"You made the screen-vora work," Nick reminded Susan.

She was uncertain. "Water-voras are different. But I'll try."

The moon shadows were too black to permit them to study Klev's chart during the night. Klev slept, with the patience and resignation only age can bring. Once or twice Sue nodded in Nick's arms, but he remained fully awake, thinking.

In the first light of dawn Martian and Earthman studied the diagram together, but it was already hot when Nick turned his back on the original and reproduced it in another patch of sand. Klev checked it and nodded approval.

"Let's go," Nick said, starting to rise.

Klev restrained him and fumbled in the torn folds of his clothing to produce a glowing sphere the size of a marble. It seemed to be a portable form of the glow-plates with which he was familiar.

"Thanks," he said. "Take it easy until we get back—I hope."

The Martian understood the sense though not the actual words.

Then he and Susan dashed across the small expanse of sun-baked rock and squeezed into the passage.

For a while they followed the tunnel through which they had been ejected, but shortly encountered a branching passage they recognized from Klev's map. It spiraled down, narrower and steeper than the main tunnel, and soon it too branched. Once more they took the steeper route. The air grew stagnant but cool.

Most of the way they were forced to stoop or crawl, and three times they encountered sections so constricted that they had to stretch out flat and inch tortuously along. Little by little the air grew humid.

At last they came to an almost level passage where they could walk erect, rounded a turn, and their greenish light no longer was reflected by enclosing walls.

"Nick," Sue whispered. Her voice reverberated hollowly, dying away in distant echoes that seemed incredibly loud. Nick paused with hand on knife to see if they had been overheard.

Finally they tiptoed out along a sloping shelf of rock, out into the great cavern. And then the light shielded in Nick's hand gleamed on a sheet of black, still water. At once both were on their knees, 

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