Then someone had suddenly swung down past me from above, and I glanced down to glimpse in the dim light from above Sar Than, swinging swiftly down past me and hanging by one of his powerful limbs while with the other three he grasped the creature below me. Instantly the latter's grip on my feet relaxed, there was an instant of swift scuffling below me, and then I glimpsed the shapeless body of the nebula-creature forced from its hold on the pegs, hurtling down into the darkness to strike the floor far below with a smacking thud. The next instant Sar Than was up to me and was pulling me up until I again clung safely to the pegs. Only the Arcturian, with his four strange limbs, could ever have successfully battled the nebula-creature thus on that giddy ladder of pegs. But now we were again clambering up, calling on all our strength to bear us on, watching the little circle of dim light above broadening as we climbed up toward it. Below us, we knew, the alarm had been given, and within a few minutes now a horde of the nebula-creatures would be rushing up the shaft. And but minutes were left for us to act in, so that we put every effort into a mad burst of speed that within a few more minutes had brought us up to the shaft's mouth. * * * * * Jor Dahat, above us, was the first to reach its level, and I saw the plant-man raise his head and peer cautiously forth, then beckon us upward. Silently, stealthily, we climbed up, crept over the shaft's edge until we crouched on the smooth metal floor. The scene about us was the same as before, the vast, metal-walled pit, the massed machines around us, the great cylinder at the clearing's center from which arose the livid ray, the long shape of our battered cruiser lying beyond it. A half-dozen of the nebula-creatures were gathered near the great cylinder, and we saw their bodies twisting in their silent speech, but their strange eyes were not turned in our direction. In a moment Jor Dahat crept silently to one side, where lay a mass of tools, and came back with three heavy, axlike implements of metal in his grasp, long-handled and broad-bladed. Silently he handed one of these to each of us, and then without words we crawled silently toward the gathered nebula-creatures, on hands and knees. Inch by inch, foot by foot, we crept toward them. I looked up, once, saw the glowing fires of the nebula far above us, knew that within minutes those fires would be flying out through our universe in flaming destruction unless we could act. My grip tightened on my weapon as we crawled on through the shadowy dusk, and then suddenly one of the creatures before us had turned and was gazing straight toward us.