Gary said, "Never mind that now. Somebody's going to make worse than a play for Penny if she and Nora are ever taken before Borisu. You know what that means, don't you?" Lark nodded grimly. "Taps for the bunch of us. He's the one person in Khundru who could recognize any of us beneath our disguises. And by the time the gals get tidied up--Well, what'll we do?" Gary said, "I've got an idea. You're about that guy's build--" He nodded toward the prostrate figure. "Scramble into his uniform, quick. Before somebody happens along this way. And while you're dressing, I'll roll _him_ into _your_ rags." "O.Q." The shift was made. Finally a "slave" lay prone in the middle of the corridor floor, and a handsome young _kraedar_ of the Magogean guard towered above him. "O.Q.," repeated Lark then. "What next, director?" "You must have something on you," figured Gary, "with which to call help. Find it." Lark pawed the unfamiliar paraphernalia with which his uniform was draped, finally discovered a small whistle. He looked at it distastefully. "You mean I have to put this in my mouth and blow it?" "Yes. Go ahead." "I'll probably get hydrophobia," grunted Lark ... but obeyed. * * * * * The whistle brought immediate results. Footsteps clattered through the tunneled corridor, and shortly questions were being hurled at the false guard officer by an excited handful of Magogean soldiery. "I was taking these two slaves to their quarters," explained Lark. "That one is a trouble maker. He turned against me. I was forced to strike him down. Cart him away. Throw him in the dungeon. You--" He picked out a likely looking prospect Gary's size--"come with me while I take this other where he must go." So, as the band of soldiers lugged their unconscious _kraedar_ into durance vile, Lark and a soldier escorted Gary to the first conveniently dark passageway. From this came shortly a thud, as of some blunt instrument striking a heavy object ... and a few moments later two warriors clad in the habiliment of the Magogean armed forces were speeding upward through the labyrinthine corridors of the Palace Royal toward those chambers to which the girls had been taken. They had ascended three levels and reached the point in the Palace Royal where the corridors were beginning to look less like passageways of a fortress and more like the aisles and avenues of a residential area when there burst about their ears a cascade of sounds at once bewildering and startling. It was the clamor of a myriad of ringing bells, sharp warning tocsins sounding an alarum of some sort. Whence it came, at first they could not tell. Searching for an explanation, their eyes discovered a series of grilled openings periodically spaced about the wainscoting of the chambers through which they hurried. Gary guessed, "A general communicating system of some sort, Lark. But what does it mean? Do you think Borisu has seen the girls, discovered--"