CHAPTER XV
_The Lake of Fire_
Before a barrier of gold, waist-high, Dean Rawson stood tense andrigid. Behind him the great cave-room swarmed with warriors, leaders,doubtless, of the unholy hordes. But beyond the barrier were the realleaders of the Mole-men tribes--Phee-e-al, ruler in chief, and hisclustering guard of high priests. In the flooding light from the wall,their eyes were circles of dead-white skin. A black speck glintedwickedly in the center of each.
Phee-e-al was speaking. His artificially whitened face grimacedhideously; the shrill whistling voice made no comprehensible sound.But in some manner Rawson gathered a dim realization of what hisgestures meant.
Phee-e-al pointed at the captive; and one lean hand, with talons moresuggestive of a bird of prey than of a human hand, pointed downward."Gevarro," he said. The word was repeated many times in the course ofhis whistling talk.
"Gevarro"--what did it mean? Then Rawson remembered. It was the wordhe had heard in his dreams, the name of the lake of fire.
The voices of the priests rose in a shrill chorus of protests, andeven Phee-e-al stood silent. They crowded about their ruler, andRawson knew they were demanding him for themselves. Then the one whostill held a human body in his arms sprang forward and his long talonsworked unspeakable mutilation upon the body and face.
Rawson averted his eyes from the ghastly spectacle. For, swiftly, hewas seeing something more horrifying than this desecration of a deadbody; he was seeing himself, still living, tortured and torn by thosesame beastly hands. The dead face of Sheriff Downer was staring at himfrom red, eyeless sockets as with one leap Rawson threw himself overthe golden wall. Ten leaping strides away was his gun. In that instantof realization, he knew why his life had been spared.
In the room of fire he had destroyed their priest. They had saved himfor further torture.
* * * * *
To get his hands on the gun, to die fighting--the thought was anunspoken prayer in his mind. Behind him the room echoed with demoniacshrieks. Before him was the metal stand. His outstretched hands felljust short of the blue .45 as he crashed to the floor. The copper oneswere upon him.
Half stunned by the fall, he hardly knew when they dragged him to hisfeet. He was facing the golden figure of Phee-e-al, but now theruler's indecision had vanished. He was exercising his full authorityand even Rawson's throbbing brain comprehended the doom that was beingpronounced.
"Gevarro!" he was shrieking. "Gevarro!"
Beside him a priest swept the metal table clear. Rawson's clothing,the gun, the radio receiver, all were snatched up and hurled into oneof the massive chests. Phee-e-al was still shouting shrill commands.An instant later Rawson was lifted in air, rushed to the barrier andthrown bodily from the sacred premises he had invaded. Then the handsof the red guard closed about him before he could struggle to hisfeet. A shining object swung down above his head. It was the last heknew.
* * * * *
His dreams were of falling. Always when he half roused toconsciousness he was aware of that smooth, even descent, and he knewit had continued for hours.
Once he saw black walls slipping smoothly past, upward, always upward.Gropingly he tried to marshal his facts into some understandablesequence. He was falling, falling toward the center of the earth, andthis that he saw was not rock, or any metal such as he knew.
"It's all different," he told himself dully, "new kind of matter. Rockwould flow; this stands the pressure." But he knew the air pressurehad built up tremendously. The blood was pounding in his ears. Hewanted to sleep.
It was the heat that awakened him. The air was stifling him,suffocating. He was struggling to move his heavy body, fightingagainst this nightmare of heat when he opened his eyes and knew thathe was in a place of light. First to be seen were walls, no longerblack, no longer even with the characteristics of rock, or even metal.Here, as Rawson had sensed, was new material to form the core of aworld. It would have been red in an ordinary light. It was transformedto orange, strangely terrifying in the blazing flood of yellowbrilliance that came from the tunnel's end.
Rawson's brain was not working clearly. An unendurable weight seemedpressing upon him--the air pressure, he thought, to which he had notyet become accustomed. And the air, itself, hot--hot!
A breeze blew steadily past toward that place of yellow horror at thetunnel's end. Yellow, that reflected light; but its source was asearing, dazzling white in the one brief instant when Rawson daredturn his eyes.
Hands held him erect, red, gripping hands. One, whose body seemedmolten copper in that fierce glare, approached. His hand described acircle over Rawson's bare chest. Straight lines radiated out from thecircle, lines of stabbing pain for the helpless man. He had seen thesame emblem in the temple of fire, again in the big room wherePhee-e-al had stood.
* * * * *
The living sacrifice was prepared. Burned into his bare flesh was theemblem of their legendary sun-god. The priests, their bodies coatedwith a flashing coppery film that must somehow be heat-resistant, hadhim in their grasp.
The red warriors had fallen back. Then Phee-e-al appeared; he joinedthe march of death of which Dean Rawson formed the head. Voices werechanting--somewhere a trumpet blared. Then Rawson, moving like one ina dream, knew the priests were guiding him toward that waiting,incredible heat.
The tunnel's end was near. About him was an inferno where heat and hotcolors blended. The whole world seemed aflame, but beyond the tunnel'send was a seething pit upon which no human eyes could look and live.
One glimpse only of the unbearable whiteness beneath which was thelake of fire, then the chains of his stupor broke and Dean Rawsonstruggled frenziedly in the grip of two copper giants.
They had been chanting a shrill monotonous refrain. They ceased now asthey fought to throw the man out past that last ten paces where eventhey dared not go.
Rawson was beyond conscious thought. Eyes closed against theunendurable heat, he fought blindly, desperately, then knew his laststrength was going from him. Still struggling he opened his eyes; somethought of meeting death face to face compelled him.
* * * * *
A hideous coppery face glared close into his own. Miraculously itvanished, disappeared in a cloud of white. Then the blazing walls weregone--there was nothing in all the world but rushing clouds ofwhiteness, shrieking winds, the roar of an explosion--and cold, sobiting that it burned like heat.
Vaguely he wondered at the hands that still clutched at him. Dimly hesensed other bodies close to his, other hands that tore him free wherehe lay, still struggling with the priests, upon the floor. A narrowopening was in the wall, a blur of darkness in the billowing whiteclouds. They were dragging him into it, those others who held him, andthey were white--white as the vapor that whirled about him.
Ahead, the girl of his former dreams was guiding him, her hand cooland soft in his. Others helped him; he ran stumblingly where they leddown a steep and narrow way.
The White Ones! In a vision they had reached out to him before. Wasthis, too, a dream? Was it only the delirium of death? That burst ofcold--had it truly been liquid fires, wrapping him around?
Dean Rawson could not be sure. He knew only that his fate lay whollyin the hands of these White Ones--and that hideous eyes in the copperyface of a priest had glared at them as they fled.