As they advanced, the voices from ahead grew slowly louder. Occasional words were now distinguishable. The speakers, however, were much farther away than the sound of their voices suggested, since the metal-walled corridor carried the sounds well if not faithfully. Nearly three hundred yards from Little's cell, a vertical shaft of the same dimensions as the corridor interrupted the latter. The voices were coming from below. Without hesitation, the escort swung over the lip of the shaft and started down the ladder which took up is full width; Little followed. On the way, he got some idea of the size of the ship he was in. Looking up, he saw the mouths of two other corridors entering the shaft above the one he had traversed; at the level of the second, another hallway joined it from the side. Evidently he was not near the center line of the craft; there were at least two, and possibly three, tiers of longitudinal corridors. He had already seen along one of those corridors; the ship must be over fifteen hundred feet in length. Four vessels the size of the _Gomeisa_ could have used the immense hull for a hangar, and left plenty of elbow room for the servicing crews. Below him, the shaft debouched into a chamber whose walls were not visible from Little's position. His eyes, however, which had become exceedingly tired of the endless orange radiance which formed the ship's only illumination, were gladdened at the sight of what was unquestionably daylight leaking up from the room. As he descended, two of the walls became visible--the shaft opened near one corner--and in one of them he finally saw an air lock, with both valves open. He went hastily down the remaining few feet and stopped as he touched the floor. His gaze took in on the instant the twenty-yard square chamber, which seemed to occupy a slight outcrop of the hull, and stopped at the corner farthest from the air lock. Penned in that corner by a line of the starfish were thirty-eight beings; and Little needed no second glance to identify the crew of the _Gomeisa_. They recognized him simultaneously; the chatter stopped, to be replaced by a moment's silence and then a shout of "Doc!" from nearly two score throats. Little stared, then strode forward and through the line of guards, which opened for him. A moment later he was undergoing a process of handshaking and back-slapping that made him wonder. He didn't think he had been _that_ popular. * * * * * Young Captain Albee was the first to speak coherently. "It's good to see you again, sir. Everyone but you was accounted for, and we'd begun to think they must have filed you away in formaldehyde for future reference. Where were you?"