hey've got something here that beats anything
we've ever had." He mentally nailed that one fact down and passed on
to the next. "And that's the bow end of our ship, up there." He looked
above him at a dented place in the ceiling, the ceiling that had been
the floor of the room when first he stepped into it. "There isn't any
up or down any more. I've been flipped back and forth every time we
slowed down or accelerated until I don't know where I'm at, but I saw
that dented plate in the floor when I got in and we started falling in
that direction. But whether we're falling toward the center of the
earth still or whether we passed the center back there at that hot
spot and now this crazy, senseless shell is flying on and up, perhaps
these people know--I don't!"

Then fact No. 3. "They live somewhere inside here. They're taking me
there, of course. It must mean there's a race of them--and they don't
like the mole-men. They know the way back, too, and if they'll help
me.... Perhaps the fighting's not over yet!"

Through more endless, age-long seconds there passed through Rawson's
mind entrancing visions. An army of men like these White Ones, himself
at their head. They were armed with strange weapons; they were
invading the mole-men's world....

The girl was reaching toward him. She laid one hand upon his, then
pointed overhead.

* * * * *

Rawson looked quickly above. The glowing bull's-eyes startled him,
then he knew it was white-light he was seeing, not the red threat of
glowing rock. Their speed had been steadily cut down as the air
pressure lessened. "They're decompressing," he thought. "They're
working slowly into the lesser pressure."

The passing air no longer shrieked insanely. Above its soft rushing
sound he heard the girl's voice; it was clear, vibrant with happiness.
Her hand closed convulsively over his; her eyes beneath their long
lashes smiled unspoken words of welcome, of comradeship, and of
something more.

Within their room her light, which at close range seemed only a
slender bar of metal with a brilliantly glowing end, had been clamped
in a bracket against the wall. The illumination had seemed brilliant,
now suddenly it was pale and dim.

Through the bull's-eyes above, a brighter light was shining, clear and
golden, like the light of the sun on a brilliant and cloudless day.
And to Rawson, who felt that he had spent a lifetime in the gloomy
dungeons of that inner w