"... and so, after many generations had lived and died, they found the Pathway to the Light," Gor was saying. "It is our name for the shaft through which you came. This was thousands of your years ago, when he who was then Gor, and the bravest of the tribe, descended. Even then they were workers in metal and they knew of Oro and Grah. They were our fathers, the first People of the Light." * * * * * Rawson had a question ready on his tongue, but Gor's words suggested another. "That shaft," he said, "the Pathway to the Light--do you mean it extends clear up to the mole-men's world? Why don't they come down?" "To them the way is lost; the Pathway is closed above the zone of fire. That other Gor did that. And those who remained--the mole-men--have forgotten. They could break their way through if they knew--they are master-workers with fire--but for them the Pathway ends, and below is the great heat. But we know of a way around the closed place, the hidden way to the great Lake of Fire." "They could break their way through if they knew!" repeated Rawson softly. For an instant he stood silent and unbreathing; he was remembering the ugly eyes in a priest's hideous face. The eyes were watching him as the White Ones took him away. He forced his thoughts to come back to the earlier question. "What," he asked, "is the diameter, the distance across the inside world? How far is it from here to your sun? How many miles?" "Miles?" questioned Gor. "We know the word, for the Mountain has told us, but the length of a mile we could not know. This I can say: there were wise men in the past when our own world was larger. They worked magic with little marks on paper. It is said that they knew that if one came here from our sun and kept on as far again through the solid rock, he would reach the outside--the land, of the true sun, from which our forefathers came." Rawson nodded his head, while his eyes followed that sweeping green bowl of the sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousand miles radius--and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose; work out an approximation of the curvature." From the smooth winding path which they had followed there sounded behind them hurrying footsteps; a moment later Loah stood beside him. * * * * * Her eyes gave unmistakable corroboration of what Gor had said of that torrent of tears, but she looked at Dean bravely, while every show of emotion was erased from her face. "You sent for me," she said. And Rawson, though now he knew he could speak to her and be understood, found himself at a loss for words. "We wanted you with us, Gor and I," he began, then paused. She was so different from the girl whose smiling eyes had welcomed him. The change had come when he spoke those first words on his arrival, and now she was so coldly impersonal.