When they came to a sudden sharp turn, he realized that they were close. Beyond that bend would be the branching, lateral tunnel that led to Smithy's prison.
The main runway had been deserted by the Reds. Stopping often to listen, starting at times into side passages at some fancied alarm, they had met with no opposition. But now, from beyond the angling passage, came the familiar shrillness of the mole-men's voices.
Again the two concealed themselves, but no one approached. "It's a guard we hear," Rawson whispered. "They're guarding that entrance where we must go. They're taking no chances on Smithy's escaping." Then he crept to the point where the passage turned, the flame-thrower ready in his hand.
He drew back. For the moment it seemed to him physically impossible to turn this weapon upon them. They were savages, true, but it seemed horrible to slash living bodies with a weapon like this. Then he thought of the devastation those same weapons had wrought among the people of his own world. His momentary hesitation vanished. With one spring he leaped into the open where, a hundred feet away, red bodies were massed, and the air above was quivering with the green jets of their weapons.
His own flame-thrower he had turned to a tiny point of light; now it roared forth in fury as he swung it forward. They had no time even to aim their weapons or to turn them on. They were stampeded by the astounding attack. And still Rawson sickened as he saw them fall.
There were some who, panic-stricken, dropped their cylinders and leaped for safety in a narrow branching way. Rawson knew he should have killed them, knew it in the instant that they vanished, but that momentary, uncontrollable revulsion within him had stayed his hand.
He rushed forward now, Loah still bravely at his side—past the fallen bodies, through the choking odor of burned flesh. Grabbing up one of the weapons that had been dropped, he thrust it into her hands and said: "Wait here. Stand them off if they come back." Then he was rushing up the side corridor toward a room where once, in a far-distant past, he himself had been confined.
The flame-thrower lighted the way. It showed him the metal plate and the smooth, glassy rock that had been melted around its edge. He pounded on the metal and shouted Smithy's name.
Voices answered from within—voices almost unintelligible for the wonder and unbelief and joy that made them a confusion of wordless shouts. Then he stepped back and turned the blast of his weapon upon the rock at the edge of the plate.
The metal sheet moved at last, its top swinging slowly outward. Its base was held by the gummy, hardening rock. Then it broke free and crashed to the floor, and the light of Dean's weapon showed through the black opening upon the blanched faces of men, where eyes were still wide in disbelief.