sand. They were between him and Smithy! A blaze of red came from
behind him--there must be others there! He snatched his gun from its
holster as he turned.

Flames were hissing into the darkness, five or six of them in lines of
hot crimson fire. They changed to green as he watched, and the livid
light spread out in ghastly illumination over the creatures that
directed them.

He saw them now--saw them in one age-long instant while he stood in
horror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned,
pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers--owl-eyes. They were
naked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in the
light of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And each
one held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal--a lava tip
like the one he had found projected and ended in the hissing line of
green.

A flame slashed downward. For one sickening second he waited to feel
the heat of it, though it was many feet away; in his mind he cringed
involuntarily from the ripping knife-cut of the fiery blade that would
blast the life from him; then he knew that the flame had passed--it
was tearing at the rock beneath his feet. And the cold stone turned to
liquid fire at that touch.

It leaped in a splashing fountain to the sand. The blaze turned the
whole pit to flame. On even the farthest rugged crag of the crater's
rim the red light glowed. Before Rawson could raise his own weapon the
blast had torn the rock from beneath his feet. The great mass tipped,
rolled. Rawson's arms were flung wide in an effort to save himself.
Then below him was the black throat with its walls of glass: he was
plunging headlong into it, turning as he fell--and somewhere, far down
in that throat, was the red glow of waiting fires. He saw it again and
again as he fell....

CHAPTER VII

_The Ring_

[Illustration: _One of them pointed at the shaft Rawson had drilled._]

[Sidenote: Town after town is fired by the emerging Red Ones as Rawson
lies helpless, a prisoner, far down in their home within the earth.]

"Smithy," Rawson had called him when he found the youngster fighting
gamely with death in the heat of Tonah Basin. And Gordon Smith was the
name on the company records. Yet he remained always "Smithy" to
Rawson, and the name, which Rawson never ceased to believe was
assumed, became a mark of the affection which can spring up between
man and man.

And now Smithy stood like a rigid