"There's more than enough of the stuff here, if we can dig it out!" I exclaimed. "We'll have to use our staffs."
The iron pikes we carried were ill-adapted to digging out the hard, glowing mineral. But we set to work, prying out chunks of the stuff and tossing them into the crucible. As I straightened once, panting for breath, I glimpsed an amazing sight in the middle distance.
Around one of the geysers were circling and flitting a dozen things that looked like swirling spheres of flame, with coiling, brilliant tentacles of light.
"Those things look as though they were alive!" I yelled in horror.
Thor straightened to see.
"Flame-children!" he exclaimed, his muffled voice suddenly anxious. He turned to me hastily. "They are alive, in a way. But it is not life like ours. They are creatures evolved somehow from the flaming radiation of this underworld of atomic fires. We believe they consist of force currents that cohere in a permanent pattern, which possess powers of movement and perhaps dim intelligence. We don't know much about them, for they've evolved here since the Aesir left poor Muspelheim."
"They look beautiful, like flame-winged birds of light," I said, staring in awe and fascination.
"They're dangerous, Jarl Keith — pure concentrated atomic energy!" warned the Hammerer. "We must be gone before they find us."
I redoubled my toil of helping to dig out the radioactive chunks. We had the crucible half-full of the precious mineral when I felt a terrific shock of force against my back. I whirled around, uttered a cry. One of the dazzling flame-children was poised behind me, had just touched my suit. The mere touch of the weird creature had burned almost through the thick lead!
"We've got to get out!" Thor bellowed. "The thing has almost pierced your suit. The radiation will penetrate it in a few minutes, and you'll die horribly."