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.

* * * * *

But he had neither time nor thoughts to spare for marvels new or old—he must find his gun. Yet, even then, he wondered what undreamed-of treasures the other chests might hold—what jewels, what paraphernalia of ancient kings.

He must be silent! Perhaps the next great glittering container might hold the blue gleam of his gun. And this time as the gem-studded lid was swung upward and back to rest noiselessly against the rock wall, Dean could not repress the audible gasp that came to his lips.

His own pistol! He had expected to find the one weapon, but, instead, the chest was filled with all it would hold of rifles and side arms and cartridge belts, all mingled in one indiscriminate heap.

They were twisted, some of them, and bent; discolored, too, evidently by flames. On some the stocks had been burned off.

Rawson's hands were suddenly trembling. There was one rifle that seemed unharmed; he brought it out, and hardly heard the little clatter that it made among the other weapons. An ammunition belt—he slipped out a clip of cartridges, made sure they fitted his gun, and threw one up into the firing chamber. He was fumbling for more of the clips when there pierced through his tumultuous thoughts the realization that he was hearing sounds not made by his own suddenly clumsy hands.

* * * * *

Marching feet, whistling voices—they came from beyond the room's farther end, beyond the entrance through which he had once been brought a captive. He took one step back toward the broad tunnel, then knew there were others coming there.

There was no possible avenue of escape. He threw himself in one wild dive into the narrow space between the chests and the wall, and pulled himself forward under the shelter of the one back-turned lid. The rifle was still gripped in his hands.

By the sounds that came to him, he knew that the outer room had filled with red warriors, and that another smaller group had come scuffing from the passage where he had just entered. And, by the echoing cry of shrill voices that shouted, "Phee-e-al! Phee-e-al!" he knew that the ruler was near.

Then there were footsteps approaching the chest. A priest no doubt; shrill whistling told of his anger. The concealing cover was jerked outward and down, and Rawson, staring above him, saw not the coppery face that he had expected, but the hideous white visage of Phee-e-al himself.

For an instant the ruler of the mole-men stood half stooped in petrified astonishment, and in that moment Rawson dragged himself to his feet. No chance to use the gun—the other was upon him, his gripping talons tearing Rawson's bare flesh. In one flashing thought, Dean cursed himself for the uselessness of his weapon—he should have taken a pistol, an automatic. Then, body to body with the savage, he was dragged out over the chest.

* * * * *

He had been holding the rifle above him, as he struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him about the shoulders, but his hands were still free; they held the gun on high. And in the second when he found his feet under him, as Phee-e-al dragged him clear of the chest, Rawson brought the breech of the gun crashing down upon the pointed skull.

He felt the talons release their hold. The priests were rushing upon him. Phee-e-al, too, had been only momentarily stunned—he was springing. Then Rawson whipped the rifle down in line, and the clamoring shrieks that filled the room with tumult were drowned under another roar.

He saw Phee-e-al fall. Even then, through all the pandemonium within his own mind, he thrilled with satisfaction at sight of a little dot and a spreading stain above Phee-e-al's heart, where only bare skin had been before.

The next shot took the foremost of the priests. The others paused, hesitant for a moment, ranged out in an irregular line. Past them, beyond the golden barrier, Rawson caught a confused glimpse of a sea of red faces. Green flames were stabbing upward from their ready weapons. The priests were between him and them, and there came to Rawson in that instant, through all the chaos of fighting and half-formed plans, the knowledge that these priests were a living barrier that held off the flames.

He fired once more to check them, then sprang for the wide entrance of the tunnel. He fired again back of him, shooting wildly as he ran, then saw Loah as she came from her hiding place with the flame-thrower ready in her hand.

"Quick!" he gasped. "Get back!" Then, with her, he was running stumblingly through the dark.

* * * * *

There could be no escape; even while they fled he knew it. And yet they almost made it—though the end, when it came, was one that neither could possibly have foreseen.

They were following a wide passage, one of the countless thoroughfares of the Reds. It was deserted. Loah flashed her light freely. Ahead of them the passage turned. Just short of that bend was a rift in the rocks.

"There!" Loah gasped. "Turn there. It will take us back to the jana." But the words were followed by a flash of green from dead ahead.

The flames that made it came quickly after and a dozen of the red warriors were before them, the light of their weapons slanting just above Rawson's head. His rifle was half raised—they would at least fight to the last. Then he realized that the green death was not swinging downward.

From behind them, in the corridor through which they had raced, came a chorus of whistling shouts. Rawson whirled to find more of the red fighters, and again, though their hissing green flames were held ready, they did not descend.

A priest, copper-colored, shining resplendently in the weird glow, detached himself from the group and stepped forward under the protection of their weapons. Loah's hand was depressing the muzzle of Rawson's rifle. "Wait!" she said. "He wishes to speak."

* * * * *

The priest stopped and addressed them. Loah answered; and to Rawson it seemed horrible that her lips and throat should be called upon to form those whistling words. Then she turned toward him.

"He says they will not harm you now if you surrender. Later, when they select a new ruler, he may order you set free."

Rawson was doing some quick thinking. The priest was lying, clumsily, childishly, but it might be he could bargain with them.

"Tell them this," he ordered Loah: "they are to let you go free—let you go right now! If they do that, I'll lay down my gun. If they don't, that priest will die before they get me. I don't think you can make it," he added, "but go back to the jana. Don't stop for anything. Drive it as fast as you can; you may still get there before Gor does his stuff. And take the flame-thrower in case you are followed—" He stopped; Loah was laughing.

"Did you really think, Dean-San, that I would desert you?" Again she laughed softly—laughing squarely in the face of that waiting death, a laugh that was half a sob, that caught suddenly in her throat as she stared at Dean.

He could not read the look in her eyes as their expression changed. "Yes," she said slowly, "yes, you are right. If I stay we both die, quickly."

Again her voice made whistling sounds; the priest replied. Then Loah threw her arms around Dean and kissed him. He was gripping his rifle; before he could take her in his arms, she was gone. She walked swiftly, the flame-thrower in her hands, toward the dark cleft in the rocks, through which she disappeared. And Dean, though she had done what he really wished, felt that all of his life and strength had gone with him with that fleeing figure.

He placed his rifle on the floor and, straightening, held out his empty hands; the priest's talons were upon his flesh.

"But I got Phee-e-al, anyhow," he was thinking dully.



CHAPTER XXV

Smithy

Scarcely more than a vault in the solid rock, the room where Rawson lay. He had seen it for an instant when the priest, after tying his hands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had but one entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet in width that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feet square; but he would not suffocate—the priests did not intend that he should die—not yet.

He saw one of the giant yellow workers bring a big metal plate. He put it before the doorway; then, by the red glow, he knew that they had sealed him in.

"I got Phee-e-al," he thought. "I did that much to help. That may put a crimp in their plans, check the invasion up above. But Gor didn't do as I told him, or it didn't work. The twenty-four hours must have gone by."

Then, even in that thought, he found happiness. "That means that Loah is safe," he told himself. "The shaft is clear; she's on her way back right now."

He pictured the jana falling swiftly through that dark shaft. He saw in his mind the beautiful figure of the girl, lithe and slender, standing at the controls.

About him was a silence like that of the grave; his blood pounded in his temples like a throbbing drum. It was some time before he knew that, with that throbbing, other faint sounds were mingled.

They came from the wall beside him, sharp tappings muffled by distance, the faintest whispering echo of rock striking upon rock. Tap-tap ... tap. A longer pause.... Tap. They were making dots and dashes that blurred with the beating in his own brain.

In that dreadful silence he strained every nerve in an agony of listening. There was nothing more.

He had been roughly handled by the savages. His whole body was bruised and aching, his thoughts hazy and blurred. "Woozy," he told himself. "Guess the old bean must have got a bad crack. Hearing things—mustn't do that."

Again he tried to picture the girl, speeding on toward that inner world. Was she thinking of him? Surely she was. He could hear her calling his name. "Dean," she was saying. "Dean-San." The words were repeated, an agonized, ghostly whisper—repeated again, "Dean-San—oh, Dean-San," before he knew that the sound was coming from overhead. Then a light flashed once in the little room, and he saw her face, looking down.

She was beside him an instant later. "Dean-San," she was saying, "did you think that I really would leave you?" She was pressing her lips to his. Uncovering her light, she worked frenziedly at the metal cords that bound his wrists, pausing only to repeat her caresses—and at last he was free.

"I reached the jana," she told him in hurried whispers, "and then I came up. Their great room, where the Pathway to the Light begins, was deserted. With a cord I pulled the lever, and the jana vanished. I could not leave it for them to use. Then I followed—I knew by the sounds where they were taking you. And now, what can we do, Dean-San? Where can we go?"

It was real! Loah was there beside him; he had her in his arms, his bruised, bleeding arms whose hurts he no longer felt. And then, through his mind, flashed the question: if this was real, what of the other—the rappings he had heard? Perhaps it hadn't been a dream.

He lifted a fragment of rock and crashed it against the wall from which those rappings apparently had come. Laboriously he spelled out his name, remembering the dots and dashes from earlier flying days when planes had been equipped with key-senders. He spelled it slowly and waited, while only the silence beat upon him and the blood pounded in his ears. Then he heard it. The answer came from a quicker hand:

"Rawson—this is Smithy."

But Smithy was dead! What could it mean? Slowly Rawson pounded out the letters of his question: "Where—are—you?" The answer dispelled his last doubt as to the reality of what he had heard.

It was Smithy. Others were with him, for Smithy said "we," and they were prisoners, sealed up in a living tomb. But where? Smithy did not know. He knew only that they were in a big room where the rocks had been shattered and molten gold spilled on the floor. There was a hole in the roof, but too small to get through—a round hole, about eight inches in diameter. And, at that, Rawson interrupted to tap out a single word.

"Coming!" he said, and turned toward Loah and the light.

The girl had found a metal rope in her wanderings; she had used it to let herself down into the cave. And now it was she who helped Dean to pull his bruised body up and into the narrow crack. Loah had clung to the flame-thrower; they found it where she had left it up above.

The tapping rocks she could not understand, but she knew Dean had a definite plan in mind when he whispered: "The room where you first found me—do you remember? Do you know the way?"

"I will always remember," she said simply. "And, yes, I know the way."

Rawson caught glimpses now and again of that broad thoroughfare along which he had once traveled, a prisoner of the mole-men. But Loah knew other and seldom-used passages that roughly paralleled it; and then, after a time, Rawson himself knew in what direction they must go.

He knew, too, that they had followed a circular route, and that the room in which he had been sealed was not a great way from the place in which Smithy was a prisoner. Yet this had been his only way to reach it.

When they came to a sudden sharp turn, he realized that they were close. Beyond that bend would be the branching, lateral tunnel that led to Smithy's prison.

The main runway had been deserted by the Reds. Stopping often to listen, starting at times into side passages at some fancied alarm, they had met with no opposition. But now, from beyond the angling passage, came the familiar shrillness of the mole-men's voices.

Again the two concealed themselves, but no one approached. "It's a guard we hear," Rawson whispered. "They're guarding that entrance where we must go. They're taking no chances on Smithy's escaping." Then he crept to the point where the passage turned, the flame-thrower ready in his hand.

He drew back. For the moment it seemed to him physically impossible to turn this weapon upon them. They were savages, true, but it seemed horrible to slash living bodies with a weapon like this. Then he thought of the devastation those same weapons had wrought among the people of his own world. His momentary hesitation vanished. With one spring he leaped into the open where, a hundred feet away, red bodies were massed, and the air above was quivering with the green jets of their weapons.

His own flame-thrower he had turned to a tiny point of light; now it roared forth in fury as he swung it forward. They had no time even to aim their weapons or to turn them on. They were stampeded by the astounding attack. And still Rawson sickened as he saw them fall.

There were some who, panic-stricken, dropped their cylinders and leaped for safety in a narrow branching way. Rawson knew he should have killed them, knew it in the instant that they vanished, but that momentary, uncontrollable revulsion within him had stayed his hand.

He rushed forward now, Loah still bravely at his side—past the fallen bodies, through the choking odor of burned flesh. Grabbing up one of the weapons that had been dropped, he thrust it into her hands and said: "Wait here. Stand them off if they come back." Then he was rushing up the side corridor toward a room where once, in a far-distant past, he himself had been confined.

The flame-thrower lighted the way. It showed him the metal plate and the smooth, glassy rock that had been melted around its edge. He pounded on the metal and shouted Smithy's name.

Voices answered from within—voices almost unintelligible for the wonder and unbelief and joy that made them a confusion of wordless shouts. Then he stepped back and turned the blast of his weapon upon the rock at the edge of the plate.

The metal sheet moved at last, its top swinging slowly outward. Its base was held by the gummy, hardening rock. Then it broke free and crashed to the floor, and the light of Dean's weapon showed through the black opening upon the blanched faces of men, where eyes were still wide in disbelief.

Though they were looking at one of their own kind, it must have taken then a moment to realize that the naked body, clad only in a golden loin cloth, and the hands that held one of the fearful, green-flamed weapons, were those of a human. Then one of them broke from the others, sprang heedlessly across the still-glowing plate, and threw his arms about the barbaric figure.

"Dean!" he choked. "Dean, it's really you! You're alive!"

And Rawson's voice, too, was husky as he said: "Smithy, I thought you were gone. The radio said they had got you, old man."

Then other khaki-clad bodies, a dozen of them, were crowding through the hot portal, and Rawson came suddenly to himself.

"Quick!" he shouted. "They'll be after us in a second. Follow me."

Loah was waiting. Her own flame-thrower spat a little jet of green; it was the only light. Rawson saw here she had gathered up the other weapons and had turned them off so that even their little light would not blind her as she kept watch down the dark passage.

"Do we want them?" Dean shouted to the others. And Smithy echoed the question:

"Do we want them, Colonel?"

Colonel Culver, his face almost unrecognizable under its smears of powder stains and blood, snapped a quick answer: "No. We outrange them with our rifles. They're only flame-throwers, not ray projectors. Beat it! Run like the devil!"

Rawson snatched Loah's weapon and threw it with the others. It would be hard going, ahead—she must not be uselessly burdened. But he kept his own. Then with his one free hand he swept her up till she was racing beside him as they led the way.

"I should have kept the fire weapon," the girl protested; "I, too, can fight."

Rawson, speaking between breaths, reassured her: "Too heavy. Their guns will protect us—"

Behind them, a man's voice cried out once, a single, hoarse scream of agony; then the rock wall took the sharp crackle of rifle fire and threw the sound into crashing, thundering echoes.



CHAPTER XXVI

Power!

A girl whose creamy body was strangely unsoiled by smoke or grime, whose jeweled breast-plates flashed in the light of her torch while the loose wrappings about her waist whipped against her as she ran. And Rawson, naked but for the golden loin cloth, running beside her. Then Smithy, and ten others in the khaki uniform of the service—it was all that was left of the fifty who had dared the depths. And now all of them were harried and driven like helpless animals in the burrows and runways of that under-world.

But not entirely helpless. Colonel Culver had been right: their rifles outranged the flame-throwers. And Rawson, looking past that first burst of rifle fire, saw the one flame that had reached them whip upward as its owner fell. Others of the Reds came crowding in after, and the jets of their weapons made little areas of light as they crashed to the floor. Then Colonel Culver took charge of the retreat.

Ahead of them and behind them was impenetrable darkness; only the nearby walls were illumined by the torch that Loah had been forced to turn on. And out of that darkness at any moment might come devastating flames. Culver detailed two men as a rear guard and two others to run ahead a few paces in advance. At intervals of a minute or two their rifles would crack, and the echoes would be pierced by the whining scream of ricochets, as their bullets glanced from the walls.

"We may not need them up ahead," Culver shouted to Rawson. "I don't understand it. The place seems deserted—there were plenty of them here before!"

"They've got something else to think of," Rawson shouted in reply. "I killed Phee-e-al—he was their leader. But they're after us now. They'll be running through other passages, cutting in ahead of us."

The tunnel turned and bent upward. For a full half mile they ran straight in a stiff climb. Between gasping breaths Colonel Culver shouted hoarsely: "Won't it ever turn? If they bring up their damned heat-ray machines they'll get us on a straightaway like this!"

Then Smithy's voice outshouted his with a note of hope: "We're almost there; I remember this place. There's where we mounted the searchlight. They've ripped everything out. Up ahead, one turn to the right, then a quarter mile, then a turn toward the crater. That runs straight for a mile, but there's a field gun at the bottom of the volcano. We'll be safe when we're on that last stretch."

* * * * *

Ahead of them the rifles of the two who ran in advance crashed out in a fury of fire as a green glow appeared. But this time the flame did not die; and Rawson, staring with hot, wide-opened eyes, saw that the ribbon of green swept transversely across the tunnel.

He could hardly stand when he came to a stop. Beside him Loah was swaying with weariness. The walls echoed only the hoarse, panting breath of the men. Then they crept slowly forward, where the passage went steadily up. Loah's light was out; she had slipped the cap on the torch at the first sight of that green.

They stopped but ten feet short of the deadly blaze. From a narrow rift in the left wall it streamed outward, the rock at the edges of that crack turning to red at its touch. It beat upon the opposite wall, where already the stone was melting to throw over them a white glare and the glow of heat. And, like a shimmering, silken barrier, whose touch could mean only instant death, it reached across the wide tunnel at the height of a man's waist and moved slowly up and down. The heaviest armor plate ever rolled could have formed no more impenetrable a barrier.

"And we almost made it," said Smithy slowly. "Look, beyond there—another hundred feet. There's the bend in the tunnel, a sharp turn—and we almost got around!"

Rawson reached for Loah's light. In the wall where the flame was striking, only a dozen steps back, he had seen another dark mouth, a ragged crack in the rock. He sprang to the entrance; it might be there was another way around. His first glance told the story, for he saw the walls draw together again not a hundred feet off.

"A blind alley," he groaned.

* * * * *

One of the two who had been their advance guard snapped his rifle to his shoulder. He was aiming at the glowing crack where the green light was issuing.

"A ricochet," he growled. "It may go on in and mess 'em up." But there was no whine of a glancing bullet that followed his shot; the softened wall had cushioned the impact.

Another man sprang beside him. He was shouting at the top of his voice while one hand reached into a bag that hung at his waist. "Get back, everyone," he said. "If I miss...." He did not finish the sentence, but pulled the pin from a hand grenade, then took careful aim and threw.

It went high—thrown there purposely; he had not dared aim it into the flame. But it struck the crevice fairly, and they heard it rattle on inside. The next instant brought the crack and roar of its explosion.

Like a winking signal light the green barrier vanished. Where it had been was only blackness and the dying glow of molten rock. Then, a hundred feet beyond, up close to the roof, the bend of the tunnel turned red; it seemed bursting into flame. Far back of them, down the long sloping way where they had come, shrill voices were screaming—and still there was no green flame to account for that tunnel end flaming red.

Rawson stood motionless. Loah, and the others beside him, seemed likewise petrified, until the voice of Culver jarred them into action.

"The ray!" he shouted. "It's the heat ray, damn them! Quick, jump into that cave!"

* * * * *

They had all retreated through fear of the grenade; they were opposite the black place into which Rawson had looked. Loah was close beside Dean; he threw her with all his strength into the black mouth of the cave, then he was one of a crowding, stumbling mass of men who followed after, and their going was lighted by a terrible torch of flame.

One man had stood apart from the others, farther across the wide corridor. His khaki-clad body flashed suddenly to incandescence, then fell to the floor. And inside the cave, where the walls came abruptly together to cut off any further retreat, Colonel Culver spoke softly.

"One more gone," he said. "That was Oakley. Well, he never knew what it was that hit him—and it looks as if we'll all get the same."

Through it all, Rawson had clung to his flame-thrower; unconsciously his hand had held fast to the bent handle of the cylindrical weapon. Now he set it down slowly upon the floor, then straightened his aching body laboriously.

Loah's light was still gleaming. He saw her eyes searching for his, half in terror, half in wonderment. Strange men with strange thundering weapons—he knew she was wondering if they still dared hope, wondering if these warriors of Rawson's race might be able to work further magic.

Dean put one arm tenderly about her and drew her close and his other hand came to rest upon Smithy's shoulder.

"It's the end, dear," he told the girl softly. "It's the end of our journey. You've been so dear and so brave. Pretty tough to lose out when we'd almost fought clear." Then, to Smithy: "Loah came back to save me—refused to go when she could have got away and been safe."

* * * * *

Already the air was stifling. The tunnel beyond the mouth of the cave was hot, though only at its end, where the invisible ray struck the rock surface squarely, was there red, glowing heat. Rawson suddenly saw none of it. He was seeing in his mind the world up above, his own world of great, free, sunlit spaces. Suddenly he was hungry for some closer link, no matter how slight, to bind him to that world.

"What day is it?" he asked. "Have you kept track of time?"

Smithy looked at him wonderingly. "Yes," he said, then added: "Oh, I see. You want to know what day this is when we die. It's the twentieth, Dean"—he looked at the watch on his wrist—"just two o'clock, the afternoon of the twentieth."

Within him, Rawson felt a dull resentment. He was being denied even this last trifling solace. "You're wrong," he said sharply. "You slipped up on your count."

"It doesn't make any real difference," Smithy said. But Rawson went on:

"We left the inner world on the nineteenth. At noon on the twentieth Gor was to cut loose the flame-throwers, melt a hole in the floor of the ocean. But it didn't work. I had hoped I could wipe out the mole-men, turn a solid stream of water down a shaft for over six hundred miles. It would have gone through the Zone of Fire, come flooding up into the mole-men world and spread out all over down deep where it's hot. It would have hit the Lake of Fire—all that!"

"I don't know what you are talking about, Dean." Smithy's voice was intentionally soothing; he knew Rawson was talking wildly. "But I know I am right on the time. We've kept track of it every hour since—"

Rawson's talk had sounded like insanity in Smithy's ears. He would have gone on—he didn't want to see Dean Rawson go out like that—but now he stopped. The rock was quivering beneath his feet.

And now Rawson, with a wild wordless cry, threw himself toward the flame-thrower on the floor. His voice rose to what was almost a scream. "It's worked!" he shouted in a delirium of joy. "It's the end of the brutes!"

* * * * *

Then, in words which the others could not comprehend but which somehow fired them with his own emotion: "Gor has cut it loose! Water, millions of tons of it! The Zone of Fire—steam!..." He threw himself flat on the floor as close to the hot mouth of the cave as he dared go, and the green flame of his weapon ripped outward and up as he aimed it.

From the passage, where it sloped downward toward the source of the heat ray, the sound of shrill, whistling voices had swelled louder. The whole tunnel now glowed green from the flames of an advancing horde. They were bringing their ray projector with them, Rawson knew, not that its beam was visible, but the white, dazzling glow from the end wall where the tunnel turned was still there.

"Shoot above me!" Rawson shouted. "Don't stick your guns out into that ray, but aim as straight down the tunnel as you can. Keep 'em busy. Keep 'em from coming too close."

Above his head he heard the beginning of rifle fire as the men crowded close to aim at the opposite wall at as flat an angle as they could. The air grew shrill with the sound of ricochets as the bullets glanced, but still the enemy came on, as their screeching voices told.

His own weapon was aimed up above. The roof of the tunnel was rough and broken. He directed the flame against the top of a great black granite block. In one place it was fractured. If he could cut it off above, make it fall to the steeply slanting floor.... He worked the full force of the blast methodically along the line he had chosen.

* * * * *

The air of the tunnel had been blowing gently, but now it came in sharp gusts that whipped in through the mouth of the cave, while it brought an unending growl and roar like distant gunfire from deep within the earth. The breeze had swelled to a steady blast when the rock crashed down.

"But that's no use," Culver had shouted, when the deafening sound of its fall had ceased. "They'll melt it in a second with their ray." Even as he spoke the great mass of granite softened and rolled downward as the enemy shot their ray on its lower side. The heat of it struck blastingly into the entrance to their retreat, yet still Rawson kept on, sawing doggedly with the weapon of flame at other great blocks above.

Now that distant thunder grew hugely in volume, and again the rocks trembled beneath them. The wind in the tunnel grew suddenly to a wild blast. It brought to them from a thousand other passages, the shrill, demoniac shrieking of air that was torn and ripped on projecting ledges of rock. Mingled with it was the sound of voices that screamed in terror, and the echo of feet running in mad flight down the tunnel.

The mass of stone, that had been melting under the invisible ray, cooled to red, then to black. Outside, the tunnel, now a place of roaring winds, was lighted only by the single flame of Dean's weapon.

"They've gone!" Culver shouted. "The ray's off. Get outside! Now we'll run for it!" And, with the others, Rawson sprang to his feet and leaped out into the tunnel which was no longer a place of death.

* * * * *

He heard the sound of their hurrying feet and a voice that cried: "Look out for the turn—the rock's hot," but he did not look after them. He was standing squarely, bracing himself in the blast of air, still directing the flame upon a block that hung stubbornly and would not let go.

He knew that Loah alone stood near. He heard other feet; someone was returning. Then Smithy was upon him, almost jarring him from his careful pose. Smithy was shouting.

"Come back, Dean!" he cried. "Are you crazy? Don't you know they'll be after us again?"

Rawson sprang as the big rock let go. It, too, crashed deafeningly upon the floor and rolled sluggishly downward beside the high hummock of glass that the first rock had become. They bulked hugely in the passage. They were eight or ten feet high, reaching across from one wall to the other.

Above them was still a space of four feet; Rawson estimated it carefully while he looked at the ceiling above. Then he shook off Smithy's hand that was dragging at him and returned to the attack; for now, above the top of the barricade he had built, white ribbons of vapor were streaming. He had to shout to his utmost to make Smith hear above the shrill shriek of the blast.

"Steam!" he screamed into Smithy's ear. "Live steam! We could never make it—before we got to the top we'd be cooked to a pulp. I've got to block it, got to seal it off." A whole section of the ceiling tore loose as he spoke, and the wind raised its voice like the scream of a wounded animal—or the cry of an overwhelmed and stricken people—as it tore through the space that remained.

* * * * *

It whipped the molten drops as they fell and made of them a deadly rain. Rawson, staring through the clouds of hot steam that now wrapped him about, called to Smithy to take Loah to safety, and kept the flame where it should be—until at length the last aperture was closed, the last gap in the wall filled in. And even after that Rawson kept the flame still playing above that wall till he had melted rock and more rock that flowed down to make the barrier a single heavy, solid mass.

Steam was coming now from the narrow cleft where the green light had flashed out to bar their way. But that was simple, and he sealed the gap shut with his flame.

He was gasping. The radiant heat from that molten mass had been torture that his naked body could never have borne but for the desperate necessity that drove him.

Smithy and Loah were again beside him. "Now," he choked, "we can go, but if there are any cross passages I'll have to block them too."

"There aren't," said Smithy, and added: "I thought you were crazy. You've saved us all, Dean; we never could have made it to the top. That steam was getting hot—hot as if it had come right out of hell."

"It did," said Rawson. Then the flame-thrower fell from his nerveless hand. He was swaying; his knees were trembling with weakness when Smithy and Loah, on either side, took his burned arms tenderly and helped him on where the others had gone.

Colonel Culver and a rescue party met them halfway. The Colonel had seen his men safely to the bottom of the volcanic pit. Others had run from their station beside a field gun to meet them; then Culver had called for volunteers and had gone back. And now there were plenty of willing arms to help.

* * * * *

The big lift, with its platforms of metal plates, awaited them at the tunnel's end. There was room on it now for all who were left; there was no crowding of men's bodies as there had been on the downward passage. Rawson was stretched on the floor-plates, whose touch was cool to his tortured body. Loah was seated that his head might rest in her lap on that absurd little fragment of skirt. She bent above him, whispering brokenly: "Dean-San—my dear—my own Dean-San! We live, Dean-San. I can scarcely believe it, but I know that we live, for I still have you."

But Dean was able to stand when that journey was done. First, though, there were men who placed him carefully on a stretcher and carried him, when he commanded, to the crater's outer rim. On the ashy floor of the crater a big transport was waiting with idling motors, but Dean would not let them put him inside. He wanted to look out across the world, to see it in reality as he had seen it in his own mind when all hope was gone. He wanted to look out once more across Tonah Basin and let his eyes rest upon country he had known.

Loah and Smithy walked beside him, as the first-aid men carried him toward that distant rim. The rocks there were cleft—it was the place where he first had seen the inside of the crater's cup. There he had them put him down; and, with the help of Loah and Smithy, he got slowly to his feet. While they lifted him, he wondered at the sound in this desert world where no sound should be. A terrific rushing, an endless roar—and then his eyes found the clouds of steam.

* * * * *

Below him was the Basin, the tangled wreckage of his camp. And there, where the derrick had stood, was a tall plume of white. It did not begin close to the ground—superheated steam, until it cools and condenses to water vapor, is invisible—but a hundred feet above the sand. And, from there on up, two thousand feet sheer into the air, was a straight shaft of vapor, rolling up for another thousand feet into billowing clouds that the afternoon sun turned to glorious white.

"Power!" gasped Rawson. "Power—and it will be like that indefinitely!" Then he laughed weakly. "I had to go down there to do it, to make Erickson richer, but it was worth it. In there the ocean will slowly subside. Gor and his people will find their lost lands; the column of water in the shaft will hold the back-pressure of steam. And here, I have Loah, and that's all—but that's enough!"

He put one arm, still with the bandages of the first-aid men, about the girl. "I hope you'll be happy, dear," he said softly, and turned back. But Smithy barred the way.

"That isn't all," said Smithy jubilantly. "You see, Dean, Erickson fired you—Erickson thought you had run out on him. Instead of backing you up, he quit. So I bought them all out. Whatever is there, Dean—and it's worth more millions than I dare to think about—you own half of! Now get back on that stretcher. Just because you've saved all our necks up here on top of the earth, you mustn't think you can keep an Army ship waiting all day!"

(The End.)