Chapter 25: Smithy

Scarcely more than a vault in the solid rock, the room where Rawson lay. He had seen it for an instant when the priest, after tying his hands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had but one entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet in width that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feet square; but he would not suffocate--the priests did not intend that he should die--not yet.

He saw one of the giant yellow workers bring a big metal plate. He put it before the doorway; then, by the red glow, he knew that they had sealed him in.

“I got Phee-e-al,” he thought. “I did that much to help. That may put a crimp in their plans, check the invasion up above. But Gor didn’t do as I told him, or it didn’t work. The twenty-four hours must have gone by.”

Then, even in that thought, he found happiness. “That means that Loah is safe,” he told himself. “The shaft is clear; she’s on her way back right now.”

He pictured the jana falling swiftly through that dark shaft. He saw in his mind the beautiful figure of the girl, lithe and slender, standing at the controls.

About him was a silence like that of the grave; his blood pounded in his temples like a throbbing drum. It was some time before he knew that, with that throbbing, other faint sounds were mingled.

They came from the wall beside him, sharp tappings muffled by distance, the faintest whispering echo of rock striking upon rock. Tap-tap ... tap. A longer pause ... Tap. They were making dots and dashes that blurred with the beating in his own brain.

In that dreadful silence he strained every nerve in an agony of listening. There was nothing more.

He had been roughly handled by the savages. His whole body was bruised and aching, his thoughts hazy and blurred. “Woozy,” he told himself. “Guess the old bean must have got a bad crack. Hearing things--mustn’t do that.”

Again he tried to picture the girl, speeding on toward that inner world. Was she thinking of him? Surely she was. He could hear her calling his name. “Dean,” she was saying. “Dean-San.” The words were repeated, an agonized, ghostly whisper--repeated again, “Dean-San--oh, Dean-San,” before he knew that the sound was coming from overhead. Then a light flashed once in the little room, and he saw her face, looking down.

She was beside him an instant later. “Dean-San,” she was saying, “did you think that I really would leave you?” She was pressing her lips to his. Uncovering her light, she worked frenziedly at the metal cords that bound his wrists, pausing only to repeat her caresses--and at last he was free.

“I reached the jana,” she told him in hurried whispers, “and then I came up. Their great room, where the Pathway to the Light begins, was deserted. With a cord I pulled the lever, and the jana vanished. I could not leave it for them to use. Then I followed--I knew by the sounds where they were taking you. And now, what can we do, Dean-San? Where can we go?”

It was real! Loah was there beside him; he had her in his arms, his bruised, bleeding arms whose hurts he no longer felt. And then, through his mind, flashed the question: if this was real, what of the other--the rappings he had heard? Perhaps it hadn’t been a dream.

He lifted a fragment of rock and crashed it against the wall from which those rappings apparently had come. Laboriously he spelled out his name, remembering the dots and dashes from earlier flying days when planes had been equipped with key-senders. He spelled it slowly and waited, while only the silence beat upon him and the blood pounded in his ears. Then he heard it. The answer came from a quicker hand:

“Rawson--this is Smithy.”

But Smithy was dead! What could it mean? Slowly Rawson pounded out the letters of his question: “Where--are--you?” The answer dispelled his last doubt as to the reality of what he had heard.

It was Smithy. Others were with him, for Smithy said “we,” and they were prisoners, sealed up in a living tomb. But where? Smithy did not know. He knew only that they were in a big room where the rocks had been shattered and molten gold spilled on the floor. There was a hole in the roof, but too small to get through--a round hole, about eight inches in diameter. And, at that, Rawson interrupted to tap out a single word.

“Coming!” he said, and turned toward Loah and the light.

The girl had found a metal rope in her wanderings; she had used it to let herself down into the cave. And now it was she who helped Dean to pull his bruised body up and into the narrow crack. Loah had clung to the flame-thrower; they found it where she had left it up above.

The tapping rocks she could not understand, but she knew Dean had a definite plan in mind when he whispered: “The room where you first found me--do you remember? Do you know the way?”

“I will always remember,” she said simply. “And, yes, I know the way.”

Rawson caught glimpses now and again of that broad thoroughfare along which he had once traveled, a prisoner of the mole-men. But Loah knew other and seldom-used passages that roughly paralleled it; and then, after a time, Rawson himself knew in what direction they must go.