Hopelessly he stepped in, and the door slid up and shut behind him, while in a moment the bolts clanged shut outside. Rowan turned slowly around, then stood rigid. Across the room from him a single figure was staring at him, and as his eyes took in that figure a cry broke from him:
"Morton!"
5
A single moment the other stared at him, unspeaking, a haggard, unshaven figure utterly different from the trim little scientist Rowan remembered, and then he came across the room, hands outstretched.
"Rowan!" he cried, hoarsely. "Good God, you here, Rowan!" Then his thoughts shifted, lightning-like. "They've gone out, Rowan?" he asked. "These things—these creatures—they've started their attack?"
"Yes," said the assistant. "Over Brinton, hours ago. I came—when you disappeared there in the swamp." Swiftly he spoke of the attack on Brinton, of his own crazed flight into the swamp, his own trip down the shaft and capture, and when he had finished Morton was silent, his face a mask. When at last he spoke it was in a whisper.
"They've started," he whispered. "Over Brinton—and over all earth, now. And I who might have warned, captured——"
"You were captured by them there in the swamp?" asked Rowan, quickly, and the other inclined his head.
"Taken there by them, without a chance to escape. And taken down here....