from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection of
thoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of the
explosion quickly came back to them.

"They popped that one off in the air--hit it with their heat ray,"
said a cheerful voice beside them. "But the phosgene will keep on
going down. Give them another!"

The interval this time was longer. "Now for a dirty crack," said the
cheerful voice. "Time this one."

* * * * *

A youngster nearby snapped a stop-watch as the bomb was released. He
held some printed tables in his hands. Odd receivers from which no
wire led were clamped over his ears. This time the dull thud was long
in coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stop
watch announced: "Fifty thousand feet, sir."

"Give 'em another. Time it again." A second high explosive bomb was
released.

"Fifty thousand feet, sir."

"Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devil
out of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give them
a real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten miles
of cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place."

But night had come, though searchlights outside the crater and
floodlights within had robbed the night of its terror, when Smithy,
with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift that
hung waiting just over the pit.

A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates he
looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost
ludicrous--twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others
would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a
spool of electric cable.

The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platform
jarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside him
Colonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on the
ashy ground. Smithy raised his hand, but the brink of that pit had
moved swiftly up--there was nothing before him but a glassy wall.

Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he was
going down--down where Dean Rawson had gone--down where there was a
debt to be paid.

CHAPTER XXII

_The Red-Flowering Vine_

"Rotan," said Gor slowly, sadly, "was wrong. His vision was not the
truth. The Red Ones have come. And now--we die."

"Without a fight?" Rawson demanded incredulously.

"We are not a fighting people