Something halted him in the act. He felt a strange numbness wrap itself about him, and a cold like nothing he had ever experienced penetrated to his very vitals. Then he felt himself falling, as if through an endless blackness....
The darkness faded, slowly. He felt his feet jar on solid ground, and the terrible cold left him. But for long moments Frank Hammond stood rigid, his dazed mind trying to accept the strange world he had fallen into.
The landscape about him was maroon in color. Irregular ridges and gullies of apparently molten stone hemmed him in. Off to his left he could see a huge, bubbly pit that reminded him of fumaroles he had seen in the National Yellowstone Park. Far in the distance, to his right and left, maroon cliffs towered into blue mists.
Hammond stared at the weird scene. Under him he could feel the slow rise and sway of the entire land, as if it were unstable, rocking in space!
For the first few moments Hammond thought he was dreaming. He must have been rendered unconscious by the strange "thing" on the boat. Soon he would awaken—
But the slightly swaying maroon landscape persisted. Hammond looked down at his nearly naked, bronzed body. He hadn't changed. He took a few tentative steps toward the bubbly pit, and the sudden realization that all this was real sickened him.
Where was he? What had happened to him and Storm?
A harsh, metallic rattle answered him. Hammond whirled. Topping one of the far ridges appeared an eight-legged monster of gigantic size. It was without head or tail. Its unsegmented body was an iridescent blue, and shaped like a giant pumpkin seed.
The thing flashed menacingly in the bright light of a sun that was but a huge blur in the misty sky. It headed for Hammond with incredible speed, a huge foreleg stretching out in readiness.