Dashing along the passage between rail and wall, I entered the art gallery, traversed it, and came to the geology hall. Here was a replica of a Pennsylvania cavern, through which visitors could wander to gawk at stalactites and artificial springs and plaster-and-plastic underworld creatures--dead-white salamanders, strange little blind bugs, crawling unnamed worms stuck to the synthetic rock with hidden adhesives. I dived through the mouth of this weird exhibit, bruising myself heedlessly; rounded heaps of faked stone, scraped skin off my knuckles as I fended off obstacles that seemed to hurl themselves at me in the murk, at last came to the back of the cave and turned and squatted there on my hams, fingertips trailing against the cool hardness of the sham rock floor. The moon was dropping; now it looked in a window opposite the cave, finding its way between the icicle forms of stalactites, just grazing my dark blue suit here and there. I bent my head and stared at the ivory huntress of the skies. Her full round belly was gravid with portent. I felt that all sorts of shattering events were shaping within her, that something alien and terrible and withal glorious was about to be born. CHAPTER III I could hear no sounds of pursuit as yet. I thought back over the past half hour. I still experienced no shred of remorse. The man had deserved to die. He had laid hands on me without provocation. He had been stupid. He had been a _man_. Again that odd emphasis stirred a wonder in my mind, which vanished before I could grip it. I looked about me at what I could discern of the artificial cavern. I felt at home here. Then my memory played me a trick. I thought I had been in this place before, with others of my kind (my kind? what the hell?), and we had squatted thus and hearkened to the hunting cries of great carnivores and of--I grasped too quickly and too consciously for the rest of the thought and it was gone. But I could have sworn that I was going to remember the blood-roaring of a band of men. What the hell, indeed! Had my wild adventure tales got under my skin and turned me lunatic? That idea lasted for about a breath and a half. I knew I was cold sane. So, coldly and sanely, I groped in my memory for whatever experience I had turned up a fragment of. It was dim but it was certainly there, a scene painted in faded oils on dark canvas. I was in a cave with others of my kind, hulking broad-chested shapes in the gloom, and outside rose the howling of our pursuers. I felt the hair bristle on my neck and my forehead creased with rage. Then the lights went on in the geology hall, dispelling the picture.