It was then that Turan discovered that his weapons had been removed-short-sword, long-sword, dagger, and pistol. Snatching his arm away he reached for his short-sword, while the rat, growling, sought to seize his arm again. The lights were on again and in their glow there was revealed to the man the figure of a giant Martian rat crouching upon the table and gnawing upon his arm.
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The effects of the gas departed as rapidly as they had overcome him so that as he opened his eyes he was in full possession of all his faculties. When Turan the panthan regained consciousness it was to the realization of a sharp pain in one of his forearms.
Then they unlocked and opened all the doors and departed. On the table before him they set food and water and upon the opposite end of the table they laid the key to the fetter. Next they dragged the long table to a new position and there bolted it to the floor so that an end, instead of the middle, was directly before the prisoner. First they removed all his weapons and then, snapping a fetter about one of the rykor’s ankles, secured him to the end of one of the chains hanging from the walls. They approached him rapidly and worked quickly. He had not long to wait before the lights were flashed on and one of the locked doors opened to admit a half-dozen warriors. Then he released his contact with its spinal cord but remained in position upon its shoulders, waiting and watching, for the kaldane’s curiosity was aroused. Ghek caused the rykor to assume a sitting position with its back against the wall where it might remain without direction from his brain. So long as the excess of carbon dioxide in the blood was not sufficient to prevent heart action, the rykor would suffer only a diminution of vitality but would still respond to the exciting agency of the kaldane’s brain. Deprived of air it would die but if only a sufficient amount of the gas was introduced to stupefy an ordinary creature it would have no effect upon the rykor, who had no objective mind to overcome. Let them replace all the air in the chamber with their most deadly fumes it would be all the same to Ghek, the kaldane, who, having no lungs, required no air. Presently he detected a change in the air about him-it grew heavy with a strange odor, and once again might Ghek have smiled, could he have smiled. He watched the dark openings of the holes in the floor and waited. If Ghek could have smiled he would have then, for Ghek could see as well in the dark as in the light-better, perhaps. Ghek sat down upon the bench and waited in silence, listening. These, alone, of the several things he saw, interested him. At the base of the walls were several holes in the dirt floor. Here he found a bench and a table standing upon the dirt floor near the wall, and set in the wall several rings from which depended short lengths of chain. WHILE Tara of Helium was being led to The Towers of Jetan, Ghek was escorted to the pits beneath the palace where he was imprisoned in a dimly-lighted chamber.
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