primitive lovefor adornment that inspires an African savage to ornament his personwith any new and glittering object he happens to acquire. Therat-king then graciously draped the cartridge-belt and holsteredautomatics around the shoulders of the metal-collared leader who hadcaptured Powell.
The king turned his attention back to his prisoner. He studied thecaptive curiously for a moment or two, then squealed a briefcommand. A score of the rat-men promptly closed in upon Powell, andbegan herding him toward a far back corner of the big cavern.
Stopping a few yards away from the edge of what seemed to be a widedeep pit in the rock floor, the guard stripped Powell's bonds fromhim. Powell made no move to take advantage of his freedom, realizingthat the swarming thousands of rodents in the cave made escape outof the question for the moment. He allowed himself to be docilelyherded on to the edge of the pit.
And the next moment he exclaimed aloud in delighted surprise as hegazed down at the floor of the pit ten feet beneath him. There,sitting on a low heap of stones on the pit's sandy floor,white-faced and weary but apparently unhurt, was Joan Marlowe.
* * * * *
The girl's face brightened in relief as she looked up and recognizedhim.
"Larry! Oh, thank God you've come!"
The leader of the guards motioned for Powell to jump down into thepit. He needed no urging. A moment later he landed lightly on thesandy floor of the pit, and Joan was in his arms.
The rat-men left a dozen of their number scattered as sentriesaround the edge of the pit. The rest of them returned to the mainhorde, leaving the prisoners to their own devices.
"I knew that you'd come, Larry, as soon as you got my note," Joanexclaimed happily. "But how did you ever succeed in finding thisCave of Blue Flame?"
"I didn't find it myself," Powell admitted. "I was captured like aboob and dragged here." He told Joan of his mishaps since arrivingin Arret.
The girl nodded when he had finished. "Much the same happened to me,Larry, only the red moon wasn't shining then. The only light wasfrom what looked like the dim ghost of a big yellow sun. Imaterialized in Arret almost in the middle of a scouting group ofrat-men. They took me captive immediately. When several minutespassed without you and Uncle Benjamin broadcasting the recall wavefor me, I knew that something terrible must have happened back inthe laboratory, and that I might be marooned in Arret for hours.
"I tried to hang onto my Silver Belt, of course," the girlcontinued, "but when I was brought to the cavern here I saw that theking was going to take it. There was a notebook and a pencil in mylaboratory smock. I managed to write the note and twine it into thebelt just before it was taken from me. The king seemed to think thenote enhanced the Belt's value as an ornament. He was wearing itwhen I last saw it. Was he materialized in the laboratory with theBelt?"
Powell told her of the amber egg and the skeleton.
"The same sort of crystalline amber egg that accompanied the work ofthe mysterious Tinkling Death, wasn't it?" Joan mused. "One of theking's lieutenants must have stolen the Belt, and reaped promptretribution when he tried to flee. I wonder what that weird TinklingDeath is?"
"Possibly some strange weapon of the rat-men," Powell hazarded.
"No, they are as afraid of it as we are. While I was being broughthere to this cave the Tinkling Death was heard several times in thedistance, and the rat-men were obviously terrified at the sound."
* * * * *
The prisoners' conversation was abruptly interrupted by a rhythmic,snarling chant from the vast horde of rat-men in the cavern above.The chant rose and fell in a rude cadence that was suggestivelyritual in nature.
"They've been doing that at intervals ever since I was first broughthere," Joan commented. "It sounds almost like the beginning of someprimitive religious ceremony, doesn't it?"
Powell nodded, without telling Joan the depressing thought in hismind. The rat-men were so low in the evolutionary scale as to belittle more than beasts, and a prominent feature of nearly allprimitive religious rites is the sacrifice of living beings. Powellcould not help but wonder whether the chanting might not mark thebeginning of rites which would end with the sacrifice of himself andJoan to some monstrous deity of theirs.
The snarling chant continued with monotonous regularity for hours,while the prisoners huddled helplessly together there on the floorof the pit, awaiting the next move of the rat-men. Any thought ofescape was out of the question. The sheer walls of the pit werealways guarded by alert sentries who had only to call to bring theentire horde to their help.
Without Powell's wrist-watch, the captives had no way of accuratelyfollowing the lapse of time, but they both realized that thetwelve-hour time limit upon Joan's rescue from Arret must be comingperilously near its end. They waited in momentary fear lest a suddenturmoil in the cavern above them should indicate that BenjaminMarlowe had broadcast the recall wave, whisking the two Belts backto Earth, together with the old rat-king who presumably still worethem.
* * * * *
The chanting above rose slowly to a snarling climax, then swiftlydied away into silence. A moment later there came the sound ofthousands of claw-like feet scratching over the rocky floor as themain horde apparently began marching out of the cavern. A detachmentof fifty rat-men appeared at the pit's edge.
A rude metal ladder was shoved down to the captives, and ametal-collared leader motioned for them to climb up. Seeing nothingto be gained by refusal, they obeyed. They were seized as theyreached the top, and their hands again bound behind them. Theoverwhelming numbers of the rat-men made any attempt at resistancefutile.
There was no sign of the main horde as Joan and Powell were herdedout through the empty cavern and out into the open air again. Withtheir prisoners in the center of their group, the rat-men startedalong a well-worn path that wound through the red vegetation.Overhead the blood-red moon still blazed down in lurid splendor.
From somewhere ahead of them the captives began to again hear thedistant squealing chant of the main horde. They steadily approachedthe sound, until abruptly they emerged into a huge clearing that hadapparently been a ceremonial assembly place for generations, for itssmooth sandy floor was packed down nearly to the hardness of rock.
The main horde of rat-men was there now, countless thousands ofthem, packed in a roughly crescent-shaped mob, with the open side oftheir formation facing what seemed to be a large deep pit, someseventy yards in circumference. In the clear space left between thehorde and the edge of the pit was a smaller group, among them theold king himself.
Powell's heart leaped as he noted that the Silver Belts were stilldraped over the mangy old monarch's shoulders. If only he and Joancould get their hands on those precious Belts before BenjaminMarlowe broadcast the recall wave that would forever snatch them outof their reach!
* * * * *
The captives were hurried through the main horde and taken in chargeby a score of picked guards who herded them on to join a small groupof four rat-men near the pit's edge. These four rodents wereapparently also prisoners, for their arms were firmly bound behindthem.
The rat-king, accompanied only by the metal-collared leader, aroundwhose shoulders the gun-belt was still draped, stood near the pit'sedge some ten yards distant from the guards and captives. Betweenthe prisoners and the rodent monarch the edge of the pit jutted outin a narrow tongue of rock that extended outward for about twentyfeet over the pit.
Joan and Powell had barely taken their place with the other captiveswhen an abrupt and familiar sound drew their attention to the floorof the pit some thirty feet beneath them. Its smooth sandy bottomwas clearly visible from where they stood. And there on that sandyfloor were six great gleaming shapes of menace which broughtinvoluntary gasps of horrified amazement to the captives' lips.
The faint musical tinkling sound as the things moved in occasionalponderous restlessness was unmistakable. Joan and Powell realizedthat the amazing
organisms responsible for the mysterious TinklingDeath were at last before them.
The things were giant _living_ crystals--great silverysemi-transparent shapes nearly ten feet in height, their facetedsides pulsing in sinister and incredible life as they gleamed inunearthly beauty beneath the blazing rays of the red moon!
Near the center of each of the giant crystals there was visiblethrough the semi-transparent wall a large inner nucleus of sullenopalescence that ceaselessly swirled and eddied.
Their powers of movement were apparently limited to a slow,ponderous, half-rocking, half-rolling progress on their heavyrounded bases. They were now grouped in a rough semicircle justunder the edge of the rocky projection that extended out over thepit. The opalescent nucleus in every silvery faceted form seemed tobe "watching" with frightening intensity the figures on the pit'sedge above them.