This time the green chieftain's speech was longer, more dramatic. He postured, gestured; once he strode to the edge of his raised platform and pointed majestically down into the chasm below. Then, concluding his words with a tone of finality, he folded his arms across his chest.
Chip noticed that a few rods away Amborg's Uranian companion was interpreting his decision to Blaze. Salvation performed the same function.
"He says," explained Salvation, "we must walk into this cave of fearful flame. It leads through burning corridors to the valley below. In that valley is the life-skiff which brought Amborg and his men here.
"If we are good men, gods, and guiltless, the flame will not destroy us. There was one not long ago who walked unscathed through the fires, he says. That man was surely a god."
"Jenkins!" broke in Chip. "It must have been—"
Salvation nodded. "That is what I thought, too, my son. But—but how? How could Jenkins survive the flames?" And he stared sombrely, questioningly, at the sheet of ruddy fire filling the cave from base to arch. He shook himself. "Well—that is a problem we must solve, and soon. For the ceremony has begun. Amborg!" he cried.
The dark man turned. Chip saw that his face was set in granite lines. Nearest to the cavern mouth, his men were being prodded toward the awful test they must endure.
Even in this critical moment, Salvation was the man of god. "Amborg," he said, "you have been ever an evil man, living and thinking the thoughts of Satan. But there is yet time for you to repent and confess your sins. As a fellow man, I loathe and despise you. But as His emissary, I offer you even in this hour of trial the peace that surpasseth all human understanding—"
Amborg laughed at him. His voice crackled harshly, metallically, in the audio-phones of Chip's space-helmet.