There was something very strange here! A chill swept over me. Drake was not familiar with the surroundings father and I had prepared for the guarding of the rock, but I was. This seemed a very strange scene now! Words choked me. I stood clutching Drake. "What is it, Frank--what's the matter?" This light overhead was not the light father and I had rigged up! There was no giant microscope up there in the sky. Vague blurred shapes of a ceiling and wall were up there, and a light--but not our light in the guarded room of our house at King's Cove. This vast plain, gleaming dimly rough and undulating in the light--it should have been our granite slab. But it was not! Realization surged over me with a chilling rush of horror. This was a different room. There were people here; I heard an echoing rumble of their giant voices. But not father, nor Foley nor Ransome! The rock fragment had been moved, stolen from father and taken somewhere else! These were enemies, guarding the rock upon the top of which we stood fatuously waving our little black and white flags! CHAPTER XXVII _The Fight on the Rock Summit_ Alt who was standing with Dianne and Ahlma, must have realized from my attitude that something was wrong. I stood stammering, clutching at Drake. Then I got it out. "Hide, Drake! This isn't our room--that's not father up there!" We swung back, and I shouted, "Alt, back!" Alt had already drawn the girls into the shelter of an overhanging rock. We crouched for a moment, not daring to move. Had we been seen from above? A blast of poisoned liquid from a spray up there could kill us here instantly. Or a monstrous finger could come down with a swoop and mash us. Drake murmured, "Shall we take the diminishing drug? Make a run for it, and back?" Failure. It beat at me. All our plans gone down into defeat. This was defeat--death for us. A retreat into the abyss; but we would meet the Togarites coming out! And where was father? What had happened up here? Alt whispered, "We must get back in." Drake gripped me. "Are you sure, Frank? Father may have changed things around. If we go back in, without knowing--that's the end, Frank! The end for us all; for the Mitans, depending on us. What will we do?" The girls crouched, silent, white-faced. It was only a moment or so. We never reached a decision--it was forced upon us. From the edge of the rocky slope near at hand a man's head and shoulders appeared! A man about our own size! He was climbing up from the plain upon which the rock lay. A long bar of metal, thin as a sword, was in his teeth. He was a hatless, bullet-headed Togarite, a heavy-set fellow, naked to the waist, with dark hair matting his thick chest. He saw us! He shouted and others appeared behind him. Four of them altogether.