The metal floor was not in place, and before us yawned the abyss that was the shaft leading down to the pit. Away across the temple, standing on the ring of black flooring that was the shaft's rim, was a group of men, seemingly tiny, toylike figures there in the empty temple's immensity. We ran around the black rim toward them. It was Denham and his three companions, and they ran forward to meet us, gripped our hands warmly. "Where are your forces?" asked Denham. "Where are the people of Kom? The hordes are getting ready to come up from the pit, man! Listen," he commanded, and I walked to the shaft's edge and looked down. From far below, muffled by the great distance, yet coming with force to my ears, there rose a dim roar, the savage shout of thousands of mad warriors. And above that dull roaring there was the clangor of metal smiting on metal. "They're beating down the gate," Denham said, "and in a few minutes they'll be pouring up that stair. But where is the aid you were to bring?" In a few words I explained the battle we had taken part in, and the pursuit of the Raider into time by Kethra and his men. "We must hold them in the pit, somehow," I told them, "until Kethra and his forces come back. If those hordes once get to the temple's roof and seize the flying-platforms, it means hideous death for all at Kom!" "Couldn't you close the metal floor of the temple?" suggested Lantin. "Swing it back in place and close the shaft?" "But how?" asked Denham. "We've searched but can't find the secret of the floor, or how it is moved." "But the collapsible stair!" I put in; "you can fold that back! Lantin and I did, the night we escaped!" "Look!" ordered Denham, pointing toward the spot where the little folding stair had been. I looked, and despair rushed over me. For the stair had been removed, and instead of it, steps had been cut into the side of the shaft itself, leading from the spiral stairway in the shaft to the ring of black flooring on which we stood. "The guards must have cut those steps after you escaped," said Denham, "probably because they would not allow anyone to play on them again the trick you did. We heard of your exploit, in the pit." Up from the shaft was coming now an increasing clamor, and the battering on the gate far below had increased in fierceness. "But how, then, are we to hold them in the pit?" I asked, despairingly. "A messenger has gone into time after Kethra and his forces, and if we could only check these hordes until he comes--" Abruptly the Aztec spoke, calmly, gravely. "We are five," he said, "five strong swords. And the stair is narrow." There was a moment of silence, for the idea he broached was stunning in its audacity. Then D'Alord laughed in sheer delight. "Good!" he cried. "Why, 'twill be easy! Ixtil is right. We are five blades here, and the stair is narrow. We'll show them sword-play, eh?"