CHAPTER XVII
_Gor_
Through an ordinary experience, Dean Rawson, like any other man, wouldhave kept unconscious measurement of the passing time. An hour, nomatter how crowded, would still have been an hour that his mind couldmeasure and grasp. But now he had no least idea of the hours orminutes that had marked their flight. Each lagging second was an agein passing. Even the flashing thoughts that drove swiftly through hismind seemed slow and laborious. Painstakingly he marshaled his fewfacts.
"They know what they're about, that's one thing dead sure. They'reonto their job, and they've got something here that beats anythingwe've ever had." He mentally nailed that one fact down and passed onto the next. "And that's the bow end of our ship, up there." He lookedabove him at a dented place in the ceiling, the ceiling that had beenthe floor of the room when first he stepped into it. "There isn't anyup or down any more. I've been flipped back and forth every time weslowed down or accelerated until I don't know where I'm at, but I sawthat dented plate in the floor when I got in and we started falling inthat direction. But whether we're falling toward the center of theearth still or whether we passed the center back there at that hotspot and now this crazy, senseless shell is flying on and up, perhapsthese people know--I don't!"
Then fact No. 3. "They live somewhere inside here. They're taking methere, of course. It must mean there's a race of them--and they don'tlike the mole-men. They know the way back, too, and if they'll helpme.... Perhaps the fighting's not over yet!"
Through more endless, age-long seconds there passed through Rawson'smind entrancing visions. An army of men like these White Ones, himselfat their head. They were armed with strange weapons; they wereinvading the mole-men's world....
The girl was reaching toward him. She laid one hand upon his, thenpointed overhead.
* * * * *
Rawson looked quickly above. The glowing bull's-eyes startled him,then he knew it was white-light he was seeing, not the red threat ofglowing rock. Their speed had been steadily cut down as the airpressure lessened. "They're decompressing," he thought. "They'reworking slowly into the lesser pressure."
The passing air no longer shrieked insanely. Above its soft rushingsound he heard the girl's voice; it was clear, vibrant with happiness.Her hand closed convulsively over his; her eyes beneath their longlashes smiled unspoken words of welcome, of comradeship, and ofsomething more.
Within their room her light, which at close range seemed only aslender bar of metal with a brilliantly glowing end, had been clampedin a bracket against the wall. The illumination had seemed brilliant,now suddenly it was pale and dim.
Through the bull's-eyes above, a brighter light was shining, clear andgolden, like the light of the sun on a brilliant and cloudless day.And to Rawson, who felt that he had spent a lifetime in the gloomydungeons of that inner world, that flooding brilliance was more thanmere light. It was the promise of release, the very essence of hope.His eyes clung to these little round windows; then the larger glassbeside him blazed forth with the bright sunlight of an open world thatwas unbearable to one who had lived so long in darkness.
He held tightly to that slim hand that remained so confidingly withinhis own.
"It isn't true," Rawson was telling himself frantically. "It can't betrue. It must be a delusion, another dream."
He gripped the girl's hand in what must have been a painful clasp. Hetold himself that she at least was real. Her lovely face was beforehim when at last he could bear to open his eyes.
* * * * *
About him were the others. The cylinder rested firmly upon a surfaceof pale-rose quartz. Inside the shell he saw the floor where he hadstood, and with that he added one more fact to the few he had gottentogether. There was no dent in the floor. The shell's position wasreversed. What had been up was now down. Rawson knew he was standingfirmly, with what seemed his normal earth weight, upon a smoothsurface of rock; he knew that he was standing head down as comparedwith his position at the beginning of their flight--as compared, too,with the way he had stood in the mole-men's world and in his own worldup above.
"I've passed the center of the world." The words were ringing in hisbrain. And then reason shot in a quick denial. "You're as heavy as youwere on earth," he told himself. "You'd have to go through and on tothe other side, the opposite surface of the world, before your weightwould come back like that!"
"What could it mean?" he was demanding as his eyes came back from themachine and swept around over a gorgeous, glittering panorama ofcrystal mountains, rose and white. Fields of strange plants, vividlygreen; a whole world that rioted madly in a luxury of color. Beforehim the girl stood smiling. Every line of her quivering figure spokeeloquently of her joy in seeing this world through Rawson's eyes.
* * * * *
A man was approaching, a man like the others, yet whose oval facestrangely resembled that of the girl. She led Rawson toward him, thenRawson, stopping, jerked backward in uncontrollable amazement, for thetall man drawing near had spoken. His lips were open, moving, and fromthem came sounds which to Rawson were absolutely unbelievable:
"Stranger," said the newcomer, "in the name of the Holy Mountain, andin the Mountain's language and words, I bid you welcome."
And Rawson, too stunned for coherent thought, could only stammer inwhat was half a shout: "But you're speaking my language. You'retalking the way we talk on earth. Am I crazy? Stark, raving crazy?"
But even the sound of the man's voice could not have prepared him forwhat followed. There was amazement written on the face of the man. Andthe girl who stood beside him--her eyes that had been smiling werewide and staring in utter fear. Then she and the man and the otherwhite figures nearby dropped suddenly to kneel humbly before him.Their faces were hidden from him, covered by their hands as they benttheir heads low. He heard the man's voice:
"He speaks with the tongue of the Mountain! He comes from the Land ofthe Sun, from Lah-o-tah, at the top of the world! And I, Gor, ampermitted to hear his voice!"