by Anthology
Other figures, with faces red and ugly, expressive of nameless evil, were gathered beside the one who still played the jet of cold fire upon the walls. Like him they were naked save for a cloth at the waist and the metal straps encircling their bodies. They, too, had flame-throwers--he saw the long metal jets and their lava tips. Yet the temptation to fire into that group as fast as he could pull trigger was strong upon him.
Instead he allowed these other giant things to grip him with their webbed hands and lead him away.
* * * * *
The wavering light had shown many passages through the rock. Glazed, all of them. Either they had been blown through molten rock which had then solidified to give the glassy surfaces, or else--and this seemed more likely--the flame-throwers had done it. Rawson, scanning the labyrinth for some recognizable strata, had a quick vision of these caverns being cut out and enlarged, and of their walls melted just as they were being melted now--melted and hardened again innumerable times by succeeding generations of red and yellow-skinned men.
Yes, they were men. He admitted this while he walked unresistingly between two of the giants. Another went before them and lighted the way with the green ray of a flame-thrower on the melting rock. These were men--men of a different sort. Evolution, working strange changes underground, had made them half beasts, diggers in the dark, mole-men!
They were passing through a long tunnel that went steadily down. Cross passages loomed blackly; ahead of them the leader was throwing his flame upon the walls of a great vault.
Rawson had ceased to take note of their movements. What use to remember? He could never escape, never retrace his steps.
He tried to whip up a faint flicker of hope at thought of Smithy. Smithy had seen him go, had seen the red mole-men, of course. And he had got away--he must have got away! He would go for help....
But, at that, he groaned inwardly. Smithy would go for help, and then what? He would be laughed out of any sheriff's office; he would be locked up as insane if he persisted. Why should he persist--for that matter, why should he go at all? Smithy would not believe for a single minute that Rawson was still alive.
* * * * *
His thoughts ended. Webbed hands, wrapped tightly about his arms, were thrusting him forward into a great room. The green flame had been snapped off. One last hot circle on the high wall showed only a dull red. But before it faded, Dean saw dimly the outlines of a tremendous cavern. He saw also that these walls were unglazed, raw; they had never been melted.
Below the rough and shattered sides heaps of fragments were piled about the room.
Fleetingly he saw the shadowed details; then darkness swallowed even that little he had seen. Clanging metal told of a closing door; a line of red outlined it for an instant to show where it was welded fast. He was a prisoner in a cell whose walls were the living rock.
For a long time he stood motionless, while the heavy darkness pressed heavily in upon his swimming senses; he sank slowly to the floor at last. He was numbed, and his mind was as blank as the black nothingness that spread before his staring eyes. In a condition almost of coma, he had no measure or count of the hours that passed.
Then a fever of impatience possessed him; his thoughts, springing suddenly to life, were too wildly improbable for any sane mind, were driving him mad. He forced himself to move cautiously.
* * * * *
On the floor he had seen burnished gold, shining dully as he entered. There had been a thick vein of yellow in the rock. The floor, at that place, was rough beneath his feet, as if the hot metal had been spilled.
His hands groped before him as he remembered the heaps of rock fragments. Then his feet found one of them stumblingly, and he turned and moved to one side. He remembered having seen a dim shape off there that had made a straight slanting line. His searching hands encountered the object and kept him from walking into it.
The feeling of helplessness that drove him was only being increased by his blind and blundering movements. He told himself that he must wait.
Silently he stood where he had come to a stop, hands resting on the object that barred his way--until suddenly, stiflingly, his breath caught in his throat. Some emotion, almost too great to be borne, was suffocating him.
Slowly he moved his hands. Inch by inch he felt his way around the smooth cylinder, so hard, so coldly metallic. Then, with a rush, he let his hands follow up the slanting thing, up to a rounded top, to a heavy ring and a shackle that was on the end of a cable, thin and taut. And, while his hands explored it feverishly, the metal moved!
* * * * *
He clung to the smooth roundness as it slipped through his hands. It was the bailer, part of his own equipment. That slender cable reached up, straight up to the world he knew. And Smithy was there--Smithy was hoisting it!
He clung to the cylinder desperately. The bore, at this depth, had been reduced to eight inches; the bailer fitted it loosely. And Rawson cursed frantically the narrow space that would let this inanimate object return but would hold him back, while he wrapped his arms about the cold surface of the metal messenger from another world.
It lifted clear, then settled back. This time it dropped noisily to the floor. And suddenly Dean was tearing at the ring on one of the swollen fingers of his left hand.
It came free at last; it was in his hand as the cable tightened again. Swiftly, surely, he worked in the darkness to jam the ring through the shackle at the bailer's top. Then the bailer lifted, clanged loudly as it entered the shattered bore in the rocks above, and scraped noisily at the sides. The sound rose to a rasping shriek that went fainter and still fainter till it dwindled into silence.
But Dean Rawson, standing motionless in the darkness of that buried vault, dared once more to let himself think and feel as he stared blindly upward.
Up there Smithy was waiting. Smithy would know. And with Smithy fighting from the outside and he, Rawson, putting up a scrap below.... He smiled almost happily as his hand rested upon his gun.
Hopeless? Of course it was hopeless. No use of really kidding himself--he didn't have the chance of a pink-eyed rabbit.
But he was still smiling toward that dark roof overhead as the outlines of a metal door grew cherry red. They were coming for him! He was ready to meet whatever lay ahead....
CHAPTER IX
A Subterranean World
The metal plate that had sealed him in this tomb fell open with a crash. Beyond it the passageway was alive with crowding red figures. Above their heads the nozzles of a score of flame-throwers spat jets of green fire. Rawson drew back in sudden uncontrollable horror as they came crowding into the room.
The familiar feel of the bailer's cold metal had given him a momentary sense of oneness with his own world. Now this inrush of hideous, demoniac figures beneath the flare of green flames was like a fevered vision of the infernal regions come suddenly to actuality.
Rawson retreated to the shattered, rocky wall and prepared for one last fight, until he realized that the evil black eyes in their ghastly circles of white skin were fixed upon him more in curiosity than in active hatred.
They formed a semicircle about him--a wall of red bodies, whose pointed heads were craned forward, while an excited chatter in their broken, whistling speech filled the room with shrill clamor. Then one of them pointed above toward the open shaft that Rawson had drilled, the shaft up which the bailer had gone. And again their voices rose in weird discord, while their long arms waved, and red, lean-fingered hands pointed.
Only a moment of this, then one of them gave an order. Two of the red figures came toward Rawson where he was waiting. They were unarmed. They motioned that he was to go with them. And Dean, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, allowed them, one on each side, to take him by the arms and hurry him through the open door. Two others went ahead, the green jets of flame from their weapons lighting the passage.
The system of communicating tunnels seemed at first only the vents and blow-holes from some previous volcanic activity. And yet, at times
they gave place to more regular arrangement that plainly was artificial. The air in them was pure, though odorous with a pungent tang which Dean could not identify. Through some of the passages it blew gently with uncomfortable warmth.
The guard of wild red figures hurried him along through a vast world of caverns and winding passages which seemed one great mine. The richness of it was amazing. Dean Rawson was a man, a human being, facing death in some form which he could not yet know, and, so fast had his wild experiences crowded in upon him, he seemed numbed to all normal emotions; yet through it all the mind of the engineer was at work, and Dean's eyes were flashing from side to side, trying to see and understand the ever-changing panorama of a subterranean world.
* * * * *
Mole-men, both red and yellow, were everywhere. But it was apparent at a glance that the yellow giants were a race of toilers--slaves, driven by the reds.
Their great bodies glowed orange-colored with the reflected heat of the blasts of flame used to melt the metals from their ores. Gold and silver, other metals that Rawson could not distinguish in the half light--the glow of the molten stuff came from every distant cave that the passages opened up.
The sheer marvel of it overwhelmed him. His own danger, even the death that waited for him, were forgotten.
A world within a world--and who knew how far it extended? Mole-men, by scores and hundreds, the denizens of a great subterranean world, of which his own world had been in ignorance. Here was civilization of a sort, and now the barriers that had separated this world from the world above had been broken down; the two were united. Suddenly there came to Rawson's mind a flashing comprehension of a menace wild and terrible that had come with the breaking of those barriers.
They were passing through a wider hall when the whistling chatter of Dean's escort ceased. They were looking to one side where a cloud of smoke had rolled from a slope beyond. One of the red figures staggered, choking, from the cloud. Two yellow mole-men followed closely after.
The red mole-man was unarmed; each yellow one had a flame-thrower that was now so familiar a sight to Dean. His own escort was silent; they had halted, watching those others expectantly.
* * * * *
In the silence of that rocky room the single red one whistled an order. One of the two yellow men placed his weapon on the floor. Another shrill order followed, and the remaining worker, without a moment's hesitation, turned the green blast of his own projector upon his comrade.
It was done in a second--a second in which the giant's shriek ended in a flash of flame for which his own flesh was the fuel. A wisp of drifting smoke, and that was all. And the red creatures who had Rawson in their charge, after a moment of silence, filled the room with shrill-voiced pandemonium, while they shrieked their approval of the spectacle.
But Dean Rawson's lips were forming half-whispered words, so intently was he thinking the thoughts. "The damned red beast! That poor devil's flame hit some sulphur, I suppose--burned it to SO2--then he got his!"
But, even while he searched his mind for words to describe the evil of this red race, he was realizing another fact. These yellow giants, countless thousands of them, perhaps, were held in subjection by their red masters. They would do as they were told. Dimly, vaguely, through his horrified mind, came the picture of a horde of red and yellow beasts turned loose upon the world above.
There were fears now which filled Dean Rawson, shook him with horrors as yet only half comprehended. But the fears were not for himself, one solitary man in the grip of these red beasts--he was fearing for all mankind.
* * * * *
His guard was hurrying him on, but now Dean hardly saw the scenes of feverish activity through which they passed. Another thought had come to him.
That shaft, the hole which he himself had drilled--what damage had it done? It was he who had broken down the barriers. His drill had told these beasts that there was other life above. It had guided them. They had realized that they were near to some other place where men worked and drove tunnels through the rocks. They had followed up these forgotten passages that led to the old craters, had ascended inside the volcano, made their way through the top and emerged into another world--a clean and sunlit world.
Now Rawson's eyes found with new understanding the activity about him.
The mining operations had been left behind. Here were branching passages, great cavelike rooms--a world within a world, in all truth. Throughout it, demoniac figures were hurrying, driving thousands of giant yellow slaves where the light shone sparkling from innumerable heaps of metal weapons--flame-throwers and others, the nature of which Rawson could not determine. And everywhere was the shouting and hurry as of a nation in the throes of war.
His speculations ended abruptly. They were approaching a room, a vast open place. High on the farther wall was a recess in the rock in which tongues of flame licked hungrily upward. The heat of the fires struck down in a ceaseless hot blast. Close to the fires, unmindful of the heat, a barbaric figure assumed grotesque and horrible postures, while its voice rose in echoing shrillness.
Below were crowding red ones who prostrated themselves on the rocky floor.
"Fire worshipers!" The explanatory thought flashed through Dean Rawson's mind. "Here was one of their holy places, a place of sacrifice, perhaps, and he was being taken there, helpless, a captive!"
CHAPTER X
Plumb Loco
The sheriff of Cocos County was reacting exactly as Rawson had anticipated. Smithy stood before him, a disheveled Smithy, grimy of face and hands. He had made his way to the highway and caught a ride to the nearest town, and now that he had found Jack Downer, sheriff, that gentleman leaned back in his old chair behind the battered desk and regarded the younger man with amused tolerance.
"Now, that's right interesting, what you say," he admitted. "Tonah Basin, and the old crater, and red devils settin' fire to everything. I've heard some wild ones since this Prohibition went into effect and some of the boys started makin' their own, but yours sure beats 'em all. Guess likely I'll have to take a run up Tonah way and see what kind of cactus liquor they're makin'."
"Meaning I'm drunk or a liar." Smithy's voice was hot with sudden anger, but the sheriff regarded him imperturbably.
"Well, I'd let you off on one count, son. You do look sort of sober."
Smithy disregarded the plain implication and fought down the anger that possessed him.
"May I use your phone, Mr. Downer?" he asked.
He called the office of Erickson and his associates in Los Angeles and told, as well as he could for the constant interruptions from his listener, the story of what had occurred. And Mr. Erickson at the other end of the line, although he used different words, gave somewhat the same reply as had the sheriff.
"I refuse to listen to any more such wild talk," he said. "If our property has been destroyed, as you say, there will be an accounting, you may be sure of that. And now, Mr. Smith, get this straight, you tell Rawson, wherever he is hiding, to come and see me at once."
"But I tell you he has been captured," said Smithy desperately. "He's gone."
"I rather think we will find him," was the reply. "He had better come of his own accord. His connection with us will be severed and all drilling operations in Tonah Basin will be discontinued, but Mr. Rawson will find that his responsibility is not so easily evaded."
The sheriff could not have failed to realize the unsatisfactory nature of the conversation; he must have wondered at the satisfied grin that spread across Smithy's tired face.
"Do you mean you're through?" he demanded. "You're abandoning Rawson's work?"
"Exactly," was Mr. Erickson's crisp response.
* * * * *
Smithy, as the telephone clicked in his ear, turned again to the sheriff. "That unties my hands," he said cryptically. "One more call, if you please."
Then to the operator: "Get me the offices of the Mountain Power and Lighting Corporation in San Francisco. I will talk with the president."
The sheriff of Cocos County chuckled audibly. "You'll talk to the president's sixteenth assistant secretary, son," he told Smithy. "And I take back what I said before--now I know you're plumb loco. By the way, son, it costs money for telephone calls like that. I hope you ain't, by any chance, overlookin'--"
But Smithy was speaking into the telephone unmindful of the sheriff's remarks.
"Is Mr. Smith in his office?" he was inquiring. "Yes, President Smith.... Would you connect me with him at once, please? This is Gordon Smith talking."
"Hello, Dad," he said a moment later. "Yes, that's right. It's the prodigal himself. Now, listen, Dad, here's something important. Can you meet me in Sacramento and arrange for us to see the Governor--get his private, confidential ear? I'll beat it for Los Angeles--charter the fastest plane they've got...."
There was more to the conversation, much more, although Smithy refrained from giving details over the phone. An operator was breaking in on the conversation as he was about to hang up.
"Emergency call," the young woman's voice was saying. "We must have the line at once."
* * * * *
Smithy handed the telephone to the sheriff. "Someone's anxious to talk to you," he said. He searched his pockets hurriedly, found a ten-dollar bill which he laid on the sheriff's desk. "That will cover it," he said with a new note in his voice. "Perhaps you're not just the man for this job, sheriff. It's going to be a whole lot too hot for you to handle."
He had turned quickly toward the door, but something in the sheriff's excited voice checked him. "Burned? Wiped out, you say?"
Halfway across the room Smithy could hear another hoarse voice in the telephone. The sheriff repeated the words. "Red devils! They wasn't Injuns? The whole town of Seven Palms destroyed!"
"I thought," said Smithy softly to himself, "that we'd have to go down there to find them, and instead they're out looking for us. Yes, I think this will be decidedly too hot for you to handle, sheriff." He turned and bolted out the door.
* * * * *
An attentive audience was awaiting Gordon Smith on his arrival in Sacramento. Smithy's father was not one to be kept waiting even by the Governor of the state. Also, Smithy was coming from the Tonah Basin region, and the news of the destruction of the desert town of Seven Palms had preceded him. Even the swift planes of the Coastal Service could not match the speed of the radio news.