The ray ate its way slowly upward beside one of his arms. It was free. A moment, and the other was loosed. Then the jaws relaxed their hold on his thighs and he slid down into the charred, jelly-like remains of the oval body, of which now only half the wall was standing. Two arms were slipped beneath his own, helping him to rise. Then he turned and faced his rescuer. Prepared as he was for almost any sight, Ted gasped in amazement when he beheld the person who had saved his life, for standing before him in a suit of soft, clinging white fur resembling astrachan, her head encased in a helmet of bell-shaped glass, was the gloriously beautiful girl he had seen in the disc of the radiovisiphone—the girl who had called herself “_Maza an Ma Gong_.” In her right hand was a short, tubular instrument which greatly resembled a flash-light, and which he judged was the weapon that had compassed his freedom. As he could not speak to her he was trying to think of a way to express his gratitude for his unexpected rescue while she smiled encouragingly, when he suddenly noticed a most fearful creature behind her. It resembled nothing living that he had ever seen or heard of, but was strikingly like pictures he had seen of winged dragons—pictures he had always previously imagined were due solely to the imagination of medieval artists. Believing the girl in dire peril, he whipped out both pistol degravitors and was about to destroy the beast when she struck down his weapons with a look of alarm. Then, beckoning the thing with her hand she stood, unafraid, while the hideous creature stretched forth its scrawny, scaly neck and laid its ugly, armor-plated muzzle on her shoulder. She fondled it for a moment, scratching its horny nose while it closed its eyes and laid back its short ears as if greatly pleased by these attentions. Then she pushed the head away and turned once more to the amazed young scientist. As she stood there beside him he noticed for the first time that what he had taken for a plume, resembling an aigrette and protruding through the top of her glass helmet was, in reality, a group of fine, metallic radio antennae. The small set which they operated was evidently attached just beneath them—shaped like and no larger than his own wrist radiophone. He wished that he had had the foresight to attach a similar contrivance to his own outfit, but since he had not, he found it necessary to resort to more primitive means for making himself heard. Taking the girl lightly by the shoulders, and thereby eliciting a look of startled surprise from her, he bent over and placed the glass of his helmet against hers, an expedient which had been much in use among deep sea divers for making themselves intelligible to each other before the advent of under water radio sets. “Thank you, Maza an Ma Gong, for saving my life,” he said. She smiled and replied: “_Di tcha-tsi_, Ted Dustin.”