"We may not need them up ahead," Culver shouted to Rawson. "I don't understand it. The place seems deserted—there were plenty of them here before!"
"They've got something else to think of," Rawson shouted in reply. "I killed Phee-e-al—he was their leader. But they're after us now. They'll be running through other passages, cutting in ahead of us."
The tunnel turned and bent upward. For a full half mile they ran straight in a stiff climb. Between gasping breaths Colonel Culver shouted hoarsely: "Won't it ever turn? If they bring up their damned heat-ray machines they'll get us on a straightaway like this!"
Then Smithy's voice outshouted his with a note of hope: "We're almost there; I remember this place. There's where we mounted the searchlight. They've ripped everything out. Up ahead, one turn to the right, then a quarter mile, then a turn toward the crater. That runs straight for a mile, but there's a field gun at the bottom of the volcano. We'll be safe when we're on that last stretch."
head of them the rifles of the two who ran in advance crashed out in a fury of fire as a green glow appeared. But this time the flame did not die; and Rawson, staring with hot, wide-opened eyes, saw that the ribbon of green swept transversely across the tunnel.
He could hardly stand when he came to a stop. Beside him Loah was swaying with weariness. The walls echoed only the hoarse, panting breath of the men. Then they crept slowly forward, where the passage went steadily up. Loah's light was out; she had slipped the cap on the torch at the first sight of that green.
They stopped but ten feet short of the deadly blaze. From a narrow rift in the left wall it streamed outward, the rock at the edges of that crack turning to red at its touch. It beat upon the opposite wall, where already the stone was melting to throw over them a white glare and the glow of heat. And, like a shimmering, silken barrier, whose touch could mean only instant death, it reached across the wide tunnel at the height of a man's waist and moved slowly up and down. The heaviest armor plate ever rolled could have formed no more impenetrable a barrier.
"And we almost made it," said Smithy slowly. "Look, beyond there—another hundred feet. There's the bend in the tunnel, a sharp turn—and we almost got around!"