Might yet become one! Not only could the rays deform the offspring. They could distort the full-grown, normal body. Sine felt increasingly dismayed as he thought of this immature, quiet-eyed girl, this waif of an alien world. He experienced a recurrence of the indignation he had previously felt. This selfish, superior First Race! Condemning the weaker people to torture and death so they could enjoy a little paradise! The Pleasure Bubble they called it. Sphere of the Damned was better! For the unfortunate consigned to the dark hemisphere was condemned to an inferno that surpassed the Ancient's most perfervid imagination. "I wish we could save Proserpina!" The words were out before Sine knew it. Kass stopped in the middle of a sentence and lifted a quizzical eyebrow. "Oh, get the romantic ideas out of your heads!" Sine snapped. "You know she's just a kid. I couldn't take care of her if we did take her back to Earth. But I'd like to take her out of The Bubble!" Lents pulled at his toga thoughtfully. It was dirty, still wet, and smelled not too pleasantly. "I could take care of her," he said slowly, and his deep bass voice was a little wistful. "My wife would be glad--we're getting old, and no children--" "We-ell," Kass submitted practically. "I'd like to take her away, and her poor old daddy too--or is he old? But what's the use of discussing all that? Here we are prisoners, and she's a prisoner of the First Race, and we shall never see her again. Or the good old Earth either," he added sadly. A man entered the room. He looked more like a normal man than might have been expected--only his exaggerated dish-face, his bulbous forehead proclaiming him just another victim of the First Race's industries. Or his shrill, treble voice as he announced: "Gentlemen of Earth, the Manager and his council expect you in the office. Follow me." He turned, waited for them to come. The Manager's messenger led them up a long, ascending tunnel meagerly lighted at intervals by small emanation tablets. After they had gone perhaps a hundred yards the hewn rock gave way to what was evidently a kind of concrete. "This part of their city is built above the ocean floor," Kass remarked quietly. "They brought us in through airlocks. Passages lead to caves along the shore where the original refugees holed up. These are mostly their children, so marked and deformed even in embryo." Their dish-faced guide now stepped aside as they entered a spacious chamber with a domed ceiling. Here and there it was wet. No doubt above there was the sea. Lents made a rapid mental calculation, rumbled into Sine's ear: "Can't be so deep. Not over a hundred feet; maybe less. Otherwise those arches couldn't carry the weight." * * * * *