They were in a vast hollowed-out space. An inner world within the moon! Damply warm and redolent of life. Its vastness stretched off into the distance, beyond sight. Most amazing was its source of light, an enormous green-white globe that loomed in the near distance. A cold but luminous sun within the moon! "It's real," chuckled Crane, watching Bonwitt. Below them was a wider balcony, a ledge on which were ordered rows of great machines with naked little brown men scurrying in their midst. To the right was the great grandad of all of those machines, a huge drum-like affair with tapered helices at crazy angles and with the big steel shaft they'd seen up above projecting from its vertical upper bearing and vanishing through the bore in the rock overhead. "Lord!" gasped Bonwitt. "A motor! What can it drive?" "You'll soon learn," said an oily voice at his shoulder. The engineer wheeled to stare into Peterson's close-set, glittering eyes. Gates, saturnine, contemptuous, was with him. * * * * * "You go to Don Peel right away," the super told Bonwitt. "Crane goes with Gates. To see our ethertype." "But--" Crane started to object. "You'll go with Gates." Peterson fingered his strange weapon. The two ethertype operators disappeared into a passage mouth. "Who's Don Peel?" asked Bonwitt. "The king--Gosak, they call him--a simpleton whom I've taught a little English. He's in the palm of my hand, though I handle him with gloves. I want you to play up to him." "Suppose I don't. Suppose I warn him?" "You won't." Peterson carelessly sighted his curious weapon on a rock ledge in the passageway. The thing bucked to a screaming hiss that belched from its snout. No more than that, but the rock spurted incandescence and puffed out of existence. "No, you won't shoot your mouth off, Bonwitt." "What's the idea?" growled the engineer. "What're you up to?" "All in good time, my boy. Here we are; remember what I said." They entered a small, softly lighted room. Two wizened, breech-clouted men bowed to the super and he jabbered unintelligible words. An inner door opened and the two Earthmen went through. "Bonji, Don Peel. Bonji, Gosak," the super mouthed, spreading his pudgy hands and salaaming before a turbaned brown man squatted in the center of a waist-high circular table that surrounded him. "Bonji," this one replied gravely. "This new helper?" "Yes, Don, this is Bonwitt. Crane's with Gates." The little brown man looked out keenly from under overhanging brows, eyes gleaming like a cobra's. "You sure we can trust?" Peterson nodded with assurance. Don Peel bared momentarily a mouthful of yellow fangs between lips that writhed hideously. Bonwitt's stomach went sick. "Good; you fix." The Gosak dismissed them with a scrawny hand. * * * * * "Had to do that," the erstwhile super explained in the outer passage, "to keep him happy. Or his men'd be taking pot shots at you."