"Work!" came the answer. "Make you punch the holes on these goddam light machines. It wears your fingers off and you have to screw new ones in at night." "No, I mean about the elephants." "That's what I said--elephants. They wear pants, and they're right smart, too." Insoluble mystery. "Who are you?" called the aviator. "Mellen. Harve Mellen. I had a farm right here where they set up this opry house of theirs." Along the edge of Sherman's cell a blue light began to blink. He had an uncomfortable sensation of being watched. "Is there any way of getting out of here?" he shouted to his unseen auditor. "Sssh," answered the other. "Them blue lights mean they want you to shut up. You'll get a paste in the eye with the yaller lights if you don't." So that was it! They were being held as the servants--slaves--of some unseen and powerful and very watchful intelligence. As for "elephants with pants" they might resemble that and they might not; it was entirely possible that the phrase represented merely a picturesque bit of metaphor on the part of the farmer. Why it must be an actual invasion of the earth, as in H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," a book he had read in his youth. The comet could have been no comet then, and.... Yet the whole thing--this transformation of himself into a metal machine, the crash of the Roamer and his subsequent bath in the painful red light. It was all too fantastic--then he remembered that one does not feel pain in dreams.... They were giving him books, food--if this electrical thing was indeed the food his new body required--little to do; keeping him a prisoner in a kind of poisoned paradise. ... At all events the locks on these bars should offer no great difficulty to a competent mechanic. He set himself to a further examination of the tools in the lectern. * * * * * The main difficulty in the way of any plan of escape lay in his complete lack of both information and the means of obtaining it. The mechanical ape-men were hopeless; they merely babbled incoherent syllables and seemed incapable of fixing their attention on any object for as long as five minutes. As for the New York farmer his cage was so far away that the conversation could be carried on only in shouts, and every shout brought a warning flicker of the blue lights. On the second day, out of curiosity, Sherman kept up the conversation after the blue lights went on. A vivid stream of yellow light promptly issued from one corner of the cage, striking him fully in the eyes, and apparently it was accompanied by some kind of a force-ray for he found himself stretched flat on the floor. After that he did not repeat the experiment.