"Flames be damned! Superstitious poppycock! Spacesuits will protect us
from heat or cold alike. Well--come on!"
He gestured his mates to him. The wailing chant of the Titanian natives
increased in tone and volume as the four outlaws left their guards and
boldly strode the last few rods up the hill, past the dais--and into
the roaring hell-mouth of the cave!
And as they entered, Chip Warren knew a swift sinking of heart. His
apprehensions had been unfounded, Amborg's claim that the lethal power
of the flame was "superstitious poppycock" was true. The spacesuits
_were_ adequate protection, and in short moments, Amborg would be
soaring back across the plateau, the jets of his rotor-gun spewing
death and destruction upon them all....
Then, "My God!" gasped Syd Palmer, his voice awed.
Chip looked, and shuddered to see, the last judgment of Blaze Amborg
and his men. A scant dozen yards they strode into the cavern. Vast
spirals of fire played about them, but they did not falter. Their
suits, ingeniously woven of metal, rubber, asbesto-quartz, defied
the combustive powers of fire. But despite this--one of the figures
staggered. The stunted Jovian was first to succumb. He had just pitched
forward to his face when the second figure reeled. Raat 'Aran, the
Uranian. He reeled and clutched at the tall Venusian, Torth--but the
Venusian, too, had dropped to his knees; his hands clawed frenziedly at
his breast.
Then the mysterious death struck Amborg. His voice rang out in a
piercing scream; Chip saw him stare wildly at the three now-motionless
bodies of his comrades, whirl, race back toward the safety of the
hillside.
But he never reached it. He had taken no more than a dozen strides when
he fell. A moment his incoherent cries babbled sickening delirium into
his watchers' ear-phones....
Then all was still, save for the inexorable chanting of the natives.
And the grave, judicial voice of the Titanian on the altar.
"They have been tested in the flame," interpreted Salvation Smith
soberly, "and found guilty. Now it is our turn...."
* * * * *
Chip Warren was not a religious man. He lived by a simple code: do good
and keep your sidearms primed. But now there faced him the inevitable
finality of death; he felt an urge to meet that last, great mystery in
comfort. He turned to his friends gravely.
"Now," he said, "it is our turn. So I guess this is goodbye, Syd. And
Padre--it might help if you could say a few words for us ... just
something...."
"So be it, my son!" said Salvation, understandingly. He lifted his
head; his fine old eyes sought the murky gray skies of Titania, so
different from the sweet blue Earthly skies for which all space-farers'
hearts yearned when their journey's end was reached.
"If this be the way," he said quietly, "thy servants must depart, then
so be it, O Lord. Yet even now in extremis we do not forget Thee and
Thy might. We remember even yet--" He looked at the flaming cave-mouth
toward which they must in a moment walk. "Even yet we remember a
fellowship like ours who met and defied the dread embrace of fire.
"'And in those days,'" he said, "'there were three children of Israel
which the king Nebuchadnezzar ordered to be cast without raiment
into the fiery furnace. And their names were Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego--'"
"_Shadrach!_" cried Chip. There was no intentional irreverence in his
interruption. Understanding had burst upon him so suddenly that the
words hurtled from his lips.
"Peace, my son!" counseled the old man. "Let not your heart be
troubled--"
"It's not! We're all right, Padre! If my hunch is right--and it must
be! Look, they are bidding us walk into the caves. We haven't a moment
to spare. Hurry, _get off your spacesuits_!"
There was biting cold upon Chip Warren's limbs and body as he cast the
limp shell of his bulger behind him. But as he neared the cavern's
mouth, the cold grew less intense. Less intense! That in itself was
final, convincing proof he had been right! He was barely two yards from
the writhing gouts of flame now. Were that the true fire it _appeared_
to be, its searing blasts would already be parching his skin to black
flakes--
But it was not! It was merely--pleasantly warm!
"I was right!" he cried exultantly. "Syd ... Padre! Come on in!" His
voice was almost hysterical with relief as he stepped gingerly over the
prostrate bodies of those who had gone into the fiery furnace garbed in
suits of metallic substance. "Come on in--the fire's fine!"
And together the three new Children of Israel walked unharmed into the
fiery furnace of Titania....
* * * * *
The corridors led, as the Titanian chieftain said, downward, winding,
through the hill to the vale below, where rested Amborg's navigable
life-skiff. The small cruiser in which they were to fly to neighboring
Uranus, there find aid and eager ears into which to pour their story.
And it did not surprise Chip Warren in the least to discover, about
halfway down the flickering tunnel, a ledge of brightly gleaming ore
that was resilient to the touch but broke the keen edge of the knife
with which Chip attempted to scratch it.
"Ekalastron!" he cried. "See--a whole mountain of it! Not just a mine;
a mountain! Enough to fill Man's needs for centuries!"
Syd's eyes, behind the quartzite globe, were big as saucers. He gulped,
"C-chip--are you sure we're alive? Do you think maybe we died back
there in the first cave, maybe? And this is all some wild illusion--?"
"It is not illusion," proclaimed Salvation serenely. "I understand,
now, what Chip divined in time to save us from a dreadful fate." And he
looked at the young man affectionately. "Radiation was what killed the
others, my boy?"
Chip nodded. "Must have been, Padre. The 'flames' were not true flames
at all. Not as we Earthlings, children of a warm Sun, masters of
combustive fire, understand flame.
"Different elements have different combustive temperatures. On
bitter-cold Uranus and Titania, the kindling point of certain rare
gases is necessarily in ratio to the outer cold. The kindling point of
the gases in this tunnel is a temperature which--though fiery-hot and
deadly to the Titanians--is only pleasantly _warm_ to us!"
"So Amborg," continued Syd, "walked into the flaming tunnel wearing a
space-suit--"
"A _metallic_ space-suit," reminded Chip, "which was a transmitter for
certain lethal radiations inherent to this 'cold heat.' Blaze Amborg
did not die of flame. He died of--electrocution."
Then a strange thought struck him and he turned suddenly to Salvation
Smith. "Padre--?"
"Yes, my son?"
"The story you started to tell. The one that gave me my inspiration.
About Shadrach. I wonder if some time long ago in the past, that legend
may not have sprung from an adventure such as ours?"
Salvation smiled and shook his head.
"That is not mine to say, my boy, not yet thine to question. Perhaps
some day the truth shall be known to you and me. But meanwhile--"
But meanwhile, the life-skiff was theirs for the taking. This was no
question to long plague Chip Warren or any other space-adventurer,
before whom stretched a whole, wide universe of wonder.