The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips in that subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rawson told her what he wanted. "But, yes," she said; "of course I know such a place." And from some two or three miles below, after anchoring the jana securely, she led him through a winding tunnel where he knew he was steadily climbing.
t was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls came together high above their heads; he could hardly see where they met by the light of Loah's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages, but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks; and Rawson, looking into them, nodded his head with satisfaction.
Occasionally his footsteps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knew that the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "What an old honeycomb it is!" he exclaimed. "And we had it all figured as being solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentrated in that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loah has shown me just what I wanted."
He had gathered a handful of little fragments, and, keeping count of his steps, had shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for every hundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six miles when he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened. Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across.
From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward, but Rawson did not explore farther. "I can seal that off with a flame-thrower," he said. "I've seen how they use them." Then he took Loah's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rocky walls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew.
He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped through from that central shaft, although Loah told him that in some deeper passages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, it seemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rawson, staring upward, felt a drop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above.
"It's a gamble," he said, "just a gamble. But the stakes are worth while. And now, Loah-San, we will return."