"Caves!" Sudden memory flashed back upon Chip Warren. "Jenkins said something about caves, Padre, remember? Caves and flame—"
"There's Amborg," interrupted Syd. His plump face was tightly pale behind his globular mask. "I don't care so much about checking out," he said, "but I wish I could get my hands on that rat just for a minute before—"
His words dwindled into silence. It was, Chip believed, an impressed silence. For they had reached the foot of the hill, now, and were climbing between two chanting rows of natives toward a huge, ornate, altarlike structure placed before the largest of the cave-mouths.
The dirge rose and soared, filling their ears with numbing fear; they moved upward inexorably, monotonously, almost mechanically. And finally they stood before the high altar.
Chip saw, then, what he would never have credited if it had been told him by another; what he could not have believed had he not seen it with his own eyes. He saw into the cave-mouth—and what he viewed there was so incredible that it brought a gasp unbidden to his lips.
This cave, deepset in the mouths of icy Titania—this cave, which by all laws of nature, of logic and reason, should be a dank, forbidding gateway to frightful cold—was bright-gleaming with orange, crimson, ochre tongues of flame! Within it, high-rising to the very lofted vaults, roared a staggering, tremendous holocaust of fire!
And beyond the altar was a precipice overlooking a sunken vale. This vale, like the interior of the cave, was shimmering like the plains of Abaddon with coruscating fingers, sheets, spires of red.