Chapter 6: 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 you were dead!”

As it had been with Riley, there was one thought uppermost in Rawson’s bewildered mind: “The fire!” he choked. “He’s swinging it...”

Then, after a time: “The derrick--it’s falling! I went down with it! ... I hit--”

“I’ll say you did,” said the relieved Smithy. “The derrick smashed across the bunkhouse, snapped you off, sent you skidding down the side of 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 he remembered and comprehended what had happened.

He was in his little office; he recognized his surroundings now. The windows were open. Outside the sun was shining. He realized at last the utter silence of that outer world.

He tried to raise himself from the cot, but fell back as his surroundings began to spin. “The camp!” he gasped weakly. “The men--I don’t hear them.”

“Gone!” Smith told him, while his eyes narrowed at some recollection and his hand came up unconsciously to a bruise of his cheek. “They beat 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 to get out of here ourselves--that flame-throwing stuff is too strong for me to take.”

Rawson suddenly remembered the vague figure that had directed that flame. “Did I get him?” he demanded eagerly.

“You got him, yes, but then a whole swarm of things boiled up out of nowhere and carried him off! We weren’t any of us close enough to see. 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 to get 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 up against. Can you imagine what they’ll say to me back in town? Scared out, licked by something I’ve never even seen!”

“Scared?” Smithy inquired. “You couldn’t find a better word for it if you hunted through the whole dictionary. Scared? Why, say, I’m so damn scared I’m shaking yet, and the only thing that will cure me of it is to look at those devils along the top of a machine gun! We’ll go catch us some equipment and a few service men--”

“You’re a good guy, Smithy,” Rawson reached out and gripped one brown hand. “And we’ll do as you say; but first I’ve got to get a line on things. I’m becoming as irrational as the men. I’m imagining all sort of crazy things.”

“You don’t have to imagine them.” Smithy’s voice was strained; it showed the tension under which he was laboring. “Men or beasts--God knows 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 they cut a man in two, melt steel as if it were butter, pull a few tons of metal 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 of understanding had flashed through his mind. He dragged himself to his feet and staggered to the doorway where he clung until the nausea of a whirling world had passed. “The dust! The dust!” he gasped.

Smithy put a hand on his shoulder. Plainly he thought Rawson out of his mind. “Easy, old-timer,” he cautioned. “We’ll get out of here. I hate to make you walk in the shape you’re in, but the dirty cowards ran off with the trucks. They even took your car; there isn’t a thing here on wheels.”

But Rawson did not hear. He was staring off across the sand, and he was muttering bitter words.

“Fool! Oh, you utter fool!” he said. “The dust--the dust.” Then he let the roughly tender hands of Smithy guide him back to the cot where he fell into a troubled sleep.

The comparative coolness of dusk was tempering the feverish midday heat when Rawson awoke. And, strangely, his troubles and all his conflicting plans had been simplified by the magic of sleep. His course 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 got to go.”

And nothing Smithy could say seemed able to reach Rawson and swerve him from his single idea.

“You’ll be safe on the road,” Rawson told him, while he filled a canteen with water in preparation for his own trip. “You can get to the highway by morning.”

Smithy did not trouble to reply. Was Rawson out of his mind? He could not be sure. Certainly he had got an awful bump, but there were no bones broken. However, it might be that he was still dazed--a crack on the head might have done it.

But there was no use in further argument, he admitted to himself. Dean was going to the crater again--there was no stopping him--but he was not going alone; Smithy could see to that.

Again Rawson took the more difficult ascent. They went first to the ghost town: the slope above Little Rhyolite would save weary miles. But, once there, they knew that the route was not a place where they would care to be in the night. The realization came when Smithy, walking where they had been the day before, passing the sand dune where the wind had been scouring, seized Rawson’s arm.

“I thought so,” he said softly. “I thought I saw something there the other day, but the sand fell in and hid it. I didn’t know the old-timers went in for subways in Little Rhyolite.”

And Rawson looked as did Smithy, in wondering amazement, at the roughly round opening in the sand, a tunnel mouth, driven through the shifting sands--a tunnel, if Rawson was any judge, lined with brown glistening glass.

Understanding came quickly.

“The jet of flame!” he exclaimed half under his breath. “They melted their way through; the sand turned to glass; they held it some way for an instant while it hardened.” He walked cautiously toward the dark entrance and peered inside.

Darkness but for the nearer glinting reflections from walls that had once been molten and dripping. The tunnel dipped down at a slight angle, then straightened off horizontally. Rawson could have stood upright 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’t dared speak of to each other. Don’t tell me that it’s just men we’ve got to meet--”