Two Thousand Miles Below Read online

  CHAPTER III

  _Red Drops_

  The flat-roofed shack of yellow boards that was Dean Rawson's "office"had a second canopy roof built above it and extending out on all sideslike a wooden umbrella. Thick pitch fried almost audibly from the firboards when the sun drove straight from overhead, but beneath theirshelter the heat was more bearable.

  By an open window, where a hot breeze stirred sluggishly, Rawson satin silent contemplation of the camp. His face was as copper-colored asan Apache's and as motionless. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly upon adistant derrick and the blasted stub of a big drill that hung unmovingabove the concrete floor.

  But the man's eyes did not consciously record the details of thatscene. He saw nothing of the derrick or of the heat waves that madethe steel seem writhingly alive; he was looking at something far moredistant, something many miles away, something vague and mysterious,hidden miles beneath the surface of the earth.

  "Heat," he said at last, as if talking in a dream. "Heat, terrifictemperatures--but I can't make it out; I can't see it!"

  The younger, broad-shouldered man, whose khaki shirt, thrown open atthe neck showed a chest tanned to the black-brown of his face, stoppedhis restless pacing back and forth in the hot room.

  "Yes?" he asked with a touch of irritation in his tone. "There'splenty of heat there--heat enough to melt off the shaft of thathigh-temp alloy! What the devil's the use of wondering about the heat,Dean? What gets me is this: the shaft has been plugged again. Now,what kind of...."

  * * * * *

  Dean Rawson's face had not moved a muscle during the other's outburst.His eyes were still fixed on that place that was so far away, yetwhich he tried to bring close in his mind, close enough to see, tocomprehend the mystery that should be so plain.

  "Lava wouldn't do it!" he said softly. "No melted stone would melt theKrieger alloy, unless it was under pressure, which this was not.There was no blast coming out of our shaft. Yet we dipped into thatgold; we stuck the drill right down into it. But what did we go intothe next time? What did we dip into?"

  He swung quickly, violently, toward Smithy who was facing him from themiddle of the room. He aimed one finger at him as if it were a pistol,and his words cracked out as sharply as if they came from a gun:

  "That tube you sent down--that piece of casing! How was it burned?Were there straggling ends, frozen gobs of metal? Did it look like anold-fashioned molasses candy bar that's been melted? Did it?"

  "Why, no," said Smithy. "It hadn't dripped any; it was cut off niceand clean."

  "Cut!" Rawson almost shouted the word. "You said it, Smithy. So wasthe shaft of the drill. And if you ever saw a piece of this alloybeing melted you know that it's as gummy as a pot of old paint. It wascut, Smithy! Dipping into that melted gold threw us off the track; wewere thinking of ramming the drill down into a mess of lava. But wedidn't. It was cut off by a blast of flame so much hotter than lavathat melted rock would seem cold!"

  "And that helps us a lot, doesn't it," asked Smithy, scornfully, "whenthe flame melts the end of the shaft shut as fast as we open it?"

  Dean Rawson's lean, muscular hands took Smithy's broad shoulders andspun the younger man around. "Cheer up," Dean told him. "We've got itlicked. Why it doesn't blow out of that shaft like hell out for noonis more than I can see; but the heat's there! We've won!"

  "But--" Smithy began. Rawson sent him spinning toward the door in agood-natured showing of strength that his assistant had not yetguessed.

  "Soup!" he ordered. "Break out the nitroglycerine, Smithy. Get thatSwede, Hanson, on the job; he's a shooter. He knows his stuff. We'llblow open the bottom end of our shaft so it'll never go shut!"

  * * * * *

  Hanson knew his stuff and did it. But he met Rawson's inquiring eyeswith a puzzled shake of his head when the open mouth of thetwenty-inch bore gave faint echo of the deep explosion and followedafter a time with only a feeble puff of air.

  "Like a cannon, she should have gone," Hanson stated. "And she yoostgo _phht_!"

  "It's open down below," said Rawson briefly. "This is a different kindof a well from the kind you've been shooting."

  To the waiting Riley he said: "Hook a bailer onto that cable and sendit down. See what you can tell about the hole."

  Again ten miles of cable hissed smoothly down the gaping throat. Thenit slowed.

  "Fifty-two-seven," said Riley, "and she's open. Seven twenty-five!Seven fifty, and we're on bottom!"

  "Up," Rawson ordered, "if there's anything left of the bailer. It'sprobably melted into scrap."

  But strangely it was not. It hung from the dangling cable spinninglazily until Riley stepped in to check its motion.

  There was a check valve in the bottom--a door that opened inwardly, totake in water and fragments of rock when need arose. Riley,disregarding the possible heat of the twirling bailer, reached for itwith bare hands. He drew them back, then held them before him--and ahundred watching eyes saw what had been unseen before: the slowdropping of red liquid from the bailer's end. The same drops werefalling from Riley's hands that had touched that end.

  "Blood!" The word came from the foreman's throat in one horrifiedgasp. It ran in a whispering echo from one to another of the watchingcrew. From far across the hot sands came the rattle of a truck thatbrought the first of many loads of cement and steel for Rawson'sbuildings. Its driver was singing lustily:

  "Hark to what I say: You're pokin' through the crust of hell And braggin' too damn loud of it, For, when you get to hell, you'll find The devil there to pay!"

  But Rawson, looking dazedly into Smithy's eyes, said only: "It'scold--the bailer's cold. There's no heat there."