S
mithy had been dozing. The shrill whistle of a high-pitched siren brought him fully awake in an instant. Culver, too, sprang alertly to his feet. Both men knew the signal was the call to quarters.
They had spread blankets on the floor of the fire-control room. Culver immediately folded his into a compact bundle, and Smithy followed suit, as he said: "That's right; we don't want any feather beds flying around here in case of a mix-up."
Even Culver's simple act of stowing the blankets back in their little compartment thrilled him with what it portended. His nerves were suddenly aquiver with anticipation. A real fight! A determined effort! No telling what these big dreadnoughts could do. Two hundred, big and little, Captain Farrell had said. If they could catch the enemy out in the open, show him up in a blaze of enormous flares....
Captain Farrell was calling them. A section of the floor had been raised up mysteriously to form a platform beneath the shallow dome of the conning tower. Farrell was there, headphones clamped to his ears, one hand on the little switchboard at the base of the glass dome that kept him in touch with every station on the ship. Beside him was the fire-control officer similarly equipped, though his headphone was connected only with the gun crews.
T
he enemy's out!" said Captain Farrell. "And not just where they were expected—they're raising fourteen kinds of hell. The ships have been ordered in. I'm hooked up with the radio room now. They're less than a hundred miles ahead. Of course we won't mix in on it, but I thought it best to have my men standing by."
He pressed a little lever on his switchboard and spoke into the mouthpiece of his head-set. "Pilot room? Our two passengers, Colonel Culver and Mr. Smith, are coming forward. Let them see whatever they can of the show."
He gave the two a quick smile and a nod and waved them forward with the binoculars in his free hand. "It will be 'lights out' after you get there. We'll be flying dark except for wing and tail lights up on top. The enemy's movements are uncertain; perhaps he can see us anyway, but we won't advertise ourselves to him."
The ship's bow was a blunt, rounded nose of glass, cut by cross bars of aluminum alloy. That deeper central portion of the big flying wing was carried ten feet forward; it was but one of many details that Smithy had looked at with interest when he had seen the ship waiting for them on the field.
T
he pilot room was dark when they entered. Only the glow from the instrument panel showed the two men who were seated behind the wheel controls. One of them turned and nodded a welcome.
"Can't offer you gentlemen seats," he said, "but if you'll stand right here behind us you can see the whole works." He did not wait for a reply, but turned back toward the black night ahead.
Smithy glanced past him at the lighted instruments and found the altimeter. Twelve thousand—yes, there was nasty country hereabouts. Then he, too, stared out into the dark at the sky sprinkled with stars, at the vague blur of an unlighted world far below, and off at either side and behind them the quivering lines of cold light where starlight was reflected dimly from the spinning propellers.
Other wing lights winked out as he watched, and he knew that from that moment on, they were invisible from below—invisible to human eyes at least—that they were sweeping on through the darkness like some gargantuan night bird pursuing its prey.
"Flares ahead, sir," one of the pilots had spoken into the mouthpiece of his telephone, spoken lightly, reporting back to Captain Farrell. The words whipped Smithy's head about, and he, too, saw on a distant horizon, the beginning of a white glare.
They were fighting there—two hundred planes roaring downward, one formation following another. In his mind he was seeing it so plainly.
The white blaze of light dead ahead grew broader. It had not been as far distant as he had first thought, and the scene that he had pictured came swiftly to reality.
T
heir own ship was still at the twelve-thousand-foot level. Ahead, and five thousand feet below, tiny lights, red and white and green, lights whose swift motion made their hundreds seem like thousands instead, were weaving intricate patterns in the night. The flying lights of the fighting planes were on for the planes' own protection; and, too, no further concealment was possible in the glare that shone upward from below.
Settling downward were balls of blinding fire, flares dropped by the squadron of scout planes that had torn through in advance. They lighted brilliantly a valley which, a few hours before, had been one of many like it—square fields, dark green with the foliage of fruit trees, straight lines of crossing roads, houses, and off in the distance a little city.
And now the valley was an inferno of spouting flame. That city was a vast, roaring furnace under smoke clouds of mingled blood-red and black. The valley floor was a place of desolation, of drifting smoke and of flashing shell-bursts as the fleet swept in above.
The myriad lights of the planes had drawn into a circle, a great whirlpool of lines that revolved above a mile-wide section of that valley.
Beside Smithy a wheel control was moving. He clung to the pilot's seat as their own plane banked and nosed downward. And now he shouted aloud to Culver:
"The mole-men! There they are! Thousands of them!"
H
e was pointing between the two pilots as their own plane swept down. He could see them plainly now, clotted masses of dark figures surging frenziedly to and fro. For an instant he saw them—then that part of the world where they had been was a seething inferno of bursting bombs and shells.
Beside him Colonel Culver spoke quietly: "Caught them cold! That's handing it to them."
Their own plane had leveled off. With motors throttled they were drifting slowly past, only a thousand feet higher than the circling planes just off at one side. Culver's quiet tones rose to a hoarse shout: "The ships! My God, they're falling!"
His wild cry ended in a gasp. Beside him Smithy, in breathless horror, like Culver, was staring at that whirlpool of tiny lights that had gone suddenly from smooth circular motion into frenzied confusion, or vanished in the yellow glare of exploding gas tanks. The light of their own white flares picked them out in ghastly clarity as they fell.
Straight, vertical lines of yellow were burning planes. Again they made horrible zigzag darts and flashed down into view torn and helpless, while others, tens and scores of others with crumpled wings, joined the mad dance of death.
Smithy knew that he could never tear his eyes away from the sight. Yet within him something was clamoring for his attention. "They didn't do it from below!" that something was shouting. "Not down in that hell. There are more of them somewhere." Then somehow, he forced his eyes to stare ahead and outside of that circle of fearful fascination and he knew that for an instant he was seeing a single stab of green flame.
O
ne single light on the darkness of a little knoll that stood close beside this place of white flame and destruction. One light—and in the valley there had flashed a million brighter. It had shone but an instant, but, to Smithy, watching, it was the same he had seen when their own camp was attacked. And now it was Smithy who was abruptly stone cold.
One hand closed upon a pilot's shoulder with a grip of steel; his other pointed. "Down there—they're hiding back of that hill, picking off our ships from the side." And then, like a guiding beacon, a point of green showed once more.
The plane banked sharply while one of the pilots spoke crisp, clearly enunciated words into his phone. He listened; then: "Right!" he snapped. "Power dive for bow-gun firing. Level off for bombing from five hundred feet."
Off into the night they were headed. Then a left bank and turn brought the place of blazing flares and falling planes swinging smoothly into view; they were flying toward it.
A
gainst the white glare in the valley of death was a hill, roundly outlined. Then the ship's nose sank heavily down; and, from each broad wing, in straight, forward-stabbing lines, was the steady lightning of the Rickert batteries in action.
The pilot's room was a place of unbearable sound. The crash of gunfire, it seemed, must crush the glass wall like an eggshell by the sheer impact of its own thunder. In that pandemonium Smithy never knew when they flattened out. He knew only that the hill ahead twinkled brilliantly, and that each flashing light was an exploding shell. He knew when the hill passed beneath them.
Then, in the night, close beside them and just outside the pilot-room glass, was a quick glow of red. The plane lurched and staggered. Smithy clung desperately to the seat ahead. The pilot was fighting madly with the wheel. The roar of bombs from astern, where the bombers had launched their missiles at the approaching hill, was unheard. In a world suddenly gone chaotic he could hear nothing. He knew only that the valley dead ahead was whirling dizzily—that it sank suddenly from sight.
They were crashing. That red glow—they had been hit. Then something hard and firm was pressing against him, pressing irresistibly. It was the last conscious impression upon Smithy's mind.
I
n a strange new world surrounded by a group of kneeling figures of whom one, who called himself Gor, had spoken in Rawson's own tongue, Dean Rawson stood silent. It was all too overwhelming. He could not bring words together to formulate a reply. He only stood and stared with wondering eyes at the exquisite beauty of the world about him, a world flooded with a golden light, faintly tinged with green. Then he looked above him to see the source of that light and found the sun.
Not the sun that he had known, but a flaming ball nevertheless. Straight above it hung, in the center of the heavens, a gleaming disk of pale-green gold, magnificently brilliant. He saw it through lids half closed against its glare. Then his gaze swept back down the blue vault of the heavens, back to a world of impossible beauty.
Directly ahead was a land of desolation, radiant in its barrenness. For every rock, every foot of ground, was made of crystal. Nearby hills were visions of loveliness where the colors of a million rainbows quivered and flashed. Veins of metal showed the rich blues and greens of peacock coloring. Others were scarlet, topaz, green, and all of them took the strange sunlight that flooded them and threw it back in blendings radiant and delicate.
The little hills began a short distance off, two low ranges running directly away. One on either side, they made brilliant walls for the flat valley between, whose foreground was barren rock of rose and white. But beyond the glistening barren stretch were green fields of luxuriant vegetation and in the distance, nestled in the green were clustered masses that might have been a city of men. Still farther on, a single mountain peak, white beyond belief, reared its graceful sweeping sides to a shining apex against the heavens of clear blue.
S
lowly Rawson turned. A hundred yards away, at his left, there was water, a sea whose smooth rollers might have been undulating liquid emeralds that broke to infinite flashing gems upon the shore. He swung sharply to the right and found the same expanse of water, perhaps the same distance away.
Then he turned toward the shell, which had been behind him and the shaft from which it had emerged, and into which the air was driving with a ceaseless rushing sound. Now, looking beyond them, he found the same ocean; he was standing on a blunt point of rock projecting into the sea. The rest of this world was one vast expanse of water.
Suddenly Rawson knew that it was unlike any ocean of earth. Instead of finishing on a sharply-cut horizon, that sea of emerald green reached out and still out, andup! It did not fall away. It curved upward, until it lost itself in the distance and merged with the blue of the sky. It was the same on all sides.
He swung slowly back to face the land that perhaps was only an island. The kneeling ones had raised their bowed heads. They were regarding him from shining, expectant eyes. Only the girl kept her face averted. Rawson spoke to none of them; the exclamations that his amazement and dismay wrung from his lips were meant for himself.
"It's concave! It curves upward! I'm on the inside of the world! And that sun is the center! But what holds us here? What keeps us from falling?" He passed one hand heavily across his eyes. The excitement of the moment had lifted him above the weariness of muscle and mind. Now fatigue claimed him.
"Sleep," he said dully. "I've got to sleep. I've got to. I'm all in."
Gor was beside him in an instant. "Whatever you wish is yours," he promised.
R
awson was to remember little of that journey toward the habitations of this people. Gor had spoken at times along the way: "... the Land of the Central Sun.... The People of the Light, peaceful and happy in our little world...."
Rawson had roused himself to ask: "Who it at the head of it? Who is the king, the ruler?"
And the tall man beside him had answered humbly: "Always since the beginning one named Gor has led. My father, and those who came before him; now it is I. And when I have gone, my little son will take the name of Gor."
He had glanced toward the girl and his voice had dropped into the soft, liquid syllables of their own tongue. She had smiled back at Gor, though her eyes persistently refused to meet those of Rawson.
Again Gor spoke in words that Rawson could understand.
"I think at times," he said, "it is my daughter Loah, my little Loah-San who really rules. I, knowing not who you were, did not approve of this expedition, but Loah insisted. She had seen you, and—" A glance from the girl cut him short.
The words lingered in Rawson's mind when he awoke. The horrible experience of the past days were no longer predominant. Even his own world seemed of a dim and distant past.
H
e awoke refreshed. He was in a new world and, for the moment, he asked nothing except to explore its mystery. He bathed under a fountain in an adjoining room, and grinned broadly as he wrapped the folds of the long golden loin cloth about him.
"As well be dead as out of style," he quoted. "And now to find Gor and Loah, and see what the devil all this is about—a talking mountain and a buried race that speaks first-rate American."
Gor was waiting for him in a room whose translucent walls admitted a subdued glow from outside. There was food on a table, strange fruits, and a clear scarlet liquid in a crystal glass. Rawson ate ravenously, then followed Gor.
Outside were houses, whose timbered frames of jet-black contrasted startlingly with the quartz walls they enclosed. The street was thronged with people who drew back to let them pass, and who dropped to their knees in humble worship. Like Gor, the men wore only the loin cloth, but for this gala day, that simple apparel added a note of flashing color. The long cloths wrapped about their hips, and brought up and about the waist where the ends hung free, were brilliant with countless variations of crimson and blue and gold. The same rainbow hues were found in the loose folded cloths that draped themselves like short skirts from the women's waists. Here and there, in the sea of white bodies and scintillant jeweled breast-plates, was one with an additional flash of color, where brilliant silken scarves had been thrown about the shoulders of the younger girls.
"From all the land," said Gor, "they have come to do you honor."
H
ardly more than a village, this cluster of strangely beautiful shelters for the People of the Light. Beyond, Rawson saw the country, pastures where animals, weird and strange, were cropping the grass so vividly green; fields of growing things; little crystal houses like fanciful, glistening toys that had miraculously grown to greater size. The dwellings were sprinkled far into the distance across the landscape. Beyond them was the base of the mountain, magnificent and glorious in its crystal purity of white, and the striations, vertical and diagonal, that flashed brilliantly with black jet and peacock green.
Rawson knew them for mineral intrusions, and knew that the mountain was only one crystalline mass of all the quartz formation that made of the world's inner core a gigantic geode, gleaming in eternal brilliance under the glow of the central sun. And still, in it all, Dean Rawson had seen a lack without which perfection could not be complete.
"Where is Loah?" he asked of Gor. "I thought—I had hoped...."
Something in Gor's face told Rawson that his companion was troubled. "She refused to come," he said. "But the wish of one of the great ones from the Land of the Sun is a command." He shouted an order before Rawson could put in a protest. A man darted away.
"Always happy, my little Loah-San," said Gor. His eyes held a puzzled look. "Always until now. And now she weeps and will not say why. Come, we will walk more slowly. There were questions you wished to ask. I will answer them as we walk."
"Questions?" exclaimed Rawson. "A thousand of them."
A
nd now for the first time since, at the top of a barren peak, in the dark of the desert night, his wild journey had begun, he found answers, definite and precise, to the puzzles he had been unable to solve.
Their speech—their language—how was it they could talk with him? He fired the questions out with furious eagerness, and Gor replied.
As to their speech—the Holy Mountain itself would explain. And yes, truly, this was the center of the world, or the sun above them was. The central sun did not attract, but instead repelled all matter from it—all things but one, the sun-stone, of which Gor would speak later.
Rawson pounced upon that and demanded corroboration.
"All the power of earth tends to draw every object to its center, yet we're here on an inner surface. We're walking actually head down. And our bodies, every stone, every particle of matter, ought by well-known laws to fall into that flaming center. But we don't! That proves your point—proves a counter gravitation. Then there must be a neutral zone. A place where this upward thrust is exactly equalled by gravity's downward pull.
"The zone of fire," said Gor. "You passed through it. Did you not see?"
"Saw it and felt it!" Rawson's mind leaped immediately to the next question.
"And we must have come through it at, surely, a thousand miles an hour. What drove us? That shell must have gone in from here. I can understand its falling one way, but not two. We should have come to rest in that very spot—and we'd have lasted about half a second if we had."
"Oro and Grah," said Gor. "Oro, the sun-stone, and Grah, the stone-that-loves-the-dark. But they are not stones, neither are they metal. We find them deep in the ground, clinging to the caves. A fine powder, both of them."
"Still I don't get it," said Rawson. "You drive that shell in from here, and then you drive it back again."
"That, too, I will explain later. It is simple; even the Dwellers in the Dark—those whom you call the mole-men—have Oro and Grah to serve them."
G
or launched into a long account of their tribal legends, of that time in the long ago when an angry sun god had driven his children inside the earth; of how Gor, and the son of Gor, and his son's sons tried always to return.
Rawson was listening only subconsciously. They were circling the white mountain, ascending its lower slope. Now he could see beyond it as far as the land extended, and he was startled to find this distance so short. They were on an island, ten miles or so in length, and beyond it was the sea; he must ask Gor about that.
"It is all that is left," said Gor, when Rawson interrupted his narrative. "Once the land was great and the sea small—this also in the long ago—but always it has risen. The air we breathe and the water in the sea come from the central sun. The air rushes out, as you know; the water has no place to retreat."
Again he took up his tale, but Rawson's eyes were following the upward curve of that sea. They, seemed to be in the bottom of a great bowl; he was trying to estimate, trying to gage distance.
"... and so, after many generations had lived and died, they found the Pathway to the Light," Gor was saying. "It is our name for the shaft through which you came. This was thousands of your years ago, when he who was then Gor, and the bravest of the tribe, descended. Even then they were workers in metal and they knew of Oro and Grah. They were our fathers, the first People of the Light."
R
awson had a question ready on his tongue, but Gor's words suggested another. "That shaft," he said, "the Pathway to the Light—do you mean it extends clear up to the mole-men's world? Why don't they come down?"
"To them the way is lost; the Pathway is closed above the zone of fire. That other Gor did that. And those who remained—the mole-men—have forgotten. They could break their way through if they knew—they are master-workers with fire—but for them the Pathway ends, and below is the great heat. But we know of a way around the closed place, the hidden way to the great Lake of Fire."
"They could break their way through if they knew!" repeated Rawson softly. For an instant he stood silent and unbreathing; he was remembering the ugly eyes in a priest's hideous face. The eyes were watching him as the White Ones took him away.
He forced his thoughts to come back to the earlier question. "What," he asked, "is the diameter, the distance across the inside world? How far is it from here to your sun? How many miles?"
"Miles?" questioned Gor. "We know the word, for the Mountain has told us, but the length of a mile we could not know. This I can say: there were wise men in the past when our own world was larger. They worked magic with little marks on paper. It is said that they knew that if one came here from our sun and kept on as far again through the solid rock, he would reach the outside—the land, of the true sun, from which our forefathers came."
Rawson nodded his head, while his eyes followed that sweeping green bowl of the sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousand miles radius—and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose; work out an approximation of the curvature."
From the smooth winding path which they had followed there sounded behind them hurrying footsteps; a moment later Loah stood beside him.
H
er eyes gave unmistakable corroboration of what Gor had said of that torrent of tears, but she looked at Dean bravely, while every show of emotion was erased from her face. "You sent for me," she said.
And Rawson, though now he knew he could speak to her and be understood, found himself at a loss for words.
"We wanted you with us, Gor and I," he began, then paused. She was so different from the girl whose smiling eyes had welcomed him. The change had come when he spoke those first words on his arrival, and now she was so coldly impersonal.
"I wanted to thank you. You saved my life; you were so brave, so...." Again he hesitated; he wanted to tell her how dear, how utterly lovely, she had seemed.
"It was nothing; it has pleased me to do it," she said quietly, then walked on ahead while the others followed. But Rawson knew that that slim body was tense with repressed emotion. He had not realized how he had looked forward to seeing again that welcoming light in her eyes. He was still puzzling over the change as they entered a natural cave in the mountainside.
A winding passage showed between sheer walls of snow white, where giant crystals had parted along their planes of cleavage. Then the passage grew dark, but he could see that ahead of them it opened to form a wider space. There were lights on the walls of the room, lights like the one that Loah had carried. And on the floor were rows of tables where men were busy at work, writing endlessly on long scrolls of parchment.
T
he Wise Ones," Gor was saying. "Servants of the Holy Mountain." Yet even then men knelt at Rawson's coming as had the other more humble people. They then returned to their tables, and in that crystal mountain was only the sound of their scratching pens and the faint sigh of a breeze that blew in through a hidden passage to furnish ventilation.
Yet there were some at those tables whose pens did not move; they seemed to be waiting expectantly. One of them spoke. "The time is near," he said. "Are the Servants prepared?"
And the waiting ones answered: "We are prepared."
Rawson glanced sharply about. "What hocus-pocus is this?" he was asking himself. Still the silence persisted. He looked at the waiting men, motionless, their heads bent, their hands ready above the parchment scrolls. He saw again the white walls, the single broad band of some glittering metal that made a continuous black stripe around walls and ceiling and floor.
"What kind of ore is that?" he was asking himself silently. "It's metallic; it runs right through the mountain. I wonder—"
His idle thoughts were never finished. A ripping crash like the crackle of lightning in the vaulted room! Then a voice—the mountain itself was speaking—speaking in words whose familiar accent brought a sob into his throat.
"Station K-twenty-two-A," said the voice of the mountain, "the super-power station of the Radio-news Service at Los Angeles, California."
I
t's tuned in!" gasped Rawson. "Tuned in on the big L. A. station! A gigantic crystal detector! Those heavy laminations of imbedded metal furnish the inductance." Then his incoherent words ended—the mountain was speaking.
"Radiopress dispatch: The invasion of the mole-men has not been checked. Army Air Force fought a terrific engagement about midnight, last night, and met defeat. Over one hundred fighting planes were brought down in flames. Even the new battle-plane type, the latest dreadnoughts of the air, succumbed.
"Heavy loss of life, although civilian population of three towns had been evacuated before the mole-men destroyed them. Gordon Smith is reported killed. Smith was associated with Dean Rawson in the Tonah Basin where the mole-men first appeared. With Colonel Culver of the California National Guard, Smith was returning from Washington in an Army dreadnought which crashed back of the enemy's lines."
Rawson's tanned face had gone white; he knew the others were looking at him curiously, all but the men at the tables whose pens were flying furiously across the waiting scrolls. Before him the face of Loah, suddenly wide-eyed and troubled, swam dizzily. He could scarcely see it—he was seeing other sights of another world.
"They're out," he half whispered. "The red devils are out—and Smithy—Smithy's gone!"
S
imple, pastoral folk, the People of the Light! In their inner world, a vanishing world, where nearly all of what once had been a vast country was now covered by the steadily encroaching sea, they had resisted the degeneration which might easily have followed the destruction of a complex civilization. Living simply, and clean of mind, they had clung to the culture of the past as it was taught them by their Wise Ones. And now the People of the Light had found a new god.
Not that Dean Rawson had asked for that exalted position; on the contrary he had tried his best to make them understand that he was only one of many millions, some better, some worse, but all of them merely humans.
His speaking the language of the holy mountain had convinced them first. But when old Rotan, oldest and grayest of the mountain's servants, went into a trance, then Rawson could no longer escape the honors being thrust upon him.
"The time of deliverance is at hand," old Rotan said when he awoke. His voice that so long had been cracked and feeble was suddenly strong, vibrant with belief in the visions that had come to him.
They were in the inner chamber of the white mountain, where Dean Rawson, heartsick, lonely and hopeless, had spent most of his time listening to the voice from the outer world. Gor was there, and Loah; and the writers had left their desks to gather around old Rotan, where now the old servant of the mountain stood erect, his glistening eyes fixed unwaveringly upon Rawson.
"Listen," he commanded. "Rotan speaks the truth. Never shall the People of the Light return to the outer world; it is here we stay. For now our world which is lost shall be returned to us." His eyes, unnaturally bright, met the wondering gaze of his own people gathered around, then came back to rest again upon Rawson.
D
ean—Rah—Sun!" he said. "'Rah'—do you not see? It is our own word, Rah—the Messenger! Dean—Messenger of the Sun! The sun-god has sent him—he will set us free. He will restore our lost cities. The People of the Light will spread out to fill the new land; they will multiply, and once more will be a mighty nation, living happily as of old in their own lost world.
"Dean!" he called. "Dean—Messenger of the Sun!" He was drawn to his full frail height, his arms outstretched. But Rawson saw the old eyes close, sensed the first slackening of that tense body; it was he who sprang and caught the sagging figure in his arms, then lowered the lifeless body to the floor of crystal white.
Even happiness can kill. A feeble heart can cease to beat under the stress of emotions too beautiful to be borne. And Rotan, wisest of the wise, had passed on to serve his sun-god in another world.
And thereafter, Rawson, Dean-Rah-Sun, was undeniably a god. But he wondered, even then, while the others dropped to their knees in humble worship, why Loah, her eyes brimming over with tears, had broken suddenly into uncontrollable sobs and had rushed blindly, swiftly, from the room.
T
o Rawson the unwavering, simple faith of the White Ones was only an added misery. Rotan's vision was accepted by them unquestioningly; their adoring eyes followed Rawson wherever he went, while the children carpeted his path to the holy mountain with golden flowers.
And there Rawson would sit, cursing silently his own helplessness, while the voice of the mountain told of further devastation up above. His plans for leading a force against the mole-men were abandoned. On the island, all that was left of this inner world, were only some two thousand persons, men, women and children. And the children were few; the population had been rigorously kept down. Their present number was all that the island would support, though every possible foot of ground was tilled.
"Only a handful of them," Rawson admitted despondently, "and not a weapon of any sort. They've kept by themselves. Only Loah and a few of the others had enough curiosity and nerve to scout around where the mole-men live. She even understands their talk! Lord, what I'd give for a thousand like her, a thousand men with her nerve! Then, with weapons, and means of transportation...." But at that he stopped, aware of the futility of all such thoughts.
He had tried to talk to Gor, tried to tell him of his own limitations. And Gor had only smiled pleasantly and repeated "Rotan has spoken. It will come to pass!"
Ceaselessly his thoughts revolved about the hopelessness of his situation. He was alone. Whatever was to be done he must do single-handed—and there was nothing he could do! But he would not admit to himself that the aching loneliness came to a focus in the memory of a girl's smiling eyes, the touch of her soft hand.
"They're fighting up there," he argued, "fighting for their lives, and I can't help. What right have I to think of Loah or myself?" In spite of which he sprang abruptly to his feet, left the mountain and the voice of the mountain behind him, and went in search of the girl.
"I've got to make her understand," he exclaimed. "I've got to have someone to talk to. But I can't make her out. She's so confoundedly respectful—acts as if I were a little tin god. And yet—she wasn't always that way!"
A
t the home of Gor he found Loah, slim and beautiful as always. She had just come from the bath. The creamy texture of her skin had flushed to rosiness in the cold fountain. Her jeweled breast-plates sparkled. A cloth that shone like silk enwrapped her hips in soft folds of pale rose and hung in an absurd little skirt. She might have been the spirit of youth itself, a vision of loveliness; yet Rawson felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her in his two hands and shake her when she bowed humbly and treated his request as if it were a royal command.
"To walk with Dean-Rah-Sun! But certainly, if that is his wish!"
In silence they left the village and walked toward the island's end where Rawson had emerged from the under-world.
The island was not large. On either side were low hills, mere knolls, of white crystal, where, in every hollow, men and women were harvesting strange grain. Between the two ranges of hills were flat fields of green, reaching out toward the point some three miles distant.
Rawson made no attempt to talk as he led Loah along the roadway that cleft the green expanse in half. Other workers were there, and Dean acknowledged their smiling, worshipful salutations. He did not want to talk now; he wanted to find some place where he and Loah could be by themselves. There was so much he must tell her. He must try to make her understand. And after that, perhaps, with her help, he could find some way to be of aid to his own beleaguered people—something he could do even single-handed.
W
here the fields ended, and from there on toward the point, had been an expanse of glistening white. Rawson remembered it plainly. So now, when he found it a place of flaming crimson, he stared in amazement. Across the full width of the valley a brilliant carpet had spread itself, a covering of flowers. A blossoming vine had sprung up in the few days since his arrival and had woven a thick mat of vegetation.
He wanted to go on out to the extreme end of the point. There they would be alone. But Loah objected when he started to enter the red expanse.
"No!" she said in quick alarm. "We must not cross. It is the Place of Death. We will go around it, following the hills."
"We crossed it the other day when it was a plain of white salt," argued Rawson.
"But now the flowers have come. Even now it might be safe—but when they die then nothing can cross here and live."
Loah could not give the reason. Dean gathered from what she could tell that a gas of some sort was formed, perhaps by the decomposing vegetation. Perhaps it combined with the sparkling white shale. But all this was of no consequence compared with his own problems. He did not argue the matter but followed where Loah led.
"Where is the shell?" he asked, when they stood at last near the open mouth of the great shaft into which the air was rushing. "Where is the machine that we came here in? I wanted to see it—thought perhaps I could use it later on.
"The jana—the shell, as you call it—is safely locked in a great room of Gor's house. Not all understand its use; it must be kept away from careless hands."
T
hen Rawson put that thought aside. He took Loah's hand and led her some distance away toward the shore. Beyond a rocky, crystalline mass, where fragments had been heaped, the sound of the rushing air was lost; only the flashing emerald waves whispered softly on the shore beyond. And there in that quiet place, under the brilliance of the central sun, Rawson told her of himself and of the great outer world. He told her of his work, of everything that had happened, of how he was only one of many millions of men and women like, and yet unlike, the People of the Light. And at last he knew that she understood.
He had spoken softly, though he knew there were no other listening ears. Loah had been seated before him on one of the white blocks. She rose to her feet. Her eyes were troubled. Vaguely he sensed behind them a conflict of emotions.
"I must think," she said. "I will walk by myself for a time; then I will return."
Rawson reached for her hand. "You're a good sport," he said huskily. Then he felt the trembling of that hand in his; and, as if it had been an electric current, his own body responded.
Shaken in every nerve, his poise deserted him. He could not think clearly. He knew only that that horrible loneliness was somehow gone. By force of will alone he kept his arms from reaching out toward that radiant figure. Instead, he raised her hand toward his lips.
She withdrew it sharply. "No," she said, "our Wise Ones were mistaken. For years they have listened to the mountain; they have written down its words. Slowly they have learned their meaning. A kiss, they said, was a symbol of love in your world. They were mistaken—as was I. Now I will walk alone for a time."
R
awson let her go. She seemed hardly looking where she went; her eyes were downcast. She moved slowly around the sheltering rock and on toward the level ground and the rushing winds of the shaft.
His own thoughts were in a whirl, too confused with emotion for clear thinking. "A symbol of love!" And back there in that cave world she had pressed her lips to his hand. Then they had come here, and he had been transformed to a god, a being who could never have more than an impersonal affection for one as humble as she.
The rising flood of happiness within him was abruptly frozen, changed to something which filled his veins with ice. For, from beyond the crystal barrier that hid Loah from his view, her voice had come in one single cry of terror. Then, "Dean!" she called. "Dean San!" But by then, Rawson was throwing himself madly around the barricade of rocks.
Like a sensitized plate when the camera's shutter is opened a merest fraction of a second, Rawson's brain took the imprint of every detail that was there. The black mouth of the shaft, and, on the rock beside it, something metallic, brilliantly gleaming—a flame-thrower! Beyond the pit was Loah, half crouching, her slim body tense as if checked in mid-flight. She had been running toward him, coming to warn him. And between her and the shaft, his back turned squarely toward Rawson, was the hideous figure of a mole-man, one of the Reds! His grotesque, pointed head was bent forward toward the girl; his arms were reaching, the long fingers like talons.
R
awson did not know when he called the girl's name. But he knew the instant that he had done it and he knew it was a mistake. He should have crept quietly, seized the weapon—and now his feet tore madly on the white rock floor as he raced toward the shining implement of death. From beyond, the red figure, whirling at his call, leaped wildly for the same prize.
The taloned hands were on the flame-thrower first. Rawson saw the red body straighten, saw the weapon swing, glistening in air, swinging over and down. From its tip green fire made a straight line of light.
He leaped in under the descending flame, felt the nozzle of the projector as it crashed upon his right shoulder and the green fire spat harmlessly beyond his back. That last spring had thrown him bodily against the red monster. They were both knocked off balance for a moment, then Rawson caught himself and swung with his left. He set himself in that fraction of a second, felt the first movement of that shining, crook-necked tube that meant the green flame was being drawn back where it could reach him; then his fist crashed into a yielding jaw.
Not five feet from the brink of that nearly bottomless shaft he stood wavering in the rush of air. He knew that the ugly red figure had toppled sideways, that the weapon had fallen with him, the blast swinging upward in a vertical, hissing arc—then man and weapon had dropped silently into the pit.
He was alone, save for the girl, who, her eyes wide with horror, threw herself upon him and clung trembling, while she murmured incomprehensible endearments in her own tongue wherein his own name was mingled: "Dean, dear! My own Dean-San!"
But the mole-men! Dean Rawson's mind was aghast with the horror of it: the mole-men had now found the way.