Hastily, fully awakening to the peril of remaining long in this hell of fierce radiation, I helped Thor pick up the leaden crucible we had brought. We stepped from the disk to the landing, and started down the stair. It was hard walking in our stiff lead garments, and with the weight of the crucible to carry. Moreover, the stair was without any protective rail, and perilously narrow.
Chapter XVI
The Flame Creatures
When we reached the floor of the underworld, we stood within a hundred yards of one of the many geysers of atomic fire. Though half-blinded by its brilliance, I was able to see that it jetted from a mass of radioactive mineral whose normally slow disintegration had been tremendously accelerated. It had been kindled to this faster disintegration, I knew, by the flame that had fallen from the central fountain.
"We shall have to find a radioactive deposit unkindled as yet," I called to Thor.
He nodded his lead-cowled head vigorously.
"Let us try this direction, Jarl Keith."
We stumbled with the crucible between the geysers of atomic flame. Sometimes we were forced to go so near one of the jets that its inconceivable radiation seemed bound to penetrate our suits. Dazzled even through my lead-glass eyeholes by the raging brilliance, every fiber of my body tingling, I searched desperately for such a deposit as we required. If our suits should be penetrated, we would die horrible deaths.
"This way, Thor!" I called suddenly as I found a mass of mineral in a niche in the broken rock floor.
It was glowing with a soft light that seemed feeble in comparison with the flaming atomic fountains. I recognized it as an isotope of radium itself, never found in a natural state in my own upper world.