* * * * * The darkness faded, slowly. He felt his feet jar on solid ground, and the terrible cold left him. But for long moments Frank Hammond stood rigid, his dazed mind trying to accept the strange world he had fallen into. The landscape about him was maroon in color. Irregular ridges and gullies of apparently molten stone hemmed him in. Off to his left he could see a huge, bubbly pit that reminded him of fumaroles he had seen in the National Yellowstone Park. Far in the distance, to his right and left, maroon cliffs towered into blue mists. Hammond stared at the weird scene. Under him he could feel the slow rise and sway of the entire land, as if it were unstable, rocking in space! For the first few moments Hammond thought he was dreaming. He must have been rendered unconscious by the strange "thing" on the boat. Soon he would awaken-- But the slightly swaying maroon landscape persisted. Hammond looked down at his nearly naked, bronzed body. He hadn't changed. He took a few tentative steps toward the bubbly pit, and the sudden realization that all this _was_ real sickened him. Where was he? What had happened to him and Storm? A harsh, metallic rattle answered him. Hammond whirled. Topping one of the far ridges appeared an eight-legged monster of gigantic size. It was without head or tail. Its unsegmented body was an iridescent blue, and shaped like a giant pumpkin seed. The thing flashed menacingly in the bright light of a sun that was but a huge blur in the misty sky. It headed for Hammond with incredible speed, a huge foreleg stretching out in readiness. Hammond wasted no time in speculation. His dazed mind reacted to but one impulse. Flight! Turning, he ran for the nearest gully. He went down in a half scramble, and ran along it, the walls looming over his head. But his huge pursuer gained on him. He could hear the metallic rattle of those flashing legs close behind him. Despair gripped the young chemist as he scrambled out of the gully and ran up the nearest ridge. The landscape ahead of him was dipping down as he ran, seemingly being tilted by his weight. The thought came back to Hammond that this must be a nightmare. The eight-legged, colossal thing pursuing him was exactly like the tiny antlike creatures that had swarmed out of the strange "catch" he pulled into the _Crawfish_ but a few hours ago. Or was it a few hours? He didn't know. He no longer knew anything. Grim-faced, his breath beginning to come in gasps, he slid down a steep maroon bank, and raced along the shadowed cut that gradually deepened. It was a hopeless flight. Behind him the clattering monster came, running along the top of the ravine which was too narrow to allow it to enter. The steep-walled cut suddenly ended. The sides here were steep and smooth--a perfect cul-de-sac. Hammond turned, his brown fists clenched.