Crude!--yes; no finely polished mechanism, this; no one of the many connection clips that the other had had, either. But Chet knew he could solder on the hundreds of wires that made the nervous system of the control and fed the current to the cage; and Kreiss had believed it would work! There was no thought of delay in Chet's mind, no waiting for daylight. This was the fourth night since he had been in that place of horror, since, above him in that Stygian pit, an inhuman satanic _something_ had said: "... the captives ... a sacrifice to Vashta ... on the sixth night...." Chet threw off the rags that once had been a trim khaki jacket and went feverishly to work. And through the time that was left he drove himself desperately. The hours so few and each hour so short! As he worked with seemingly countless strands of heavy cables, where each strand must be traced back and its point of connection determined, he knew how long each dreadful minute must be for the two captives deep inside the Dark Moon. * * * * * It was as well, perhaps, that Chet did not have the power of distant sight, that he had no messenger like those from the pyramid who might have gone down in that place and have sent him by mental television a picture of what was there. For he would have seen that which could have lent no clarity of vision to his deep-sunk eyes nor skill to the touch of fumbling, tired hands. Walt Harkness, no longer under hypnotic control, stood in a dim-lit room carved from solid stone; stood, and stared despairingly at the surrounding walls and at the pair of giant ape-men who guarded the one doorway. And, clinging to his hand, was a girl; and she, too, had been released from the invisible bonds. She was speaking: "No, Walter; we both saw it; it must be true. It was Chet's pistol; he was there in that horrible place. And I will not give up. He will save us at the last; I know it! He will save us from the inhuman cruelty of those terrible things. He shoots straight, Chet does; and he will give us a bullet apiece from the gun--the last kindly act of a friend. That's what the signal meant." "Then why did he wait! Why didn't he do it then?" Walt Harkness had made the same demand a hundred times. And Diane answered as always: "I don't know, Walter, I--don't--know." Chet, cursing insanely at strange machines--equilibrators that controlled the longitudinal and transverse and rotative stability of the ship and that refused to take their electrical charge--knew with horrible certainty that the last night had come. But to the two humans, in the depths of this world where all knowledge of time was lost, the knowledge came only when they were dragged by their guards into a familiar room. * * * * *