Chapter 24: The Bargain

Rawson 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 central tube was dragging them at terrific speed as it rushed away from the earth’s center.

Over six hundred miles, Rawson had figured, from that inner surface to the neutral zone where the red substance of the earth, that was neither rock nor metal, under terrific pressures, glowed with fervent heat or formed pools like the Lake of Fire.

Perhaps a hundred miles thick, that zone of incessant energy, and their little craft tore through it at tremendous speed. Even so, he was gasping for breath in the heated room when the glow faded and again he swung over and down upon the floor as Loah checked the speed of the flying projectile and the little ship crept slowly up into the room where first he had seen it.

The first that he noticed was the absence of the roar. The jana drifted slowly to one side, and Loah let it come to rest upon the floor. Staring from the open door, Rawson saw the same familiar red walls and floor and the black opening of the shaft from which they had come. But the reverberating roar of the great organ-pipe was gone. He knew that the air, for the greater part, was driving on past through the upper shaft that was now open. The way was clear for them to ascend. He turned to the girl.

“If my figures are right, it’s some thirteen hundred miles from here on. How did you get up there before?”

Loah pointed to the passage where the jana, on that other excursion, had been hidden. “We went through there,” she said, “taking the jana with us. We went up many miles through a great crack, but it was not straight; we had to go carefully till another passage opened through to the shaft far above where it was sealed.”

“And the mole-men never found it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Loah, “they must have known of the crack, but they did not know where it led. Its air was bad--a gas that choked; one could not breathe it and live. But in our little jana we were safe. They could not use theirs; it was too large. Besides, only the priests came down. They had their Lake of Fire, where they did horrible things. They did not know that the shaft began again below.”

“O. K.,” said Rawson, and closed the door.

“But I wish to get out,” Loah protested, “to gather more of the Oro. We may need more, should we return.”

“We will never need it,” Rawson spoke softly. “From the time we left Gor we had just twenty-four hours to live. We must go on, and go fast.”

They had no way of measuring time, and Rawson could only guess at the hours that passed while their little ship tore swiftly upward through the dark. He wondered if the occasional shrill shriek that followed the touching of their metal guides on the glassy walls could be heard up above.

Then, at last, Loah was driving the jana slowly while she held her light so it would shine through a window. Rawson had to restrain himself to keep from pacing the little room like a caged animal while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than he knew.

“I may have passed it,” Loah was saying doubtfully. “I may have come too far.” Then she interrupted herself and sprang to the controls.

They drifted slowly back. “It is different now,” Loah said; “the air rises more swiftly than before.” She stared from the windows while she drove the jana slowly up and down, trying to bring it to equilibrium in the strong up-draft.

The air entered the shell through a little opening with the same pungent tang Rawson had noticed before. He had wondered about the air. Down near the neutral zone it was dense, yet he had not minded the pressure too greatly--and that had been puzzling.

“Rock pressure and air pressure,” he had reasoned; “they are two different things. If the rock flowed, any air that it trapped would be squeezed to a liquid. But it doesn’t flow--that red stuff is solid; so the air pressure is only the weight of the air column itself. But even that should be enormous.”

He could only conclude that the lessened pressure came from that strange counter-gravitation, the repelling force from the center of the earth. Perhaps it tended to dissipate the molecules, held them farther apart, prevented their squeezing in together, and battering with a thousand little impacts on a point where one had hit before.

Their jana swayed gently as if the smooth air currents were disturbed and were drifting them sideways; and then, at last, Loah, peering from a window, sprang back and moved a lever. Beneath them was the softly-cushioned thud of the shell seating itself on firm rock.

They were in another of the interminable caves, Rawson found when he opened the door. The jana was resting a few feet in from the edge of the shaft. Cautiously they got out, but even without their weight it had a slight negative buoyancy.

“Oro is pulling more strongly than Grah,” Dean said, and smiled. Already the names seemed familiar to him.

The two lifted the jana and carried it back some twenty feet more before Rawson realized how unnecessary this was.

“We’ll never be using it again,” he said. “If I’ve guessed right it will stay here as long as the rocks; if not--but we’ll never know the difference anyway.”

He took the flame-thrower from the car in sudden haste. “Quick, dear,” he told Loah. “God knows when the end will come. Quick, show me the way.”

Loah knew every step of the route that took them on and upward through a maze of twisting passages, and Rawson marveled at her sense of direction. She flashed her light at times--the little bar of metal that had in one hollow end a substance which absorbed the light-energy of the Central Sun. Rawson knew how it worked. Even the lights in the mountain room were taken out from time to time and exposed to the sunlight that brought them back into glowing life. He had seen similar phenomena on earth. But, for the most part, Loah kept the little metal cap in place on the end of her torch, and they moved cautiously through the dark.

Sounds of the Red Ones came to them at times. And once they hid in a narrow branching cleft that came abruptly to a dead end, while a force of red warriors marched hurriedly through the passage they had just left. Back in their hiding place Rawson stood tense and ready, with his weapon till the last of the enemy was gone.

Always he was frantic at thought of the time that was slipping past--until, at last, the narrow passage that they followed cut transversely through another large runway that glowed faintly from some distant light.

With that first gleam of light there came over Dean Rawson an odd change. Something within him had been cold with fear. Fear of the flying minutes. Fear that Loah might have lost her way in this tangled labyrinth of winding ways. And now, suddenly, he was care-free, filled with an absurd joy. Nothing mattered. They were to die, but what of that? Loah had chosen death; he would see that when it came to her, it would be quickly and without pain. And as for himself, if before he died he could remove this ruler of an enemy race...

So when Loah leaned close and whispered, “The light--it shines from the council room of Phee-e-al,” Dean replied almost gaily; “I’ve got to hand it to you--you sure do know all the back alleys.” Then he stuck his head cautiously out into the dimly-lighted corridor.

It was broad. He saw where their own little passageway went on from the opposite side. But the light--the light! At his left, not a hundred steps away, was a room, brilliantly lighted. And across it, in gleaming splendor, stretched a low wall--a barrier of gold. It was the council room, where once before he had faced Phee-e-al in all that savage’s hideous splendor.

He listened. All was silent. Then Loah whispered: “Phee-e-al comes this way when he goes to the council room. But when he comes, or how often, I do not know.”

Dean pressed her back into the narrow way with his hands. “Wait here!” he said, and gave her the flame-thrower. “I’ve an idea!” He stepped softly out into the broad passage and on naked, noiseless feet, moved swiftly toward the lighted room.

It was empty. Beyond the barrier were no red figures, nor were there whistling voices to echo as he had heard them before. Here was the throne where Phee-e-al had sat; here the priests had stood; there, along the wall, were the chests.