He reached the punctured metal barrier at last, and passed through it. Two feet thick, the shell was. A moment later his feet touched a solid floor, wet with the water that had dribbled down through the opening. "I'm here, Rod," Perry called into the phone. "At the bottom." It was a moment before the older man answered, and in this interval Perry heard disquieting sounds from the phones over his ears--sounds from the surface, which seemed so infinitely far away to him now. Automobile motors racing. Voices in much larger numbers than those of the small drill crew. And to Perry Wilcox came a conviction of pending trouble. Then Murgatroyd spoke: "We've got company up here, Perry," he said, a note of anxiety in his tone. "A lot of curious people from Brenton. Sight-seers rushing to a fire, so to speak. Kerwin couldn't think of anything dirtier to do to gum up the works for us, so he spread the news around that something was up out here. Naturally I've got a whole crowd on my hands. We're trying to keep 'em outside the fence. Of course they ought to be harmless enough, really; but damn it, I wish they'd go someplace else! What do you see down there?" Perry had his electric lamp blazing at full now. On his chest, his camera, driven by a little spring motor, was turning. And he was staring about him intently, to grasp the character of his surroundings. He began to talk--to describe what he saw and felt. * * * * * "I'm in a passage, Rod," he said. "It slants down. Its alloy walls are all bent and crumpled. It must have been the movement of the ground through the ages that did that. Gosh, Rod, but you can feel the length of eternity here! It's written in these tunnel walls, Rod. The way they're bent and rebent. I can understand now why they were made of something tough and pliable, like this lead alloy. It's twisted everywhere, but unbroken. They--whoever built this place--must have known pretty well what they were doing--whatever their purpose was...." Perry advanced slowly down the slope of the tunnel, cautiously drawing his descent cable and his telephone and electric cords after him. He reached a room of heroic dimensions, walled with the same grey alloy as the tunnel. The Stygian gloom that obscured it parted before the intense white path of his lamp.