Some vague understanding came to him of the beast's ability to see in the dark. They used these red-hot stones for illumination, but this thing had seemed to see clearly even when the stones had ceased to glow. And again, though indistinctly, Dean knew that those eyes might be sensitive to infra-red radiations--they might see plainly by the dark light that continued to flood these rocky chambers, though, to him, the rocks had gone lightless and black.

Even as the quick thoughts flashed through his mind, he was thinking other thoughts, recording other observations.

The rest of the face was red like the body; the head was sharply pointed, and crowned with a ma.s.s of thin, clinging locks of hair. The mouth, a round, lipless orifice, contracted or dilated at will; from it came whistling words.

Out of the darkness, giant things were leaping. They clutched at Rawson, while the first captor released his hold and drew back.

Taller, these newcomers were, bigger, and different.

In the red light from the hot rocks Dean saw their faces, in which were owl eyes like those of the first one, but yellow, expressionless and stupid. Their great bodies were yellow: their outstretched hands were webbed.

For one instant, as Rawson's hand touched his pistol in its holster, a surge of fighting rage swept through him. His whole being was in a spasm of revolt against all this series of happenings that had trapped him; he wanted to lash out regardless of consequences. Then cooler judgment came to his aid.

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 pa.s.sages through the rock. Glazed, all of them. Either they had been blown through molten rock which had then solidified to give the gla.s.sy 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 pa.s.sing through a long tunnel that went steadily down.

Cross pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sed.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sageway 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 pa.s.sage.