After groping about in the darkness for some time, Ted finally secured a skull, tore the jaw bone loose, and began sawing at the armor over his right hip. It was slow work. The wires were tougher by far than he had thought possible, and as Shen Ho had predicted, the teeth in the jaw bone he used were being ground away. When he had worn them down to the bone after many hours of patient labor, he discarded the lower jaw and went to work with the upper set of teeth. These, also, were nearly worn away with but slight effect on the armor, when a light suddenly appeared far down the passageway. “It is a slave with our food and drink,” whispered Shen Ho. “Cease your labors until he has gone. I will feign madness, as usual.” Ted laid the skull on the floor and sat down with his back against the wall, while Shen Ho laughed and shrieked until the whole cavern resounded with his weird cries. The slave, a yellow, round-bodied Lunite who wore a light strapped to his forehead, a long, loose shirt of some coarse material, and straw sandals, set a bowl of stewed fungus and a large cup of water before each prisoner. Although he was without appetite in his ill-smelling surroundings, Ted choked down the fungus and drank the water, not knowing how soon he might again be offered food and drink. When the prisoners had finished their frugal meal the slave took the bowls and cups and departed, leaving them in total darkness once more. Ted picked up a skull, the position of which he had marked while eating his meal, tore off the jaw bone, and resumed work on the armor. When he felt sure the slave was out of earshot, he asked Shen Ho how often food and drink were served. “The slave comes once in a rotation of your world,” replied Shen Ho. “Our world moves so slowly on its axis that we use the rotation of yours to mark our measurement of time. We have our chronometers, of course, but your world is the great chronometer in the sky by which our own are guided and corrected. I had a small timepiece when I was brought here, but it ceased to function long ago and I gave it to a slave as a bribe for some few morsels of better food than is sent here regularly. A short time thereafter, that slave was chained in the niche you now occupy. He cursed me when he told me he had been caught with my chronometer and forced to confess his defection. Being quite superstitious, he died from terror in a short time, and it was his skeleton that was kicked into the corner by the guard and his skull that was shaken out of the collar to make a place for you.”. . . . Four times, thereafter, the slave came with food, thus marking the passage of five earth days in all. Ted had used up all the available teeth in his own niche, and was working with the upper set of the last skull which Shen Ho had been able to produce and toss over to him, but although he had cut through many wires in his armor, he was still unable to reach his degravitor.