_The White-Hot Pit_
How far his guard of wild, red man-things had taken him Dean Rawson
could not know. Many miles, it must have been. And he knew that the
air had grown steadily more stiflingly hot. But the heat of those long
tunneled passages was like a cool breeze compared with the blasting
breath of the room into which he was plunged.
It seared his eyeballs; it struck down from the tongues of flame that
played in red fury in the recess high up on the farther wall. And the
vast room, the fires, the hundreds of kneeling figures, all blurred
and swam dizzily before him.
The hot air that he breathed seemed crisping his lungs. Vaguely, for
the stupefying, brain-numbing heat, he wondered at the figure he saw
dimly in its grotesque posturing close to the flames. And the hundreds
of others--how could they live? How could he himself go on living in
this inferno?
They had been chanting in unison, the kneeling red ones. Dean heard
the regular beat of their repeated words change to an uproar of
shrill, whistling voices. But he could neither see nor hear plainly
for the unbearable, suffocating heat.
The clamor was deafening, confusing; it echoed tremendously in the
rocky room and mingled with the steady, continuous roar of the flames.
The mass of bodies that surged about him made only a blurring
impression; he tried to make himself see clearly. He must fight--fight
to the last! Only this thought persisted. He was striking out blindly
when he knew that his red guard had cleared a way through the mob and
was dragging him forward.
He knew when they reached the farther wall. Somewhere above him was
the deep-cut niche in which the fires roared. And then, when again he
could see from his tortured eyes, he found directly ahead another
doorway in the solid rock. Beyond it all was black; it gave promise of
coolness, of relief from the stifling air of the room. Red hands were
thrusting him through.
The burst of water, icy cold, that descended upon him from above
shocked him from the stupor that claimed his senses. He was drenched
in an instant, strangling and gasping for breath. But he could think!
And, as the lean hands seized him again and hurried him forward, he
almost dared to hope.
* * * * *
To his eyes the passageway was a place of utter darkness, but the red
ones, their great owl eyes opened wide, hurried him on. His stumbling
feet encountered a flight of steps. With the red guard he climbed a
winding stair where the tunnel twisted upward.
That icy deluge had set every nerve aquiver with new life. He hardly
dared ask himself what might lie ahead. Yet he had been saved from
that mob; it might be his life would be spared, that in some way he
could learn to communicate with these people, learn more of this
subterranean world--which must be of tremendous extent. Without any
sure knowledge of their plans, he still was certain in his own mind
that they intended to swarm out upon the upper world. He might even be
able to show them the folly of that.
A thousand thoughts were flashing through his mind when the tunnel
ended. Beyond a square-cut opening the air was aglow with red. An
ominous thunder was in his ears. Then a score of hands lifted him
bodily and threw him out upon a rocky floor that burned his hands as
he fell.
Heat, blistering, unbearable, beat upon him. He was wrapped in
quick-rising clouds of steam from his wet clothes.
The platform ended. Far below was a sea of red faces, grotesque and
horrible, where each held two ghastly white disks, and at the center
of each disk a mere pinpoint eye.
He saw it all in the instant of his falling--the inhuman, shrieking
mob, the blast of hot flame not forty feet away at the back of the
rocky niche, and, between himself and the flame, a giant figure that
leaped exultantly, while its body, that appeared carved from metallic
copper, reflected the red fires until it seemed itself aflame.
* * * * *
Dean knew in the fraction of a second while he scrambled to his feet,
that the great room had gone silent. The roaring of the flames ceased;
even the clamor of shrill voices was stilled. He had thrown one arm
across his face to shield his eyes; the heat still poured upon him
like liquid fire. But his instant decision to throw himself out and
down into the waiting mob was checked by the sudden stillness.
To open his eyes wide meant impossible torture, yet he forced himself
to peer through slitted lids beneath the shelter of his arm.
The flame was gone. Where it had been was a wall of shimmering red
rock above a gaping throat in the floor, whose rim was quivering white
with heat. Here the blast from some volcanic depth had come.
Then he saw it, saw the great coppery figure leaping upon him--and saw
more plainly than all this the end that had been prepared for him.
Fire worshipers! Demons of an under world paying tribute to their god.
And he, Dean Rawson, was to be a living sacrifice, cast headlong to
that waiting, white-hot throat!
The coppery giant was upon him in the instant of his realization.
Somehow in that moment Dean Rawson's wracked body passed beyond all
pain. With the inhuman, maniacal strength of a man driven beyond all
reason and restraint he tore himself half free from those encircling
arms and drove blow after blow into the hideous face above him.
Only his left arm was free. That, too, was clamped tightly against his
body an instant later.
* * * * *
The giant had been between him and the glowing rocks. Now he felt
himself whirled in air, and again the blast of heat struck upon him.
He was being rushed backward; and there flashed through his mind, as
plainly as if he could actually see it, the scintillant whiteness of
that hungry throat.
He tried to lock his legs about the big body to prevent that final
heave and throw that would end a ghastly ceremony. The rocks were
close, their radiant heat wrapped about him like a living flame.
Abruptly his strength was gone--the fight was over--he had lost! His
heart sent the blood pounding and thundering to his brain; his lungs
seemed on fire.
* * * * *
The high priest of the red ones had his priestly duty to perform--the
sacrifice must be offered. But even the high priest, it would seem,
must have been not above personal resentment. Sacrilege had been
done--a fist had smashed again and again into the holy one's face.
This it must have been that made him pause, that brought one big hand
up in a grip of animal rage about Dean's throat.
Only a moment--a matter of seconds--while he vented his fury upon this
white-skinned man who had dared to oppose him. Dean felt the hand
close about his throat. So limp he was, so drained of strength, he
made no effort to tear it loose. He was _dead_--what mattered a few
seconds more or less of life? And then a thrill shot through him as he
knew his right hand was free.
That hand made fumbling work of drawing a gun from its smoking,
leather holster. He could hardly control the numbed, blistered
fingers, yet somehow he crooked one about the trigger; and dimly, as
from some great distance, he heard the roar of the forty-five....
Then, from some deep recess within him, he summoned one last ounce of
strength that threw him clear of the falling body.
Instinctively he had heaved himself away from the fiery rocks; the
same effort had sent his big coppery antagonist staggering, stumbling,
backward. And Dean, sprawled on the stone floor, whose heat where he
lay was just short of redness, heard one long, despairing shriek as
the giant figure wavered, hung in air for a moment in black outline
against the fierce red of a rocky wall above a white-hot pit, then
toppled, pitched forward, and vanished.
Sick and giddy, he forced himself to draw his body up on hands and
knees. Then he straightened, came to his feet, and staggered forward.
* * * * *
Below him was pandemonium. The sea of faces wavered and blurred before
his eyes. From a distant archway other figures were coming. He saw the
gleam of metal, heard the wild blare of trumpets, and knew that the
hundreds of red ones below him were standing stiffly, both hands
raised upright in salute as another barbaric figure entered. The air
was clamorous with a shrill repeated call. "Phee-e-al!" the red ones
shrieked. "Phee-e-al!"
But Rawson did not wait to see more. Behind him, the flames that had
been fed with human flesh--if indeed these red ones were human--roared
again into life. He had returned the pistol to its holster when first
he came to his feet; his weak hands had seemed unable to hold it. And
now his two hands were thrust outward before him as he staggered
blindly toward the tunnel mouth.
It was where he had emerged upon the platform. His reaching hands
found the side entrance where the stairs led down to the main hall.
In the darkness he made his way past. Stumbling weakly he pushed on
down the long tunnel whose floor slanted gently away.
Ahead of him was a light. The comparative coolness of these rocks had
served to revive him somewhat. He had no hope of escape, yet the light
seemed comforting, somehow.
He stopped. His stinging eyes were wide open. He stared incredulously
at the glowing spot on a distant wall, where a flame must have
touched, and at the figure beneath it.
The figure of a woman! A young woman, tall, slender, fair-haired,
whose skin was white, a creamy white, whiter than snow.
A woman? It was a mere girl, slender and beautiful, her graceful young
body poised as if, in quick flight, she had been caught and held for a
moment of stillness.
What was she doing here? His exhausted brain could not comprehend what
it meant. He had seen women of the Mole-men tribe mingling with the
men. Like them their heads were pointed, their faces grotesque and
hideous. Rawson gave an inarticulate cry of amazement and staggered
forward.
Between him and the distant figure a crowd of Reds swarmed in. They
came from a connecting passage. Above their heads the lava tips of
flame-throwers were spitting jets of green fire. Every face was turned
toward him at his cry.
Beyond them the white figure vanished. Dean, leaning weakly against
the wall, told himself dully that it had been a phantom, a product of
his own despairing brain and his own weakness. Then that weakness
overcame him; and the red Mole-men, their white and hideous eyes, the
threatening jets of green flame, all vanished in the quick darkness
that swept over him....