One man had stood apart from the others, farther across the wide corridor. His khaki-clad body flashed suddenly to incandescence, then fell to the floor. And inside the cave, where the walls came abruptly together to cut off any further retreat, Colonel Culver spoke softly. "One more gone," he said. "That was Oakley. Well, he never knew what it was that hit him--and it looks as if we'll all get the same." Through it all, Rawson had clung to his flame-thrower; unconsciously his hand had held fast to the bent handle of the cylindrical weapon. Now he set it down slowly upon the floor, then straightened his aching body laboriously. Loah's light was still gleaming. He saw her eyes searching for his, half in terror, half in wonderment. Strange men with strange thundering weapons--he knew she was wondering if they still dared hope, wondering if these warriors of Rawson's race might be able to work further magic. Dean put one arm tenderly about her and drew her close and his other hand came to rest upon Smithy's shoulder. "It's the end, dear," he told the girl softly. "It's the end of our journey. You've been so dear and so brave. Pretty tough to lose out when we'd almost fought clear." Then, to Smithy: "Loah came back to save me--refused to go when she could have got away and been safe." * * * * * Already the air was stifling. The tunnel beyond the mouth of the cave was hot, though only at its end, where the invisible ray struck the rock surface squarely, was there red, glowing heat. Rawson suddenly saw none of it. He was seeing in his mind the world up above, his own world of great, free, sunlit spaces. Suddenly he was hungry for some closer link, no matter how slight, to bind him to that world. "What day is it?" he asked. "Have you kept track of time?" Smithy looked at him wonderingly. "Yes," he said, then added: "Oh, I see. You want to know what day this is when we die. It's the twentieth, Dean"--he looked at the watch on his wrist--"just two o'clock, the afternoon of the twentieth." Within him, Rawson felt a dull resentment. He was being denied even this last trifling solace. "You're wrong," he said sharply. "You slipped up on your count." "It doesn't make any real difference," Smithy said. But Rawson went on: "We left the inner world on the nineteenth. At noon on the twentieth Gor was to cut loose the flame-throwers, melt a hole in the floor of the ocean. But it didn't work. I had hoped I could wipe out the mole-men, turn a solid stream of water down a shaft for over six hundred miles. It would have gone through the Zone of Fire, come flooding up into the mole-men world and spread out all over down deep where it's hot. It would have hit the Lake of Fire--all that!" "I don't know what you are talking about, Dean." Smithy's voice was intentionally soothing; he knew Rawson was talking wildly. "But I know I am right on the time. We've kept track of it every hour since--"