"I don't know. In a cage somewhere. The only people around there are like these mugs." He nodded toward the ape-man.
"I wonder how long they'll keep us at this."
"I wish I could tell you. How's chances of making a break?"
"Rotten. There was a guy at the next machine tried it three or four work-periods ago. He socked the dopey at the door."
"What happened?"
"They sent a machine down for him and gave him the yellow lights all over. It was fierce, you should have heard him scream."
"How far down are we, anyway?"
"You got me, boy friend. Sssh! Watch the dopey."
Sherman glanced over his shoulder to see the ape-man moving aside from the door and bent back to his work. Evidently something important was imminent, judging from the actions of the sentry and the energetic attention the ex-dancer was giving to her machine. He was not deceived. Down the passage came something moving; something flesh-like and smooth, of a pale, grey-blue, dead-fish color, like a dangling serpent, then a round bulging head and finally the full form of an elephant!
But such an elephant as mortal eye had never before seen. For it stood barely eight feet high and its legs were both longer and infinitely more slender and graceful than the legs of any earthly elephant. The ears were smaller, not loose flaps of skin, but possessed of definite form and pressed close to the head. The skull was enormous, bulging at the forehead, and wrinkled in the middle down over the large intelligent eyes in an expression permanently cross and dissatisfied. As for the trunk it reached nearly to the floor, longer and thinner in proportion than the trunk of an ordinary elephant, and at its tip divided into four finger-like projections set around the circle of the nostril.