"Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," quoted Terry. "I don't see anything down there, do you?" "No. Why the spider recitation?" "I don't know. Everything is too pat. I feel as if someone is watching behind us, practically breathing down our necks and urging us on the way he wants us to go. And when we get there we aren't going to like it." "I suppose that is strictly a scientific hunch which we ignorant physicists wouldn't understand." But Terry was serious. The whole aspect of the Stroid device was unnerving in the way it led along from step to step, as if unseen powers were guiding them, rather than using their own initiative in their work. Underwood gave a final grunt and dropped into the hole, flashing his light rapidly about. Terry followed immediately. They found themselves in the center of a circular room twenty feet in diameter. The walls and the floor seemed to be of the same ebony-black material that had composed the outer shell of the gem before its transmutation. * * * * * The walls were literally covered from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling with inscriptions that glowed faintly in the darkness when the flashlights were not turned on them. "Recognize any of this stuff?" asked Underwood. "Stroid III," said Terry in awe. "The most beautiful collection of engravings that have ever been found. We've never obtained a consecutive piece even a fraction this size before. Dreyer has got to come now." "I've got a hunch about this," said Underwood slowly. "I don't know a thing about the procedures used in deciphering an unknown lingo, but I'll bet you find that this is an instruction primer to their language, just as the inscriptions outside gave the key to their math before detailing the wave equations." "You might be right!" Terry's eyes glowed with enthusiasm as he looked about the polished walls with the faintly glowing characters inlaid in them. "If that's the case, Papa Phyfe and I ought to be able to do the job without Dreyer." They returned to the ship for photographic equipment and to report their finding to Phyfe. It was a little difficult for him to adjust to the view that something had been gained in the transformation of the gem. The sight of that boiling, amorphous mass in space had been to him like helplessly standing on the bank of a stream and watching a loved one drown. But with Terry's report on the characters in Stroid III which lined the walls of the antechamber which they had penetrated, he was ready to admit that their position had improved. Underwood was merely a by-stander as they returned to the gem. Two photographers, Carson and Enright, accompanied them along with Nichols, assistant semanticist. Underwood stood by, in the depths of speculation, as the photographers set up their equipment and Phyfe bent down to examine the characters at close range.