"All right, let's go. There's a cave below here. Take their guns, young lady. We'll need them."

The sky beyond the west windows was clogged with huge black shapes. Fallon remembered the smashed windows of the department store in Santa Monica. "Joan," he said, "come here."

He put his arm around her shoulders. He might have walked all right without her, but somehow he wanted her there.

They dropped down the other side of the hill into a little brush-choked cleft. There was a shallow cave at one end.

"There go my windows," said Bjarnsson, and cursed in Swedish. "In with you, before those flying devils find us."

They were well hidden. Chances were the rays would go right over them—after they'd finished off Kashimo and his men. Bjarnsson said softly, "What did they want with me, Fallon?"

"There's only one thing they couldn't get from somebody else," returned Fallon. "Your submarine."

"Yes. The mechanisms are of my own design. They would need me to operate it. Does that mean we are right about the volcano?"

"Maybe. They'd have made plans to control it, of course. Or they may want your ship merely as a model."

There was silence for a while. Outside, heavy wings began to beat again. They came perilously low, went over, and were gone.

Einar Bjarnsson said quietly, "I'm going to take the chance, Fallon. I'm going to try to get my ship through."

"What about the radiations?"

"If Kashimo was planning to use the ship, he'll have arranged for that. Anyway, I'm going to see." His ice-blue eyes stabbed at Fallon. "I can't do it alone."

Joan Daniels said, "I'll go."

Bjarnsson's eyes flicked from one to the other. Fallon's face was dark and almost dangerous.

"Wait a minute," he said gently.

Joan faced him. "I thought you were going away."

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