The girl was white-skinned and lovely, utterly different from the grotesque creatures who surrounded her. Larry was crouching near enough to see her faintly smiling eyes, and the curve of her red lips, and the dark hair that fell to her waist behind. Except for the grotesque metallic helmet on her head, and the fact that she wore no clothing except for a silver loin cloth, she might have been a girl of the sort to be seen along the elevated cross-walks of New York City. "Do you see her too?" Ripon whispered. "I do." "We can't both be that crazy, so she must really be there. But how she breathes in that atmosphere, and how she avoids freezing to death, is more than I can tell you." The ceremony had evidently some sort of a religious significance, for the Insect-men were clicking rhythmically and were bowing down before the dark-haired girl. Goddess of the Moon! The girl's head-dress was a grotesque representation of an insect, set with jewels. At the tops of the flexible antennae were a pair of giant rubies. "Boy! Wouldn't I like to get my hands on those stones!" Colton whispered from where he crouched on Ripon's left. Then Larry noticed something else! A group of perhaps a hundred of the Insect-men were moving swiftly forward between the ranks of their bowing comrades. This group carried shields as well as clubs, and they had the purposeful air of men with a grim and serious errand to perform. The girl was staring over the heads of the crowd with a distant and goddess-like manner, and did not notice the newcomers till they had almost reached her. Then her eyes widened in alarm. She leaped up from her throne and burst into a torrent of shrill clicking. In an instant the crater was in a turmoil. The group of the heavily armed Insect-men charged straight for the mound in the center. Others flung themselves in their path, rallying to the defense of the Goddess. There was a wild flurry of swinging clubs. The spiked heads clanged on metal shields, or cracked sharply on the brittle brown shells of the Insect-men. The significance of the scene before him was still obscure to Larry, but it was evident that some kind of a revolt had broken out. The rebels among the Insect-men were outnumbered, but their metal shields gave them a big advantage and they were better organized. Like a spear-point they drove straight through the confused mass of worshipers and surrounded the low knoll in the center. They brushed its defenders aside and swarmed up toward the dark-haired Goddess. Larry had already drawn his ray-gun, but Ripon was the first to leap to his feet. "Come on, young feller!" he roared. "That girl is the first human thing we've seen on the Moon. We can't let her down. Let's show those many-legged devils how an Earth man can fight!"