CHAPTER XXV
_Smithy_
Scarcely more than a vault in the solid rock, the room where Rawsonlay. He had seen it for an instant when the priest, after tying hishands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had butone entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet inwidth that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feetsquare; but he would not suffocate--the priests did not intend that heshould die--not yet.
He saw one of the giant yellow workers bring a big metal plate. He putit before the doorway; then, by the red glow, he knew that they hadsealed him in.
"I got Phee-e-al," he thought. "I did that much to help. That may puta crimp in their plans, check the invasion up above. But Gor didn't doas I told him, or it didn't work. The twenty-four hours must have goneby."
Then, even in that thought, he found happiness. "That means that Loahis safe," he told himself. "The shaft is clear; she's on her way backright now."
He pictured the _jana_ falling swiftly through that dark shaft. He sawin 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 inhis temples like a throbbing drum. It was some time before he knewthat, with that throbbing, other faint sounds were mingled.
They came from the wall beside him, sharp tappings muffled bydistance, the faintest whispering echo of rock striking upon rock._Tap-tap_ ... _tap_. A longer pause.... _Tap._ They were making dotsand dashes that blurred with the beating in his own brain.
In that dreadful silence he strained every nerve in an agony oflistening. There was nothing more.
He had been roughly handled by the savages. His whole body was bruisedand aching, his thoughts hazy and blurred. "Woozy," he told himself."Guess the old bean must have got a bad crack. Hearing things--mustn'tdo that."
Again he tried to picture the girl, speeding on toward that innerworld. Was she thinking of him? Surely she was. He could hear hercalling his name. "Dean," she was saying. "Dean-San." The words wererepeated, 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, "didyou think that I really would leave you?" She was pressing her lips tohis. Uncovering her light, she worked frenziedly at the metal cordsthat bound his wrists, pausing only to repeat her caresses--and atlast he was free.
"I reached the _jana_," she told him in hurried whispers, "and then Icame up. Their great room, where the Pathway to the Light begins, wasdeserted. With a cord I pulled the lever, and the _jana_ vanished. Icould not leave it for them to use. Then I followed--I knew by thesounds 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, hisbruised, bleeding arms whose hurts he no longer felt. And then,through his mind, flashed the question: if this was real, what of theother--the rappings he had heard? Perhaps it hadn't been a dream.
He lifted a fragment of rock and crashed it against the wall fromwhich those rappings apparently had come. Laboriously he spelled outhis name, remembering the dots and dashes from earlier flying dayswhen planes had been equipped with key-senders. He spelled it slowlyand waited, while only the silence beat upon him and the blood poundedin 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 theletters of his question: "Where--are--you?" The answer dispelled hislast doubt as to the reality of what he had heard.
It _was_ Smithy. Others were with him, for Smithy said "we," and theywere prisoners, sealed up in a living tomb. But where? Smithy did notknow. He knew only that they were in a big room where the rocks hadbeen shattered and molten gold spilled on the floor. There was a holein the roof, but too small to get through--a round hole, about eightinches in diameter. And, at that, Rawson interrupted to tap out asingle 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 tolet herself down into the cave. And now it was she who helped Dean topull his bruised body up and into the narrow crack. Loah had clung tothe flame-thrower; they found it where she had left it up above.
The tapping rocks she could not understand, but she knew Dean had adefinite plan in mind when he whispered: "The room where you firstfound 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 alongwhich he had once traveled, a prisoner of the mole-men. But Loah knewother 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 theroom in which he had been sealed was not a great way from the place inwhich Smithy was a prisoner. Yet this had been his only way to reachit.
When they came to a sudden sharp turn, he realized that they wereclose. Beyond that bend would be the branching, lateral tunnel thatled to Smithy's prison.
The main runway had been deserted by the Reds. Stopping often tolisten, starting at times into side passages at some fancied alarm,they had met with no opposition. But now, from beyond the anglingpassage, came the familiar shrillness of the mole-men's voices.
Again the two concealed themselves, but no one approached. "It's aguard we hear," Rawson whispered. "They're guarding that entrancewhere we must go. They're taking no chances on Smithy's escaping."Then he crept to the point where the passage turned, the flame-throwerready in his hand.
He drew back. For the moment it seemed to him physically impossible toturn this weapon upon them. They were savages, true, but it seemedhorrible to slash living bodies with a weapon like this. Then hethought of the devastation those same weapons had wrought among thepeople of his own world. His momentary hesitation vanished. With onespring he leaped into the open where, a hundred feet away, red bodieswere massed, and the air above was quivering with the green jets oftheir weapons.
His own flame-thrower he had turned to a tiny point of light; now itroared forth in fury as he swung it forward. They had no time even toaim their weapons or to turn them on. They were stampeded by theastounding attack. And still Rawson sickened as he saw them fall.
There were some who, panic-stricken, dropped their cylinders andleaped for safety in a narrow branching way. Rawson knew he shouldhave killed them, knew it in the instant that they vanished, but thatmomentary, uncontrollable revulsion within him had stayed his hand.
He rushed forward now, Loah still bravely at his side--past the fallenbodies, through the choking odor of burned flesh. Grabbing up one ofthe weapons that had been dropped, he thrust it into her hands andsaid: "Wait here. Stand them off if they come back." Then he wasrushing up the side corridor toward a room where once, in afar-distant past, he himself had been confined.
The flame-thrower lighted the way. It showed him the metal plate andthe smooth, glassy rock that had been melted around its edge. Hepounded on the metal and shouted Smithy's name.
Voices answered from within--voices almost unintelligible for thewonder and unbelief and joy that made them a confusion of wordlessshouts. Then he stepped back and turned the blast of his weapon uponthe rock at the edge of the plate.
The metal sheet moved at last, its top swinging slowly outward. Itsbase was held by the gummy, hardening rock. Then it broke free andcrashed to the floor, and the light of Dean's weapon showed throughthe black opening upon the blanched faces of men, where eyes werestill wide in disbelief.
Though they were looking at one of their own kind, it must have takenthen a moment to realize that the naked body, clad only in a goldenloin cloth, and the hands that held one of the fearful, g
reen-flamedweapons, were those of a human. Then one of them broke from theothers, sprang heedlessly across the still-glowing plate, and threwhis 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 youwere gone. The radio said they had got you, old man."
Then other khaki-clad bodies, a dozen of them, were crowding throughthe 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; itwas the only light. Rawson saw here she had gathered up the otherweapons and had turned them off so that even their little light wouldnot blind her as she kept watch down the dark passage.
"Do we want them?" Dean shouted to the others. And Smithy echoed thequestion:
"Do we want them, Colonel?"
Colonel Culver, his face almost unrecognizable under its smears ofpowder stains and blood, snapped a quick answer: "No. We outrange themwith our rifles. They're only flame-throwers, not ray projectors. Beatit! Run like the devil!"
Rawson snatched Loah's weapon and threw it with the others. It wouldbe hard going, ahead--she must not be uselessly burdened. But he kepthis own. Then with his one free hand he swept her up till she wasracing beside him as they led the way.
"I should have kept the fire weapon," the girl protested; "I, too, canfight."
Rawson, speaking between breaths, reassured her: "Too heavy. Theirguns will protect us--"
Behind them, a man's voice cried out once, a single, hoarse scream ofagony; then the rock wall took the sharp crackle of rifle fire andthrew the sound into crashing, thundering echoes.
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