Fahn, Loto, and Rogers, during these three days, stayed at Fahn's home. Nothing had been heard from George and the two girls. They were days full of anxiety--almost despair--for the three men. The guards at the two caverns reported what had happened. Fahn cursed his inefficiency in allowing a Toroh spy to remain unsuspected in the League. The man who had given Toroh the plane was located and put to death, but that helped matters little. In the brief interims of inactivity, the three men discussed what George and Dee might be doing--what the outcome would be. The discussions were futile; there was nothing to do but wait. The character of the two Frazia planes, the identity of the visitors, had never been made public. Only Fahn, his two companions and a few of the Scientist leaders were aware of the momentous outcome for which they were so helplessly waiting. On the afternoon of the third day, Fahn took Loto and his father through the cavern. Loto was pale and tight-lipped, but he seldom mentioned Azeela, and never once had he given vent to his feelings. Rogers was curious to see the cavern; older, more philosophical than Loto, he could better withstand his anxiety over George and the girls. Yet he, too, was more worried than he would have cared to admit, even to himself. The war--the fate of the Anglese--was one thing; but that plane was all that could take him back to Lylda, his wife. He could probably never manufacture another plane in this time world; the materials were not available. He realized now how wrong he had been not to bring Lylda with him. It was late afternoon when they started. Work in the cavern now proceeded day and night. To Rogers the place was one of romantic mystery, with a sinister air to it that he could not shake off. The darkness of the cavern walls, the shadows, the flickering blue lights, and the yawning holes with which the interior of the mountain seemed honeycombed, awed and perturbed him. Far ahead, down a sharp slope, two blue lights shone. To the left a passageway glowed dull red. Fahn turned toward it. They went into the passageway, and from it emerged upon a narrow ledge with a metal railing. Before them spread a huge pit, a great pool of lava a thousand feet down--lava that boiled sluggishly, with tiny flames of burning gases licking upward from its surface. To one side, overhead, a rift through the mountain showed a patch of starlit sky. Visitors to an inferno, they stood clinging to the iron rail. The lurid red light cast monstrous shadows of their figures upward to the rocky ceiling. The sulphurous air was intolerably hot; it choked their breathing. After a moment they all stumbled back into the passageway, coughing, breathing deep of the purer air. "Fires of the earth so close!" murmured Rogers. Fahn was leading them forward again. "Yes, almost every mountain on the island is like that. The fires are even closer to the surface at Orleen; we use them in the cavern there."