"It was like water," Loah said. "We found it deep inside the earth in a place where it is very cold. When warmed it turns to white clouds. We threw a flask of it on the hot rocks, hoping to reach you while they could not see."--she paused and shook her head slowly--"but we can get no more. The Pathway of Light is closed to us, now that the Red Ones are there." "Liquefied gas of some sort," said Rawson briefly, "caught in enormous rock pressure. But that's out! Now what about this Place of Death? There's an idea there." The White Ones were numbed with fear, but Loah and Gor accompanied him when Rawson returned to the red field. The flowers were still in bloom; they waved gently in the breeze that blew always from the mountain across the fields and out toward the point, where even now dark figures could be seen near the mouth of the shaft. "It will be many of your days," said Loah, "before the flowers die. If you thought to trap the Red Ones in the Place of Death, there will not be time...." But Rawson had left them; he had advanced into the scarlet field and dropped to his knees. * * * * * He was crushing the vines in his hands, grinding them into the white, salty earth underneath. Then he passed his hands guardedly before his face as if to detect an odor. Loah and Gor saw him shake his head slowly while he spoke aloud words that they could not understand. "Cyanide," Dean Rawson was saying. "It's a cyanide of some sort--releases hydrocyanic acid gas. I could have rigged a generator, though I've forgotten about all of my chemistry--and now there isn't time." Off in the distance the dark figures still moved near the end of the point. He made no effort to conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of the Place of Death made a winding line across the scant half mile of valley where the green fields ended abruptly. Dean stepped high over the stone trough a half mile long that marked that dividing line. There was water in it; it was part of their irrigation system. A little beyond, in the midst of the green, stood a tiny flat-topped knoll on which he knew was a pool that supplied the crude system. Beyond it Loah and Gor were waiting. Gor read the look on Rawson's face. "It is useless," Gor said. "And now I have decided. The People of the Light must die--but not in the fires of the Reds. With my people I shall walk into the sea." And Rawson could not protest. He could only follow as Gor turned back toward the village and the mountain beyond. From a spur on the mountainside Rawson could see the full length of the island. One way lay the village; beyond it the green fields; then the wide scarlet band of the Place of Death. And beyond that the little crystal hills and the valley between that led out to the point. It was now dark with massed clusters of bodies, red even at that distance. He could even see the glint of metal from time to time.