eyes. He lay staring, puzzled, with a blurred scene resolving into outlines that he could distinguish, but not understand. He was lying on his back, gazing upward at what seemed a vaulted, shining metal ceiling close over his head. It was sharply curved, two or three feet above him, as though now he were lying in a shining, glowing vault. With returning strength he tried to sit up, but could not. And then he realized that he was shackled. He could see what looked like finely woven, white metallic ropes. They wrapped his arms and legs together.

The waterfall was partly the roaring of weakness in his head; but that seemed subsiding now and there was only a faintly throbbing hum somewhere near him. A hum like a dynamo, or at least some sort of mechanism. Turning his head, he saw that on one side of him the concave metal wall had a row of small bullseye windows. They were spaced about a foot apart, each the size of his fist. And in each of them there was the vision of a black abyss of sky, with white blazing stars.

Again he tried to sit up. He could bend a little at the waist, and he was able to get one elbow under him and his head up so that it was nearly to the ribbed ceiling. At once, from the other side of him, away from the bullseye windows, there was a faint, hurried scurrying of little footsteps.

A voice said, "Careful, giant!"

And another voice said, "Will he hear us, Tork?" It was a softer voice. Less harsh. English! But queerly slurred, carefully spoken. And the voices were tiny, strangely thin, of a pitch totally different from anything Nixon ever had heard.

"Tork, will he hear us? He is recovered now. Will he hear us? Oh, Tork, what will he try to do?" The English words drifted off into a language totally strange, unintelligible.

Nixon saw the two little figures. One was taller, wider than the other; the big one six inches, the other at least an inch less. They were standing on the white metal of the floor, down by his thigh. And now he realized that he was stretched out in the small interior of a metal cylinder, lying on a floor that crossed the middle of it, so that he was stretched the length of its top half. It was about a ten-foot length, and six feet wide. It left a space beside him. Little metal railings a few inches high ran along the floor, dividing it into tiny enclosures. A mechanism room; another where supplies seemed to be stored; another which had what seemed furniture in it. All in miniature. All peopled with tiny figures that had stopped their 

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