He was conscious first of a mighty curving roof of rock close above him, from which the disk was dropping smoothly downward, and in which there yawned a black circle which was the opening of the shaft down which he had come. A full mile below lay the floor of the mighty cavern, stretching away for miles on every side, a colossal underworld lit by the crimson, wavering glare. Then Rowan's stunned eyes made out, far away, the titanic, precipitous walls of gray rock which formed the great cavern's sides, miles in the distance, stretching from floor to rocky roof. And as his eyes swept along them they came to rest upon the blinding, dazzling source of the crimson light that illuminated all this cavern world.
In the gray wall to his right, miles away, was a great, slitlike opening near the roof, an opening through which there poured down a mighty torrent of blazing, liquid fire, a colossal Niagara of molten flame whose crimson, blazing radiance shot out a quivering glare which lit luridly the whole mighty cavern. For thousands of feet the great torrent of raging fires tumbled downward, caught at the base of the cliff in a canal of gray stone which conveyed it, a river of living flame, into a central basin of stone of the same diameter as the great shaft above, and which lay just beneath the opening of that shaft in the roof and beneath the descending disk, a lake of leaping flame. Around it were grouped a circle of strange, blunt-nosed machines of some sort, and down toward it the disk-platform was smoothly sinking.
And beyond and around it, on the stupendous cavern's floor, there stretched mass upon mass of huge buildings, gray and mighty and ancient in appearance, buildings which resembled masses of gigantic gray cubes piled upon each other in neatly geometrical designs. Broad streets cut through their square-cut masses, and in those streets moved great throngs of large and smaller shapes, mighty dinosaurs and masses of the lizard-men. Far away to the distant, encircling walls stretched the massed buildings, and over them hovered here and there great pterodactyls bearing lizard-riders, flitting across the cavern from place to place on their immense, flapping wings.
Rowan stared, stupefied, stunned, crouching at the edge of his descending disk, and then became suddenly aware of fierce and increasing heat beating up toward him. He looked down, saw that the disk was dropping straight toward the lake of fire below, sprang to its edge in sudden fear as it dropped on.
Down, down—ever more slowly the great disk was sinking, now, down until at last it hovered motionless a scant fifty feet above the surface of the molten lake, hanging level with the edges of the circular stone basin which held that lake, and level with the floor of the mighty cavern. A moment only it hovered there, and in that moment Rowan saw that awaiting it at the great basin's edge stood a half-score of the lizard-men. Even in the moment he saw them they glimpsed him crouching at the disk's edge, and instantly two of them leapt upon the disk, with the white globes that held the heat-beam outstretched toward him. He cowered back, but instead of loosing the ray upon him one grasped him by the shoulder and jerked him from the platform onto the basin's edge, just as the great disk began to move upward from that edge. Standing there for the moment Rowan saw the great disk floating smoothly up once more into the lurid light toward the black round opening of the shaft in the roof of rock above, rising swiftly into that shaft and disappearing from view inside it as it flashed upward once more on its endless, automatic motion.
As one of his captors tugged suddenly at his arm, though, he turned, and the creature pointed toward the gigantic gray buildings ahead, at the same time jerking him forward. Slowly Rowan started toward them, while on each side of him walked one of the lizard-men, their deadly white globes ready for action.
A moment and they had left the broad clear plaza of stone where lay the fiery lake, and were entering one of the wide streets which cut across the masses of the city's buildings. As he marched down that street between his two guards Rowan all but forgot his own predicament, so intensely interesting was the panorama before his eyes, a shifting pageant of creatures of the world's youth, enthralling to the eyes of the paleontologist.
For through the streets were pouring masses of the lizard-men, bearing tools or weapons, hurrying along on taloned feet or riding huge brontosaurs, who tramped majestically along the street's center while the walking crowds clung to its sides. Here and there, too, moved other dinosaurs, almost as huge, bearing burdens or ridden by lizard-men, the reptilian beast-servants of a lizard race. Tyrannosaurs there were, moving along in their swift, hopping gait, the fiercest and most terrible of all the dinosaurs, yet servants, like the rest, of the green-scaled lizard-folk; allosaurs, like smaller replicas of the great tyrannosaurs; mighty-armored stegosaurs and great-horned triceratops, and over all the whirring wings of the great pterodactyls.
As they marched on down the street, attracting but little attention from the hurrying lizard-creatures, Rowan saw that in the great gray buildings on each side the doors opening into the street were of immense size, forty to fifty feet in height, and saw here and there a giant dinosaur entering or emerging from one of those great open doorways in obedience to the command of its lizard master. Then abruptly his two guards turned with him into one of them, and he found himself in a long, colossal corridor, its gray roof fifty feet above him and its width almost as great. Here and there along this great corridor were open doorways, and into one of these he was jerked by his guards, finding himself in the presence of three other of the lizard-creatures who sat behind a metal block much like a legless table.
To these his guards spoke in their harsh voices. There was a moment of silence, and then a rasping command from one of the three, at which he was instantly reconducted from the room and down the corridor's length to a smaller, bolted door. A moment his captors fumbled with its bolt, then opened the door by sliding it down into an aperture in the floor, motioning Rowan inside and keeping the white globes full upon him.