BILLY STEELE CHAPTER FIVE: MENACE OF THE MOLE PEOPLE

But in the deep darkness, they failed to see a wide hole left by the monster. But Swifty saw it and wildly jumped from fear. And the terrified riders then toppled from their steed and descended down the orifice into the accursed blackness-where it was darker than a thousand midnights.

Billy's pony neighed loudly as he watched his master become swallowed into the Earth itself. Billy and Cassidy held tightly to one another as they plummeted down the hole. Even though he was perhaps seconds away from death, Billy still managed to feel some excitations while he held Cassidy's warm body next to his own. They did not have far to fall as the pre teen pair landed on a ledge overlooking the bottomless darkness. Once they opened up their eyes after the fall, a nose-to-nose Billy and Cassidy gently nuzzled a bit, relieving themselves in their warm skin after such a harrowing ordeal. They rubbed each other until the throbbing disappeared, but they would not linger for long.

"We better get out of here," Cassidy warned Billy as she gathered herself and her sword. "They'll soon be here and you don't want to get caught."

"Who will be here, " Billy questioned. The kid ranger's mind became packed with questions for his partner in danger. Who is this girl? What happened to her right arm? What is she running from? Who are the mysterious beings she's talking about? What about those worm creatures? But before Billy could call for his pony, he and Cassidy suddenly became surrounded by members of an unearthly, half human, half mutant posse.

In the lantern light, Billy could see their captors looked like aged townspeople, men and women dressed in denim and burlap. They trudged like humans, but their faces were disfigured as if some force, some power had ripped away at their human facial features and reshaped them into the form of a mole. Protruding teeth, sharp, pointed noses, squinty eyes and large claws where hands used to be, characterized these subhuman, subterranean citizens. Each mole person pointed a gun at the adolescents' hearts. But these were weapons Billy had never seen before. These were futuristic firearms. One's sleek, shiny metal barrel fired a dazzling ray bolt as a warning shot. At the point of a ray gun, Billy handed over his black arrowhead while Cassidy reluctantly surrendered her sword. As Billy watched the mole man's ray gun disintegrate the rock, he feared these creatures have the power to match, and outdo The Lightning Warrior's energy and weapons.

Without uttering a word, the mole people led Billy and Cassidy down a black passage, and they were then shoved into a capsule like conveyance. This vehicle sped them down and down a vast tubular highway until they saw a bright light radiating from an underground community. This mole people metropolis was like nothing Billy had ever seen. Sleek metal structures bathed in vibrant lights dazzled the boy's eyes. Beneath the million year old hanging rocks, these mole mutants had managed to build a futuristic wonderland, enlivened by the crackling bolts radiating from a secret source of power. In the center of this technologically advanced city, there stood a towering, cathedral like structure in which mutant mole people entered to bow down to a mysterious minister.

Billy's fascination with this city did not last long. Billy and Cassidy were swiftly led to a dungeon like cell. "You couldn't escape us, no matter how hard you try, Cassidy," a ray gun toting mole man exclaimed as he pushed the young beauty into the holding pen along with Billy.