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 out knowing, with nothing really to alarm them till too late.

"Great stuff," said Keeban again and not to me but to the normals. "We'll make it worth millions yet—millions! We'll get the next bunch and then sell Wall Street the gas—at our own price! Boys, the curtain raiser's over."

For the rabbits had drooped into death. There was not a mark nor a twist on them to show it. Keeban shut off the gas, where he had turned it on; he pulled the cords to open the ceiling.

"Perfectly safe in two minutes," he assured Doris and me. "It's light; the stuff rises."

Doris and I looked at each other. What had been done had been planned of course to break our nerve. I can't say what cracks showed in mine, nor how much satisfaction I was giving them. I can say that what she was supplying them was mighty small.

We had two minutes, one of us or both of us; and she wasn't for wasting them. Nor was I thinking of things far away. I couldn't; and I didn't want to.

I felt my flashes of home; of my mother and my father. I felt flashes of Jerry, as he used to be when he was my brother. To see him here