n need arose. Riley,
disregarding the possible heat of the twirling bailer, reached for it
with bare hands. He drew them back, then held them before him--and a
hundred watching eyes saw what had been unseen before: the slow
dropping of red liquid from the bailer's end. The same drops were
falling from Riley's hands that had touched that end.

"Blood!" The word came from the foreman's throat in one horrified
gasp. It ran in a whispering echo from one to another of the watching
crew. From far across the hot sands came the rattle of a truck that
brought the first of many loads of cement and steel for Rawson's
buildings. Its driver was singing lustily:

"Hark to what I say:
You're pokin' through the crust of hell
And braggin' too damn loud of it,
For, when you get to hell, you'll find
The devil there to pay!"

But Rawson, looking dazedly into Smithy's eyes, said only: "It's
cold--the bailer's cold. There's no heat there."

CHAPTER IV

_The Light in the Crater_

"Of course it wasn't blood!" said Smithy explosively. "But try to tell
the men that. See how far you get. 'Devils!' That's been their talk
since yesterday when Riley got smeared up--and now that the bailer's
gone we can't prove a thing."

Again he was pacing restlessly back and forth in the little board
shack that was Rawson's field head-quarters. Rawson, seated by the
window, was looking at tables of comparative melting points. He
glanced up sharply.

"You haven't found it yet?" he questioned. "A forty-foot bailer! Now
that's a nice easy little thing to mislay."

Riley had followed the excited Smithy into the room; he stood silently
by the door until he caught Rawson's questioning glance.

"Forty feet or forty inches," he said, "'tis gone! 'Twas there by the
derrick last night, and this marnin'--"

"That's fine," Rawson interrupted with heavy sarcasm. "I haven't
enough down below ground to keep my mind occupied--I need a few
mysteries up top. Now do you really expect me to believe that a thing
like that bailer has been carried off?"

This time it was Smithy who interrupted. "You can just practise
believing on that, Dean," he said. "When you get so you can believe a
forty-foot bailer can vanish into thin air, then you'll be ready for
what I've got. This is what I came in to tell you: that one truckload
of steel grillage beams for the turbine footings--they were put out
where we surveyed for the first power house--dumped o