"Nay, Mouthpiece of Zitu, I dare not." At the end, Helmor balked the issue. Life-long superstition proved stronger than all other considerations. "Helmor nor any man may seek to keep from Bel what is consecrated to him." "Ga--" The prayer of a mother to the Mother Eternal. The thing was a matter of a few moments. Then Croft cast his glance upward. A monstrous, glistening oblong hung there, slowly turning. He lowered his gaze and swept it across the floor of the mighty pit, and from that to Ptah and those behind them. And then his voice lashed back at Zollaria's monarch. "Does Helmor fear then the fire of Bel--more than Tamarizia's fires?" And Helmor answered. "Helmor, Tamarizian, performs not a sacrilege against his god. In his hands be it." "Then let Helmor behold!" Croft took the only chance remaining. Swiftly he darted down some half dozen tiers of steps and lifted his huge signaling-torch to the skies. "Set fire to the pit of the temple." Once, twice, he flashed that message, even though after the first swift sending, the blimp began sinking down. And then as it hovered lower and lower, bulking ever more hugely, he turned and climbed back with limbs that shook beneath him, to Naia's side. For that was the thought born of his desperate need as Helmor weakened in his purpose--to flood the level space between Ptah and the idol with a mass of impassable flame--to check him, hold him from the presence of his god with fire, since he might not do it with men. Lower and lower sank the airship. Like a mighty cover settling down above the open enclosure, it seemed. And as Croft slipped an arm about the swaying form of Naia of Aphur, it paused. Paused, too, Ptah and his fellow priests. They had caught sight of Croft on the steps beyond the idol--marked the upflung posture of his arm. Their eyes had leaped above it and fallen on the glistening shape descending as it seemed, upon their heads. Perhaps consternation seized them--perhaps they waited merely to grasp its presence. But at all events they paused with lifted faces. And as they stood--the floor of the pit about the idol, beyond it farther and farther, burst into widening lines of flame. Swiftly those lines stretched out, spreading, spreading across the sunken level, as the monstrous shape above it poured down its fiery rain. In it the image of Bel glowed yet more hotly, became a thing of a myriad licking, darting, fiery tongues. The men who had stoked the fires within it vanished, writhing, caught beyond any hope of rescue in the open. And whether consternation had first seized the minds of Ptah and his party, it seized them now. They turned to draw back before the deadly menace of the sea of fire before them. Too late--its ever widening circle swung its arc against them. Ptah--Priest of Bel, shrieked once in mortal anguish, and went down. * * * * *