Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930

They were men such as the two fliers had never seen before, like humans except that their skins were a light green instead of the normal white and pink. They were dressed in dark short tunics, and kept talking to each other in a tongue quite unintelligible to Norman and Hackett. They came closer, flocking curiously around the two men, with a babel of voices quite meaningless to the two. Then one of the men uttered an exclamation, and all turned. The barred door had swung open and a half-dozen frog-guards entered, followed by two frog-men carrying a square little mechanism from which tubing led back out through the door. "Norman--these men--" Hackett was whispering rapidly. "If there are men in this world too, it may be that--" "Quiet, Hackett--look at what they're doing." The two frog-men had set their mechanism in place and then croaked out a brief word or order. Slowly, reluctantly, one of the green men moved toward them. Quickly they removed a metal disk fastened to his arm, exposing a small orifice like an unhealed wound. Onto this they fastened a suckerlike object from which a transparent tube led back through the mechanism. The machine hummed and at once a red stream pulsed through the tube and back through the mechanism. The man to whom it was attached was growing rapidly pale! Norman, sick with horror, clutched his companion. "Hackett--these frog-men are sucking his blood from him!" "Good God! And look--they're doing it with another!" "All of these men--kept prisoners to furnish them with blood. It must be the damned creatures' food! And we here with the others--"