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Footsteps slithered across the floor. The woman-form bent over the farthest couch. With one skeleton hand she bared an arm of the corpselike figure; the other hand lifted–metal glinted in it and plunged into the unshrinking limb! A slow movement of the bony fingers and the threadlike, silvery thing was withdrawn. She stared ghoulishly–and the man, too, gazed tensely at her victim. A long quiver ran through the recumbent shape, another. The death’s-head on the pallet moved slightly–and merciful blackness welled up in Allan’s brain….

* * * * *

A cool liquid was in his mouth. He swallowed instinctively, and warmth ran through his veins. He felt strength flooding back into him–and he remembered horror.

“That’s better,” a mellow voice said, close above him. “Drink just a little more.” The cool liquid came up against Allan’s lips again, pungent, and he drank. Once more strength surged warmingly within him. “That’s a good fellow. A little more now.”

Fingers were on Allan’s wrist, life-warm. There was friendliness in the voice that was speaking to him, and solicitude. He dared to look.

A skull-like head was right before him. But seen thus closely, the terror of it was lessened. Fleshless indeed it was. But a parchment skin was tightly drawn over the bones, and Allan could see that its true shade was a sere yellow. It was the bluish light that had given it the green of decay. The deep-sunk eyes were kindly; they gleamed with pleasure as Allan’s opened; and the voice asked:

“How do you feel?”

Allan made shift to reply, though a strange lassitude still enervated him, and his mouth was full of tongue. “Much better, thank you. But who–who…?”

With a sudden access of energy Allan sat up on his couch. He looked about him, and his fears were back full flood.

He was in a chamber with neither door nor window–floor, walls, and arched ceiling entirely formed of the palely lustrous, glasslike substance. The room was perhaps twenty by forty feet, its ceiling curving to about five yards from the floor at its highest point, and the spectral blue glow that filled it was apparently sourceless. It lit three vacant couches to his left. To his right were the four he had already seen. The woman was ministering to the occupants of these–living skeletons that lay flaccid, but whose heads were moving, barely moving from side to side. Like nothing else but a sepulcher the place seemed, a tomb in which the dead had come to life!

* * * * *

Allan clutched at Anthony’s arm, grasped textured fabric that was cold to his frantic touch, and thin bone beneath. “In Heaven’s name,” he mouthed, “tell me what sort of place this is before–” He stopped, appalled by a sudden thought. Perhaps he was insane, this seeming tomb really some hospital ward transformed by his crazed brain. A wave of weakness overcame him, and he fell back.

“Careful,” the other spoke soothingly, “you must give the plasma time to act or you may harm yourself.”

If Allan shut out sight with his eyelids, and listened only to the resonance of Anthony’s voice, he could hold his slipping grip on reason. He felt that the cloth of his robe was metal, fine spun and woven. That was strangely reassuring.

“How long do you think you have slept?”

“How long?” Dane murmured. Something told him that he had been unconscious for a long time. “A week?”

Anthony sighed. “No. Longer than that, much longer.” There was reluctance in his tone. “You have lain here for twenty years.”

Allan’s eyes flew open, and he stared up into the speaker’s face. Twenty years! Somehow it did not occur to him to disbelieve this astounding statement. He struggled hard to realize its implication. Two decades had passed since last he remembered. He had been a youth then. Now he was forty-four.