"Stop!" he cried. "Stop—!"
There was no way of knowing whether or not his words were audible to those outside. True, the glass dome of their prison was cracked, but even so the curved surface might mute all sounds. But communication is not a matter of sound-waves alone; action has a tongue. Steve lifted his arm—as he had seen the golden priestess raise hers a moment before—in the universal symbol for cessation.
His gesture saved the doomed man's life. The raised blade stayed ... then clattered to the floor from the dust-gold maiden's nerveless fingers. Heads turned, and faces hard and soft adopted one expression of awed terror. Voices rose in a bedlam of confusion; then, as one, the women tumbled to their knees!
Cringing, they cowered there prostrate. But one had the courage to raise her eyes again: the leader. On her brow was a furrow of perplexity as if she were trying to recollect some once-heard, half-forgotten instruction. Then her visage lighted; her voice lifted in clarion call.
"Jain! The Slumberers have awakened—at last! The Day of Freedom dawns! To the Sacred Wheel, swiftly!"
A flame of joy burst in the eyes of one of the grim-faced warrior women; her lean flanks tensed as, leaping to her feet, she hurried across the chamber to a huge, metal wheel on the farther wall. Sweat sprang from her forehead, her sinews knotted in cords as she tugged at this device. It held fast. Again she wrenched its spokes, white lines of strain upon her jaw. This time red flakes of rust showered to the floor, the wheel groaned protest at being thus rudely roused from an age of disuse—and slowly turned!
As it did so, Steve was conscious of a draft of cool air about his ankles, his knees, his thighs. Looking sharply he saw that the nether rim of the glass prison was separating from the edge of the dais; the whole structure hoisted upward like the gigantic bell it was.
Slowly as it had started, the movement stopped. And Steve and Chuck—along with the wide-eyed von Rath, whom the fresh air had revived, and who had now lurched to his feet—stood face to face with their worshippers!
Now the leader dropped to one knee; in a voice which even determination could not steady quavered:
"Hail, O Slumberers! Aie, look with mercy upon us, Thy children, for lo! we have tarried and kept the faith, even as was ordained!"