rs like talons.

* * * * *

Rawson did not know when he called the girl's name. But he knew the
instant that he had done it and he knew it was a mistake. He should
have crept quietly, seized the weapon--and now his feet tore madly on
the white rock floor as he raced toward the shining implement of
death. From beyond, the red figure, whirling at his call, leaped
wildly for the same prize.

The taloned hands were on the flame-thrower first. Rawson saw the red
body straighten, saw the weapon swing, glistening in air, swinging
over and down. From its tip green fire made a straight line of light.

He leaped in under the descending flame, felt the nozzle of the
projector as it crashed upon his right shoulder and the green fire
spat harmlessly beyond his back. That last spring had thrown him
bodily against the red monster. They were both knocked off balance for
a moment, then Rawson caught himself and swung with his left. He set
himself in that fraction of a second, felt the first movement of that
shining, crook-necked tube that meant the green flame was being drawn
back where it could reach him; then his fist crashed into a yielding
jaw.

Not five feet from the brink of that nearly bottomless shaft he stood
wavering in the rush of air. He knew that the ugly red figure had
toppled sideways, that the weapon had fallen with him, the blast
swinging upward in a vertical, hissing arc--then man and weapon had
dropped silently into the pit.

He was alone, save for the girl, who, her eyes wide with horror, threw
herself upon him and clung trembling, while she murmured
incomprehensible endearments in her own tongue wherein his own name
was mingled: "Dean, dear! My own Dean-San!"

But the mole-men! Dean Rawson's mind was aghast with the horror of it:
the mole-men had now found the way.

CHAPTER XXI

_Suicide?_

Gordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of the
happenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It was
Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel
Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness.
They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of
the ship.

Their hands were red when they returned--and empty. Captain Farrell
and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States
Army Air Force; henceforth they would be only names on a casualty list
grown ominous