There had been a distinct chill in the strange surface canyon, but from the moment that the white sunlight began to stream in, there was a definite warming effect. The rays were diffused by the substance above which sealed the cleft, yet the sun was strong while it lasted. Robin felt good as he bathed in its rays. He looked at himself, at Korree, in wonder.

For the clear white light was the first normal lighting he had seen in all the time he had been marooned below. Now he received the first true color visualization of himself and his companion. He saw from his hands that he had become very pale-skinned; all his normal tan had been lost in the cavern worlds. He unpacked the bright, gleaming space helmet and used it as a makeshift mirror. His hair had faded to a light blond, and there were several white hairs now visible, the result presumably of his period of exposure to the unshielded rays of the sun during his passage through space.

In the clear light Korree seemed even more transparent than ever, and indeed Robin could make out the shadowy, pulsating shapes of his internal organs quite clearly—his skeleton standing out sharply. He realized how dim and abnormal the phosphorescence of the caverns had really been.

Reshouldering his pack, they continued up the deep canyon. In a little while, the gray ashy surface gave way to sandy soil and there was a dampness in the air that indicated the presence of one of the deposits of water. Now the familiar Lunar vegetation was making its presence known and before long they were wandering through a very dense thicket of huge ball-trees and plants.

Robin had never seen such a dense jungle growth on the Moon before and he attributed it to the occasional bath of sunlight this one cavern received. It was like a hothouse, a natural one, more or less sealed with a high dampness, natural warmth augmented by screened sunlight.

Soon the two found themselves forcing their way single file through the growth, while Cheeky swung into the tops and made his own way, happy in the sort of thick, warm forest his monkey nature demanded. Robin pushed his way through first, with Korree following in the path the Earthling cleared.

Robin went on through the jungle, struggling in spite of his powerful Earth muscles to push his pack along. After a while he stopped to rest, looked back. He saw behind him only the bruised and broken stalks of the ball-trees he'd passed through. There was no sign of Korree.

Robin stared, but the forest was too thick to allow much vision. He set the pack down, called, "Korree!"

There was no answer. Somewhere in the distance a stalk snapped. Robin called again. Still no answer. He started back a few steps, retracing his path, but there was still no sign of his Glassie friend.

He suddenly felt uneasy. What was going on here? How had his companion vanished? He went back to where he had left his pack, waited, again calling his friend's name. But still there was no answer. There were more crackling noises somewhere in the thick vegetation. Perhaps Korree was in trouble there?

Robin turned in that direction, started to push through the barrier of tree stalks. Suddenly there was a rushing noise, a chorus of shrieks all around, and something heavy fell around him.

He whirled, but something sticky and tight was encircling his body. He caught glimpses of glasslike, one-eyed faces jumping around him, hiding in the branches, shrieking. He struggled again to free himself but the encircling Glassies threw more of the sticky ropes around him, more things like barrel staves that fell and tied him up.

He struggled to use his full strength against them but his arms were pinned to his sides, he was tight amid the stalks and he could not brace himself. Fight as he might, he was caught, and he saw that there were stalk-ropes attached to those that had trapped him and these were being further secured by the creatures around him.

He stopped struggling, quieted. It was obviously no use to waste his strength. Let's see what they intend to do next, he thought.

For a while they did nothing. Then his Glassie captors—he still could see little of them so thick was the jungle—seemed to be working their way together so that all their attached ropes were soon leading off in the same direction. Then they started to pull.

Had Robin chosen to resist it might have become a fruitless tug of war, but he did not. He had decided that his best course was to go along with them. Doubtless they would lead him to their village or at least to an open space where his great Earth strength might then come into better play.

For a while, therefore, he allowed himself to be led through the Moontree forest, dragging himself enough to give his captors a workout. Robin had cagily decided that the more tired they were when they finally arrived, the better for him.

After a time the thicket of plants came to an end and Robin found himself, as he had presumed, at the native settlement. Unlike the ones he had seen in Korree's home cavern, these Glassies were cavemen. They evidently made their homes in a section of this narrow surface-cleft where one of the walls was greatly pocked with holes and openings. The cliff walls were apparently quite like pumice here. Under the circumstances and because of the limited width of the area, it was quite logical that the inhabitants should have made use of these holes.

There were several dozen such cave entrances and Robin could see a fair number of Glassies around them, including women and young ones. His captors, he now saw, numbered about fifteen, all male hunters like Korree. They hustled him along to a central cave, whose entrance was decorated with blue circles, clearly the designation of their chief.

Korree was already there, tied, as was Robin. He looked relieved to see the Earthling, and also a little puzzled at seeing that Robin too was a prisoner.

"They catch me when Robin not looking," he said, explaining the obvious. "I not like these Glassies' ways. I think they mean kill."

Robin looked around at them. "We'll see. Back in my land, we have a saying, 'There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.' I think we will get away. Wait and watch."

Korree immediately showed relief. He had a profound faith in Robin's magical abilities. To him, therefore, Robin's lack of fright was enough evidence that all was really well.

The band gathered before the chief's cave was waiting. Presently a voice came from the cave darkness. It questioned one of the captors, who turned and repeated the query to Korree. Korree answered at length, and his answer in turn was repeated into the cave.

At Robin's query, Korree said that he had just informed the hidden chief that Robin was a great man-beast who would destroy them all if he was not immediately released and placated.

More cave talk and interchange. There was a delay for a while and Robin could faintly hear voices within the cave, as if the chief were discussing the matter with someone else. Then a command was issued. The captors pulled on the ropes and urged Korree and Robin to the door of another cave. They pushed them into this and rolled a large boulder in front of the cave mouth to block their exit.

It was dark inside the cave but not so dark that they could not see that it was about twenty feet long and that there were a number of piles of stuff around, food possibly, or remnants of things. Korree and Robin eased themselves down on the hard floor.

Robin studied the vegetable cords that bound him. He twisted his hands and pulled until he got his elbow up where he could exert pressure. Then he strained against one of the bonds. In a few seconds it parted and broke. In this way he snapped bond after bond until he was free. He was sticky from them, for the stalks had been soaked in some sort of adhesive substance which had made them so effective. But the strength of Earth muscles was more than they had ever held before.

Next Robin went to work on Korree's bonds and broke them off one by one. The two silently stretched their cramped bodies. Korree glanced back at the dark end of the cave and his headlight organ glowed brightly for a moment. Something among the bundles was stirring slightly. Korree said quietly, "Another prisoner or a listener?"

Robin looked. Yes, there was something over there, apparently tied up also. It might be a Glassie prisoner, or it might be some one of his captors trying to spy on them. He shrugged. Let them try. They couldn't understand English.

The two sat down near the entrance, conversed quietly. Korree was of the opinion that the Glassies would eventually kill them in some sort of ceremony. Robin never had found out how different tribes of Glassies acted toward each other. Evidently they did not make war, but neither did they have much contact or exchange. In general, they treated each other like suspicious strangers, avoiding contact whenever possible. But it seemed now that when strangers did force their way into unwelcome tribal caverns, death was the result. This was fairly typical of the most primitive savages on Earth and it was evidently a rule for that level of culture anywhere in the universe.

For a while then they sat silently, thinking about their plight. Robin, somehow, was not too worried. He had become so used to the superiority of his muscles that he felt that he could eventually manage his escape when the time came. The question was, where could he escape to? This particular region was not actually a part of the honeycomb of Luna's interior—it was a cleft sealed in by a trick of volcanic fate on the very surface. Probably it had no other exit than the one which led into it.

Again, escape though he might, could he save Korree too? He thought about it in silence. Korree broke the meditations. "Have hunger. Is food here?"

"There must be some around," said Robin, glancing back at the things in the rear of their prison-cave. The figure back there stirred a bit. And then there was a mumbling sound and a voice said something. The voice was deep and strong, unlike the sound of a Glassie's tongue. But Robin could not understand it. Korree too looked and listened.

"Did you understand him?" Robin asked his companion.

Korree shook his head. Now at the sound of Robin's words occurred the most astonishing surprise that Robin had yet encountered. The unseen speaker spoke again:

"Who is that? Is there someone here who speaks English?"

It was a human voice! It spoke Robin's language, though the intonation and accent were not quite right. Robin and Korree hastened back to the rear of their cave to the reclining figure of the speaker. In the light of Korree's head-stalk, it was indeed a man, an Earth man!

He was lying, tied hand and foot, on a pile of scraps, but he was raising his head, staring at them eagerly. He was a young man, evidently not much older than Robin. His blue eyes looked at them with relief and he smiled widely.

"You are a human! I thought I was dreaming when I heard a voice I could understand. You must be an American ... then the Americans must have beaten us here after all!"

Robin knelt down by the man, worked at his bonds. They were tight, real cord of nylon or some Earth-made substance. It took the combined strength of the two of them to finally open the knots and free the man.

"Who are you?" Robin asked, as he worked. "Do you have a rocket on the surface?"

The man got to his feet, rubbed his muscles. He was dressed in a simple blue one-piece flyer's coverall. He was taller and slimmer than Robin, and his hair was tousled and reddish.

"My name is Piotr Ivanovitch Kareff," he said, bowing with a European gracefulness. "I regret to tell you that my rocket is indeed on the surface—but there it will stay forever. We crashed. But I am so glad to see you. You do not know how glad."

Robin shook hands. "I hate to disappoint you, but I must tell you that we are in the same predicament. I have no rocket here. I was hoping when I heard your voice that you might have one we could go back in."

The other looked confused, shook his head. "No rocket? Oh, that is too bad. Very bad."

The Glassie, who had been watching them without understanding too much of the rapid-fire quality of normal speech, suddenly said, "Have hunger much. Is food here."

He turned his back on the two men, pawed through the scraps on the cave floor, coming up with some of the provisions that Robin had packed with him.

"I'm hungry, also," said the Russian. "They have not fed me since they threw me in here. Is this stuff good to eat?"

"Try it," said Robin and the three sat down and ate. Robin sat munching and stared at the other man. The first human he had seen in almost two years. A real live man! But where did he come from? How did he get here? And how was it he was a prisoner?

For a while after they had finished, they looked at each other. The Russian spoke. "You must have a story to tell me, Robin Carew. How did you say you got here?"

Robin briefly outlined what had happened to him, the other listening attentively. When Robin had finished, he asked, "Now I want to know about you? It's your turn."

"Yes," said Piotr, "I shall tell you."