. We have no weapons. We can only die."

Rawson turned to Loah. They were inside the mountain, and the servants
of the mountain, with terror and dismay written plainly on their
faces, were gathered about. "At the Lake of Fire," said Rawson, "when
you saved me, there was an explosion and clouds of white fumes. What
was it?"

"It was like water," Loah said. "We found it deep inside the earth in
a place where it is very cold. When warmed it turns to white clouds.
We threw a flask of it on the hot rocks, hoping to reach you while
they could not see."--she paused and shook her head slowly--"but we
can get no more. The Pathway of Light is closed to us, now that the
Red Ones are there."

"Liquefied gas of some sort," said Rawson briefly, "caught in enormous
rock pressure. But that's out! Now what about this Place of Death?
There's an idea there."

The White Ones were numbed with fear, but Loah and Gor accompanied him
when Rawson returned to the red field. The flowers were still in
bloom; they waved gently in the breeze that blew always from the
mountain across the fields and out toward the point, where even now
dark figures could be seen near the mouth of the shaft.

"It will be many of your days," said Loah, "before the flowers die. If
you thought to trap the Red Ones in the Place of Death, there will not
be time...." But Rawson had left them; he had advanced into the scarlet
field and dropped to his knees.

* * * * *

He was crushing the vines in his hands, grinding them into the white,
salty earth underneath. Then he passed his hands guardedly before his
face as if to detect an odor.

Loah and Gor saw him shake his head slowly while he spoke aloud words
that they could not understand. "Cyanide," Dean Rawson was saying.
"It's a cyanide of some sort--releases hydrocyanic acid gas. I could
have rigged a generator, though I've forgotten about all of my
chemistry--and now there isn't time." Off in the distance the dark
figures still moved near the end of the point.

He made no effort to conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of
the Place of Death made a winding line across the scant half mile of
valley where the green fields ended abruptly.

Dean stepped high over the stone trough a half mile long that marked
that dividing line. There was water in it; it was part of their
irrigation system. A little beyond, in the midst of the green, stood a
tiny flat-topped knoll on which he k