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PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE
n the gray darkness the curved fangs of a saber-toothed tiger gleamed white and ghostly. The man-figure that stood half crouched in the mouth of the cave involuntarily shivered. "Gwanga!" he said. "He goes, too!" But the man did not move more than to shift a club to his right hand. Heavy, that club, and knotted and with a head of stone tied and wrapped with leather thongs; but Gor of the tribe of Zoran swung it easily with one of his long arms. He paid only casual attention as the great cat pass
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CHAPTER I A Man Named Smith
CHAPTER I A Man Named Smith
eat! Heat of a white-hot sun only two hours old. Heat of blazing sands where shimmering, gassy waves made the sparse sagebrush seem about to burst into flames. Heat of a wind that might have come out of the fire-box of a Mogul on an upgrade pull. A highway twisted among black masses of outcropping lava rock or tightened into a straightaway for miles across the desert that swept up to the mountain's base. The asphalt surface of the pavement was almost liquid; it clung stickily to the tires of a b
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CHAPTER II Gold!
CHAPTER II Gold!
rom the black, night-wrapped valley, far below, the singer's voice went silent with the slamming of a door in one of the bunkhouses. The song was popular; some rimester in the Tonah Basin camp had written the parody for the tormenting of the drill crews. And, high on the mountainside, Dean Rawson hummed a few bars of the lilting air after the singer's voice had ceased. "Ten miles down!" he said at last to his assistant, sprawled out on the stone beside him. "That's about right, Smithy. And maybe
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CHAPTER III Red Drops
CHAPTER III Red Drops
he flat-roofed shack of yellow boards that was Dean Rawson's "office" had a second canopy roof built above it and extending out on all sides like a wooden umbrella. Thick pitch fried almost audibly from the fir boards when the sun drove straight from overhead, but beneath their shelter the heat was more bearable. By an open window, where a hot breeze stirred sluggishly, Rawson sat in silent contemplation of the camp. His face was as copper-colored as an Apache's and as motionless. His eyes were
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CHAPTER IV The Light in the Crater
CHAPTER IV The Light in the Crater
f course it wasn't blood!" said Smithy explosively. "But try to tell the men that. See how far you get. 'Devils!' That's been their talk since yesterday when Riley got smeared up—and now that the bailer's gone we can't prove a thing." Again he was pacing restlessly back and forth in the little board shack that was Rawson's field head-quarters. Rawson, seated by the window, was looking at tables of comparative melting points. He glanced up sharply. "You haven't found it yet?" he questioned. "A fo
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CHAPTER V The Attack
CHAPTER V The Attack
very light of the camp was on as Rawson and his assistant approached. A shallow depression in the sand marked the place where the big casting had been. Beyond it a hundred feet was a black swarm of men that parted as the car drew near. They had been gathered about a figure upon the sand. Dean sensed something peculiar about that figure as the big car ploughed to a stop. He leaped out and ran forward. He knew it was Riley there on the ground, knew it while still he was a score of feet away. Only
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CHAPTER VI Into the Crater
CHAPTER VI Into the Crater
mithy's agonized face was above him when he came back to life. "God!" Smithy was breathing. "I thought you were gone, Dean! I thought you were dead!" As it had been with Riley, there was one thought uppermost in Rawson's bewildered mind: "The fire!" he choked. "He's swinging it...." Then, after a time: "The derrick—it's falling! I went down with it!... I hit—" "I'll say you did," said the relieved Smithy. "The derrick smashed across the bunkhouse, snapped you off, sent you skidding down the side
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CHAPTER VII The Ring
CHAPTER VII The Ring
mithy," Rawson had called him when he found the youngster fighting gamely with death in the heat of Tonah Basin. And Gordon Smith was the name on the company records. Yet he remained always "Smithy" to Rawson, and the name, which Rawson never ceased to believe was assumed, became a mark of the affection which can spring up between man and man. And now Smithy stood like a rigid carven statue in the midst of a barren sandy waste in the vast cup of a towering volcano top—sand that was in reality co
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CHAPTER VIII The Darkness
CHAPTER VIII The Darkness
arkness; and red fires that seemed whirling about him as his body twisted in air. To Dean Rawson, plunging down into the volcano's maw, each second was an eternity, for, in each single instant, he was expecting crashing death. Then he knew that long arms were wrapped about him, holding him, supporting him, checking his downward plunge ... and at last the glassy walls, where each bulbous irregularity shone red with reflected light, moved slowly past. And, after more eons of time, a rocky floor ro
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CHAPTER IX A Subterranean World
CHAPTER IX A Subterranean World
he metal plate that had sealed him in this tomb fell open with a crash. Beyond it the passageway 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
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CHAPTER X Plumb Loco
CHAPTER X Plumb Loco
he sheriff of Cocos County was reacting exactly as Rawson had anticipated. Smithy stood before him, a disheveled Smithy, grimy of face and hands. He had made his way to the highway and caught a ride to the nearest town, and now that he had found Jack Downer, sheriff, that gentleman leaned back in his old chair behind the battered desk and regarded the younger man with amused tolerance. "Now, that's right interesting, what you say," he admitted. "Tonah Basin, and the old crater, and red devils se
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CHAPTER XI The White-Hot Pit
CHAPTER XI The White-Hot Pit
ow 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 kn
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CHAPTER XII Dreams
CHAPTER XII Dreams
he black curtain of unconsciousness which descended so quickly upon Rawson was not easily thrown off. For hours, days or weeks—he never knew how long he lay in the citadel of the Reds—it was to wrap him around. Nor was his waking a matter of a moment. Many and varied were the impressions which came to him in times of semiconsciousness, and which of them were realities and which dreams, he could not tell. He was being tortured with knives, lances tipped with pain that dragged him up from the blac
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CHAPTER XIII "N-73 Clear!"
CHAPTER XIII "N-73 Clear!"
ou fly, of course?" demanded Governor Drake. Smithy nodded. "Unlimited license—all levels." They had spent the night in the executive mansion, and now the Governor had burst precipitately into the room where Smithy and his father had just finished dressing. The two had been deep in an earnest conversation which the Governor's entrance had interrupted. "I am drafting you for service," said the Governor. "I want you to go out to Field Number Three. A fast scout plane—National Guard equipment—will
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CHAPTER XIV Emergency Order
CHAPTER XIV Emergency Order
he throat of the old volcano was a pit of blackness in the midst of gray ash and the red-yellow of cinders. Beside it were other flecks of color: red, moving bodies; metal, that twinkled brightly under the desert sun—and in an instant they were gone. Nor did Smithy, throwing the thundering plane close over that place, know how near he had passed to sudden, invisible death. Rugged pinnacles of rock were ahead. The plane under Smithy's hands vaulted over them and roared on above the desert. "Did y
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CHAPTER XV The Lake of Fire
CHAPTER XV The Lake of Fire
efore a barrier of gold, waist-high, Dean Rawson stood tense and rigid. Behind him the great cave-room swarmed with warriors, leaders, doubtless, of the unholy hordes. But beyond the barrier were the real leaders of the Mole-men tribes—Phee-e-al, ruler in chief, and his clustering guard of high priests. In the flooding light from the wall, their eyes were circles of dead-white skin. A black speck glinted wickedly in the center of each. Phee-e-al was speaking. His artificially whitened face grima
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CHAPTER XVI The Metal Shell
CHAPTER XVI The Metal Shell
ean Rawson had passed through a nerve-racking experience. It was not a question of courage—Rawson had plenty of that—but there are times when a man's nervous system is shocked almost to insensibility by sheer horror. Not at once did he realize what was happening. Perhaps it was the sound of pursuit that jarred him out of the fog clouding all his thoughts and perceptions. It was like the sound of fighting animals—cat-beasts—whose snarls had risen to screaming, squalling shrieks of rage. It was sh
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CHAPTER XVII Gor
CHAPTER XVII Gor
hrough an ordinary experience, Dean Rawson, like any other man, would have kept unconscious measurement of the passing time. An hour, no matter how crowded, would still have been an hour that his mind could measure and grasp. But now he had no least idea of the hours or minutes that had marked their flight. Each lagging second was an age in passing. Even the flashing thoughts that drove swiftly through his mind seemed slow and laborious. Painstakingly he marshaled his few facts. "They know what
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CHAPTER XVIII The Dance of Death
CHAPTER XVIII The Dance of Death
hrough an airplane's thick windows of shatter-proof glass, so tough and resilient that a machine-gun bullet would only make a temporary dent, the midday sun flashed brightly as the big ship rolled. Along each side of the small room, high up under the curve of the cabin roof, windows were ranged. Others like them were in the floor. And, above, the same glass made a transparent dome from which an observer could see on all sides. Outside was the thunderous roar of ten giant motors, but inside the c
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CHAPTER XIX The Voice of the Mountain
CHAPTER XIX The Voice of the Mountain
n a strange new world surrounded by a group of kneeling figures of whom one, who called himself Gor, had spoken in Rawson's own tongue, Dean Rawson stood silent. It was all too overwhelming. He could not bring words together to formulate a reply. He only stood and stared with wondering eyes at the exquisite beauty of the world about him, a world flooded with a golden light, faintly tinged with green. Then he looked above him to see the source of that light and found the sun. Not the sun that he
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CHAPTER XX Taloned Hands
CHAPTER XX Taloned Hands
imple, pastoral folk, the People of the Light! In their inner world, a vanishing world, where nearly all of what once had been a vast country was now covered by the steadily encroaching sea, they had resisted the degeneration which might easily have followed the destruction of a complex civilization. Living simply, and clean of mind, they had clung to the culture of the past as it was taught them by their Wise Ones. And now the People of the Light had found a new god. Not that Dean Rawson had as
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CHAPTER XXI Suicide?
CHAPTER XXI Suicide?
ordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of the happenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It was Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness. They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of the ship. Their hands were red when they returned—and empty. Captain Farrell and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States Army
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CHAPTER XXII The Red-Flowering Vine
CHAPTER XXII The Red-Flowering Vine
otan," said Gor slowly, sadly, "was wrong. His vision was not the truth. The Red Ones have come. And now—we die." "Without a fight?" Rawson demanded incredulously. "We are not a fighting people. We have no weapons. We can only die." Rawson turned to Loah. They were inside the mountain, and the servants of the mountain, with terror and dismay written plainly on their faces, were gathered about. "At the Lake of Fire," said Rawson, "when you saved me, there was an explosion and clouds of white fume
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CHAPTER XXIII Oro and Grah
CHAPTER XXIII Oro and Grah
he 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 vi
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CHAPTER XXIV The Bargain
CHAPTER XXIV The Bargain
awson had taken one flame-thrower with him. He tied it securely inside the shell so it could not shift with the changing gravity, or be accidentally turned on. Again he clung to the curved bar against the wall. Loah stood at the center, directing the craft. Once again he floated in air, then found himself standing on what had been the ceiling of the room. The girl had released a considerable quantity of the lifting element in the jana's end, and now the black powder in the other end of the centr
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CHAPTER XXV Smithy
CHAPTER XXV Smithy
carcely 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 p
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