzing tone, seemingly far away. Well, two down, anyhow.