Perry's head went beneath the fluid. His brain was spinning. He thought he heard a click of switches being turned on. The numbness increased suddenly, like a jolt of electricity. But he managed to hold his breath. He had a curious sensation of shrinking, of being pressed together. * * * * * He emerged at last from unconsciousness, knowing at least that he was alive. He was coughing, as though his lungs had been partly full of fluid. His head ached intolerably, and his heart was laboring like a rusty engine. He sat up on the wet surface on which he sprawled, and tried to look about. His vision was blurred at first, and he squinted to focus his eyes. He looked around a square room, one end of which was open. Its walls were like rough, black glass. Behind him was a dark opening, like a door, from which, judging from the wetness around him, he had recently been ejected, along with a considerable quantity of fluid. He saw the girl, Lyssa Arthurs, sprawled beside him. Worriedly, Perry scrambled over to her. She was still unconscious, though breathing raggedly. Her rubber oxygen mask was intact, except for the metal and glass parts, which were curiously pitted and malformed. By some unknown transformation the oxygen tanks strapped to her shoulders, were similarly distorted and useless. They were full of holes, and had lost their compressed content. Perry had parted with his mask during his scuffle with the robots, and now his tanks had broken loose from his shoulders somewhere too. He noticed that even the metal buttons of his shirt were rough and out of shape. He ripped the useless, ill-fitting mask from Troubles' face, unfastened the crooked buckles that held the oxygen flasks in place, and applied artificial respiration. Meanwhile he searched his surroundings. What had been done to Troubles and himself, and where had they been taken? He looked again toward the open end of the compartment. Beyond was a gigantic, beautiful cavern, apparently many miles in extent. It was walled with coarse, jagged glass. Through a system of lenses in its azure roof, light was streaming down. It must be artificial, but it was just about like reddish sunlight. The floor of the cavern was like a beautiful, wild valley, crowded with strange, exotic trees and plants; and white buildings peeped through the foliage. What had happened looked almost simple to Perry Wilcox then. He and Troubles had merely passed down through the vat, to a vast, habitable, artificially excavated cavern below. But he couldn't accept this idea, somehow. It was _too_ simple. And there was an elusive strangeness, disquieting and hard to identify, about everything he saw and felt. It was more than just the oddity of the vegetation and the buildings. After a minute, Lyssa Arthurs sighed and tried to rise. She looked about, confusedly. "Where are we?" she demanded.