"Still I do not understand," said Gor. "My people pressed the strong, burning water from the vines and poured it into the pool as you directed. But the Red Ones did not touch it—how could it burn them?"
"I'll say it was strong!" said Rawson. He looked at his hands, red and burned where the liquid had touched. "And it got stronger by standing. It was an acid, and when it touched the white earth a gas was formed—hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with."
He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured over the white ground. No odor remained; the air was clean. Then he picked up one of the flame-throwers and experimented with it until he found the sliding sleeve that shut off the blast.
"All right," he called to Gor. "Bring on your men; we've got to clean up this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in its work. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you." He moved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging the weapons and turning off their fearful blasts.
They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task was done and Rawson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind.
Beside the mouth of the great shaft, resting on the rocks, was a cylinder, almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loah had used. But this was larger—fully fifty of the red savages could have crowded inside.
"It is the only one they had," said Loah. "I have seen, and I know."
"But they can make more," Gor argued. "This one and the one we have," he told Rawson, "were made thousands of years ago. There were masters of metal-work among them, and they had learned to use Oro and Grah. Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gor and his followers fought with the others. But he left them one jana—this very one here. Then Gor followed the Pathway to the Light, though he sealed it as you know. But—but they will build others. Sooner or later they will come."
"I think not," said Rawson. "Now what about this Oro and Grah material? What was it you called them—the Sun-stone and the Stone-that-loves-the-dark? I must know how they work." But Loah was reluctant to experiment with the jana of the Reds; she had her own shell brought instead—and then Rawson learned the secret of what seemed its miraculous flight.
A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself above the ground—Gor and some of the others brought it from the village. Gor brought, too, a little box which he carried with great difficulty.