G
ordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of the happenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It was Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness. They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of the ship.
Their hands were red when they returned—and empty. Captain Farrell and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States Army Air Force; henceforth they would be only names on a casualty list grown ominously long.
"Stood plumb on her tail," said the pilot, staring at the wreck. "They hit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last I remember was pulling her up off the trees." He stared at the mass of twisted metal and the center section where the wing had torn loose; it stood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail.
"Funny," said the pilot in the same flat, level tone that seemed the only voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. "Damn funny—mostly we get it first up there."
"Come here!" snapped Colonel Culver. "Lend a hand here with Smith; we've got to carry him. And don't talk so loud—those red devils will be out here any minute."
S
mithy was taking a more active interest in his surroundings when he sat a week later in the Governor's office.
"There's a detachment moving in there from the south," said the Governor. "We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least. We're sending troops to Tonah Basin. If the top of that dead crater is closed they will blast it open; then a scouting party's going down. Call it a reconnaissance, call it suicide—one name's just as good as the other. Colonel Culver, here, is going. But you know the lay of the land there; you could be of great help. How about it?"
"Are you asking me?" Smithy inquired.
He stood up, flexed his arms, while he grinned at Colonel Culver. "Hinges all greased and working! As a flier, Colonel, you're a darn good first-aid man. I'll say that! When do we start?"
Which explains why Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesque disguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty, similarly attired, who stood waiting about the black open maw in the great cinder-floored crater of one of the peaks that surrounded Tonah Basin.
Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert sky should have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare that streamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of the entire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the 49th Field Artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephone wire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddled owls; and, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain's slopes and the desert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers of light incessantly—and where nothing moved.
But the empty silence of the desert was misleading, as the men in the crater knew.
T
hey had begun arriving with the earliest light of morning. Smithy had come in with the first lot. And when the first big auto-gyro transport had settled and risen again from the crater, another had taken its place, and another and many others after that.
That first crew had been a machine-gun battalion, and Smithy had smiled with grim satisfaction at the unhurried way in which their young captain had snapped them into position without the loss of a second. And their guns, Smithy noticed, were trained inward upon the crater itself.
Inside that protecting circle the other transports landed one by one: men, mobile artillery, ammunition cases, big searchlights, and a dozen engine-generator outfits. The last transports brought in strange cargo—short sections of aluminum struts with bolts and splice plates to join them together: blocks, and tackle and sheaves; then spools of steel alloy cable at least ten miles in length.
From the last ship they took a hoisting engine and an assortment of aluminum plates and bars which were bolted together by waiting mechanics, and which grew magically to a crude but exceedingly substantial elevator, on which fifty men, by considerable crowding, could stand.
Only a floor of bolted plates, with corner posts and diagonal bracing and a single guard rail running around the four sides—but for the first time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down; that this was not all make-believe, or a futile gesture. He would stand on that platform; he would go down where Dean had gone. And then.... But what would come after he knew he could never imagine.
A
little crane swung the first metal work into position above the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into the pit.
"Good," said Colonel Culver, who was standing beside Smithy. "Now we know they are there—but it means we will have to go down there with our gas masks on."
To Smithy it was not immediately apparent how gas masks were to protect them from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection of thoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of the explosion quickly came back to them.
"They popped that one off in the air—hit it with their heat ray," said a cheerful voice beside them. "But the phosgene will keep on going down. Give them another!"
The interval this time was longer. "Now for a dirty crack," said the cheerful voice. "Time this one."
A
youngster nearby snapped a stop-watch as the bomb was released. He held some printed tables in his hands. Odd receivers from which no wire led were clamped over his ears. This time the dull thud was long in coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stop watch announced: "Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Give 'em another. Time it again." A second high explosive bomb was released.
"Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devil out of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give them a real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten miles of cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place."
But night had come, though searchlights outside the crater and floodlights within had robbed the night of its terror, when Smithy, with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift that hung waiting just over the pit.
A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates he looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost ludicrous—twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a spool of electric cable.
The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platform jarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside him Colonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on the ashy ground. Smithy raised his hand, but the brink of that pit had moved swiftly up—there was nothing before him but a glassy wall.
Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he was going down—down where Dean Rawson had gone—down where there was a debt to be paid.
R
otan," said Gor slowly, sadly, "was wrong. His vision was not the truth. The Red Ones have come. And now—we die."
"Without a fight?" Rawson demanded incredulously.
"We are not a fighting people. We have no weapons. We can only die."
Rawson turned to Loah. They were inside the mountain, and the servants of the mountain, with terror and dismay written plainly on their faces, were gathered about. "At the Lake of Fire," said Rawson, "when you saved me, there was an explosion and clouds of white fumes. What was it?"
"It was like water," Loah said. "We found it deep inside the earth in a place where it is very cold. When warmed it turns to white clouds. We threw a flask of it on the hot rocks, hoping to reach you while they could not see."—she paused and shook her head slowly—"but we can get no more. The Pathway of Light is closed to us, now that the Red Ones are there."
"Liquefied gas of some sort," said Rawson briefly, "caught in enormous rock pressure. But that's out! Now what about this Place of Death? There's an idea there."
The White Ones were numbed with fear, but Loah and Gor accompanied him when Rawson returned to the red field. The flowers were still in bloom; they waved gently in the breeze that blew always from the mountain across the fields and out toward the point, where even now dark figures could be seen near the mouth of the shaft.
"It will be many of your days," said Loah, "before the flowers die. If you thought to trap the Red Ones in the Place of Death, there will not be time...." But Rawson had left them; he had advanced into the scarlet field and dropped to his knees.
H
e was crushing the vines in his hands, grinding them into the white, salty earth underneath. Then he passed his hands guardedly before his face as if to detect an odor.
Loah and Gor saw him shake his head slowly while he spoke aloud words that they could not understand. "Cyanide," Dean Rawson was saying. "It's a cyanide of some sort—releases hydrocyanic acid gas. I could have rigged a generator, though I've forgotten about all of my chemistry—and now there isn't time." Off in the distance the dark figures still moved near the end of the point.
He made no effort to conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of the Place of Death made a winding line across the scant half mile of valley where the green fields ended abruptly.
Dean stepped high over the stone trough a half mile long that marked that dividing line. There was water in it; it was part of their irrigation system. A little beyond, in the midst of the green, stood a tiny flat-topped knoll on which he knew was a pool that supplied the crude system. Beyond it Loah and Gor were waiting.
Gor read the look on Rawson's face. "It is useless," Gor said. "And now I have decided. The People of the Light must die—but not in the fires of the Reds. With my people I shall walk into the sea."
And Rawson could not protest. He could only follow as Gor turned back toward the village and the mountain beyond.
From a spur on the mountainside Rawson could see the full length of the island. One way lay the village; beyond it the green fields; then the wide scarlet band of the Place of Death. And beyond that the little crystal hills and the valley between that led out to the point. It was now dark with massed clusters of bodies, red even at that distance. He could even see the glint of metal from time to time.
And behind the mountain were the People of Light, where Gor was only waiting for the attack to lead them out to the island's farther end and then on to a kindlier death in the emerald sea. Only Loah was with Dean, although there were others of the White Ones not far away, watching, ready to warn Gor when the attack began.
Not an hour before, Rawson had stood in the inner chamber and had listened to the mountain as it repeated the words of a far-distant man: "Attack of the mole-men growing increasingly ferocious ... heat-ray projectors—almost invincible ... our forces have entered the Tonah Basin—they are descending into the crater. But whether warfare can be carried on advantageously under ground is problematical...." Rawson unconsciously gritted his teeth behind his set lips as he watched the Reds.
He knew why they had been so slow in attacking. They must have a carrier of some sort, a shell like that of Loah's, and they were bringing their fighters one shell-load at a time. When the entire force was ready they would attack. And Rawson was convinced that this force would be limited in number.
"They'll have plenty to keep them busy up there," he argued. "If only we could wipe out this one lot we could prepare to defend ourselves." And now, standing on the side of the mountain, he startled Loah with the fury of his sudden ejaculation.
"Fool! Quitter! Waiting here for them to come and get you! There's one chance in a million—" Then he was rushing at full speed along the roadway that circled the mountain toward Gor and the terrified throng.
T
he waiting savages must have laughed, if indeed laughter was possible for such a race, at sight of the White Ones creeping timidly down. Off a mile and more they could see them harvesting their strange crop—harvesting!—storing up supplies of food, no doubt, when the mole-men with their flame-throwers would reap the harvest so soon!
But in a crimson field Dean and Gor and Loah led the others where they swarmed across the Place of Death, gathering huge armfuls of the red-flowering vine, carrying them to the village and returning for more. Where they trod it was as if peach pits were crushed beneath their feet. And there was a curious fragrance which Rawson told them not to breathe, but to keep their faces always into the wind.
Their hands and bodies were sore and burned by the strong juice of the vines. They stopped often to cast apprehensive glances at the distant group of red figures, and always Rawson drove them in a frenzy of haste. At last he made them move the long trough of stone beyond the edge of the green field and over into the Place of Death.
Rawson kept no track of the time. The voice of the mountain was his only measure of hours in a world of perpetual day. But more hours—another day, perhaps—had passed when the Red force at last began to move.
T
hey did not spread out wide across the valley, but formed a straggling line that was denser toward the center. They could not know what opposition they would meet; for the present they would stay together. Above them as they came were twinkling lights of pale-green fire.
The radio had spoken of heat rays; Rawson wondered if that meant some newer and more horrible instrument. But he saw nothing but the flame-throwers in the armament of this force.
He was waiting by the irrigation pool, hidden for the moment behind the little knoll. Loah was with him; he had tried in vain to induce her to stay with Gor and the others who were waiting beyond the mountain.
There were watchers, some of them within hearing, whose voices relayed the news of the enemy's advance. Then they ran; panic was upon them.
"Tur—gona!" they cried, "Nu—tur—gona!We die! Quickly we die!" Rawson heard the shout carried on toward the hidden throng.
Cautiously he peered from the little knoll. They were coming. Already they were trampling the remaining red blooms on the farther edge of the field. But he waited till they were halfway across before he leaped to the top of the knoll, grasped a pole he had placed there in readiness and rammed it down through the pool, turbid yellow with the juice from the vines, and broke open the outlet he had plugged in the base.
O
ne green light slashed above his head. One flicked at the knoll near his feet, where green growing things burst into flame—then he threw himself backward down the short rocky slope while the stones tore at his nearly nude body. He sprang to his feet and held Loah close. On either side of the knoll was a holocaust of flame where green lights played. He waited breathlessly. The fires brought in a little back draft of air, the scent of peach pits was strong—and then the green lights ceased. The unripe grain of the fields smoldered slowly.
Then Rawson stepped from his hiding and stared out at the Place of Death.
Nearby was a huddle of bodies. On either side, in a long, straggling line, they lay now on the ground—a windrow where Death had reaped. The flames of their weapons still in action were all that moved. The white earth turned molten wherever those flames struck.
Farther off there were red things that were running. The yellow liquid from the pool, charged with the acid of the vines, had been slow in flowing out through that long trough. The savages could only see that their fellows had fallen. Some mystery, something invisible and beyond their comprehension had struck them. They ran toward the center at first, then turned and fled—and by then the soft air blowing gently about them had brought that strange fragrance of death. Then they, too, lay still.
From the distance came faintly a booming chant, two thousand voices raised in unison. "Tur—gona! Nu—tur—gona!" The last of a once mighty people were marching to their death.
Rawson and Loah turned with one accord. Victory was theirs, but there was no time to taste the fruits of victory. They ran with straining muscles and gasping breath toward the distant mountain and the marching host beyond.
M
y plans are made," Rawson spoke quietly. "I must go. I shall take the shell—the jana—and go back to the mole-men's world. I shall go alone, and I shall die, but what of that?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I'll try to findPhee-e-alfirst. If I can get him before they get me, that will help."
They were standing on the mountain's lower slope, Gor and Leah and the servants of the mountain gathered near. Below, the White Ones were massed in worshiping silence. Had not Dean-Rah-Sun saved them? And now what else would come to pass?
The same question had been asked by the Wise Ones, and now Rawson turned and spoke to them. "Rotan was right," he told them. "His vision was true. There is work I must do here before I go. Your lands, or some of them at least, will be restored. And you will be safe forever from what we have seen to-day. Gor will lead you wisely, and Loah...." His voice faltered; he had kept his eyes resolutely away from the slim figure of the girl, who had been wordless, scarcely breathing. Now she stepped swiftly before him.
"You must go, Dean-San," she said gently. He knew it was a term of endearment. "You must go if you say you must. But you do not go alone, nor die alone. Long ago the voice of the mountain spoke beautiful words. I know now it was one of your priests telling of a woman of your own race. Always have I remembered. 'Wheresoever thou goest, I shall go; thy people....'"
But Dean Rawson had gathered the slender figure, starry-eyed and sobbing into his arms.
Then there were footsteps approaching the chest.Then there were footsteps approaching the chest.
T
he Place of Death!" said Dean Rawson. "Whoever named it had the right idea."
As part of their titanic plan, Rawson and Loah-San return to sacrifice themselves in the flaming caverns of the Red Ones.
He looked out across the wide stretch of ground with its covering of white salt almost entirely stripped of the carpet of vines. The bodies of the mole-men lay where they had fallen; their flame-throwers still tore futilely at the earth or stabbed upward in vain, thrusting toward the green-gold sun that shone pitilessly down.
"Still I do not understand," said Gor. "My people pressed the strong, burning water from the vines and poured it into the pool as you directed. But the Red Ones did not touch it—how could it burn them?"
"I'll say it was strong!" said Rawson. He looked at his hands, red and burned where the liquid had touched. "And it got stronger by standing. It was an acid, and when it touched the white earth a gas was formed—hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with."
He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured over the white ground. No odor remained; the air was clean. Then he picked up one of the flame-throwers and experimented with it until he found the sliding sleeve that shut off the blast.
"All right," he called to Gor. "Bring on your men; we've got to clean up this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in its work. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you." He moved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging the weapons and turning off their fearful blasts.
They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task was done and Rawson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind.
Beside the mouth of the great shaft, resting on the rocks, was a cylinder, almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loah had used. But this was larger—fully fifty of the red savages could have crowded inside.
"It is the only one they had," said Loah. "I have seen, and I know."
"But they can make more," Gor argued. "This one and the one we have," he told Rawson, "were made thousands of years ago. There were masters of metal-work among them, and they had learned to use Oro and Grah. Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gor and his followers fought with the others. But he left them onejana—this very one here. Then Gor followed the Pathway to the Light, though he sealed it as you know. But—but they will build others. Sooner or later they will come."
"I think not," said Rawson. "Now what about this Oro and Grah material? What was it you called them—the Sun-stone and the Stone-that-loves-the-dark? I must know how they work." But Loah was reluctant to experiment with thejanaof the Reds; she had her own shell brought instead—and then Rawson learned the secret of what seemed its miraculous flight.
A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself above the ground—Gor and some of the others brought it from the village. Gor brought, too, a little box which he carried with great difficulty.
I
t is Grah," he said, when he showed Rawson a little scattering of black dust within the box. "Always it tries to fall back under the ground. Both Oro and Grah grow deep down near the Zone of the Fires; we find them in the caves, Oro on one side and Grah on the other. Oro is as heavy in its upward falling as Grah is in its downward.
"Then"—he pointed to the central vertical tube in the shell—"we put both of them in here, bringing it a few grains at a time. One falls to one end and the other to the other. And then, with these simple valves, we let out a little of whichever we wish—release it a grain at a time, if that is best. We let out a few grains of Grah, and Oro, being stronger, draws us upward; or we let a little of the Oro escape, and we fall downward swiftly. You see it is simple, as I said."
Rawson's reply was not an answer to Gor so much as it was an argument with himself. "Heavy," he said. "Specific gravity beyond anything we've ever known. Osmium, the heaviest substance we have, would be light as a feather compared to this. But wait. This Grah, as you call it, falls downward, but that means it falls toward the outside of the earth. With us it would be light—light! And Oro would be heavy. New substance—new matter! One feels only the attraction of our normal gravitation; the other doesn't react to that at all, but is driven outward with tremendous force by counter-gravitation, the repulsion of this Central Sun. You've used it cleverly, but we'd have done more with it up on top."
H
e was lost in thought for some minutes, muttering figures and calculations half aloud. "Two thousand miles from the Central Sun to us; two thousand more through the solid earth. And if that repelling force follows Newtonian laws it will decrease as the square.... But, coming down from up on top, normal gravity would decrease directly as the distance!" He made scratches with one small stone upon a larger one in lieu of paper and pencil, but, to his listeners, his muttered words could have meant nothing.
"Around six seventy-six hundred and seventy miles to the neutral zone, the Zone of Fire. And a column of water—it would carry on by, plug the shaft, check the back-pressure, and then...." For the first time since that night when the mole-men had poured out into the crater, his eyes were alight with hope, though his face seemed tense and grim. Then the lines about his lips relaxed; he smiled at Loah.
"I would like to investigate this under-world," he said, "—not very far down. Will you take me?"
The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips in that subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rawson told her what he wanted. "But, yes," she said; "of course I know such a place." And from some two or three miles below, after anchoring thejanasecurely, she led him through a winding tunnel where he knew he was steadily climbing.
I
t was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls came together high above their heads; he could hardly see where they met by the light of Loah's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages, but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks; and Rawson, looking into them, nodded his head with satisfaction.
Occasionally his footsteps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knew that the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "What an old honeycomb it is!" he exclaimed. "And we had it all figured as being solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentrated in that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loah has shown me just what I wanted."
He had gathered a handful of little fragments, and, keeping count of his steps, had shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for every hundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six miles when he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened. Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across.
From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward, but Rawson did not explore farther. "I can seal that off with a flame-thrower," he said. "I've seen how they use them." Then he took Loah's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rocky walls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew.
He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped through from that central shaft, although Loah told him that in some deeper passages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, it seemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rawson, staring upward, felt a drop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above.
"It's a gamble," he said, "just a gamble. But the stakes are worth while. And now, Loah-San, we will return."
H
e made crude work with the flame-throwers at first but finally he got the knack, and the mouth of the tunnel beyond the big room was sealed. Then, with the help of Loah and some few of the others, he brought in more and more weapons of the Reds. He was curious as to their construction, but his curiosity had to go unsatisfied. They were only cylinders, so far as he could see, cylinders a foot long and six inches through, of some metal with the dull lustre of aluminum. But they were sealed, and he dared not cut one open with another flame-thrower for fear of what might come forth.
On the top of each cylinder a tube was connected that ended in a lava tip; but at the base of the tube, where it joined the cylinder, was a sliding sleeve that checked the flame to nothing when it was moved, or opened it to the full blast.
He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through—one hundred fearful instruments of destruction. And still he told no one of his plans; he only told Gor what he wanted done later on. "It may not work," he had to admit to himself. "I'm just guessing at the thickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble, nothing but a gamble."
He arranged the flame-throwers in a circle along the outer wall. The tops of the cylinders were curved, but the bottoms were flat and they set solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backward and braced them firmly with fragments of stone until every crooked-neck tube was pointed upward and toward the center. Finally he was done.
I
t was only a matter of a few hours later when Rawson stood on the island's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaseless rush of the air as it entered the pit; it was the only sound in a silent world. And for the first time there came overwhelmingly upon him a realization of what this moment meant.
The time had come. Loah was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturally bright in her face from which all the blood seemed to have flowed. He felt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him; he knew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rawson half turned with one final entreaty that she let him go alone; but he left the words unsaid—he had argued it several times before.
Before them stood Gor, then the Wise Ones, the Servants of the Mountain, deserting their post for the first time since the Mountain had been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this little world were gathered.
It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going; in fact, he had been too busy, too pressed with his own preparations, to give it thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he had identified himself with this world and its people. It had given him Loah; it had been a haven, a sanctuary.
He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea, the shining land under a green-gold sun, the Mountain in white, crystal purity against a green-blue sky. And he was leaving it, he and Loah; they were going to—death!
Y
ou will remember," he said to Gor. His voice sounded dull and heavy; it hardly seemed himself who was speaking. "You know the day and the hour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon—twelve o'clock in my world. When the Voice of the Mountain says that noon again has come you will do as I said."
"The Mountain speaks without ceasing now," said Gor, "telling always of what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. In twenty-four of those hours Gor will descend in thejanaof the Reds to do as Dean Rah-Sun has commanded."
Rawson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loah threw herself into Gor's arms in one last passionate embrace—but it was she who entered thejanafirst.
"Come," she said to Dean. "Oh, come quickly, Dean-San!" Then he, too stepped inside and made the heavy door fast.
Men of the White Ones had been holding the big cylinder down. But Rawson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gor's own hands that swung them out at last above the pit.
Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air; then Loah moved one of the levers a trifle and the blackness took them, and only the little bull's-eyes in the metal ceiling showed the fading glow of the Inner World, the home of the People of the Light, which their eyes never again would see.
R
awson had taken one flame-thrower with him. He tied it securely inside the shell so it could not shift with the changing gravity, or be accidentally turned on. Again he clung to the curved bar against the wall. Loah stood at the center, directing the craft.
Once again he floated in air, then found himself standing on what had been the ceiling of the room. The girl had released a considerable quantity of the lifting element in thejana'send, and now the black powder in the other end of the central tube was dragging them at terrific speed as it rushed away from the earth's center.
Over six hundred miles, Rawson had figured, from that inner surface to the neutral zone where the red substance of the earth, that was neither rock nor metal, under terrific pressures, glowed with fervent heat or formed pools like the Lake of Fire.
Perhaps a hundred miles thick, that zone of incessant energy, and their little craft tore through it at tremendous speed. Even so, he was gasping for breath in the heated room when the glow faded and again he swung over and down upon the floor as Loah checked the speed of the flying projectile and the little ship crept slowly up into the room where first he had seen it.
The first that he noticed was the absence of the roar. Thejanadrifted slowly to one side, and Loah let it come to rest upon the floor. Staring from the open door, Rawson saw the same familiar red walls and floor and the black opening of the shaft from which they had come. But the reverberating roar of the great organ-pipe was gone. He knew that the air, for the greater part, was driving on past through the upper shaft that was now open. The way was clear for them to ascend. He turned to the girl.
I
f my figures are right, it's some thirteen hundred miles from here on. How did you get up there before?"
Loah pointed to the passage where thejana, on that other excursion, had been hidden. "We went through there," she said, "taking thejanawith us. We went up many miles through a great crack, but it was not straight; we had to go carefully till another passage opened through to the shaft far above where it was sealed."
"And the mole-men never found it?"
"Oh, yes," said Loah, "they must have known of the crack, but they did not know where it led. Its air was bad—a gas that choked; one could not breathe it and live. But in our littlejanawe were safe. They could not use theirs; it was too large. Besides, only the priests came down. They had their Lake of Fire, where they did horrible things. They did not know that the shaft began again below."
"O. K.," said Rawson, and closed the door.
"But I wish to get out," Loah protested, "to gather more of the Oro. We may need more, should we return."
"We will never need it," Rawson spoke softly. "From the time we left Gor we had just twenty-four hours to live. We must go on, and go fast."
T
hey had no way of measuring time, and Rawson could only guess at the hours that passed while their little ship tore swiftly upward through the dark. He wondered if the occasional shrill shriek that followed the touching of their metal guides on the glassy walls could be heard up above.
Then, at last, Loah was driving thejanaslowly while she held her light so it would shine through a window. Rawson had to restrain himself to keep from pacing the little room like a caged animal while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than he knew.
"I may have passed it," Loah was saying doubtfully. "I may have come too far." Then she interrupted herself and sprang to the controls.
They drifted slowly back. "It is different now," Loah said; "the air rises more swiftly than before." She stared from the windows while she drove thejanaslowly up and down, trying to bring it to equilibrium in the strong up-draft.
The air entered the shell through a little opening with the same pungent tang Rawson had noticed before. He had wondered about the air. Down near the neutral zone it was dense, yet he had not minded the pressure too greatly—and that had been puzzling.
"Rock pressure and air pressure," he had reasoned; "they are two different things. If the rock flowed, any air that it trapped would be squeezed to a liquid. But it doesn't flow—that red stuff is solid; so the air pressure is only the weight of the air column itself. But even that should be enormous."
He could only conclude that the lessened pressure came from that strange counter-gravitation, the repelling force from the center of the earth. Perhaps it tended to dissipate the molecules, held them farther apart, prevented their squeezing in together, and battering with a thousand little impacts on a point where one had hit before.
Theirjanaswayed gently as if the smooth air currents were disturbed and were drifting them sideways; and then, at last, Loah, peering from a window, sprang back and moved a lever. Beneath them was the softly-cushioned thud of the shell seating itself on firm rock.
T
hey were in another of the interminable caves, Rawson found when he opened the door. Thejanawas resting a few feet in from the edge of the shaft. Cautiously they got out, but even without their weight it had a slight negative buoyancy.
"Oro is pulling more strongly than Grah," Dean said, and smiled. Already the names seemed familiar to him.
The two lifted thejanaand carried it back some twenty feet more before Rawson realized how unnecessary this was.
"We'll never be using it again," he said. "If I've guessed right it will stay here as long as the rocks; if not—but we'll never know the difference anyway."
He took the flame-thrower from the car in sudden haste. "Quick, dear," he told Loah. "God knows when the end will come. Quick, show me the way."
Loah knew every step of the route that took them on and upward through a maze of twisting passages, and Rawson marveled at her sense of direction. She flashed her light at times—the little bar of metal that had in one hollow end a substance which absorbed the light-energy of the Central Sun. Rawson knew how it worked. Even the lights in the mountain room were taken out from time to time and exposed to the sunlight that brought them back into glowing life. He had seen similar phenomena on earth. But, for the most part, Loah kept the little metal cap in place on the end of her torch, and they moved cautiously through the dark.
S
ounds of the Red Ones came to them at times. And once they hid in a narrow branching cleft that came abruptly to a dead end, while a force of red warriors marched hurriedly through the passage they had just left. Back in their hiding place Rawson stood tense and ready, with his weapon till the last of the enemy was gone.
Always he was frantic at thought of the time that was slipping past—until, at last, the narrow passage that they followed cut transversely through another large runway that glowed faintly from some distant light.
With that first gleam of light there came over Dean Rawson an odd change. Something within him had been cold with fear. Fear of the flying minutes. Fear that Loah might have lost her way in this tangled labyrinth of winding ways. And now, suddenly, he was care-free, filled with an absurd joy. Nothing mattered. They were to die, but what of that? Loah had chosen death; he would see that when it came to her, it would be quickly and without pain. And as for himself, if before he died he could remove this ruler of an enemy race....
So when Loah leaned close and whispered, "The light—it shines from the council room of Phee-e-al," Dean replied almost gaily; "I've got to hand it to you—you sure do know all the back alleys." Then he stuck his head cautiously out into the dimly-lighted corridor.
It was broad. He saw where their own little passageway went on from the opposite side. But the light—the light! At his left, not a hundred steps away, was a room, brilliantly lighted. And across it, in gleaming splendor, stretched a low wall—a barrier of gold. It was the council room, where once before he had faced Phee-e-al in all that savage's hideous splendor.
H
e listened. All was silent. Then Loah whispered: "Phee-e-al comes this way when he goes to the council room. But when he comes, or how often, I do not know."
Dean pressed her back into the narrow way with his hands. "Wait here!" he said, and gave her the flame-thrower. "I've an idea!" He stepped softly out into the broad passage and on naked, noiseless feet, moved swiftly toward the lighted room.
It was empty. Beyond the barrier were no red figures, nor were there whistling voices to echo as he had heard them before. Here was the throne where Phee-e-al had sat; here the priests had stood; there, along the wall, were the chests.
Fully twenty of them, each eight feet long, they stood ranged along the three walls of that part of the room protected by the barrier. No two of them alike; all of them were oddly carved and studded with jewels.
The chests were ranged in a straight row a foot or more out from the wall. He crossed to them swiftly. About here was where that priest must have gone. He raised one of the heavy lids till the light struck within.
Bones! Only fragments of a skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and yellow as old ivory.
What was it Gor had said of legends that told of ancestors coming from the outer world? Rawson knew that he was looking at priceless relics of the tribe, at the tusks of man's long extinct enemy, the great sabre-toothed tiger.