It was these things alone, though, the coming of night and the changing of our guards, the cessation and recommencement of the activity in the corridor outside, the waning and waxing of the crimson light that fell through the great building's flickering blue vibration-walls, that alone marked for us the passage of time. Day was following day while we sat on there in living death, unmoving as stones, and I knew that with each day the great fleet of the serpent-creatures I had glimpsed in the clearing would be approaching nearer to completion, as would the colossal death-beam cone with which they meant to wipe out all the races of all the galaxy's worlds. And we, on whom had rested the one chance of our universe, had failed--we were prisoners. I could not believe that Jhul Din, with his two or three followers, had managed to get through the great vibration-wall about this universe and speed to the Andromeda universe for help. Our last hope was gone, and the last hope of our galaxy with it, prisoned as we were in the helpless flesh of our own bodies, from which there could be no escape, lacking even the power to destroy ourselves and end our endless torture. * * * * * The passing days became blurred and confused in my mind, as we sat on there, and I felt that my brain was beginning to give at last beneath the awful strain. Time still I could roughly measure, though, by the waning of activity in the corridor outside, by the darkening of the crimson light that slanted through the pale blue walls. I think that it was on the tenth day of our imprisonment that I watched that light darkening, as always, wondering for how many times I was to see it thus, for how many days, years, ages, we were to lie in this living death, in the serpent-creatures' museum. As I watched, the passing throngs in the corridor outside were thinning, disappearing, with the coming of the dusky night, and soon there was almost complete silence about us, only the low hissing of the two serpent-guards, near the room's door, as they conversed there, breaking the stillness. Then suddenly my brooding thoughts were broken into by sharp surprize as I glimpsed a big, stealthy shape that showed itself for a moment in the corridor outside, and then dodged swiftly back. With a sudden flame of excitement leaping in me for the first time since our imprisonment, I gazed toward the door, eyes unmoving as always. A moment more and the dark, erect shape that I had glimpsed outside came slowly into view once more, peering around the door's edge at the two serpent-guards, who for the moment were turned away from it. Seeing this, the lurking shape came slowly into the room, through the door from the shadows of the corridor, and as it did so I saw it clearly, and well it was for me that I could not speak or surely I would have shouted aloud. For it was Jhul Din!