Before us, over the brink of a five hundred-foot drop, a great
glistening plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it
ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our hilltop level a
horizontal streak marked the rope railing of the slab.
"Well," said Alan. "We're here." He gazed behind us, back across the
rocky summit which seemed several hundred feet across to its opposite
brink. He was smiling, but the smile faded. "Now what, Glora? Another
pellet?"
"No. Not yet. There is a place where we go down. It is marked in my
mind."
I had a sudden ominous sense that we three were not alone up here.
Glora led us back from the cliff. As we picked our way among the naked
crags, it seemed behind each of them an enemy might be lurking.
"Glora, do you know if any of Dr. Polter's men might have the drug? I
mean, do they come in and out of here?"
She shook her head. "I think not. He lets no one have the drug. He
trusts not anyone. I stole it. I will tell you later. Much I have to
tell you before we arrive."
Alan made a sudden, sidewise leap, and dashed around a rock. He came
back to us, smiling ruefully.
"Gets on your nerves, all of this. I had the same idea you had, George.
Might be someone around here. But I guess not." He took Glora's hand and
they walked in advance of me. "We haven't thanked you yet, Glora," he
added.
"Not needed. I came for help from your world. I followed the Dr. Polter
when he came outward. He has made my world and my people, his slaves. I
came for help. And because I have helped you, needs no thanks."
"But we do thank you, Glora." Alan turned his flushed, earnest face back
to me. I thought I had never seen him so handsome, with his boyish,
rugged features and shock of tousled brown hair. The grimness of
adventure was upon him, but in his eyes there was something else. It was
not for me to see it. That was for Glora; and I think that even then its
presence and its meaning did not escape her.
We reached a little gully near the center of the hilltop. It was some
twenty feet deep.
Glora paused. "We descend here."
The gully was an unmistakable landmark--open at one end, forty feet
long, with the other end terminating in a blind wall which now loomed
above us.
"A pit is here--a hole. I cannot tell just how large it will look when
we are in this size."
We found it and stood over it--a foot-wide circular hole extending
downward. Alan knelt and shoved his hand and arm into it, but Glora
sprang at him.
"Don't do that!"
"Why not? How deep is it?"
She retorted sharply, "The Doctor Polter is ahead of us. How far away in
size, who knows? Do you want to crush him, and crush that young girl
with him?"
Alan's jaw dropped. "Good Lord!"
We stood with the little pit before us, and another of the pellets
ready.
"Now!" said Glora.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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