A terrifying, baffling gloom settled down on the Selinites. They had won a great victory, they had chased the crickets out of their country and had captured the Land of Taunan, and yet they realized that a man who could drop bombs out of the sky in the end would defeat them. Epworth, who was also puzzled deeply over a way to get into the crater, heard this underground rumbling, and felt his own spirits dampen. He and his sister, Joan, and Billy, of all the people in the Lunar world, knew just how dangerous Toplinsky was.
It was during a period of his deepest gloom that the leader of the Sons of the Great Selina came out of his mountain retreat and called on him.
“You wish to go up into the crater?” the councilman inquired with a sly smile.
Epworth did not like the smile. There seemed to be hidden treachery behind the smirk. But he was in a desperate hurry. He felt sure that if given time he could finally build an airship operated by electricity with a wire line attached to a power plant constructed beneath the crater to run an electric motor on the plane but this could only carry a limited number of soldiers, and what he had to do must be done at once. “I certainly do,” he answered abruptly, putting aside his suspicions.
“It will take courage.”
“I am not boasting of courage,” the young American said quietly.
“The path leads through a nest of ramphs—many thousands of the most vicious reptiles known.”
Epworth shuddered. The fights he had had with this monstrous Thing on the bridge, and inside of the crater were still fresh in his mind.
“If it is the only way,” he responded.
The councilman of the Great Selina patted him on the shoulder.