One of the women who had fled from the cave was brought to me. White-faced, she twisted her hands together in anguish while she talked. "We didn't know he'd done it, Captain Theusaman--I swear it!" "Who?" "Baiel--this morning at the _Olympus_. He just told us." "But what? Speak up! Tell me!" "He put on the automatic power in the control room, timed to energize the dorsal tubes at noon." "No harm in that. The tubes are blown. The blast will simply send open flame soaring into the sky." "There's forty hours' residue in the tank. Baiel thought the sight of the flame would terrify the tribe into obeying him. But he says the ship was overturned this morning, after he had set the dials; so the broken tubes are pointing down toward the base of the glacier." I understood the woman's terror, then, and my own body tensed with cold fear. Instead of making a harmless display, the sun-hot energy, blasting through the naked dorsal tubes for the next forty hours, would be fed into the glacier and the ground beneath it. In half that time the liquefying flame could pierce the planetary crust and reach its molten core. As I sprang to my feet the first shock stabbed into the frozen ground. The shattering explosion of the crumbling glacier rocked the air. In the distance a cloud of steam arose, blood red from the flames raging beneath it. In seconds the sun was blotted over with thick clouds. Hot rain began to fall. The earth quivered so violently it was almost impossible to stand. Yet still Baiel's voice boomed through the village. "Give me the blood of Theusaman and I spare the tribe!" From priest, he had become the sun god himself. The rain fell in a deluge. The snow dissolved into slush, and the village ran with mud. Dayhan screamed. I turned and saw one of the tribal hunters atop the stone pedestal, drawing careful aim on me with his bow and arrow. I caught the shaft in the air with a wide angle beam from my Hayden. "Give me the blood of Theusaman!" Baiel cried. The quaking increased steadily. Small landslides of stone began to slither from the face of the cliff. The roof of the cave shook and sagged. The tribe backed away, swirling around me in fury and brandishing their spears in the bleary air. The distant rending of the glacier reached a new climax of thunder, and the deluge swelled into a torrent. The draining water became a stream, racing muddily through the village and eating at the crumbling cliffs. The skies darkened as if it were dusk. It was difficult to recognize faces in the frenzy of squirming bodies.