But it would take years to drain our oceans. A year perhaps, to fill up the two main caverns here. I said it to Arturo. “Yes, Jeff. But the gates and the walls and the dams out there won’t hold. They’ll break under the full surge of water and the erosion. The walls of the upper passage, with that torrent flooding down, will break sidewise--” He burst into a half coherent description. The scientists of the Middge were able to estimate it. This whole region, from here up to the ocean bed, was honeycombed; and the rock strata themselves comparatively loose and porous. With the gigantic torrent of swiftly descending water, rifts would be made. Small, then greater. The whole region would collapse. And there were molten fire-pits everywhere. The water would reach them. * * * * * I said, “Last night, Arturo, the gates were opened for a time.” “Yes. But only a trifle, at the distant end. The water escaped into passages across the monsters’ realm. They lead, no one knows where.” “Everywhere,” I said. “And that water mingled with the fires of the earth--you remember, Arturo.” He sat up abruptly. “Every volcano was active. Storms, earthquakes--” “Yes,” I agreed. We had been thinking, Arturo particularly, only of this subterranean world. But what about the surface? Our own world up there? Our great nations, our millions of people? My mind went to little Polly. My imagination widened. This rolling globe in space which we call earth, its teeming millions, its civilization, the gigantic unknown forces of nature, were being tampered with, so that one set of humans might bring harm to another. A titanic whirlpool of events, rushing to overwhelm us. And in the midst of it all, Arturo and I sat here in this fortress cell. Two tiny grains of sand on a vast beach with the ocean pounding. What could we do about it? Of what use to try? A million minds were groping with it; our great nations, with all their far-flung resources; the Middge scientists down here. But the human mind individualizes. I saw Polly. In all the interwoven, complicated affairs of struggling nations, the individual always is supreme. Sometimes, just one individual. The keystone of an arch--you pull it out, and the arch falls. And with the arch, the whole great edifice comes down to destruction. There was this one woman, Rhana. She had opened these gates, to start these tumbling, cataclysmic events. But might not the gates be flung closed, now while there was yet time? A single small operating mechanism--why, one hand, mine perhaps, might close them. And demolish the mechanism--one hand, mine perhaps, might do it. They would stay closed then. And with it done--that one vital thing like replacing the keystone of a crumbling arch--all these far-flung events would cease. I leaped to my feet. “Arturo, see here--I’ve got to get to that gate-house! We must escape from here at once. I think I know how we might do it!”