_Smithy_
Scarcely more than a vault in the solid rock, the room where Rawson
lay. He had seen it for an instant when the priest, after tying his
hands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had but
one entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet in
width that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feet
square; but he would not suffocate--the priests did not intend that he
should die--not yet.
He saw one of the giant yellow workers bring a big metal plate. He put
it before the doorway; then, by the red glow, he knew that they had
sealed him in.
"I got Phee-e-al," he thought. "I did that much to help. That may put
a crimp in their plans, check the invasion up above. But Gor didn't do
as I told him, or it didn't work. The twenty-four hours must have gone
by."
Then, even in that thought, he found happiness. "That means that Loah
is safe," he told himself. "The shaft is clear; she's on her way back
right now."
He pictured the _jana_ falling swiftly through that dark shaft. He saw
in 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 in
his temples like a throbbing drum. It was some time before he knew
that, with that throbbing, other faint sounds were mingled.
They came from the wall beside him, sharp tappings muffled by
distance, the faintest whispering echo of rock striking upon rock.
_Tap-tap_ ... _tap_. A longer pause.... _Tap._ They were making dots
and dashes that blurred with the beating in his own brain.
In that dreadful silence he strained every nerve in an agony of
listening. There was nothing more.
He had been roughly handled by the savages. His whole body was bruised
and aching, his thoughts hazy and blurred. "Woozy," he told himself.
"Guess the old bean must have got a bad crack. Hearing things--mustn't
do that."
Again he tried to picture the girl, speeding on toward that inner
world. Was she thinking of him? Surely she was. He could hear her
calling his name. "Dean," she was saying. "Dean-San." The words were
repeated, 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, "did
you think that I really would leave you?" She was pressing her lips to
his. Uncovering her light, she worked frenziedly at the metal cords
that bound his wrists, pausing only to repeat her caresses--and at
last he was free.
"I reached the _jana_," she told him in hurried whispers, "and then I
came up. Their great room, where the Pathway to the Light begins, was
deserted. With a cord I pulled the lever, and the _jana_ vanished. I
could not leave it for them to use. Then I followed--I knew by the
sounds 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, his
bruised, bleeding arms whose hurts he no longer felt. And then,
through his mind, flashed the question: if this was real, what of the
other--the rappings he had heard? Perhaps it hadn't been a dream.
He lifted a fragment of rock and crashed it against the wall from
which those rappings apparently had come. Laboriously he spelled out
his name, remembering the dots and dashes from earlier flying days
when planes had been equipped with key-senders. He spelled it slowly
and waited, while only the silence beat upon him and the blood pounded
in 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 the
letters of his question: "Where--are--you?" The answer dispelled his
last doubt as to the reality of what he had heard.
It _was_ Smithy. Others were with him, for Smithy said "we," and they
were prisoners, sealed up in a living tomb. But where? Smithy did not
know. He knew only that they were in a big room where the rocks had
been shattered and molten gold spilled on the floor. There was a hole
in the roof, but too small to get through--a round hole, about eight
inches in diameter. And, at that, Rawson interrupted to tap out a
single 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 to
let herself down into the cave. And now it was she who helped Dean to
pull his bruised body up and into the narrow crack. Loah had clung to
the flame-thrower; they found it where she had left it up above.
The tapping rocks she could not understand, but she knew Dean had a
definite plan in mind when he whispered: "The room where you first
found 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 along
which he had once traveled, a prisoner of the mole-men. But Loah knew
other 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 the
room in which he had been sealed was not a great way from the place in
which Smithy was a prisoner. Yet this had been his only way to reach
it.
When they came to a sudden sharp turn, he realized that they were
close. Beyond that bend would be the branching, lateral tunnel that
led to Smithy's prison.
The main runway had been deserted by the Reds. Stopping often to
listen, starting at times into side passages at some fancied alarm,
they had met with no opposition. But now, from beyond the angling
passage, came the familiar shrillness of the mole-men's voices.
Again the two concealed themselves, but no one approached. "It's a
guard we hear," Rawson whispered. "They're guarding that entrance
where we must go. They're taking no chances on Smithy's escaping."
Then he crept to the point where the passage turned, the flame-thrower
ready in his hand.
He drew back. For the moment it seemed to him physically impossible to
turn this weapon upon them. They were savages, true, but it seemed
horrible to slash living bodies with a weapon like this. Then he
thought of the devastation those same weapons had wrought among the
people of his own world. His momentary hesitation vanished. With one
spring he leaped into the open where, a hundred feet away, red bodies
were massed, and the air above was quivering with the green jets of
their weapons.
His own flame-thrower he had turned to a tiny point of light; now it
roared forth in fury as he swung it forward. They had no time even to
aim their weapons or to turn them on. They were stampeded by the
astounding attack. And still Rawson sickened as he saw them fall.
There were some who, panic-stricken, dropped their cylinders and
leaped for safety in a narrow branching way. Rawson knew he should
have killed them, knew it in the instant that they vanished, but that
momentary, uncontrollable revulsion within him had stayed his hand.
He rushed forward now, Loah still bravely at his side--past the fallen
bodies, through the choking odor of burned flesh. Grabbing up one of
the weapons that had been dropped, he thrust it into her hands and
said: "Wait here. Stand them off if they come back." Then he was
rushing up the side corridor toward a room where once, in a
far-distant past, he himself had been confined.
The flame-thrower lighted the way. It showed him the metal plate and
the smooth, glassy rock that had been melted around its edge. He
pounded on the metal and shouted Smithy's name.
Voices answered from within--voices almost unintelligible for the
wonder and unbelief and joy that made them a confusion of wordless
shouts. Then he stepped back and turned the blast of his weapon upon
the rock at the edge of the plate.
The metal sheet moved at last, its top swinging slowly outward. Its
base was held by the gummy, hardening rock. Then it broke free and
crashed to the floor, and the light of Dean's weapon showed through
the black opening upon the blanched faces of men, where eyes were
still wide in disbelief.
Though they were looking at one of their own kind, it must have taken
then a moment to realize that the naked body, clad only in a golden
loin cloth, and the hands that held one of the fearful, green-flamed
weapons, were those of a human. Then one of them broke from the
others, sprang heedlessly across the still-glowing plate, and threw
his 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 you
were gone. The radio said they had got you, old man."
Then other khaki-clad bodies, a dozen of them, were crowding through
the 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; it
was the only light. Rawson saw here she had gathered up the other
weapons and had turned them off so that even their little light would
not blind her as she kept watch down the dark passage.
"Do we want them?" Dean shouted to the others. And Smithy echoed the
question:
"Do we want them, Colonel?"
Colonel Culver, his face almost unrecognizable under its smears of
powder stains and blood, snapped a quick answer: "No. We outrange them
with our rifles. They're only flame-throwers, not ray projectors. Beat
it! Run like the devil!"
Rawson snatched Loah's weapon and threw it with the others. It would
be hard going, ahead--she must not be uselessly burdened. But he kept
his own. Then with his one free hand he swept her up till she was
racing beside him as they led the way.
"I should have kept the fire weapon," the girl protested; "I, too, can
fight."
Rawson, speaking between breaths, reassured her: "Too heavy. Their
guns will protect us--"
Behind them, a man's voice cried out once, a single, hoarse scream of
agony; then the rock wall took the sharp crackle of rifle fire and
threw the sound into crashing, thundering echoes.