My remaining antagonist had me by the throat. He was half on top of me. Beyond his ugly distorted face I saw Drake rising--and the Togarite under him lay inert. I was pinned. My breath was stopped. In another moment I would have been unconscious. But Drake came with a leap. He had seized his automatic where it lay on the rocks. The butt of it crashed against the skull of the man over me. My senses faded, but came instantly back. Drake was pulling the body off me. He helped me up. Around us lay the four Togarites, motionless. Alt was lying here also. And Alt, I thought, was dead. Dianne and Ahlma came running forward. We stood a moment breathless, confused, undecided what to do. The white-faced, trembling girls bent over Alt. The blow on the head had perhaps only stunned him. But there was a sharpened bar of metal now, sticking gruesomely in his side. The thing had happened so swiftly! Overhead in some strange, monstrous room, giants were sitting. As Drake and I stood here in the silence, victorious in this fight, but with our dead friend here, the rumble of the talking giants overhead was plainly audible. To them, all this was a tiny combat, fought upon a quarter of an inch of rock surface. They had not yet seen or heard us, not realizing that anything unusual was transpiring on the small chunk of rock at their feet. Ants may fight in deadly combat and the human, whose shoes is their battle ground may be all unaware of them. I pulled myself together. "Drake, we've got to hide these bodies! Perhaps we can avoid discovery." There were many recesses here. We dragged and tumbled the bodies out of sight, or at least what we hoped would be out of sight of the people overhead. Drake panted, "We'll have a few minutes, maybe. But they're likely to discover that their guards are gone." "Drake, let's not go back in. We've got to get out, Drake! Out to the world with these drugs--and with a warning of what is coming." "And get to father. Oh, Frank--" He did not finish. Had father been killed? "We'll get out," I said. "Here, put these vials in your belt, you've got more room." We were despoiling the dead Togarites of their drug supply. We hurried from the last one, back to where Alt lay with Dianne and Ahlma over him. They were in plain sight from above. "Carry him somewhere, Drake. We mustn't be seen--above everything, not be seen. Is he dead, Dianne?" She answered, with a surprising hushed calmness, "No, not yet. Our poor friend!" We lifted him up, as quietly as we could. In a small ravine with a jutting rock above it, we laid him down. "The best we can do, Drake." CHAPTER XXVIII _The Return to Earth_ "Not that way, Frank! Let's get around the back--I think it's a better chance."