"This is my eightieth work-period. We lost track of the days." "So did I. Where are we? Are there any other humans with you?" "One in the cage across the corridor from me. Walter Stevens the Wall Street man." "Have they got him on this job, too?" "Yes." Sherman could not avoid a snicker. Back in the days before the comet he had had Stevens as a passenger once, and a more difficult customer to satisfy, a more cocksure-of-his-own-importance man he had never seen. The thought of him burning his fingertips up in one of these machines gave him some amusement. But his next question was practical. "Do you know what these machines are for?" "Haven't the least idea; Stevens said they were for digging something. They had the helmets on him twice." "What helmets?" "Like the dopey at the door wears. The dopeys all have to wear them." "Why?" "Haven't got any brains, I guess. I had one on once when they were teaching me to do this. They tell you what to think." "What do you mean?" "You put the helmet on and it's like you're hypnotized. You can't think anything but what they want you to think." Sherman shuddered slightly. So that was how the mechanical ape-men were controlled so perfectly! "How did they get you?" asked the girl who had described herself as Marta Lami. "In an airplane. I'm an aviator. They shot me down somewhere and when I came to, put me in one of those cages. How did you get here?" "The birds. I was at West Point with Stevens and that old fool Vanderschoof. They started shooting at the birds and the birds just picked us up and flew away with us." "Where were you after you came to? I mean after the comet." "New York. Century Roof. I was dancing there before." "You aren't Marta Lami, the dancer?" "Sure. Who the hell do you think?" * * * * * He turned and regarded her deliberately, careless of the aroused attention of the sentry. So this was the famous dancer who had blazed across two continents and three divorce suits--who had been proclaimed the most beautiful woman in the world in starring electric lights before an applauding Broadway; for whose performances speculators held tickets at prize-fight premiums! How little she resembled it now, a parody of the human form, working her fingers off as the slave of an alien and conquering race. She asked the next question: "Where have they got you?" "I don't know. In a cage somewhere. The only people around there are like these mugs." He nodded toward the ape-man. "I wonder how long they'll keep us at this." "I wish I could tell you. How's chances of making a break?" "Rotten. There was a guy at the next machine tried it three or four work-periods ago. He socked the dopey at the door." "What happened?" "They sent a machine down for him and gave him the yellow lights all over. It was fierce, you should have heard him scream." "How far down are we, anyway?" "You got me, boy friend. Sssh! Watch the dopey."