Minutes passed while Rowan crouched there, watching them, and then one pointed downward into the shaft again, and in a moment there floated up once more the great disk-platform, but empty this time. It swept smoothly up once more to the edge of the shaft's mouth, hung motionless momentarily again at that edge, and then sank from sight once more. Rowan saw, then, that its motion was apparently automatic, and then before he could speculate further on it all his attention focused on the three lizard-men on the mound, who were walking together toward the great path which led west from that mound. One seemed to point westward, where the red glare of light from burning Brinton still quivered in the sky, and then the three had disappeared down the path, evidently for a better view, since Rowan still could hear over the shriek of winds from the pit the rasping of their harsh, insectlike voices in the distance. Minutes he crouched, while the white-lit mound before him lay unoccupied, and then rose suddenly from his place of concealment and crept silently across the mound to the rim of the great pit. Tensely he craned forward, staring downward. In his ears was the deafening roar of the winds from beneath, winds which tore at him with cyclonic fury as they rushed up from the dark depths of the shaft. Staring down into that shaft Rowan could see nothing, since its interior was of intense and unrelieved blackness, without spark of light. As seconds passed, though, and his eyes became more accustomed to the blackness beneath, he seemed to sense, rather than see, a quiver of light far below, a wavering, flickering of light that lasted for but a moment and then vanished. And then he glimpsed something far below that was rising swiftly toward him, something that gleamed a little in the white light from above him. The platform! Abruptly there was a sound of sharp movement behind Rowan, and he whirled around, then stood motionless. At the mound's west edge there stood a single one of the scaled, unhuman lizard-creatures, his eyes full upon Rowan. From down the great path came the rasping squeak of the voices of the other two, but the one was silent, staring straight toward him. Then, with a movement inconceivably swift, he had leapt forward. Rowan cried out as the creature leapt, then felt himself grasped by powerful, taloned claws, thrown to the ground, whirling about at the pit's edge in threshing combat. He heard a harsh cry from the creature that grasped him, heard the cries of the other two as they raced now to his aid. The two struggling figures were at the very rim of the great shaft, now, rolling and twisting, and in one uppermost moment Rowan glimpsed the mighty disk-platform sweeping up out of the depths of that shaft, hovering motionless at its mouth, beside him.