other one tried to run, but he didn't get far.

Harry was breathing hard. He grinned at me. "You okay?" he said.

"I'll have a shoulder that's sore as hell for a while," I said, "but let's go."

A dozen passageways led from the main one. "Where do we look first?" Harry wanted to know.

"We'd better split up. That way we can cover more territory."

"I don't like to leave you alone with that bum shoulder."

"Forget it. If there were any more around, they've cleared out by now. Get going."

I had a pocket light that I used in the darkest passages. Most of the cloisters and compartments were empty, and didn't look as though they'd been used in years.

At the end of one passageway I found the rooms of the priests, very sparsely furnished, and from there I got a glimpse from a narrow ventilation slit at the garden itself. The colored mists and the weird trees. But no animate being was moving out there.

In the last room, the door was barred with a crude, vertical bolt. I blasted off the bar, and opened the door. Behind it I found Sukey Jones.

She stood there looking scared, and not believing that it was really me. Her eyes were big as dollars.

And when she was sure, the way she threw herself at me and hugged me, it was embarrassing.

"Chuck, Chuck! I never thought I'd see you again. I never—I'm so—!" And that was all I got out of her for the next couple of minutes. I gave her my handkerchief to dab at her eyes, and I got the story at last.

She had been there two days without food and water, locked in.

They had arrived a week ago, and during that time she had seen nothing except the interior of this room.

Althea Campbell had heard rumors of the rainbow gardens, and that the natives, by bathing in the radiation given off by the colored mists, were able to restore youth and vigor for long periods of time. She had seen the chance of restoring her own body to its youthful bloom and of working the miracle that she had sought for so many years on half a 

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