Two more days dragged out, days that were like weeks to me. I felt that I must soon go mad, if I were longer imprisoned. And then, sharply ending the monotony of dreary hours, there came a summons, a summons that in the end proved to be a call to an adventure utterly undreamed of by Lantin or myself. _CHAPTER 10_ THE TEMPLE OF THE RAIDER All that day I had sensed a tense activity outside, and many times there was the tramp of feet down the corridor outside our cell, as companies of the guards came and went. As sunset came, I stood beside the transparent wall and watched its brilliant colors fade from the sky. Overhead, now, the aircraft of the Kanlars were flickering continuously past, all heading toward the giant cylinder that stood at the city's center, and when I scrambled up a little higher against the wall, to get a glimpse of the street, I saw that that street was crowded with masses of the armored guards and the staring-eyed slaves, all pressing on toward the same building. Darkness came, and the noise of activity outside died away, so that it seemed that all the city around us was deserted, nor was there any sound from the building above us. For all of two hours after the darkness, we sat there, listening, waiting. Once I thought I heard a distant ringing music, but decided that my ears had been deceived. Then, abruptly, there was the stamp of sandals on the floor of the corridor, and we heard the doors of the cells along it being opened. Our own was flung wide, as we rose, and I saw that a score of the guards waited outside, their leader ordering us to come out, which we were glad enough to do. Once in the corridor, I found Denham and the others of the group I had met before, shackled to each other, wrist to wrist, in a single file. The Northman and myself were fettered to the end of the line, and then we set out, a long file of guards on each side of us, marching us down the corridor and outside the building. The big street up which I had come before was utterly deserted, as we turned into it. I looked back along its length, lit with the crimson bulbs, a winding serpent of red light that stretched away out into the country beyond the city, out to where our time-car lay hidden in the hills. At the thought of it, so fierce a desire seized me to win back to it, and my own time, that had I not been shackled I would have made a break for freedom down the empty street. But as it was, I had no choice, and followed the others in our fettered line down the wide street toward the gigantic cylindrical building at its end.