As his shell was drawn downward toward the strange scene Siblin saw many moving things beneath him, but was able neither to understand what he saw nor to correlate it with anything in his own knowledge or experience. For those beings were amorphous. Some flowed along the ground, formless blobs of matter; some rolled, like wheels or like barrels; many crawled rapidly, snakelike; others resembled animated pancakes, undulating flatly and nimbly about upon a dozen or so short, tentacular legs; only a few, vaguely manlike, walked upright. A glass cage, some eight feet square and seven high, stood under the towering bulge of the great ship's side; and as his shell of force engulfed it and its door swung invitingly open, Siblin knew that he was expected to enter it. Indeed, he had no choice--the fabric of cold flame that had been his conveyance and protection vanished, and he had scarcely time to leap inside the cage and slam the door before the noxious vapors of the atmosphere invaded the space from which the shell's impermeable wall had barred it. To die more slowly, but just as surely, from suffocation? No, the cage was equipped with a thoroughly efficient oxygen generator and air purifier; there were stores of Valeronian food and water; there were a chair, a table, and a narrow bunk; and, wonder of wonders, there were even kits of toilet articles and of changes of clothing. Far above a great door opened. The cage was lifted and, without any apparent means either of support or of propulsion, it moved through the doorways and along various corridors and halls, coming finally to rest upon the floor in one of the innermost compartments of the sky rover. Siblin saw masses of machinery, panels of controlling instruments, and weirdly multiform creatures at station; but he had scant time even to glance at them, his attention being attracted instantly to the middle of the room where, lying in a heavily reënforced shallow cup of metal upon an immensely strong, low table, he saw a--a _something_; and for the first time an inhabitant of Valeron saw at close range one of the invaders. It was in no sense a solid, nor a liquid, nor yet a jelly; although it seemed to partake of certain properties of all three. In part it was murkily transparent, in part greenishly translucent, in part turbidly opaque; but in all it was intrinsically horrible. But that it was sentient and intelligent there could be no doubt. Not only could its malign mental radiations be felt, but its brain could be plainly seen; a huge, intricately convolute organ suspended in an unyielding but plastic medium of solid jelly. Its skin seemed thin and frail, but Siblin was later to learn that that tegument was not only stronger than rawhide, but was more pliable, more elastic, and more extensible than the finest rubber. * * * * *