Rawson, speaking between breaths, reassured her: "Too heavy. Their
guns will protect us--"

Behind them, a man's voice cried out once, a single, hoarse scream of
agony; then the rock wall took the sharp crackle of rifle fire and
threw the sound into crashing, thundering echoes.

CHAPTER XXVI

_Power!_

A girl whose creamy body was strangely unsoiled by smoke or grime,
whose jeweled breast-plates flashed in the light of her torch while
the loose wrappings about her waist whipped against her as she ran.
And Rawson, naked but for the golden loin cloth, running beside her.
Then Smithy, and ten others in the khaki uniform of the service--it
was all that was left of the fifty who had dared the depths. And now
all of them were harried and driven like helpless animals in the
burrows and runways of that under-world.

But not entirely helpless. Colonel Culver had been right: their rifles
outranged the flame-throwers. And Rawson, looking past that first
burst of rifle fire, saw the one flame that had reached them whip
upward as its owner fell. Others of the Reds came crowding in after,
and the jets of their weapons made little areas of light as they
crashed to the floor. Then Colonel Culver took charge of the retreat.

Ahead of them and behind them was impenetrable darkness; only the
nearby walls were illumined by the torch that Loah had been forced to
turn on. And out of that darkness at any moment might come devastating
flames. Culver detailed two men as a rear guard and two others to run
ahead a few paces in advance. At intervals of a minute or two their
rifles would crack, and the echoes would be pierced by the whining
scream of ricochets, as their bullets glanced from the walls.

"We may not need them up ahead," Culver shouted to Rawson. "I don't
understand it. The place seems deserted--there were plenty of them
here before!"

"They've got something else to think of," Rawson shouted in reply. "I
killed Phee-e-al--he was their leader. But they're after us now.
They'll be running through other passages, cutting in ahead of us."

The tunnel turned and bent upward. For a full half mile they ran
straight in a stiff climb. Between gasping breaths Colonel Culver
shouted hoarsely: "Won't it ever turn? If they bring up their damned
heat-ray machines they'll get us on a straightaway like this!"

Then Smithy's voice outshouted his with a note of hope: "We're almost
there; I remember this place. There's where we m