Seaton had spoken truly. In a few more steps they broke out of the thick growth of the jungle and into the almost-palpable darkness of a great, roughly circular area which had been cleared of the prolific growth. In the center of this circle could be seen the bluely illuminated works of the engineers who were raising _Skylark Two_. The edge of the great well was surrounded by four-dimensional machinery; and that well's wide apron and its towering derricks were swarming with hypermen. "Stay behind me, Peg, but as close as you can without getting hit," the man instructed his companion after a hasty but comprehensive study of the scene. "Keep your shield up and have your grating in good swinging order. I'll be able to take care of most of them, I think, but you want to be ready to squash any of them that may get around me or who may rush us from behind. Those stickers of theirs are bad medicine, girl, and we don't want to take any chances at all of getting stuck again." "I'll say we don't!" she agreed feelingly, and Seaton started off over the now unencumbered ground. "Wait a minute, Dick--where are you, anyway? I can't see you at all!" "That's right, too. Never thought of it, but there's no light. The glimmer of those plants is pretty faint, at best, and doesn't reach out here at all. We'd better hold hands, I guess, until we get close to the works out there so that we can see what we're doing and what's going on." "But I've got only two hands--I'm not a hippocampus--and they're both full of doors and clubs and things. But maybe I can carry this shield under my arm, it isn't heavy--there, where are you, anyway?" Seeking hands found each other, and, hand in hand, the two set out boldly toward the scene of activity so starkly revealed in the center of that vast circle of darkness. So appalling was the darkness that it was a thing tangible--palpable. Seaton could not see his companion, could not see the weapons and the shield he bore, could not even faintly discern the very ground upon which he trod. Yet he plunged forward, almost dragging the girl along bodily, eyes fixed upon the bluely gleaming circle of structures which was his goal. "But Dick!" Margaret panted. "Let's not go so fast; I can't see a thing--not even my hand right in front of my eyes--and I'm afraid we'll bump into something--anything!" "We've got to snap it up, Peg," the man replied, not slackening his pace in the slightest, "and there's nothing very big between us and the _Skylark_, or we could see it against those lights. We may stumble over something, of course, but it'll be soft enough so that it won't hurt us any. But suppose that another night clamps down on us before we get out there?" "Oh, that's right; it did come awfully suddenly," and Margaret leaped ahead; dread of the abysmally horrible hypernight so far outweighing her natural fear of unseen obstacles in her path that the man was hard put to it to keep up with her. "Suppose they'll know we're coming?"