Between the pedestals Chet crouched, hardly daring to look, hardly daring to breathe, while feet, bare and black, tramped shufflingly past. They went in groups--he lost count of their number but knew there were hundreds; he heard them going to the platform above. And, through the sound of the naked feet, came disjointed fragments of thought that reached his brain, transformed to words. Mere fragments at first: "... back; the Master goes first!... The lights--how grateful is their coolness!... Who stumbled? Careless and stupid ape! You, Bearer-captain, shall take him to the torture room; a touch of fire will help his infirmity!" And there was a cold rage that accompanied the last which set Chet's tense nerves a-tingle. But there was no fear in the emotion; he was quivering with a fierce, instinctive, animal hate. The black feet retraced their steps. Then there was silence, and Chet knew there was something above him on the platform; whether one or many he could not tell until an interchange of thoughts reached him to show there was at least more than one. "A presence!" some unseen thing was thinking. "I sense a strange mental force!" * * * * * A moment of panic gripped Chet at the threat of discovery. Then he forced himself to relax; he tried to make his mind a blank; or if not that, to think of anything but himself--of the jungle, the ape-men, of the two comrades who had been captured. "Patience!" another thinker was counseling. "It is the captives; they draw near." And across the great room, from the same passage where he had entered, Chet heard again the sound of bare, scuffing feet. He could see them at last; he dared, to stop and peer along the floor. Bare feet--black, hairy legs, and then came sounds of clumping leather that brought Chet's heart into his throat, until, directly before the altar that made his shelter, he saw the stained shoes and torn leggings of Walt Harkness, and beside them, the little boots and jungle-stained stockings that encased the slender legs of Mademoiselle Diane. They were there before him, Walt and Diane; he would see them if he but dared to look. And, from somewhere above, a confusion of thought messages poured in upon him like the unintelligible medley of many voices. Out of them came one, clearer, more commanding: "Silence! Be still, all! Your Master speaks. I shall question the captives." And there came to Chet, crouched beneath the altar, hardly breathing, listening, tense, a battering of questioning thoughts. He heard no answer from Harkness and Diane, but he knew that their minds were open pages to the one from whom those thought-waves issued. "Where are you from?--what part of this globe?... Another world? Impossible! This is our own world, Rajj. It is alone. There is no nearby star." And after a moment, when Harkness had silently answered, came other thoughts: