I heard Torrence mutter, "To roast us! Just to roast us slowly—"
The shoulders and heads of the running, circling fire-mimes were nearly as high as the altar slab on which we were lying. The flames of them swirled two or three feet higher—blobs of fire which merged one with the other. A circular curtain of mounting flame walling us in. Through it the temple interior was blurred, distorted. Vaguely the figure of the aged priest was visible. He was now on his knees, turned partly away from us as he faced his little row of god-images, supplicating them.
Curtain of swirling fire. Within a moment the heat of it was searing us. Heat slowly intensifying. It was bearable now; but the confined circle of air here was mounting in temperature; the big gargoyle image over us, the metallic-rock slab beneath us both were slowly heating. The smoke and the swirling gas-fumes would choke us into unconsciousness very quickly, I knew. And then the mounting heat would at last make this a sizzling griddle, on which we would lie, slowly roasting....
A chaos of confused phantasmagoria blurred my mind in those first horrible moments.... I saw the old priest, so solemnly, humbly supplicating his gods as he officiated at this gruesome pagan ceremony ... then I could envisage us being carried off, back to the Org village where the people, not worthy of being here in the sacred temple, were so eagerly awaiting us ... then the orgy—sacred feast, endowing its participants with what future virtues and panaceas they conceived their gods would give them....
The end, for us.... Already Jan was pitifully coughing.... But what was this? I felt a shape stir beside me; a small, slender figure with dangling hair; I felt trembling fingers fumbling at my bonds.
Ama! She had crept from a little recess under the giant bulging statue of the gargoyle god, here on the altar. Ama, who had found a chance to slip away from the wooing Tahg, and had preceded us here—hiding up here so that she might try and release us....
But it was too late now. So obviously too late! She had accomplished nothing, save to immolate herself here with us!
Into my ear her terrified voice was whispering, "I thought that the fire-males would not come so soon."
In the blurring, blasting heat and smoke, she had untied us, but of what use? "No—no chance to try and jump," she stammered. "As we fell they would leap upon us—kill us in a moment—"