e bailer's top. Then the bailer lifted, clanged loudly as
it entered the shattered bore in the rocks above, and scraped noisily
at the sides. The sound rose to a rasping shriek that went fainter and
still fainter till it dwindled into silence.

But Dean Rawson, standing motionless in the darkness of that buried
vault, dared once more to let himself think and _feel_ as he stared
blindly upward.

Up there Smithy was waiting. Smithy would know. And with Smithy
fighting from the outside and he, Rawson, putting up a scrap below....
He smiled almost happily as his hand rested upon his gun.

Hopeless? Of course it was hopeless. No use of really kidding
himself--he didn't have the chance of a pink-eyed rabbit.

But he was still smiling toward that dark roof overhead as the
outlines of a metal door grew cherry red. They were coming for him!
He was ready to meet whatever lay ahead....

CHAPTER IX

_A Subterranean World_

The metal plate that had sealed him in this tomb fell open with a
crash. Beyond it the passageway was alive with crowding red figures.
Above their heads the nozzles of a score of flame-throwers spat jets
of green fire. Rawson drew back in sudden uncontrollable horror as
they came crowding into the room.

The familiar feel of the bailer's cold metal had given him a momentary
sense of oneness with his own world. Now this inrush of hideous,
demoniac figures beneath the flare of green flames was like a fevered
vision of the infernal regions come suddenly to actuality.

Rawson retreated to the shattered, rocky wall and prepared for one
last fight, until he realized that the evil black eyes in their
ghastly circles of white skin were fixed upon him more in curiosity
than in active hatred.

They formed a semicircle about him--a wall of red bodies, whose
pointed heads were craned forward, while an excited chatter in their
broken, whistling speech filled the room with shrill clamor. Then one
of them pointed above toward the open shaft that Rawson had drilled,
the shaft up which the bailer had gone. And again their voices rose in
weird discord, while their long arms waved, and red, lean-fingered
hands pointed.

Only a moment of this, then one of them gave an order. Two of the red
figures came toward Rawson where he was waiting. They were unarmed.
They motioned that he was to go with them. And Dean, with a helpless
shrug of his shoulders, allowed them, one on each side, to take him
by the arms and hur