CHAPTER I
_A Man Named Smith_
Heat! Heat of a white-hot sun only two hours old. Heat of blazingsands where shimmering, gassy waves made the sparse sagebrush seemabout to burst into flames. Heat of a wind that might have come out ofthe fire-box of a Mogul on an upgrade pull.
A highway twisted among black masses of outcropping lava rock ortightened into a straightaway for miles across the desert that sweptup to the mountain's base. The asphalt surface of the pavement wasalmost liquid; it clung stickily to the tires of a big car, letting gowith a continuous, ripping sound.
Behind the wheel of the weatherbeaten, sunburned car, Dean Rawsonsquinted his eyes against the glare. His lean, tanned face was almostas brown as his hair. The sun had done its work there; it had setcrinkly lines about the man's eyes of darker brown. But the deeperlines in that young face had been etched by responsibility; they madethe man seem older than his twenty-three years, until the steady eyes,flashing into quick amusement, gave them the lie.
And now Rawson's lips twisted into a little grin at his owndiscomfort--but he knew the desert driver's trick.
"A hundred plus in the shade," he reasoned silently. "That's hot anyway you take it. But taking it in the face at forty-five an hour istoo much like looking into a Bessemer converter!"
He closed the windows of his old coupe to within an inch of the top,then opened the windshield a scant half inch. The blast that had beendrawing the moisture from his body became a gently circulating currentof hot air.
He had gone only another ten miles after these preparations for fastdriving, when he eased the big weatherbeaten car to a stop.
* * * * *
On his right, reaching up to the cool heights under a cloudless bluesky, the gray peaks of the Sierras gave promise of relief from thefurnace breath of the desert floor. There were even valleys of snowglistening whitely where the mountains held them high. A watcher, hadthere been one to observe in the empty land, might have understoodanother traveler's pausing to admire the serene majesty of thoseheights--but he would have wondered could he have seen Rawson's eyesturned in longing away from the mountains while he stared across theforbidding sands.
There were other mountains, lavender and gray, in the distance. Andnearer by, a matter of twenty or thirty elusive miles through thedancing waves of hot air, were other barren slopes. Across the rollingsand-hills wheel marks, faint and wind-blown, led straight from thehighway toward the parched peaks.
"Tonah Basin!" Rawson was thinking. "It's there inside these hills.It's hotter than this is by twenty degrees right this minute--but Iwish I could see it. I'd like to have one more look before I face thathard-boiled bunch in the city!"
He looked at his watch and shook his head. "Not a chance," headmitted. "I'm due up in Erickson's office in five hours. I wonder ifI've got a chance with them...."
* * * * *
Five hours of driving, and Rawson walked into the office of Erickson,Incorporated, with a steady step. Another hour, and his tanned facehad gone a trifle pale; his lips were set grimly in a straight linethat would not relax under the verdict he felt certain he was about tohear.
For an hour he had faced the steely-eyed man across the long table inthe Directors Room--faced him and replied to questions from this manand the half-dozen others seated there. Skeptical questions, trickyquestions; and now the man was speaking:
"Rawson, six months ago you laid your Tonah Basin plans beforeus--plans to get power from the center of the Earth, to utilize thatenergy, and to control the power situation in this whole Southwest.It looked like a wild gamble then, but we investigated. It still lookslike a gamble."
"Yes," said Rawson, "it is a gamble. Did I ever call it anythingelse?"
"The Ehrmann oscillator," the man continued imperturbably, "inventedin 1940, two years ago, solves the wireless transmission problem, butthe success of your plan depends upon your own invention--upon yourstraight-line drills that you say will not wander off at a tangentwhen they get down a few miles. And more than that, it depends uponyou.
"Even that does not damn the scheme; but, Rawson, there's only onefactor we gamble on. No wild plans, no matter how many hundreds ofmillions they promise: no machines, no matter what they are designedto do, get a dollar of our backing. It's men we back with our money!"
Rawson's face was set to show no emotion, but within his mind wereinsistent, clamoring thoughts:
"Why can't he say it and get it over with? I've lost--what ahard-boiled bunch they are!--but he doesn't need to drag out theagony." But--but what was the man saying?
"Men, Rawson!" the emotionless voice continued. "And we've checked upon you from the time you took your nourishment out of a bottle; it'syou we're backing. That's why we have organized the little company ofThermal Explorations, Limited. That's why we've put a million of hardcoin into it. That's why we've put you in charge of operations."
He was extending a hand that Dean Rawson had to reach for blindly.
"I'd drill through to hell," Dean said and fought to keep his voicesteady, "with backing like that!"
He allowed his emotion to express itself in a shaky laugh. "Perhaps Iwill at that," he added: "I'll certainly be heading in the rightdirection."
* * * * *
Under another day's sun the hot asphalt was again taking the print ofthe tires of Rawson's old car. But this time, when he came to thealmost obliterated marks that led through the sand toward distantmountains, he stopped, partially deflated the tires to give them agrip on the sand, and swung off.
"A fool, kid trick," he admitted to himself, "but I want to see theplace. I'll see plenty of it before I'm through, but right now I'vegot to have a look; then I'll buckle down to work.
"Thermal Explorations, Limited!" The name rang triumphantly in hismind. "A million things to do--men, crews for the drills, derricks....We'll have to truck in over this road; I'll lay a plank road over thesand. And water--we'll have to haul that, too, until we can sink awell. We'll find water under there somewhere. I've got to see theplace...."
The black sides of the mountains were nearer: every outcropping rockwas plainly volcanic, and great sweeping slopes were beds of ash andpumice; the wheel marks, where they showed at all, wound off and intoa canyon hidden in the tremendous hills that thrust themselvesabruptly from the desert floor.
The mountains themselves towered hugely at closer range, but the roadthat Rawson followed climbed through them without traversing thehighest slopes. It was scarcely more than a trail, barely wide enoughfor the car at times, but boulder-filled gullies showed where thehands of men had worked to build it.
* * * * *
He came at last into the open where a shoulder of rock bent the roadoutward above a sea of sand far below. And now the mountains showedtheir circular arrangement--a great ring, twenty miles across. At oneside were three conical peaks, unmistakable craters, whose scarredsides were smothered under ash and sand that had rained down fromtheir shattered tops in ages past. Yet, so hot they were, so clear-cutthe irregularly rimmed cups at their tops, that they seemed to havepushed themselves up through the earth in that very instant. At theirbases were signs of human habitation--broken walls, scattered stonebuildings whose empty windows gaped blackly. This was all thatremained of New Rhyolite.
Rawson looked at the "ghost town" which had never failed to interesthim, but he gave no thought now to the hardy prospectors who had builtit or to the vein of gold that had failed them. His searching eyescame back to the fiery pit, the Tonah Basin, a vast cauldron of sandand ash--great sweeps of yellow and gray and darker brown into whichthe sun was pouring its rays with burning-glass fierceness.
But to Rawson, there was more than the eye could see. He was picturinga great powerhouse, steel derricks, capped pipes that led off towhirring turbines, generators, strings of cables stretching out onsteel supports into the distance, a wireless transmitter--and all of
this the result of his own vision, of the stream he would bring fromdeep in the earth!
Then, abruptly, the pictures faded. Far below him on the yellow,sun-blasted floor, a fleck of shadow had moved. It appeared suddenlyfrom the sand, moved erratically, staggeringly, for a hundred feet,then vanished as if something had blotted it out--and Dean Rawsonknew that it was the shadow of a man.
* * * * *
The road widened beyond the turn. He had intended to swing around; hehad wanted only to take a clear picture of the place with him. But nowthe big car's gears wailed as he took the downgrade in second, and thebrakes, jammed on at the sharp curves, added their voice to the chorusof haste.
"Confounded desert rats!" Rawson was saying under his breath. "They'llchance anything--but imagine crossing country like that! And he hasn'ta burro--he's got only the water he can carry in a canteen!"
But even the canteen was empty, he found, when he stopped the car in awhirl of loose sand beside a prone figure whose khaki clothes werealmost indistinguishable against the desert soil.
Before Rawson could get his own lanky six feet of wiry length from thecar, the man had struggled to his feet. Again the little blot ofshadow began its wavering, uncertain, forward movement.
He was a little shorter than Rawson, a little heavier of build, andyounger by a year or two, although his flushed face and a two days'stubble of black beard might have been misleading. Rawson caught thestaggering man and half carried him to the shadow of the car, the onlyshelter in that whole vast cauldron of the sun.
From a mouth where a swollen tongue protruded thickly came an agonizedsound that was a cry for, "Water--water!" Rawson gave it to him asrapidly as he dared, until he allowed the man to drink from the desertbag at the last. And his keen eyes were taking in all the significantdetails as he worked.
The khaki clothes earned a nod of silent approval. The compact rollthat had been slung from the younger man's shoulders, even the broadshoulders themselves, and the square jaw, unshaved and grimy, gotRawson's inaudible, "O. K.!" But the face was more burned than tanned.
* * * * *
He introduced himself when the stranger was able to stand. "I'mRawson, Dean Rawson, mining engineer when I'm working at it," heexplained. "I'm bound north. I'll take you out of this. You can travelwith me as far as you please."
The dark-haired youngster was plainly youthful now, as he stood erect.His voice was recovering what must have been its usual hearty ring.
"I'm not trying to say 'thank you,'" he said, as he took Rawson'shand. "I was sure sunk--going down for the last time--taps--all thatsort of thing! You pulled me out--the good old helping hand. Can'tthank a fellow for that--just return the favor or pass it on tosomeone else. And, by the way--you won't believe it--but my name isSmith."
Rawson smiled good-naturedly. "No," he agreed, "I don't believe it.But it's a good, handy name. All right, Smithy, jump in! Here, let megive you a lift; you're still woozy."
Rawson found his passenger uncommunicative. Not but what Smithy talkedfreely of everything but himself, but it was of himself that Rawsonwanted to know.
"Drop me at the first town," said Smithy. "You're going north: I'msouth-bound--looking for a job down in Los. I won't take any moreshort cuts; I was two days on this last one. I'll stick to the road."
They were through the mountains that ringed in the fiery pit of TonahBasin. Smooth sand lay ahead; only the shallow marks that his owntires had ploughed needed to be followed. Dean Rawson turned andlooked with fair appraisal at the man he had saved.
"Drifter?" he asked himself silently. "Road bum? He doesn't look thepart; there's something about him...."
Aloud he inquired: "What's your line? What do you know?"
And the young man answered frankly: "Not a thing!"
* * * * *
Dean sensed failure, inefficiency. He resented it in this youngsterwho had fought so gamely with death. His voice was harsh with acurious sense of his own disappointment as he asked:
"Found the going too hard for you up north, did you? Well, it won't beany easier--" But Smithy had interrupted with a weak movement of hishand.
"Not too hard," he said laconically; "too damn soft! I don't know whatI'm looking for--pretty dumb: got a lot to learn!--but it'll be a jobthat needs to take a good licking!"
"'Too damn soft!'" Dean was thinking. "And he tackled the desertalone!" There was a lot here he did not understand. But the look inthe eyes of Smithy that met his own searching gaze and returned itsquarely if a bit whimsically--that was something he _could_understand. Dean Rawson was a judge of men. The sudden impulse thatmoved him was founded upon certainty.
"You've found that job," he said. "The desert almost got you a littlewhile ago--now it's due to take that licking you were talking about.I'm going to teach it to lie down and roll over and jump throughhoops. Fact is, my job is to get it into harness and put it to work.I'll be working right out there in the Basin where I found you. Itwill be only about two degrees cooler than hell. If that sounds goodto you, Smithy, stick around."
He warmed oddly to the look in the younger man's deep-set, dark eyes,as Smithy replied:
"Try to put me out, Rawson--just try to put me out!"
Two Thousand Miles Below Page 2
