The engineer spied a curiously shaped weapon in Peterson's belt. Entirely unfamiliar but looking mighty dangerous with its ugly flaring snout and the cooling discs along its stubby barrel. "All right," said the super. "Your side-kick'll tell you more about things here. Play ball and you're okay. We may even find jobs for the two of you. But no monkey business." The man turned on his heel and disappeared through the arched door. Bonwitt saw they were in a circular chamber lined with bluish metal. His gray eyes questioned Crane. "They jumped me and tied me in a knot," the ethertype man explained. "Gates slammed you down, the rat!" "How long was I out?" "An hour or so. And you won't believe what you see here. Can you walk now?" Bonwitt took an experimental step. "Sure." "Come on then." Crane started for the doorway. "We're not locked up? Not guarded?" "No, but prisoners all the same. In the damndest place. Wait." They came out on a balcony that limned a seemingly bottomless pit with a huge vertical shaft that dropped centrally from high above and vanished in the depths below. "What in hell is it?" demanded Bonwitt. "You haven't seen anything yet." Crane moved to the cage of a lift. "Cripes! An elevator on the moon!" None of it made sense to Bill Bonwitt. "We sure stumbled into something, Chief," agreed Crane. As they dropped sickeningly in the cage, the engineer saw that the controls of the automatic elevator were of craftsmanship like none he had ever seen. * * * * * Crane said: "I don't understand it, either. They didn't tell me much, but kept me with them till Gates had landed below. I saw enough to scare the devil out of me, though." "Why do you suppose they didn't knock us off like they did Andy Pauchek?" wondered Bonwitt. "They want us to join up with them. At least Peterson does. Gates would cut our throats in a minute." "M-mm. He's tough. Let's see; he came on the job a month before Peterson, didn't he?" "Right, Chief. And they were thick as thieves from the start." "Don't we ever reach the bottom?" asked Bonwitt impatiently. "It's a long way down but we're nearly there." Crane puckered his sandy brows. "Nobody can make cables that long," he opined. Bonwitt examined the controls again. "It's a gravity lift," he decided. "Nothing like it on Earth. Suppose Peterson's found an underground civilization here?" The ethertype man grinned. "I knew you'd get it. Peterson told me or I'd never have guessed. Until I saw the damn creatures." "You did see them?" "Hundreds. They're queer--like Pauchek." "So-o. That explains a lot. Peterson's been here before, often. I still don't get it about Pauchek, though." The lift slowed down and stopped. Crane led the way out onto a second balcony, a gigantic sweeping curve of it.