"Good! I have been waiting a long time for them to put someone in the next cell. Some of the stones are loose. I will come in."
There was a soft rattle of falling mortar, and a scrape of sliding stones. Gerry saw the head and shoulders of a man thrust through the opening, and then the man crawled laboriously into the cell.
"Who are you?" he whispered. "Your accent is not like that of the Green Men of Giri. Wait, I have a light here."
A small flashlight clicked on. Its beam pointed up into Gerry's face. Then the man gasped.
"Good Lord!" he whispered. "It ... it's Gerry Norton!"
Then the man swung the light so that it swung on himself. Gerry saw a tall, gaunt man in the tattered remains of a blue and silver uniform. It was Major Walter Lansing, once of the Interplanetary Fleet, who had commanded the ill-fated Stardust when she set out on her voyage into space!
"Norton!" he gasped in a hoarse whisper. "Man, I never expected to see anyone from Earth again!"
"We thought you were dead."
"I might as well be!" Lansing said grimly. "But tell me how you come to be here."
As they squatted there in the darkened cell, Gerry whispered the story of the Viking's expedition and of his own capture. Lansing told him how the Stardust had been wrecked on the rim of the mountains when landing, and how the Scaly Ones had captured all the crew.