CHAPTER VI
_Into the Crater_
Smithy's agonized face was above him when he came back to life. "God!"Smithy was breathing. "I thought you were gone, Dean! I thought youwere dead!"
As it had been with Riley, there was one thought uppermost in Rawson'sbewildered mind: "The fire!" he choked. "He's swinging it...."
Then, after a time: "The derrick--it's falling! I went down withit!... I hit--"
"I'll say you did," said the relieved Smithy. "The derrick smashedacross the bunkhouse, snapped you off, sent you skidding down the sideof a sand dune. It darned near scoured the clothes off you at that."
Slowly Rawson began to feel the return flow of life through his body;the shock had jarred every nerve to insensibility. Slowly heremembered and comprehended what had happened.
He was in his little office; he recognized his surroundings now. Thewindows were open. Outside the sun was shining. He realized at lastthe utter silence of that outer world.
He tried to raise himself from the cot, but fell back as hissurroundings began to spin. "The camp!" he gasped weakly. "The men--Idon't hear them."
"Gone!" Smith told him, while his eyes narrowed at some recollectionand his hand came up unconsciously to a bruise of his cheek. "Theybeat it--went last night after the derrick fell. I tried to stop them.The fools were crazy with fear--devils, hell, all that kind of stuff.It all wound up in a fight--I couldn't hold 'em.
"You've got to get better kind of fast," he told Rawson. "We've got toget out of here ourselves--that flame-throwing stuff is too strong forme to take."
Rawson suddenly remembered the vague figure that had directed thatflame. "Did I get him?" he demanded eagerly.
"You got him, yes, but then a whole swarm of things boiled up out ofnowhere and carried him off! We weren't any of us close enough tosee. The men said they were devils; I'm not sure they were wrong,either. Dean, old man, we're up against something rotten. We've got toget fixed for a fight; we can't handle this by ourselves."
* * * * *
Rawson was silent. He spoke slowly at last:
"You mean we've got to quit--quit without knowing what we're upagainst. Can you imagine what they'll say to me back in town? Scaredout, licked by something I've never even seen!"
"Scared?" Smithy inquired. "You couldn't find a better word for it ifyou hunted through the whole dictionary. Scared? Why, say, I'm so damnscared I'm shaking yet, and the only thing that will cure me of it isto look at those devils along the top of a machine gun! We'll go catchus some equipment and a few service men--"
"You're a good guy, Smithy," Rawson reached out and gripped one brownhand. "And we'll do as you say; but first I've got to get a line onthings. I'm becoming as irrational as the men. I'm imagining all sortof crazy things."
"You don't have to imagine them." Smithy's voice was strained; itshowed the tension under which he was laboring. "Men or beasts--Godknows what they are!--but when they come up from nowhere--"
"Out of the sand," Rawson explained.
Smithy stared at him. "Out of the sand," he repeated. "Then, when theycut a man in two, melt steel as if it were butter, pull a few tons ofmetal down out of sight as easy as we would sink it in the ocean,flash their lights over in the ghost town, up on top of a volcano--"
"Stop!" shouted Rawson unexpectedly. Some sudden gleam ofunderstanding had flashed through his mind. He dragged himself to hisfeet and staggered to the doorway where he clung until the nausea of awhirling world had passed. "The dust! The dust!" he gasped.
Smithy put a hand on his shoulder. Plainly he thought Rawson out ofhis mind. "Easy, old-timer," he cautioned. "We'll get out of here. Ihate to make you walk in the shape you're in, but the dirty cowardsran off with the trucks. They even took your car; there isn't a thinghere on wheels."
But Rawson did not hear. He was staring off across the sand, and hewas muttering bitter words.
"Fool! Oh, you utter fool!" he said. "The dust--the dust." Then he letthe roughly tender hands of Smithy guide him back to the cot where hefell into a troubled sleep.
* * * * *
The comparative coolness of dusk was tempering the feverish middayheat when Rawson awoke. And, strangely, his troubles and all hisconflicting plans had been simplified by the magic of sleep. Hiscourse was entirely plain. He was going to the crater again.
"What's there?" Smithy demanded. "What do you think that you'll find?"
"I don't know," was the reply.
"Then why--what the devil's the idea?"
"It's my job. They put it up to me, Erickson and his crowd. I've gotto go."
And nothing Smithy could say seemed able to reach Rawson and swervehim from his single idea.
"You'll be safe on the road," Rawson told him, while he filled acanteen with water in preparation for his own trip. "You can get tothe highway by morning."
Smithy did not trouble to reply. Was Rawson out of his mind? He couldnot be sure. Certainly he had got an awful bump, but there were nobones broken. However, it might be that he was still dazed--a crack onthe head might have done it.
But there was no use in further argument, he admitted to himself. Deanwas going to the crater again--there was no stopping him--but he wasnot going alone; Smithy could see to that.
* * * * *
Again Rawson took the more difficult ascent. They went first to theghost town: the slope above Little Rhyolite would save weary miles.But, once there, they knew that the route was not a place where theywould care to be in the night. The realization came when Smithy,walking where they had been the day before, passing the sand dunewhere the wind had been scouring, seized Rawson's arm.
"I thought so," he said softly. "I thought I saw something there theother day, but the sand fell in and hid it. I didn't know theold-timers went in for subways in Little Rhyolite."
And Rawson looked as did Smithy, in wondering amazement, at theroughly round opening in the sand, a tunnel mouth, driven through theshifting sands--a tunnel, if Rawson was any judge, lined with brownglistening glass.
Understanding came quickly.
"The jet of flame!" he exclaimed half under his breath. "They meltedtheir way through; the sand turned to glass; they held it some way foran instant while it hardened." He walked cautiously toward the darkentrance and peered inside.
Darkness but for the nearer glinting reflections from walls that hadonce been molten and dripping. The tunnel dipped down at a slightangle, then straightened off horizontally. Rawson could have stoodupright in it with easily another two feet of headroom to spare.
"And that," said Smithy, "is how the dirty rats got over to the camp.Like moles in their runway. No wonder they could pop up from nowhere.But, Dean, old man, I'm thinkin' we're up against something we haven'tdared speak of to each other. Don't tell me that it's just men we'vegot to meet--"
"Wait," Rawson begged in a hushed whisper. "Wait till we know. That'swhy I didn't dare go out without something definite to report. We'llgo up--but not here. We'll get a line on this up top."
* * * * *
He led the way from the crumbling walls and skirted the mountain'sbase to the place where he had climbed before. And, with the help of asupporting arm at times, he found himself again in the great cleft inthe rocks.
Darkness now made the passageway a place of somber shadows. The broadcupped crater lay beyond in silent waiting; the vast sand-filled pitseemed, under the starlight, to have been only that instant cooled.The twisted rocks that formed the rim had been caught in the veryinstant of their tortures and frozen to deep silence and eternaldeath: the black masses of tufa, protruding from the packed ashy sandmight have been buried by the smothering mass but a moment before. Itwas a place of death, a place where nothing moved--until again thebreeze that whirled gustily over the saw-tooth crags snatched at thesand in that lowest pit and drew it up in a spiral of dust.
The word was on Rawson's lips. "D
ust--dust in the crater. Fool! I saidI could read sign; I thought I was a desert man."
"Dust? And why shouldn't there be dust? How do you usually have yourvolcanoes arranged, old man?"
"Fine dust!" Rawson interrupted in the same whisper. He was glancingsharply about him as if in fear of being overheard. "See, the wind isblowing it. Coarse sand and pumice--that's to be expected; but lightdust in a place that the winds have been sweeping for the last millionyears! I don't have them arranged that way, Smithy--not unless thesand has been recently disturbed!"
* * * * *
He moved soundlessly across the sand. There was no chance forconcealment; the surface was too smooth for that. Yet he wished, as hemoved onward down the long, gentle slope, that he had been able tokeep under cover. In all the wide bowl of the great crater top wasnothing but dead ashes of fires gone long centuries before, coarse,igneous rock--nothing to set the little nerves of one's spine totingling. Rawson tried to tell himself he was alone. Even the gun inhis hand seemed an absurd precaution. Yet he knew, with a certaintythat went beyond mere seeing, that invisible eyes were upon him.
The blocks were massive when he drew near to them. They were buried inthe sand, their sides like mirrors, their edges true and straight."Crystals," Rawson tried to tell himself, but he knew they were not.
Gun in hand, he moved among the great rocks. Open sand lay beyond,running off at a steeper pitch to make a throat--a smaller pit in thegreat pit of the crater itself. Rawson noted it, then forgot it as hestooped for something that lay half hidden, its protruding end shiningunder the light of the stars, as he had seen it gleam before at thederrick's base.
He snatched up the metal tube, noting the lava tip, and that it waslike the one Smithy had found in the ghost town. The tube, clearly,was part of some other mechanism, and Rawson realized with startlingsuddenness that he was holding in his hand the jet of aflame-thrower--the same one, perhaps, that had almost sent him to hisdeath.
The thought, while he was still thinking it, was blotted from hismind. He was thrown suddenly to the sandy earth; the sand was slippingswiftly from beneath his feet; he was scrambling on all fours, clawingwildly for some anchorage that would keep him from being swept away.
* * * * *
He touched a corner of shining stone, drew himself to it, reached itsslanting side, then scrambled frenziedly to the top and threw himselfabout to face the place of slipping sands. But where the sand hadbeen, his wildly glaring eyes found only a black hole--a verticalbore, like the ancient throat of the volcano; and this, like thetunnel in the sand, was lined with smooth and glistening glass.
It was black at first, a yawning, ominous maw, till the polished sidescaught a reflection from below and blazed red with the glare of hiddenfires.
No time was needed for Dean's quick searching eyes to grasp themeaning of the change. Whatever had menaced the camp had set thistrap. He swung sharply to leap from the block, but stopped at thesight of Smith's chunky figure coming slowly across the sand.
"Back!" he shouted. His voice was almost a scream, shrill andcrackling with excitement. "Get back, Smithy! I'm coming!"
* * * * *
He would have leaped. Below the block the sand bulged upward as ayellow animal-thing came clawing up into the night. Dimly he sawit--saw this one and the others that must have been hidden in thesand. They were between him and Smithy! A blaze of red came frombehind him--there must be others there! He snatched his gun from itsholster as he turned.
Flames were hissing into the darkness, five or six of them in lines ofhot crimson fire. They changed to green as he watched, and the lividlight spread out in ghastly illumination over the creatures thatdirected them.
He saw them now--saw them in one age-long instant while he stood inhorror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned,pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers--owl-eyes. They werenaked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in thelight of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And eachone held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal--a lava tiplike the one he had found projected and ended in the hissing line ofgreen.
A flame slashed downward. For one sickening second he waited to feelthe heat of it, though it was many feet away; in his mind he cringedinvoluntarily from the ripping knife-cut of the fiery blade that wouldblast the life from him; then he knew that the flame had passed--itwas tearing at the rock beneath his feet. And the cold stone turned toliquid fire at that touch.
It leaped in a splashing fountain to the sand. The blaze turned thewhole pit to flame. On even the farthest rugged crag of the crater'srim the red light glowed. Before Rawson could raise his own weapon theblast had torn the rock from beneath his feet. The great mass tipped,rolled. Rawson's arms were flung wide in an effort to save himself.Then below him was the black throat with its walls of glass: he wasplunging headlong into it, turning as he fell--and somewhere, far downin that throat, was the red glow of waiting fires. He saw it again andagain as he fell....