The moment that followed lives in my memory as one of lightning action. The very unexpectedness of Jor Dahat's mad attack was all that saved him, for before the massed guards about us could turn their deadly weapons on the plant-man he was upon the dais and the great creature there, whirling across the platform with him in wild conflict. Instantly Sar Than and I had leaped up to his side, glimpsing in that moment a half-dozen great pseudopod arms form suddenly out of the monster with whom the plant-man battled, wrapping themselves around him with swift force. Then, before we two could reach his side, we had been gripped ourselves by the guards on either side of us. [Illustration: "They whirled across the platform in wild conflict."] A moment we struggled madly in the remorseless grip of those powerful arms, then desisted as we saw others of the guards grasp Jor Dahat and pull him down from the dais beside us, wrenching him loose from his hold on his opponent. Then we three faced our captors once more, panting and disheveled, while from the dais the great nebula ruler again surveyed us. I looked for instant death as a result of that wild attack upon him, but whether the creature intended to reserve his revenge for later, or whether there was in that cool and alien mind nothing so human as a desire for revenge, he did not order our deaths at that moment. His body spun again in silent speech, and as it ceased a half-dozen of the guards surrounded us and marched us back down the great hall and into the dim-lit corridor outside. Instead of conducting us back down that corridor toward the giant cavern through which we had come, though, they led us in the opposite direction. A thousand feet or more we were marched, and then the corridor widened, while on either side of us now we made out holes in its floor, round shafts like that down which we had come from above. In the sides of these shafts, though, were no peg ladders, and we saw that the depth of each was only some twenty-five to thirty feet. While we wondered at their purpose our guards suddenly halted us before one of them, and then, taking a flexible little metal ladder from a recess in the wall, lowered it into the metal wall and motioned us to descend. Slowly we clambered down, and when the three of us had reached the well's bottom the ladder was at once drawn up. Then came the rustling sound of the guards above, gliding back down the corridor, except for a single one apparently left to guard us, who moved ceaselessly back and forth above.