_Oro and Grah_
[Sidenote: As part of their titanic plan, Rawson and Loah-San return
to sacrifice themselves in the flaming caverns of the Red Ones.]
[Illustration: _Then there were footsteps approaching the chest._]
"The Place of Death!" said Dean Rawson. "Whoever named it had the
right idea."
He looked out across the wide stretch of ground with its covering of
white salt almost entirely stripped of the carpet of vines. The bodies
of the mole-men lay where they had fallen; their flame-throwers still
tore futilely at the earth or stabbed upward in vain, thrusting toward
the green-gold sun that shone pitilessly down.
"Still I do not understand," said Gor. "My people pressed the strong,
burning water from the vines and poured it into the pool as you
directed. But the Red Ones did not touch it--how could it burn them?"
"I'll say it was strong!" said Rawson. He looked at his hands, red and
burned where the liquid had touched. "And it got stronger by standing.
It was an acid, and when it touched the white earth a gas was
formed--hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with."
He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured over the
white ground. No odor remained; the air was clean. Then he picked up
one of the flame-throwers and experimented with it until he found the
sliding sleeve that shut off the blast.
"All right," he called to Gor. "Bring on your men; we've got to clean
up this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in its
work. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you." He
moved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging the
weapons and turning off their fearful blasts.
They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task was
done and Rawson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind.
Beside the mouth of the great shaft, resting on the rocks, was a
cylinder, almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loah had used. But
this was larger--fully fifty of the red savages could have crowded
inside.
"It is the only one they had," said Loah. "I have seen, and I know."
"But they can make more," Gor argued. "This one and the one we have,"
he told Rawson, "were made thousands of years ago. There were masters
of metal-work among them, and they had learned to use Oro and Grah.
Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gor and his
followers fought with the others. But he left them one _jana_--this
very one here. Then Gor followed the Pathway to the Light, though he
sealed it as you know. But--but they will build others. Sooner or
later they will come."
"I think not," said Rawson. "Now what about this Oro and Grah
material? What was it you called them--the Sun-stone and the
Stone-that-loves-the-dark? I must know how they work." But Loah was
reluctant to experiment with the _jana_ of the Reds; she had her own
shell brought instead--and then Rawson learned the secret of what
seemed its miraculous flight.
A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself above
the ground--Gor and some of the others brought it from the village.
Gor brought, too, a little box which he carried with great difficulty.
* * * * *
"It is Grah," he said, when he showed Rawson a little scattering of
black dust within the box. "Always it tries to fall back under the
ground. Both Oro and Grah grow deep down near the Zone of the Fires;
we find them in the caves, Oro on one side and Grah on the other. Oro
is as heavy in its upward falling as Grah is in its downward.
"Then"--he pointed to the central vertical tube in the shell--"we put
both of them in here, bringing it a few grains at a time. One falls to
one end and the other to the other. And then, with these simple
valves, we let out a little of whichever we wish--release it a grain
at a time, if that is best. We let out a few grains of Grah, and Oro,
being stronger, draws us upward; or we let a little of the Oro escape,
and we fall downward swiftly. You see it is simple, as I said."
Rawson's reply was not an answer to Gor so much as it was an argument
with himself. "Heavy," he said. "Specific gravity beyond anything
we've ever known. Osmium, the heaviest substance we have, would be
light as a feather compared to this. But wait. This Grah, as you call
it, falls downward, but that means it falls toward the outside of the
earth. With us it would be light--light! And Oro would be heavy. New
substance--new matter! One feels only the attraction of our normal
gravitation; the other doesn't react to that at all, but is driven
outward with tremendous force by counter-gravitation, the repulsion of
this Central Sun. You've used it cleverly, but we'd have done more
with it up on top."
* * * * *
He was lost in thought for some minutes, muttering figures and
calculations half aloud. "Two thousand miles from the Central Sun to
us; two thousand more through the solid earth. And if that repelling
force follows Newtonian laws it will decrease as the square.... But,
coming down from up on top, normal gravity would decrease directly as
the distance!" He made scratches with one small stone upon a larger
one in lieu of paper and pencil, but, to his listeners, his muttered
words could have meant nothing.
"Around six seventy-six hundred and seventy miles to the neutral zone,
the Zone of Fire. And a column of water--it would carry on by, plug
the shaft, check the back-pressure, and then...." For the first time
since that night when the mole-men had poured out into the crater, his
eyes were alight with hope, though his face seemed tense and grim.
Then the lines about his lips relaxed; he smiled at Loah.
"I would like to investigate this under-world," he said, "--not very
far down. Will you take me?"
The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips in
that subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rawson told her what
he wanted. "But, yes," she said; "of course I know such a place." And
from some two or three miles below, after anchoring the _jana_
securely, she led him through a winding tunnel where he knew he was
steadily climbing.
* * * * *
It was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls came
together high above their heads; he could hardly see where they met by
the light of Loah's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages,
but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks; and Rawson, looking
into them, nodded his head with satisfaction.
Occasionally his footsteps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knew
that the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "What an
old honeycomb it is!" he exclaimed. "And we had it all figured as
being solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentrated
in that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loah has
shown me just what I wanted."
He had gathered a handful of little fragments, and, keeping count of
his steps, had shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for every
hundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six miles
when he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened.
Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across.
From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward,
but Rawson did not explore farther. "I can seal that off with a
flame-thrower," he said. "I've seen how they use them." Then he took
Loah's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rocky
walls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew.
He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped through
from that central shaft, although Loah told him that in some deeper
passages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, it
seemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rawson, staring upward, felt a
drop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above.
"It's a gamble," he said, "just a gamble. But the stakes are worth
while. And now, Loah-San, we will return."
* * * * *
He made crude work with the flame-throwers at first but finally he got
the knack, and the mouth of the tunnel beyond the big room was sealed.
Then, with the help of Loah and some few of the others, he brought in
more and more weapons of the Reds. He was curious as to their
construction, but his curiosity had to go unsatisfied. They were only
cylinders, so far as he could see, cylinders a foot long and six
inches through, of some metal with the dull lustre of aluminum. But
they were sealed, and he dared not cut one open with another
flame-thrower for fear of what might come forth.
On the top of each cylinder a tube was connected that ended in a lava
tip; but at the base of the tube, where it joined the cylinder, was a
sliding sleeve that checked the flame to nothing when it was moved, or
opened it to the full blast.
He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through--one
hundred fearful instruments of destruction. And still he told no one
of his plans; he only told Gor what he wanted done later on. "It may
not work," he had to admit to himself. "I'm just guessing at the
thickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble,
nothing but a gamble."
He arranged the flame-throwers in a circle along the outer wall. The
tops of the cylinders were curved, but the bottoms were flat and they
set solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backward and braced them
firmly with fragments of stone until every crooked-neck tube was
pointed upward and toward the center. Finally he was done.
* * * * *
It was only a matter of a few hours later when Rawson stood on the
island's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaseless
rush of the air as it entered the pit; it was the only sound in a
silent world. And for the first time there came overwhelmingly upon
him a realization of what this moment meant.
The time had come. Loah was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturally
bright in her face from which all the blood seemed to have flowed. He
felt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him; he
knew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rawson half
turned with one final entreaty that she let him go alone; but he left
the words unsaid--he had argued it several times before.
Before them stood Gor, then the Wise Ones, the Servants of the
Mountain, deserting their post for the first time since the Mountain
had been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this little
world were gathered.
It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going; in fact,
he had been too busy, too pressed with his own preparations, to give
it thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he had
identified himself with this world and its people. It had given him
Loah; it had been a haven, a sanctuary.
He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea,
the shining land under a green-gold sun, the Mountain in white,
crystal purity against a green-blue sky. And he was leaving it, he and
Loah; they were going to--death!
* * * * *
"You will remember," he said to Gor. His voice sounded dull and heavy;
it hardly seemed himself who was speaking. "You know the day and the
hour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon--twelve o'clock in my
world. When the Voice of the Mountain says that noon again has come
you will do as I said."
"The Mountain speaks without ceasing now," said Gor, "telling always
of what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. In
twenty-four of those hours Gor will descend in the _jana_ of the Reds
to do as Dean Rah-Sun has commanded."
Rawson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loah threw
herself into Gor's arms in one last passionate embrace--but it was she
who entered the _jana_ first.
"Come," she said to Dean. "Oh, come quickly, Dean-San!" Then he, too
stepped inside and made the heavy door fast.
Men of the White Ones had been holding the big cylinder down. But
Rawson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gor's own hands
that swung them out at last above the pit.
Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air; then
Loah moved one of the levers a trifle and the blackness took them, and
only the little bull's-eyes in the metal ceiling showed the fading
glow of the Inner World, the home of the People of the Light, which
their eyes never again would see.