by Jerry
Wanno picked Florence up and was walking toward the pool that shot flames. Winter started to run. He was half crazy with anger. He didn’t care what happened. He had to try to save the girl.
The next few minutes were dim in his mind. He remembered hitting the tall man in the back with all his weight, just as Wanno was about to toss Florence into the flames. He heard the roar of anger from the red people and felt the man topple backward. Before Winter could stop, he had stumbled and fallen head-long into the steaming pool.
FLORENCE opened her eyes slowly, say Wanno standing above her and closed them again, pretending to sleep.
“You need not be frightened,” Wanno said. “You will remain alive as long as I can protect you.”
The tone of his voice amazed her. She had never heard anyone speak more tenderly. Her eyes opened quickly, to study his honest, patient face.
“I—I don’t understand.”
She stared around the tiny room. It was hardly more than five feet square, evidently carved from solid stone. The entrance was a low tunnel. She had been lying on a black, clothlike substance that cushioned her head.
“Do not try to understand me,” Wanno said, and sat down beside her on the floor. “You see, this is my own hiding place. I constructed it when I was very small. It has served me many times.”
She stared at the warm, scarlet face, and thought that if it were not for his color, the man would be handsome. Memories of the Fire Pool began to flood back. The sudden attack from behind, the fall, in Wanno’s arms.
“You were going to destroy me,” she said. “Why have you changed your mind?”
He shrugged.
“Boona, King of the Fire People, is very powerful,” he said. “Boona demanded your preservation for his fortieth throne. At the pool, the people were so interested in the white man that I was able to slip away with you and escape. It was my first opportunity to escape Boona’s wrath.”
She didn’t hear his last words. White man? Why hadn’t she guessed?
“A white man was at the pool?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Somehow he entered the caves of the Fire People and followed us there. He attacked me but slipped and fell into the Fire Pool. He will trouble no one now.”
She knew it was Jim Winter. It could be no one else. She tried to keep her voice firm. Tried not to falter.
“What happens to those who fall into the pool?”
Wanno smiled.
“They die,” he said simply. “The heat is intense. The Fire Pool has a curious power. It makes the body hard. It preserves it forever. That is why Boona wants his brides dipped in the pool. They remain lovely and he can stare at them for all time. Boona hates age. He loves youth.
Tears sprang into her eyes.
“Then the white man is dead?”
Wanno grinned.
“I didn’t remain long, but I believe it was quite obvious,” he said. “They search for us now, but they will never find us. When the search dies down, we will escape to the tunnels of the lower people and stay there until Boona forgives.”
BOBBY TALMUD was terribly frightened. Since that first night he had descended into the mysterious crater, strange things had happened to the fifteen year old boy. Bobby Talmud was a page in the court of Boona.
For days he had been forced to dress as the Fire People dressed, and carry vast trays of food to the sour-faced King.
He had done all this because he had no plan for escape and didn’t dare defy these strange people who treated him as a small, unimportant animal.
Bobby knew every passage in the Temple of Fire. He spent hours working in the great kitchen over the fire pits and in the hall on his way to Boona’s throne.
He knew that the lovely women who sat around the King were not alive. They smiled and looked pretty. They never ate and if you got close to them, you saw horror in the soft eyes, and a rigidness about the face.
The full horror of his position had burst upon Bobby Talmud. Tonight he had entered the temple to find a new Queen. He was staring at her now, the dead eyes, the willowly perfection of June Freemont. June, whom he had loved and who had been with him and Uncle Jim a few nights ago—the thirty-ninth dead Queen of Boona.
Bobby stared for a long time, tears in his eyes, at the body of the girl. The Boona’s voice warned him that he must not linger near the thrones, and Bobby Talmud went slowly back to the kitchen—determined to kill the King and escape from this world beneath the black stone.
“THE earth people are gullible,” a far away voice said. “Drawn into the stone, they cannot understand that such a place exists.”
The voice interested Jim Winter. He was drifting about in mist. The mist cleared gradually and his body seemed to lower itself on a soft cushion that clung to him and held him suspended half in space, half on something solid.
He opened his eyes and saw a vast, darkened room. The walls were black.
The voice was saying:
“This body is of no use to Boona. This earth man isn’t exactly beautiful, according to Boona’s rating.”
A chuckle, evidently from someone other than the man who had spoken.
“A pretty problem, this Fire World,” the second voice said. “We might burst out of it and destroy the world.”
They both laughed long and hard, as though the idea was pleasing.
“But we cannot disturb Boona,” the first said. “Boona would die if he had to leave the Temple of Fire. It is only the heat that tempers his old body. He couldn’t stand the upper world.” Footsteps sounded near him, and Winter closed his eyes. He remembered falling into the pool. Now his body was stiff, but he could feel life flowing back into him. He could flex his fingers and toes, though he dared not do so.
“Bathed in the Fire Pool,” a voice said very close to his head. “This time, it was no bathing beauty, but an oddly colored upper world man who felt the soothing qualities of Boona’s pool. I wonder if his body is preserved? He was lifted from the pool long before the required time had elapsed.”
The other chuckled.
“Boona was angry,” it said. “Boona wanted to dispose of the corpse at once. He cannot think of a man touching the waters of the pool. It has contaminated the Fire Pool.”
“At least, Boona has not captured his fortieth queen.”
“Ah,” was the answer. “Wanno is a smooth one. He ran away with his prize and will escape among the lower people. No one will tell Boona.” Winter’s mind was working furiously. Wanno, the man who held Florence, had escaped. Florence was safe for the time being.
He could bear the clink-clink of instruments. He could flex his arms and legs. His hips and torso still felt cold and dead. Thank God they had pulled him from the pool before it was too late.
The men were walking toward him. He tensed, hoping his muscles would respond when the time came.
“We shall start with the heart,” said the man who had spoken first. “I am interested in the construction, and what might have happened to it under compression.”
Under compression? The words puzzled Winter, but so had everything that had happened thus far.
He tensed for the spring. Opening his eyes, he stared upward at the point of a glistening knife.
HE ROLLED over suddenly, heard a cry of amazement, and landed on the floor, bent double. He came up, right fist aimed at the face above him. The blow connected. The knife sprang across the room and clattered against the wall. Winter didn’t wait for the second man. The door was close and he dashed through it and down a long tunnel. He knew that an alarm would be given. He rounded the first corner to find that the tunnel ahead was deserted.
Dashing headlong into a small doorway, he connected with someone who cried out in pain and went down beneath his weight.
In that one second, he saw Bobby lying on the floor below him.
“Bobby,” he said, unable to believe his eyes.
“Uncle Jim!” the boy’s voice was filled with relief. “I was trying to run away—to h
ide. I’m awfully glad you’re here. We’ve got to find Florence.”
He helped the boy to his feet.
“You’ve seen her? You know where she is?”
Bobby nodded eagerly.
“They say at the court that a guard, Wanno, has stolen her and taken her to the lower people. I know the way.”
“And June?”
There was hope in Winter’s voice.
Bobby’s lip started to quiver. His eyes were bright.
“June is dead,” he said slowly. “She’s one of the Queens of Boona.”
WANNO did not go to the lower people. For many hours he hid in the cave. He dreamed of having the girl for his own, but Wanno was of the Fire People. Now he was banished from the kingdom and he was bitter.
“We are powerful,” Wanno told Florence. “We plan the destruction of the world. Now that I am banished from Boona’s halls, I cannot escape. If we hid with the lower people, shortly Boona would find and destroy us both. I will not give you up to him.”
Florence tried to play the game coolly. With Jim gone, she had one job left. She must find Bobby. If she could not do that, she must attempt to destroy as much as she could of this Fire Kingdom, and then die herself.
She must stay with Wanno until she knew when and how to gain the information she needed to harm Wanno’s people.
“Why can’t we escape to the upper-world from which I came?” she asked Wanno. “We would be safe from Boona there.”
Wanno chuckled.
“Listen,” he said, “and I will tell you a story. I am a rogue and a scoundrel. Boona has hated me for many years. I defy him and he knows I am well liked. Therefore, he leaves me alone.
“The Fire Kingdom is concentrated and powerful. Many years ago, earth started to grow hotter inside. The crust will break some day, and the Fire Kingdom will be spread forth above ground to rule the surface. The upper earth people will be destroyed. Your own books tell you that.
“When the time comes, I was to have been powerful. Now, I will be less than dirt in Boona’s eyes.
“I am angry at Boona and yet I cannot escape him. Therefore, you will go with me. I have a plan to destroy the Fire Kingdom and get my revenge. I will die doing something I have longed to do. Punish Boona for his cruelty to me.”
The girl shuddered.
“And am I to die with you?”
He nodded, still smiling.
“Don’t be sad,” he said. “It will be wonderful to destroy Boona.”
He picked her up easily and started for the entrance.
“I HEARD Boona tell about the pit,” Bobby said. “I was in the throne room one night. He said that when the fire in the pit grew bright, it would burst out and destroy the earth. Then the Fire People would go out on the crust of the earth and rule it. Boona said he would take his queens to the surface and establish his court there.”
Jim stood well back from the roaring fire, the boy’s hand in his, his mind full of the terror and hopelessness of their situation.
He should be trying to escape. He couldn’t leave until Florence was found. Bobby had brought him this way, down the long dark tunnel toward the catacombs of the lower people, and finally, through the heat-ridden chamber of the fire pit.
The pit was sending up a steady, blasting fire that hit the ceiling and mushroomed out over the room. Cold down-drafts saved them from the worst of the heat. The flames flickering against the wall, the steady roar from below, were frightening.
“We’ll have to go on,” Winter said grimly. “If you think Florence came this way we must find her first. Later, we’ll think about what can be done to save ourselves and the others.”
He thought of the thousands of people above them, knowing nothing of this destruction, living innocently on top of a raging volcano of death.
Bobby led the way onward past the pit and into another tunnel. Suddenly he halted, drawing Winter behind an outcropping of rock.
“Wait,” he whispered. “After you’ve been here a while you can sense anyone who is close. People are ascending from below.”
They waited. Winter could hear voices, then Florence and the tall, red man, Wanno, came into the light of the fire chamber.
They went directly to the edge of the pit. Wanno’s voice was clear.
“We will smother the pit with fire blankets,” he said. “That was Boona’s plan. To do it now will force the flame to seek escape. If it cannot it will blow the kingdom apart.”
Winter admired the girl. He could see it In her pale, set face, the small clenched fists.
“Will it destroy us—here—in the chamber?”
Wanno nodded.
“The fire blankets are packed in chests near the wall. They are ready for the great day. We must hurry.”
While Winter and the boy hid in the shadows, Wanno led the girl to the wall of the cavern. He opened stone panels and dragged forth huge folded blankets. They stacked them on the edge of the pit. For an hour they toiled, and at last the blankets were piled in a high wall all around the pit. Wanno turned to the girl.
“You will leave first,” he said. “When I push the blankets into the pit, the cave will become still and airless. Then the crust of the world will explode. I could not bear having you here when that happens.”
He took her arm firmly.
“Good-by, earth woman.”
She stared up at him, her eyes wide with fright.
“You mean you’re going to . . .?”
He chuckled.
“Into the pit with you,” he snapped. “I do not fear death. Why should you fear it?”
He started to push her toward the fire.
JIM WINTER left the wall with quick, gliding foot-steps. He was close to them when Wanno saw, and dropped the girl. Wanno pivoted swiftly.
“So the white one wasn’t embalmed in the Fire Pool!” he cried.
Winter was on him, both fists flailing. He caught Wanno under the chin, sending him sprawling back toward the wall. With a snarl, Wanno came to his feet and started to run toward Winter. Winter, his back to the pit, waited. Wanno jumped into the air and came down with both feet against Winter’s chest. Winter groaned and sank down, almost falling into the blankets that bordered the pit.
He rolled over quickly, caught Wanno’s arm and threw him on the floor. While the boy and Florence watched with fascination, Winter twisted the red man over on his back and pinned him down.
Wanno, with one last lunge, worked his way free and rolled out of reach. As he did so, he hit the pile of blankets and both men started to slide. With a scream, he hit the smooth edge of the pit and tried to catch himself. It was too late.
He sank out of sight, and the fire blankets started to slide downward after him. The pit was suddenly filled with a choked rumble.
Winter staggered to his feet and grasped the girl.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he shouted. “Bobby—follow—up the tunnel.”
Behind them, the pit roared a protest against the choking blanket that had fallen down its shaft. For a moment, Winter thought they would escape—that the explosion had been avoided.
Then the walls of the tunnel turned blood red and intense heat surged past them, traveling upward in a hot wind toward the Temple of Flame.
The wall trembled and an explosion rocked the cavern and sent them sprawling on the floor.
None of them heard or felt what followed.
JIM sat up slowly, staring around him.
He was safe but very weak. A short distance away, Florence was sprawled on her back, staring upward dully at the star-studded sky. Bobby kneeled at her side.
Winter stood up and moved slowly toward them.
“You all right?” he asked.
She looked at him dully.
“Jim—I don’t understand.”
He was sitting beside her, smiling.
“I think I do,” he said. “We are back in the crater. Home is only a short distance away.”
He pointed at the dark rim of the prairi
e far above them.
“Before us is the rock—the same black rock that dynamite would not move—split wide open.”
“And there’s no hole beneath it,” Bobby Talmud said in a puzzled voice. “How did we get into the world of the Fire People?”
Winter felt much better now. They were safe. Nothing could harm them now.
“We didn’t,” he said. “I remember wondering why that stone was so hard. Then I heard the Fire People say that they were curious to know about my heart, as it was ‘compressed’. I didn’t understand what they meant. Now I think I do. The Fire World wasn’t as huge as we thought. Instead of it being large, we were made very small.
“From somewhere, probably the very center of the earth, a huge rock was forced up. The pressure on it had been so great, that it was harder than any surface we have ever seen.
“People captured us and took us to a strange, new world. Yet, when that world explodes, we find ourselves sitting back on earth, safe and sound. The rock, the one we could not crack, is broken wide open. There is no opening beneath it, no opening through which we might have gone.”
“Then the Fire People actually lived within . . .?”
Florence was beginning to understand.
“The ebony rock,” Winter said, “we were forced through an atomic change, and became so small that tiny pits—minute to the point where they would not show in a microscope—were like huge tunnels to us.
“One thing saved us from death. When the explosion came, it released us into our normal surroundings. The air caused us to return to normal size, and the explosion that would have killed us, were we normally as small as Boona and his followers, only served to release us from the Fire Kingdom.”
Tears glistened in Bobby Talmud’s eyes.
“Aunt June didn’t come back,” he said.
Winter’s eyes were troubled.
“The power of the Fire Pool was real enough,” he said. “But June did not suffer. She was dead long before the explosion came. We can be thankful for one thing. The Fire World, which seemed to be a threat to the world’s safety, was actually powerless to harm us. The stone was forced up from below by sudden heat that blackened the pit it created. King Boona and his thirty-nine queens are gone, destroyed by the heat Boona thought would end the world.”