"Tell me, my queen mother, the story of the gods." "Do you never tire, son, of those ancient legends? But no—let this not seem a reproof. It is well that a prince of the royal line should ponder much on those mighty ones, who came from the sun, where dwells El-Leighi, the source of all, to create a fair world—the world in which some day you will reign. Shall I speak, then, of Solin-Ga-Ling, patron of husbandry and Lord of the North, or would you hear of the gentle Maha-Bar-Astro, sweet goddess w

The rain settled into a steady downpour. Drenched to the marrow, Dave Marlin struggled on through the darkness and mire. At times he stumbled away from the wagon trail and floundered through sodden verdure that tangled his feet, clutched with slimy tendrils at his clothing, or lashed his face. Occasionally he stopped to curse the road, the darkness, the storm; again to heap maledictions on the truck driver who had dumped him off on this byway to nowhere. He should have kept to the paved highway.

A light gleamed feebly through a small window. Closer approach revealed that it was set in a wall which formed the front of a dwelling partly extending back into the cliff. They pressed their faces against the dripping pane. Beside a fireplace in which a few dying embers glowed faintly, a robust man with a flowing beard was nodding over a book. A kerosene lamp flickered on the table beside him. They felt along the wall for a door and rapped. After a moment, it opened. The beard was thrust forwar

Dave Marlin stood on the ledge in the chill air of early morning, looking into the sodden depths below. The rain had ceased, but the rays of the newly risen sun as yet had scarcely found their way into the crater. He turned, shivering, as DuChane sauntered toward him. "What's that thing down below?" "What does it look like?" "Like a huge ball of clay. But the scaffolding and building equipment—these bunkhouses—indicate human handiwork. The old duffer said something about a space ship. This could

They managed to get the cylinder up on the scaffolding and to insert one end in the opening gouged in the outer shell. Slow but steady progress toward penetrating the gummy mass was achieved by imparting a rotary motion to the pipe section. By mid-morning, Marlin had rigged up a crude leverage device of timbers, on the principle of a pipe wrench, which expedited the process of screwing the cylinder into the interior. From time to time it was necessary to shovel out the accumulation of ooze. DuCh

Both hurried to the single window. Where the wagon trail skirted the base of the rocky hillside, a half dozen crouching figures came into view. Armed with rifles and pistols, they were creeping cautiously up the incline. A single shot from above caused some of the group to drop flat. Others dodged into the brush. There was a movement among the lengthening shadows at the left. "What goes on!" demanded Sally. "Gang war?" "They're not shooting at each other," Marlin asserted, after watching the cau

Returning to the others, Marlin found DuChane holding forth in a profane diatribe which included not only McGruder, Link, and Sally, but all their antecedents. "There's nothing to get excited over," Marlin interposed, calmly. "What difference does it make?" "Difference?" DuChane roared. "Has it occurred to you that we've no possible way to get out of here? That ooze must have filled up the opening solidly by now." "But the pipe is still projecting from the outside. Our sheriff friend will probab

He woke with a stifling sense of oppression. In that indefinite period between sleeping and waking, he struggled with a terrified conviction that the whole mass of the enclosing sphere was caving in on him, smothering, crushing his chest, grinding him against the floor. For some minutes, he seemed unable to move. Eventually, his head clearing somewhat, he struggled up, gasping for breath and fighting a surge of nausea. The crushing sensation had been so vivid that it was several minutes before h

In an ordinary group, such an announcement might have brought hysterical outbursts from the women and at least some kind of clamor from the men. Eli's motley guests were either slower of comprehension or else hardened to vicissitudes. McGruder turned a rather ghastly color, murmured "Jees!" and sat down heavily on a packing box. No one else evinced more than bewilderment. "So what?" queried Sally Camino. "Where are we going and how do we get back? Whose bright idea was this anyway?" "Nobody's,"

Curiosity centered for a while upon the outlaw, who was making a slow recovery. She—for after a few days her sex had become general knowledge—kept moodily to herself, having little to do with the other women and regarding the men with suspicion. She gave her real name as Norma Hegstrom. DuChane, by persistent questioning, elicited the additional fact that she had escaped from some institution—possibly a school of correction—and adopted her masquerade on coming West in order to elude the search.

Seemingly least imaginative of them all, it was odd that Link should be the first to crack under the strain. From the time of the disclosure that their hull was slowly corroding under the chemical action of the clay, he had appeared frightened and morose. Once or twice, as Marlin approached him on isolated portions of the superstructure, he slunk away in a peculiar manner. One day—for they still called their alternation of sleeping and waking periods a "day"—he failed to show up for meals. When

McGruder, who as a rule evinced little interest in matters beyond eating, sleeping, and following the feminine members of the party with pig-like, calculating eyes, was the one who made the discovery. He had climbed to the observation scaffold and peeped idly through the periscope. His yell of dismay reverberated through the interior of the vessel. "We're gonna hit the moon!" he shouted, as the others scrambled into view. Marlin gained the platform. "What's the idea!" he demanded sharply. "We ar

For the most part, the vessel had proceeded without producing any sense of motion. A violent shift would have dislodged everything loose in the shell—the scaffolding, ladders, the temporarily secured electric lights—and yet there had been nothing of the sort. Once in a while, they felt a trembling jar. This probably was caused by the impact of a meteorite. But thus far, no such bodies had pierced the heavy insulation of resistant clay. There was now, however, quite definite indication that they

Marlin regretted afterward that he had not attempted to offer Norma some antidote for her moody thoughts on her visit to his observation point. He might have tried to put in words his own fatalistic point of view. Possibly it would have helped to sustain her. If only he had been less preoccupied— But it was useless to regret, when they found the girl stretched out on her sleeping pallet with eyes rigidly staring upward. They gathered in silence around the inert form. Death had been their constan

Marlin woke with a smothering sensation and a foreboding. Fumbling for his flashlight, he sought the others. Maw Barstow was snoring stertoriously in her cubbyhole. Pearl, who should have occupied the pallet next to her, was gone. Sally, pale from the retching she had endured, was sleeping fitfully. In the storeroom, he found DuChane, lying in a stupor beside an empty bottle. There were several empties, in fact. DuChane and McGruder must have returned to make a night of it. But McGruder was nowh

From a narrow strip of shore that fringed a murky sea, sheer cliffs rose—black, beetling, forbidding. In one direction the rampart lost itself in the haze of a bleak horizon; in the other it merged into a rocky but sloping ascent. The sea itself was of a muddy hue, reflecting feebly the rays of a sun which seemed to begrudge what little warmth it spared. The sky, gray though nearly cloudless, seemed overcast with a dusty haze. Where the sea washed into a narrow inlet at the foot of the last grea

They wandered down the coastline, the two together faring better in the hunt for small game and edible growths than either had succeeded in doing alone. Whenever he found a scattering of the baked clay fragments, or even isolated lumps, Marlin made it a point to carry them down to the water's edge, where in due course they would add to the life of the planet. It would be splendid to locate some larger pieces. There might be something to those stories of goats and sheep trapped by the ooze. A dog

Marlin regained consciousness in the camp. He was stiff and weak and sick with the pain of his ankle. DuChane and the girl stood over him. "Sorry, old man," DuChane said regretfully. "You put up a good fight, but I had the advantage." Marlin made no reply. But in the days that followed, while slowly regaining his strength, he observed the pair. It was clear that he was definitely out of the picture. The girl, Norma, taciturn as ever, nevertheless followed DuChane with her eyes and seemed to dwel

Morning found Marlin many miles down the coast and still feverishly pushing on. Too bad he couldn't have left some word for Sally; but she'd probably understand. His failing to show up for breakfast would be the tipoff. She'd realize that he must have decided that he couldn't do this thing. In the long run, she'd be glad that the father of her children still had the responsibility of caring for them. What if he did beat her occasionally? Recollection of the fight they'd staged last evening recur