The lower portion, he noted, was in the main flat, though a number of wartish protuberances jutted down from it, ejecting a pale violet emanation. Whatever this was it seemed to have the effect of holding the thing motionless in the air, for it hovered there quite easily, a hundred yards or so above the ground.
But what was it? Where was it from? What had brought it?
Those were the questions he wanted answered; and they were to be, sooner than he knew.
As he stood there speculating, a device like a trap-door opened in the base of the disc, and creatures resembling human beings began descending. Began floating down, rather.
Whereupon Kendrick did what any sensible man would have done, under similar circumstances. He reacted into motion. In short, he ran.
lancing back over his shoulder after a minute or two, however, he drew up sheepishly. Of that strange apparition and those who had descended from it there was not a trace, not a shadow!
But the peculiar humming had recommenced, he realized in the next breath—and at the same instant he felt himself seized by invisible hands.
There was a struggle, but it was brief and futile. When it was over his captors became visible once more. They were singular little beings about four feet tall, with strange, wise, leathery faces, their heads grotesquely bald.