AS WE DESCENDED THE BROAD STAIRCASE WHICH led to the mainavenue of Phutra I caught my first sight of the dominantrace of the inner world. Involuntarily I shrank backas one of the creatures approached to inspect us.A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine.The all-powerful Mahars of Pellucidar are great reptiles,some six or eight feet in length, with long narrow headsand great round eyes. Their beak-like mouths are linedwith sharp, white fangs, and the backs of their huge,lizard bodies are serrated into bony ridges from theirnecks to the end of their long tails. Their feet areequipped with three webbed toes, while from the fore feetmembranous wings, which are attached to their bodies justin front of the hind legs, protrude at an angle of 45degrees toward the rear, ending in sharp points severalfeet above their bodies.

I glanced at Perry as the thing passed me to inspect him.The old man was gazing at the horrid creature with wideastonished eyes. When it passed on, he turned to me.

"A rhamphorhynchus of the Middle Olitic, David," he said,"but, gad, how enormous! The largest remains we everhave discovered have never indicated a size greater thanthat attained by an ordinary crow."

As we continued on through the main avenue of Phutra wesaw many thousand of the creatures coming and going upontheir daily duties. They paid but little attention to us.Phutra is laid out underground with a regularity thatindicates remarkable engineering skill. It is hewn fromsolid limestone strata. The streets are broad and of auniform height of twenty feet. At intervals tubes piercethe roof of this underground city, and by means of lensesand reflectors transmit the sunlight, softened and diffused,to dispel what would otherwise be Cimmerian darkness.In like manner air is introduced.

Perry and I were taken, with Ghak, to a large public building,where one of the Sagoths who had formed our guard explainedto a Maharan official the circumstances surrounding our capture.The method of communication between these two was remarkablein that no spoken words were exchanged. They employeda species of sign language. As I was to learn later,the Mahars have no ears, not any spoken language.Among themselves they communicate by means of what Perrysays must be a sixth sense which is cognizant of a fourthdimension.

I never did quite grasp him, though he endeavored to explainit to me upon numerous occasions. I suggested telepathy,but he said no, that it was not telepathy since they couldonly communicate when in each others' presence, nor couldthey talk with the Sagoths or the other inhabitantsof Pellucidar by the same method they used to conversewith one another.

"What they do," said Perry, "is to project their thoughtsinto the fourth dimension, when they become appreciableto the sixth sense of their listener. Do I make myselfquite clear?"

"You do not, Perry," I replied. He shook his headin despair, and returned to his work. They had set usto carrying a great accumulation of Maharan literaturefrom one apartment to another, and there arranging itupon shelves. I suggested to Perry that we were in thepublic library of Phutra, but later, as he commencedto discover the key to their written language, he assuredme that we were handling the ancient archives of the race.

During this period my thoughts were continually uponDian the Beautiful. I was, of course, glad that she hadescaped the Mahars, and the fate that had been suggestedby the Sagoth who had threatened to purchase her upon ourarrival at Phutra. I often wondered if the little partyof fugitives had been overtaken by the guards who had returnedto search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure but that Ishould have been more contented to know that Dian was herein Phutra, than to think of her at the mercy of Hoojathe Sly One. Ghak, Perry, and I often talked togetherof possible escape, but the Sarian was so steeped in hislifelong belief that no one could escape from the Maharsexcept by a miracle, that he was not much aid to us--hisattitude was of one who waits for the miracle to come to him.

At my suggestion Perry and I fashioned some swords of scrapsof iron which we discovered among some rubbish in the cellswhere we slept, for we were permitted almost unrestrainedfreedom of action within the limits of the building to whichwe had been assigned. So great were the number of slaveswho waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that none of uswas apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our mastersunkind to us.

We hid our new weapons beneath the skins which formedour beds, and then Perry conceived the idea of making bowsand arrows--weapons apparently unknown within Pellucidar.Next came shields; but these I found it easier to stealfrom the walls of the outer guardroom of the building.

We had completed these arrangements for our protectionafter leaving Phutra when the Sagoths who had been sentto recapture the escaped prisoners returned with fourof them, of whom Hooja was one. Dian and two othershad eluded them. It so happened that Hooja was confinedin the same building with us. He told Ghak that he hadnot seen Dian or the others after releasing them withinthe dark grotto. What had become of them he had notthe faintest conception--they might be wandering yet,lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not deadfrom starvation.

I was now still further apprehensive as to the fateof Dian, and at this time, I imagine, came the firstrealization that my affection for the girl might beprompted by more than friendship. During my wakinghours she was constantly the subject of my thoughts,and when I slept her dear face haunted my dreams.More than ever was I determined to escape the Mahars.

"Perry, " I confided to the old man, "if I have to searchevery inch of this diminutive world I am going to findDian the Beautiful and right the wrong I unintentionallydid her." That was the excuse I made for Perry's benefit.

"Diminutive world!" he scoffed. "You don't know what youare talking about, my boy," and then he showed me a mapof Pellucidar which he had recently discovered amongthe manuscript he was arranging.

"Look," he cried, pointing to it, "this is evidently water,and all this land. Do you notice the general configurationof the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust,is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean followthe general lines of the continents of the outer world.

"We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness;then the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles,and the superficial area 165,480,000 square miles.Three-fourths of this is land. Think of it! A land areaof 124,110,000 square miles! Our own world containsbut 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of itssurface being covered by water. Just as we often comparenations by their relative land areas, so if we comparethese two worlds in the same way we have the strangeanomaly of a larger world within a smaller one!

"Where within vast Pellucidar would you search for yourDian? Without stars, or moon, or changing sun how couldyou find her even though you knew where she might be found?"

The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away;but I found that it left me all the more determinedto attempt it.

"If Ghak will accompany us we may be able to do it,"I suggested.

Perry and I sought him out and put the question straightto him.

"Ghak," I said, "we are determined to escape fromthis bondage. Will you accompany us?"

"They will set the thipdars upon us," he said, "and thenwe shall be killed; but--" he hesitated--"I would takethe chance if I thought that I might possibly escapeand return to my own people."

"Could you find your way back to your own land?" asked Perry."And could you aid David in his search for Dian?"

"Yes."

"But how," persisted Perry, "could you travel to strangecountry without heavenly bodies or a compass to guide you?"

Ghak didn't know what Perry meant by heavenly bodiesor a compass, but he assured us that you might blindfoldany man of Pellucidar and carry him to the farthermostcorner of the world, yet he would be able to come directlyto his own home again by the shortest route. He seemedsurprised to think that we found anything wonderful in it.Perry said it must be some sort of homing instinct suchas is possessed by certain breeds of earthly pigeons.I didn't know, of course, but it gave me an idea.

"Then Dian could have found her way directly to herown people?" I asked.

"Surely," replied Ghak, "unless some mighty beast of preykilled her."

I was for making the attempted escape at once, but both Perryand Ghak counseled waiting for some propitious accidentwhich would insure us some small degree of success.I didn't see what accident could befall a whole communityin a land of perpetual daylight where the inhabitants hadno fixed habits of sleep. Why, I am sure that some of theMahars never sleep, while others may, at long intervals,crawl into the dark recesses beneath their dwellings andcurl up in protracted slumber. Perry says that if a Maharstays awake for three years he will make up all his lostsleep in a long year's snooze. That may be all true, but Inever saw but three of them asleep, and it was the sightof these three that gave me a suggestion for our means of escape.

I had been searching about far below the levels that weslaves were supposed to frequent--possibly fifty feetbeneath the main floor of the building--among a networkof corridors and apartments, when I came suddenly uponthree Mahars curled up upon a bed of skins. At first Ithought they were dead, but later their regular breathingconvinced me of my error. Like a flash the thoughtcame to me of the marvelous opportunity these sleepingreptiles offered as a means of eluding the watchfulnessof our captors and the Sagoth guards.

Hastening back to Perry where he pored over a musty pile of,to me, meaningless hieroglyphics, I explained my plan to him.To my surprise he was horrified.

"It would be murder, David," he cried.

"Murder to kill a reptilian monster?" I asked in astonishment.

"Here they are not monsters, David," he replied."Here they are the dominant race--we are the 'monsters'--thelower orders. In Pellucidar evolution has progressedalong different lines than upon the outer earth.These terrible convulsions of nature time and time againwiped out the existing species--but for this fact somemonster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today uponour own world. We see here what might well have occurredin our own history had conditions been what they have been here.

"Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust.Here man has but reached a stage analogous to the StoneAge of our own world's history, but for countless millionsof years these reptiles have been progressing. Possibly itis the sixth sense which I am sure they possess that hasgiven them an advantage over the other and more frightfullyarmed of their fellows; but this we may never know.They look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields,and I learn from their written records that other racesof Mahars feed upon men--they keep them in great droves,as we keep cattle. They breed them most carefully,and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them."

I shuddered.

"What is there horrible about it, David?" the old man asked."They understand us no better than we understandthe lower animals of our own world. Why, I have comeacross here very learned discussions of the questionas to whether gilaks, that is men, have any meansof communication. One writer claims that we do not evenreason--that our every act is mechanical, or instinctive.The dominant race of Pellucidar, David, have not yetlearned that men converse among themselves, or reason.Because we do not converse as they do it is beyond themto imagine that we converse at all. It is thus that wereason in relation to the brutes of our own world.They know that the Sagoths have a spoken language,but they cannot comprehend it, or how it manifests itself,since they have no auditory apparatus. They believethat the motions of the lips alone convey the meaning.That the Sagoths can communicate with us is incomprehensibleto them.

"Yes, David," he concluded, "it would entail murderto carry out your plan."

"Very well then, Perry." I replied. "I shall becomea murderer."

He got me to go over the plan again most carefully,and for some reason which was not at the time clear to meinsisted upon a very careful description of the apartmentsand corridors I had just explored.

"I wonder, David," he said at length, "as you are determinedto carry out your wild scheme, if we could not accomplishsomething of very real and lasting benefit for the humanrace of Pellucidar at the same time. Listen, I havelearned much of a most surprising nature from thesearchives of the Mahars. That you may not appreciatemy plan I shall briefly outline the history of the race.

"Once the males were all-powerful, but ages ago the females,little by little, assumed the mastery. For other agesno noticeable change took place in the race of Mahars.It continued to progress under the intelligent andbeneficent rule of the ladies. Science took vast strides.This was especially true of the sciences which we knowas biology and eugenics. Finally a certain femalescientist announced the fact that she had discovereda method whereby eggs might be fertilized by chemicalmeans after they were laid--all true reptiles, you know,are hatched from eggs.

"What happened? Immediately the necessity for males ceasedto exist--the race was no longer dependent upon them.More ages elapsed until at the present time we find a raceconsisting exclusively of females. But here is the point.The secret of this chemical formula is kept by a singlerace of Mahars. It is in the city of Phutra, and unless Iam greatly in error I judge from your description of thevaults through which you passed today that it lies hiddenin the cellar of this building.

"For two reasons they hide it away and guard it jealously.First, because upon it depends the very life of the raceof Mahars, and second, owing to the fact that when itwas public property as at first so many were experimentingwith it that the danger of over-population became very grave.

"David, if we can escape, and at the same time take withus this great secret what will we not have accomplishedfor the human race within Pellucidar!" The very thoughtof it fairly overpowered me. Why, we two would be themeans of placing the men of the inner world in theirrightful place among created things. Only the Sagothswould then stand between them and absolute supremacy,and I was not quite sure but that the Sagoths owed alltheir power to the greater intelligence of the Mahars--Icould not believe that these gorilla-like beastswere the mental superiors of the human race of Pellucidar.

"Why, Perry," I exclaimed, "you and I may reclaima whole world! Together we can lead the races of menout of the darkness of ignorance into the light ofadvancement and civilization. At one step we may carrythem from the Age of Stone to the twentieth century.It's marvelous--absolutely marvelous just to think about it."

"David," said the old man, "I believe that God sent ushere for just that purpose--it shall be my life workto teach them His word--to lead them into the lightof His mercy while we are training their hearts and handsin the ways of culture and civilization."

"You are right, Perry," I said, "and while you are teachingthem to pray I'll be teaching them to fight, and betweenus we'll make a race of men that will be an honor to us both."

Ghak had entered the apartment some time before weconcluded our conversation, and now he wanted to knowwhat we were so excited about. Perry thought we had bestnot tell him too much, and so I only explained that Ihad a plan for escape. When I had outlined it to him,he seemed about as horror-struck as Perry had been;but for a different reason. The Hairy One only consideredthe horrible fate that would be ours were we discovered;but at last I prevailed upon him to accept my plan asthe only feasible one, and when I had assured him that Iwould take all the responsibility for it were we captured,he accorded a reluctant assent.