Their speech—their language—how was it they could talk with him? He fired the questions out with furious eagerness, and Gor replied.
As to their speech—the Holy Mountain itself would explain. And yes, truly, this was the center of the world, or the sun above them was. The central sun did not attract, but instead repelled all matter from it—all things but one, the sun-stone, of which Gor would speak later.
Rawson pounced upon that and demanded corroboration.
"All the power of earth tends to draw every object to its center, yet we're here on an inner surface. We're walking actually head down. And our bodies, every stone, every particle of matter, ought by well-known laws to fall into that flaming center. But we don't! That proves your point—proves a counter gravitation. Then there must be a neutral zone. A place where this upward thrust is exactly equalled by gravity's downward pull.
"The zone of fire," said Gor. "You passed through it. Did you not see?"
"Saw it and felt it!" Rawson's mind leaped immediately to the next question.
"And we must have come through it at, surely, a thousand miles an hour. What drove us? That shell must have gone in from here. I can understand its falling one way, but not two. We should have come to rest in that very spot—and we'd have lasted about half a second if we had."
"Oro and Grah," said Gor. "Oro, the sun-stone, and Grah, the stone-that-loves-the-dark. But they are not stones, neither are they metal. We find them deep in the ground, clinging to the caves. A fine powder, both of them."
"Still I don't get it," said Rawson. "You drive that shell in from here, and then you drive it back again."
"That, too, I will explain later. It is simple; even the Dwellers in the Dark—those whom you call the mole-men—have Oro and Grah to serve them."