This etext was produced from Astounding Stories January 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. 

A Sequel to "The Fifth-Dimension Catapult"

[Illustration: _Evelyn swayed . .. And the Thing moved!_]

 By way of Professor Denham's Tube, Tommy and Evelyn invade the inimical Fifth-Dimensional world of golden cities and tree-fern jungles and Ragged Men. 

The Fifth-Dimension Tube

_A Complete Novelette_

By Murray Leinster

CHAPTER I

_The Tube_

The generator rumbled and roared, building up to its maximum speed. The whole laboratory quivered from its vibration. The dynamo hummedand whined and the night silence outside seemed to make the noiseswithin more deafening. Tommy Reames ran his eyes again over thepower-leads to the monstrous, misshapen coils. Professor Denham bentover one of them, straightened, and nodded. Tommy Reames nodded toEvelyn, and she threw the heavy multiple-pole switch. 

There was a flash of jumping current. The masses of metal on the floorseemed to leap into ungainly life. The whine of the dynamo rose to ascream and its brushes streaked blue flame. The metal things on thefloor flicked together and were a tube, three feet and more indiameter. That tube writhed and twisted. It began to form itself intoan awkward and seemingly impossible shape, while metal surfacessliding on each other produced screams that cut through the din of themotor and dynamo. The writhing tube strained and wriggled. Then therewas a queer, inaudible _snap_ and something gave. A part of the tubequivered into nothingness. Another part hurt the eyes that looked uponit. 

And then there was the smell of burned insulation and a wire wasarcing somewhere, while thick rubbery smoke arose. A fuse blew outwith a thunderous report, and Tommy Reames leaped to the suddenlyracing motor-generator. The motor died amid gasps and rumblings. AndTommy Reames looked anxiously at the Fifth-Dimension Tube. 

It was important, that Tube. Through it, Tommy Reames and ProfessorDenham had reason to believe they could travel to another universe, ofwhich other men had only dreamed. And it was important in other ways, too. At the moment Evelyn Denham threw the switch, last-editionnewspapers in Chicago were showing headlines about "King" Jacaro'sforfeiture of two hundred thousand dollars' bail by failing to appearin court. King Jacaro was a lord of racketeerdom. 

While Tommy inspected the Tube anxiously, a certain chief of police ina small town upstate was telling feverishly over the telephone of aposse having killed a monster lizard by torchlight, having discoveredit in the act of devouring a cow. The lizard was eight feet high, walked on its hind legs, and had a collar of solid gold about itsneck. And jewel importers, in New York, were in anxious conferenceabout a flood of untraced jewels upon the market. Their origin wasunknown. The Fifth-Dimension Tube ultimately affected all of thoseaffairs, and the Death Mist as well. And--though it was not considereddangerous then--everybody remembers the Death Mist now. 

But at the moment Professor Denham stared at the Tube concernedly, hisdaughter Evelyn shivered from pure excitement as she looked at it, anda red-headed man named Smithers looked impassively from the Tube toTommy Reames and back again. He'd done most of the mechanical work onthe Tube's parts, and he was as anxious as the rest. But nobodythought of the world outside the laboratory. 

Professor Denham moved suddenly. He was nearest to the open end of theTube. He sniffed curiously and seemed to listen. Within seconds theothers became aware of a new smell in the laboratory. It seemed tocome from the Tube itself, and it was a warm, damp smell that couldonly be imagined as coming from a jungle in the tropics. There werethe rich odors of feverishly growing things; the heavy fragrance ofunknown tropic blossoms, and a background of some curious blend ofscents and smells which was alien and luring, and exotic. The wholewas like the smell of another planet of the jungles of a strange worldwhich men had never trod. And then, definitely coming out of the Tube, there was a hollow, booming noise. 

 * * * * *

It had been echoed and re-echoed amid the twistings of the Tube, butonly an animal could have made it. It grew louder, a monstrous roar. Then yells sounded suddenly above it--human yells, wild yells, insane, half-gibbering yells of hysterical excitement and blood lust. Thebeast-thing bellowed and an ululating chorus of joyous screams arose. The laboratory reverberated with the thunderous noise. Then there wasthe sound of crashing and of paddings, and abruptly the noise wasdiminishing as if its source were moving farther away. The beast-thingroared and bellowed as if in agony, and the yelling noise seemed toshow that men were following close upon its flanks. 

Those in the laboratory seemed to awaken as if from a bad dream. Denham was kneeling before the mouth of the Tube, an automatic riflein his hands. Tommy Reames stood grimly before Evelyn. He'd snatchedup a pair of automatic pistols. Smithers clutched a spanner andwatched the mouth of the Tube with a strained attention. Evelyn stoodshivering behind Tommy. 

Tommy said with a hint of grim humor:

"I don't think there's any doubt about the Tube having gotten through. That's the Fifth Dimension planet, all right. "

He smiled at Evelyn. She was deathly pale. 

"I--remember--hearing noises like that. .. . "

Denham stood up. He painstakingly slipped on the safety of his rifleand laid it on a bench with the other guns. There was a small arsenalon a bench at one side of the laboratory. The array looked much morelike arms for in expedition into dangerous territory than a normalpart of apparatus for an experiment in rather abstruse mathematicalphysics. There were even gas masks on the bench, and some of thoseconverted brass Very pistols now used only for discharging tear- andsternutatory-gas bombs. 

"The Tube wasn't seen, anyhow, " said Professor Denham briskly. "Who'sgoing through first?"

Tommy slung a cartridge belt about his waist and a gas mask about hisneck. 

"I am, " he said shortly. "We'll want to camouflage the mouth of theTube. I'll watch a bit before I get out. "

He crawled into the mouth of the twisted pipe. 

 * * * * *

The Tube was nearly three feet across, each section was five feetlong, and there were gigantic solenoids at each end of each section. 

It was not an experiment made at random, nor was the world to which itreached an unknown one to Tommy or to Denham. Months before, Denhamhad built an instrument which would bend a ray of light into the FifthDimension and had found that he could fix a telescope to the deviceand look into a new and wholly strange cosmos. [1] He had seentree-fern jungles and a monstrous red sun, and all the flora and faunaof a planet in the carboniferous period of development. More, by theaccident of its placing he had seen the towers and the pinnacles of acity whose walls and towers seemed plated with gold. 

 [1] "The Fifth-Dimension Catapult"--see the January, 1931, issue of Astounding Stories. 

Having gone so far, he had devised a catapult which literally flungobjects to the surface of that incredible world. Insects, birds, andat last a cat had made the journey unharmed, and he had built a steelglobe in which to attempt the journey in person. His daughter Evelynhad demanded to accompany him, and he believed it safe. The trip hadbeen made in security, but return was another matter. A laboratoryassistant, Von Holtz, had sent them into the Fifth Dimension, only tobetray them. One King Jacaro, lord of Chicago racketeers, wasconvinced by him of the existence of the golden city of that otherworld, and that it was full of delectable loot. He offered a bribepast envy for the secret of Denham's apparatus. And Von Holtz hadremoved the apparatus for Denham's return before working the catapultto send him on his strange journey. He wanted to be free to sell fullprivileges of rapine and murder to Jacaro. 

The result was unexpected. Von Holtz could not unravel the secret ofthe catapult he himself had operated. He could not sell the secret forwhich he had committed a crime. In desperation he called in TommyReames--rather more than an amateur in mathematical physics--showedhim Evelyn and her father marooned in a tree-fern jungle, andhypocritically asked for aid. 

Tommy's enthusiastic efforts soon became more than merelyenthusiastic. The men of the Golden City remained invisible, but therewere strange, half-mad outlaws of the jungles who hated the city. Tommy Reames had watched helplessly as they hunted for the occupantsof the steel globe. He had worked frenziedly to achieve a rescue. Inthe course of his labor he discovered the treachery of Von Holtz aswell as the secret of the catapult, and with the aid of Smithers--whohad helped to build the original catapult--he made a new small deviceto achieve the original end. 

 * * * * *

The whole affair came to an end on one mad afternoon when the RaggedMen captured first an inhabitant of the Golden City, and then Denhamand Evelyn in a forlorn attempt at rescue. Tommy Reames went mad. Heused a tiny sub-machine gun upon the Ragged Men through the modelmagnetic catapult he had made, and contrived communication with Denhamafterward. Instructed by Denham, he brought about the return of fatherand daughter to Earth just before Ragged Men and Earthling alike wouldhave perished in a vengeful gas cloud from the Golden City. Even then, though, his triumph was incomplete because Von Holtz had gotten wordto Jacaro, and nattily-dressed gunmen raided the laboratory and madeoff with the model catapult, leaving three bullets in Tommy and one inSmithers as souvenirs. 

Now, using the principle developed in the catapult, Tommy and Denhamhad built a large Tube, and as Tommy climbed along its corrugatedinterior he knew a good part of what he should expect at the otherend. A steady current of air blew past him. It was laden with a myriadunfamiliar scents. The Tube was a tunnel from one set of dimensions toanother, a permanent way from Earth to a strange, carboniferous-periodplanet on which a monstrous dull-red sun shone hotly. Tommy shouldcome out into a tree-fern forest whose lush vegetation would hide thesky, and which furnished a lurking place not only for strangereptilian monsters akin to those of the long-dead past of Earth, butfor the bands of ragged, half-mad human beings who were outlaws fromthe civilization of which Denham and Evelyn had seen proofs. 

 * * * * *

Tommy reached the third bend in the Tube. By now he had lost all senseof orientation. An object may be bent through one right angle only intwo dimensions, and a second perfect right angle--at ninety degrees toall former paths--only in three dimensions. It follows that a thirdperfect right angle requires four dimensions for existence, and fourperfect right angles five. The Tube bent itself through four perfectright angles, and since no human-being can ever have experience ofmore than three dimensions, plus time, it followed that Tommy wasexperiencing other dimensions than those of Earth as soon as he passedthe third bend. In short, he was in another cosmos. 

There was a moment of awful sickness as he passed the third bend. Hewas hideously dizzy when he passed the fourth. For a time he felt asif he had no weight at all. But then, quite abruptly, he was climbingvertically upward and the soughing of tree-fern fronds was loud in hisears, and suddenly the end of the Tube was under his fingers and hestared out into the world of the Fifth Dimension. 

Now a gentle wind blew in his face. Tree-ferns rose to incredibleheights above his head, and now and again by the movements of theirfronds he caught stray glimpses of unfamiliar stars. There were redstars, and blue ones, and once he caught sight of a clearlydistinguishable double star, of which each component was visible tothe naked eye. And very, very far away he heard the beastly yellingshe knew must be the outlaws, the Ragged Men, feasting horribly onhalf-scorched flesh torn from the quivering, yet-living flanks of amonstrous reptile. 

Something moved, whimpered--and fled suddenly. It sounded like a humanbeing. And Tommy Reames was struck with the utterly impossibleconviction that he had heard just that sound before. It was notdangerous, in any case, and he watched, and listened, and presently heslipped from the mouth of the Tube and by the glow of a flashlightstripped foliage from nearby growths and piled it about the Tube'smouth. And then, because the purpose of the Tube was not adventure butscience, he went back down into the laboratory. 

 * * * * *

The three men, with Evelyn, worked until dawn at the rest of theirpreparations for the use of the Tube. All that time the laboratory wasfilled with the heavy fragrance of a tree-fern jungle upon an unknownplanet. The heavy, sickly-sweet scents of closed jungle blossomsfilled their nostrils. The reek of feverishly growing green thingssaturated the air. A steady wind blew down the Tube, and it boreinnumerable unfamiliar odors into the laboratory. Once a gigantic mothbumped and blundered into the Tube, and finally crawled heavily outinto the light. It was scaled, and terrible because of its monstroussize, but it had broken a wing and could not fly. So it crawled withfeverish haste toward a brilliant electric light. Its eyes wereespecially horrible because they were not compound like the moths ofEarth. They were single, like those of a man, and were fixed in anexpression of utter, fascinated hypnosis. The thing looked horriblyhuman with those eyes staring from an insect's head, and Smitherskilled it in a flash of nerve-racked horror. None of them were able togo on with their work until the thing and its fascinated, staring eyeshad been put out of sight. Then they labored on with the smell of thejungles of that unnamed planet thick about them, and noises now andthen coming down the Tube. There were roars, and growlings, and oncethere was a thin high sound which seemed like the far-distant, death-startled scream of a man. 

CHAPTER II

_The Death Mist_

Tommy Reames saw the red sun rise while he was on guard at the mouthof the Tube. The tree-ferns above him came into view as vague grayoutlines. The many-colored stars grew pale. And presently a bit ofcrimson light peeped through the jungle somewhere. It moved along thehorizon and very slowly grew higher. For a moment, Tommy saw the huge, dull-red ball that was the sun of this alien planet. Queer mosses tookform and color in the daylight, displaying colors never seen on Earth. He saw flying things dart among the tree-fern fronds, and some werescaled and some were not, but none of them were feathered. 

Then a tiny buzzing noise. The telephone that now rested below the lipof the Tube was being used from the laboratory. 

"Smithers will relieve you, " said Denham's voice in the receiver. "Come on down. We're not the only people experimenting with the FifthDimension. Jacaro's been working, and all hell's loose!"

Tommy slid down the Tube in an instant. The four right-angled turnsmade him sick and dizzy again, but he came out with his jaw setgrimly. There was good reason for Tommy's interest in Jacaro. Besidessides three bullet wounds, Tommy owed Jacaro something for stealingthe first model Tube. 

He emerged in the laboratory on his hands and knees as the size of theTube made necessary. Smithers smiled placidly at him and crawled in totake his place. 

"What the devil happened?" demanded Tommy. 

Denham was bitter. He held a newspaper before him. Evelyn had broughtcoffee and the morning paper to the laboratory. She seemed ratherpale. 

"Jacaro's gotten through too!" snapped Denham. "He's gotten in a packof trouble. And he's loosed the devil on Earth. Here--look!" He jabbedhis finger at one headline. "And here--and here!" He thrust at others. "Here's proof. "

The first headline read: "KING JACARO FORFEITS BOND. " Smaller headingsbeneath it read: "Racketeer Missing for Income Tax Trial. $200, 000Bail Forfeited. " The second headline was in smaller type: "MonsterLizard Killed! Giant Meat Eater Brought Down by Rifleman. Akin toAncient Dinosaurs, Say Scientists. "

 * * * * *

"Jacaro's missing, " said Denham harshly. "This article says he'svanished, and with him a dozen of his most prominent gunmen. You knowhe had a model catapult to duplicate--the one he got from you. VonHoltz could arrange the construction of a big Tube for him. And heknew about the Golden City. Look!"

His finger, trembling, tapped on the flashlight picture of the giantlizard of which the story told. And it was a giant. A rope had uphelda colossal, leering, reptilian head while men with rifles posedself-consciously beside the dead creature. It was as big as a horse, and at first glance its kinship to the extinct dinosaurs of Earth wasplain. Huge teeth in sharklike rows. A long, trailing tail. But therewas a collar about the beast-thing's neck. 

"It had killed and was devouring a cow when they shot it, " said Denhambitterly. "There've been reports of these creatures for days--so thenews story says. They weren't printed because nobody believed them. But there are a couple of people missing. A searching party washunting for them. They found this!"

Tommy Reames stared at the picture. His face went grimmer still. Hethought of sounds he had heard beyond the Tube, not long since. 

"There's no question where they came from. The Fifth Dimension. But ifJacaro brought them back, he's a fool. "

"Jacaro's missing, " said Denham savagely. "Don't you understand? Hecould get through to the Golden City. These beast-things are proofsomebody did. And these things came down the Tube that somebodytravelled through. Jacaro wouldn't send them, but somebody did. They've got collars around their necks! Who sent them? And why?"

 * * * * *

Tommy's eyes narrowed. 

"If civilized men found the mouth of a Tube, it would seem like themouth of an artificial tunnel or a cave--"

"And if annoying vermin, like Jacaro's gunmen"--Denham's voice wasbrittle--"had come out of it, why, intelligent men might sendsomething living and deadly down it, as men on Earth will send ferretsdown a rat-hole! To wipe out the breed! That's what's happened!Jacaro's gone through and attacked the Golden City. They've found hisTube. And they've sent these things down. .. . "

"If _we_ found rats coming from a rat-hole, " said Tommy very quietly, "and ferrets went down and didn't come up, we'd gas them. "

"And so, " Denham told him, "so would the Golden City. "

He pointed to a boxed double paragraph news story under leadedtwenty-point headline: "Poisonous Fog Kills Wild Life. "

The story was not alarming. It said merely that state game wardens hadfound numerous dead game animals in a thinly-settled district nearColtsville, N. Y. , and on investigation had found a bank of mist, allof half a mile across, which seemed to have caused the trouble. Statechemists and biologists were investigating the phenomenon. Curiously, the bank of mist seemed not to dissipate in a normal fashion. Samplesof the fog were being analyzed. It was probably akin to the Belgianfogs which on several occasions had caused much loss of life. The mistwas especially interesting because in sunlight it displayed prismaticcolorings. State troopers were warning the inhabitants of theneighborhood. 

"The gassing's started, " said Denham savagely. "I know a gas thatshows rainbow colors. The Golden City uses it. So we've got to findJacaro's Tube and seal it, or only God knows what will come out of itnext. I'm going off, Tommy. You and Smithers guard our Tube. Blow itup, if necessary. It's dangerous. I'll get some authority in Albany, and we'll find Jacaro's Tube and blast it shut. "

Tommy nodded, his eyes keen and thoughtful. Denham hurried out. 

 * * * * *

Minutes later, only, they heard the roar of a car motor going down thelong lane away from the laboratory. Evelyn tried to smile at Tommy. 

"It seems terrible, dangerous. "

Tommy considered and shrugged. 

"This news is old, " he observed. "This paper was printed last night. Ithink I'll make a couple of long-distance calls. If the Golden City'shad trouble with Jacaro, it's going to make things bad for us. "

He swept his eyes about and frowningly loaded a light rifle. He put itconvenient to Evelyn's hand and made for the dwelling-house and thetelephone. It was odd that as he emerged into the open air, thefamiliar smells of Earth struck his nostrils as strange andunaccustomed. The laboratory was redolent of the tree-fern forest intowhich the Tube extended. And Smithers was watching amid those dank, incredible carboniferous-period growths now. 

Tommy put through calls, seeing all his and Denham's plans for apeaceful exploration party and amicable contact with the civilizationof that other planet, utterly shattered by presumed outrages byJacaro. He made call after call, and his demands for information grewmore urgent as he got closer to the source of trouble. His cause forworry was verified long before he had finished. Even as he made thefirst call, New York newspapers had crowded a second-grade murder offtheir front pages to make room for the white mist upstate. 

 * * * * *

The early-morning editions had termed it a "poisonous fog. " Thebreakfast editions spoke of it as a "poison fog. " But it grew andmoved and by the time Tommy had a clear line to get actual informationabout it, a tabloid had christened it the "Death Mist" and there werethree chartered planes circling about it for the benefit of theirnewspapers. State troopers were being reinforced. At ten o'clock itwas necessary to post extra traffic police to take care of the carsheaded upstate to look at the mystery. At eleven it began to move!Sluggishly, to be sure, and rather raggedly, but it undoubtedly moved, and as undoubtedly it moved independently of the wind. 

It was at twelve-thirty that the first casualty occurred. Before thattime, the police had frantically demanded that the flood of sightseersbe stopped. The Death Mist covered a square mile or more. It clung tothe ground, nowhere more than fifty or sixty feet high, and glitteredwith all the colors of the rainbow. It moved with a velocity ofanywhere from ten to twenty miles an hour. In its path were a myriadsmall tragedies--nesting birds stiff and still, and rabbits and othersmall furry bodies contorted in queer agonized postures. But untiltwelve-thirty no human beings were known to be its victims. 

Then, though, it was moving blindly across the wind with a thintrailing edge behind it and a rolling billow of descending mist as itsforefront. It rolled up to and across a concrete highway, watched byperspiring motor cops who had performed miracles in clearing a pathfor it among the horde of sightseeing cars. It swept on into aspindling pine wood. Behind it lay a thinning sheet of vapor--thickwhite mist which seemed to rise and move more swiftly to overtake themain body. It lay across the highway in a sheet which was ten feetdeep, then thinned to six, to three. .. . 

 * * * * *

The mist was no more than a foot thick, when a party of motoristsessayed to drive through it as through a sheet of water. They dodged aswearing motorcycle cop and, yelling hilariously, plunged forward. Ithappened that they had not more than a hundred yards to go, so thewhole thing was plainly seen. 

The car was ten yards across the sheet of mist before the effect ofits motion was apparent. Then the mist, torn by the car-eddy, swirledmadly in their wake. The motorists yelled delightedly. There is apicture extant, taken at just this moment. It shows the driver with afoolish grin on his face, clutching the wheel and very obviouslystepping on the accelerator. A pandemonium of triumphant, hilariousshouting--and then a very sudden silence. 

The car roared on. The road curved slightly. The car did not. It wentoff the road, turned over, and its engine shrieked itself intosilence. The Death Mist went on, draining from the roadway to followthe tall, prismatically-colored cloud. It moved swiftly and blindly. To the circling planes above it, it seemed like a blind thingimagining itself confined, and searching for the edges of its prison. It gave an uncanny impression of being directed by intelligence. Butthe Death Mist, itself, was not alive. 

Neither were the occupants of the motor car. 

When Tommy got back to the laboratory after his last call for news, hefound Evelyn in the act of starting to fetch him. 

"Smithers called, " she said uneasily. "He says something's movingabout--" The buzzer of the telephone was humming stridently. Tommyanswered quickly. 

"Just want you handy, " said Smithers' calm voice. "I might have toduck. Some Ragged Men are chasin' something. Get set, will ya?"

"Ready for anything, " Tommy assured him. 

Then he made it true: rifles handy, a sub-machine gun, grenades, gasmasks. He handed one to Evelyn. Smithers had one already. Then Tommywaited, grimly ready by the Tube-mouth. 

 * * * * *

The warm, scent-laden breeze blew upon him. Straining his ears, hecould hear the sound of tree-fern fronds clashing in the wind. Heheard the louder sounds made by Smithers, stirring ever so slightly inthe Tube. And then he caught a vague, distant uproar. It would havebeen faint and confused at best but the Tube was partly blocked bySmithers' body, and there were the multiple bends further tocomplicate the echoes. It was no more than a formless tumult throughwhich faint yells came occasionally. It drew nearer and nearer. Tommyheard Smithers stir suddenly, almost as if he had jumped. Then therewere scrapings which could only mean one thing: Smithers was climbingout of the Tube into the jungle of the Fifth-Dimension world. 

The noise rose abruptly to a roar as the muffling effect of Smithers'body was removed. The yells were sharp and savage and half mad. Therewas a sudden crackling sound and a voice screamed:

"_Gott!_"

The hair rose at the back of Tommy's neck. Then there came thedeafening report of an automatic pistol roaring itself empty above theend of the Tube. Smithers' voice, vastly calm:

"It's a'right, Mr. Reames. Don't worry. "

A second pistol took up the fusillade. Yells and howls and screamsarose. Men fled. Something came crashing to the mouth of the Tube. Smithers' voice again, with purring note in it: "Get down there. I'llhold 'em off. " Then single deliberately spaced shots, while somethingcame stumbling, fumbling, squirming down through the Tube, so fillingit that Smithers' shooting was muted. 

 * * * * *

Then came the subtly different explosions of the Very pistols, discharging gas bombs. And Tommy drew back, his jaw set, and he stoodwith his weapons very ready indeed, and a scratched, bleeding, exhausted, panting, terror-stricken human being in the tatteredcostume of Earth crawled from the Tube and groveled on the floorbefore him. 

Evelyn gave a little exclamation, partly of disgust and partly ofhorror. Because this man, who had had come from the world of the FifthDimension, was wholly familiar. He was tall, and he was lean, emaciated now; he wept sobbingly behind thick-lensed spectacles, andhis lips were far too full and red. His name was Von Holtz; he hadonce been laboratory assistant to Professor Denham, and he hadbetrayed Evelyn and her father to the most ghastly of possible fatesfor a bribe offered him by Jacaro. Now he groveled. He was horrible tolook at. Where he was not scratched and torn his flesh was reddened asif by fire. He was exhausted, and trembling with an awful terror, andhe gasped out abject, placatory ejaculations and suddenly collapsedinto a sobbing mass on the floor. 

Smithers emerged from the Tube with a look of unpleasant satisfactionon his face. 

"I chased off the Ragged Men with sneeze gas, " he observed with a vastcalmness. "They ain't comin' back for a while. An' I always wanted tobreak this guy's neck. I think I'll do it now. "

"Not till I've questioned him, " said Tommy savagely. "He and Jacarohave started hell to popping, with that Tube design they stole fromme. He's got to stay alive and tell us how to stop it. Von Holtz, talk! And talk quick, or back you go through the Tube for the RaggedMen to work on!"

CHAPTER III

_The Tree-Fern Jungle_

Tommy watched Smithers drive away. The sun was sinking low toward thewest, and the car stirred up a cloud of light-encarmined dust as itsped down the long, narrow lane to the main road. The laboratory hadintentionally been built in an isolated spot, but at the moment Tommywould have given a good deal for a few men nearby. Smithers was takingVon Holtz to Albany to add his information to Denham's pleas. Denhamhad ordered it, when they reached him by phone after hours of effort. Smithers had to go, to guard against Von Holtz's escape, even sick andill as he was. And Evelyn had refused to go with him. 

"If I stay in the laboratory, " she insisted fiercely, "you can slipdown and I can blow up the Tube after you, if the Ragged Men don'tstay away. But by yourself. .. . "

Tommy did not consent, but he was helpless. There was danger from theTube. Not only from ghastly animals which might come through, but frommen. Smithers had fought the Ragged Men above it. He had chased themoff, but they would come back. Perhaps they would come very soon, perhaps not until Denham and Smithers had returned. If they could beheld off, the as yet unknown dangers from the other Tube--of whichonly the lizards and the Death Mist were certainties--might becounteracted. In any case, the Tube must not be destroyed until itsdefense was hopeless. 

Tommy made up a grim bundle to go through the Tube with him: thesub-machine gun, extra drums of shells, more gas bombs and half adozen grenades. He hung the various objects about himself. Evelynwatched him miserably. 

"You--you'll be careful, Tommy?"

"Nothing else but, " said Tommy. He grinned reassuringly. "There'snothing to it, really. Just sitting still, listening. If I pop offsome fireworks I'll just have to sit down and watch them run. "

 * * * * *

He settled his gas mask about his neck and started to enter the Tube. Evelyn touched his arm. 

"I'm--frightened, Tommy. "

"Shucks!" said Tommy. "Also a couple of tut-tuts. " He stood up, puthis arms about her, and kissed her until she smiled. "Feel betternow?" he asked interestedly. 

"Y-yes. .. . "

"Fine!" said Tommy, and grinned again. "When you feel scared again, ring me on the phone and I'll give you another treatment. "

But her smile faded as, beaming at her, he crawled into the firstsection of the Tube. And his own expression grew serious enough whenshe could see him no longer. The situation was not comfortable. Evelynintended to marry him and he had to keep her cheerful, but he wishedshe were well away from here. 

He tried to move cautiously through the Tube, but his bundles bumpedand rattled. It seemed hours before he was climbing up the lastsection into the tree-fern jungle. He was caution itself as he peeredover the edge. It was already night upon Earth, but here themonstrous, dull-red sun was barely sinking. It moved slowly along thehorizon as it dipped, but presently a gray cast come over thecolorings in the forest. Flying things came clattering homewardthrough the masses of fern-fronds overhead. He saw a projectile-likething with a lizard's head and jaws go darting through an incrediblysmall opening. It seemed to have no wings at all. But then, in oneinstant, a vast wing-surface flashed out, made a single giganticflap--and the thing was a projectile again, darting through a_cheraux-de-frise_ of interlaced fronds without a sign of wings tosupport it. 

 * * * * *

Tommy inspected his surroundings with an infinite care. As thedarkness deepened he meditatively taped a flashlight below the barrelof the sub-machine gun. Turned on, it would cast a pitiless light uponhis target, and the sights would be silhouetted against the thing tobe killed. He hung his grenades in a handy row just inside the mouthof the Tube and set his gas bombs conveniently in place, then settleddown to watch. 

It was assuredly necessary. Von Holtz's story confirmed his own andDenham's guesses and made their worst fears seem optimistic. Von Holtzhad made a Tube for Jacaro, working from the model of Tommy's ownconstruction. It had been completed nearly a month before. But nojungle odors had seeped through that other Tube on its completion. Itopened in a sub-cellar of a structure in the Golden City itself, thecity of towers and soaring spires Denham had glimpsed long monthsbefore. By sheer fortune it opened upon a rarely used storeroom whereimprobable small animals--the equivalent of rats--played obscenely inthe light of ever-glowing panels in the wall. 

For two days of the Fifth-Dimension world Jacaro and his gunmen layquiet. During two nights they made infinitely cautious reconnaissance. The second night it was necessary to kill two men who sighted the tinyexploring party. But the killing was done with silenced automatics, and there was no alarm. The third night they lay still, fearing anambush. The fourth night Jacaro struck. 

 * * * * *

He and his men fled back to their Tube with plunder and precious gems. Their loot was vast even beyond their hopes, though they had killedother men in gathering it. The Golden City was rich beyond belief. Thevery crust of the Fifth-Dimension world seemed to be composed of othersubstances than those of Earth. The common metals of Earth were rareor even unknown. The rarer metals of Earth were the commonplace onesin the Golden City. Even the roofs seemed plated with gold, butJacaro's gunmen saw not one particle of iron save in a ring they tookfrom a dead man's finger. There, an acid-etched plate of steel was setas if to be used for a signet. 

Von Holtz had accompanied the raiders perforce on every journey. Jeweled bearings for motors; objects of commonest use, made of goldbeat thin for lightness; huge ingots of silver for industry; once aqueer-shaped spool of platinum wire that it took two men tocarry--these things made up the loot they scurried back to theirrathole with. Five raids they made, and twenty men they shot downbefore they came upon disaster. On the sixth raid an outcry rose andan ambush fell upon them. 

Flashes of incredibly vivid actinic flame leaped from queer enginesthat opened upon them. Curious small truncheonlike weapons spatparalyzing electric shocks upon them. The twelve gangsters fought withthe desperation of cornered rats, with notched and explosive bulletsand with streams of lead from tommy-guns. 

 * * * * *

A chance bullet blew something up. One of the flame weapons flew tobits, spouting what seemed to be liquid thermit upon friend and foealike. The way of the gangsters back to their Tube was barred. Theroute they knew was a chaos of scorched bodies and melting metal. Thethermit flowed in all directions, seeming to grow in volume as itflamed. Jacaro and his gangsters fled. They broke through the shakenremnants of the ambush. The six of them who survived the fightingfound a man somnolently driving a ground vehicle with two wheels. Theyburst upon him and, with their scared faces constituting threats inthemselves, forced him to drive them out of the Golden City. They fledalong aluminum roads into the tree-fern forests, while the sky behindthem seemed to flame as the city woke to the tumult in its ways. 

They killed the driver of their vehicle when he refused to take themfarther, and it was that murder which saved their lives. It was seenby Ragged Men, the outlaws of the jungle, and it proved their enmityto the Golden City. The Ragged Men greeted them joyously and fed them, and enlisted their aid in a savage attack on a land-convoy on the wayto the city. Their weapons carried the convoy, and they watchedwounded prisoners killed with excruciating tortures. .. . 

They were with the Ragged Men now, Von Holtz believed. He had fled aweek or more before, when Jacaro--already learning the language of hishalf-mad allies--began to plan a grandiose attack upon the GoldenCity. Von Holtz was born a coward, and he knew where Tommy Reames andDenham would shortly thrust a Tube through. It would come out justwhere the catapult had flung Evelyn and Denham, months before, thesame spot where he had marooned them. He searched desperately for thatTube, and failed to find it. He was chased by carnivores, scratched bythorns, and at last pursued by a yelling horde of human devils whowere fired into by Smithers from the mouth of the just-finished Tube. 

 * * * * *

Tommy debated the story grimly as he stood guard in the Tube in thehumid jungle night. Many-colored stars winked fitfully through thethatch of giant ferns overhead. The wind soughed unsteadily above thejungle. There were queer creakings, and once or twice there weredistant cries, and when the wind died down there was a deep-tonedcroaking audible somewhere which sounded rather like the croaking ofunthinkably, monstrous frogs. But it could not be that, of course. Andonce there was the sound of dainty movement and something passednearby. Tommy Reames saw the shadowy outline of a bulk so vast that itturned him cold to think about it, and it did not seem fair for anycreature as huge as that to move so quietly. 

Then there was a little scuffling noise beneath him. A hand touchedhis foot. 

"It's--it's me, Tommy. " Evelyn crowded up beside him and whisperedshakenly: "It--it was so lonesome down there, so quiet. "

Tommy frowned unhappily in the darkness. If he sent her back, shewould know it was because he knew danger lurked here. Then she wouldworry. If he did not send her back. .. . 

"I'll go back the minute you tell me, " she insisted forlornly. "Honestly. But--I was lonesome. "

Tommy slipped his arm about her. 

"Woman, " he said sternly. "I'm going to let you stay ten minutes, soyou can brag to our grandchildren that you were the first Earth-girlever to be kissed in the Fifth Dimension. But I want you down in thelaboratory so you won't be in my way if I start running!"

His tone was the right one. She even laughed a little, softly, as hepressed her to him. Then she clung to his hand and tried eagerly topierce the darkness all about them. 

"You'll be able to see something presently, " he assured her in a lowtone. "Just keep quiet, now. "

 * * * * *

She gazed up at the stars, then around in the so-nearly completeobscurity. Tommy answered her comments abstractedly, after a little. He was not quite sure that certain irregular sounds, yet far distant, were not actually quite regular ones. The Ragged Men Smithers had shotinto had run away. But they would come back and they might come withJacaro and his gunmen as allies. If those distant sounds were men. .. . 

She withdrew her hand from his. Her back was toward him then, as shetried to pierce the darkness with her eyes. Tommy listened uneasily tothe distant sound. Suddenly he felt Evelyn bump against his shoulder. He turned sharply--and she was out of the Tube! She was walkingsteadily off into the darkness!

"Evelyn! Evelyn!"

She did not falter or turn. He switched on the flashlight beneath hisgun barrel and leaped out of the Tube himself. The light swept about. Evelyn's lithe figure kept moving away from him. Then his heart stoodstill. There were eyes beyond her in the darkness, huge, monstrous, steady eyes, half a yard apart in a head like something out of hell. And he could not fire because Evelyn was between the Thing andhimself. Its eyes glowed unholily--fascinating, hypnotic, insane. .. . 

 * * * * *

Evelyn swayed . .. And the Thing moved! Tommy leaped like a madmanshouting. As his feet struck the ground a mass of sold-seeming fungusgave way beneath him. He fell sprawling, but clutching the gun fast. The spreading beam of the flashlight showed him Evelyn turning, herface filled with a wakening horror--the horror of one released fromthe fascination of a snake. She screamed his name. 

Then a huge lizard paw swept forward and seized her body. A secondgripped her as she screamed again. And Tommy Reames was deathly, terribly cool. The whole thing had happened in seconds only. He wassubmerged in slimy, sticky ooze which was the crushed fungus that hadtripped him. But he cleared the gun. The flashlight limned a ghastly, obscenely fat body and a long tapering tail. Tommy aimed at the baseof that tail and pulled the trigger, praying frenziedly. 

A stream of flame leaped from the gun-muzzle. Explosive bulletsuttered their queer cracking noise. The thing screamed horribly. Itscry was hoarsely shrill. The flashlight showed it swinging ponderouslyabout, with Evelyn held fast against its body in a fashion horriblyreminiscent of a child holding a doll. 

Tommy was scrambling upright. Jaws clamped, cold horror filling him, he aimed again, at the sharp-toothed head above Evelyn's body. Hecould not try a heart shot with her in the way. Again the gun spat outa burst of explosive lead. And Tommy should have been sickened by theeffect of detonating missiles. The thing's lower jaw was shattered, half severed, made useless. It should have been killed a dozen timesover. 

But it screamed again until the jungle rang with the uproar, and thenit fled, still screaming and still holding Evelyn clutched fastagainst its scaly breast. 

CHAPTER IV

_The Fifth-Dimension World_

Tommy flung himself in pursuit, despairing. Evelyn cried out once moreas the lumbering thing fled with her, giving utterance to shriekingoutcries at which the tree-fern jungle shook. It leaped once, uponmonstrous hind legs, but came crashing heavily to the ground. Tommy'sexplosive bullets had shattered the bones which supported thebalancing tail. Now that huge fleshy member dragged uselessly. Thething could not progress in its normal fashion of leaps covering manyyards. It began to waddle clumsily, shrieking, with Evelyn claspedclose. Its jaw was a shattered horror. It went marching insanelythrough the blackness of the jungle, and with it went the unholy dinof its anguish, and behind it Tommy Reames came flinging himselffrenziedly in pursuit. 

Normally, the thing should have distanced him in seconds. Evencrippled as it was, it moved swiftly. The scaly, duck-shaped headreared a good twenty feet above the fallen tree-fern fronds whichcarpeted the jungle. The monstrous splayed feet stretched a good yardand a half from front to rear upon the ground. Even its waddlingfootprints were yards apart, and it moved in terror. 

Tommy tripped, fell, and got to his feet again, and the shriekingtumult was farther away. He raced madly toward the sound, theflashlight beam cutting swordlike through the blackness. He caughtsight of the warty, scaly bulk of the monster at the extreme limit ofthe rays. It was moving faster than he could travel. He sobbedhelpless curses at the thing and put forth superhuman exertions. Heleaped fallen tree-fern trunks, he splashed through shallowponds--later, when he knew something of the inhabitants of such pools, Tommy would turn cold at that memory--and raced on, gasping for breathwhile the shrieking of the thing that bore Evelyn grew more and moredistant. 

 * * * * *

In five minutes he was almost strangling and the thing was half a mileahead of him. In ten, he was exhausted, and the shrieking noise itmade as it waddled away was distinctly fainter. In fifteen minutes heonly heard its hooting scream between the harsh laboring rasps of hisown breath as he drew it into tortured lungs. But he ran on. He leapedand climbed and ran in a terrible obliviousness to all dangers thejungle might hold. 

He leaped down from one toppled tree-trunk upon what seemed beanother. But the thing he landed upon gave beneath his boots in theunmistakable fashion of yielding flesh. Something vast and angrystirred and hissed furiously. Something--a head, perhaps--whippedtoward him among the fallen fern-fronds. But he was racing on, sobbing, cursing, praying all at once. 

Then suddenly he broke out into a profuse sweat. His breathing becameeasier, and then he was running lightly. His second wind had come tohim. He was no longer exhausted. He felt as if he could run forever, and ran on more swiftly still. Suddenly the flashlight beam showed hima deep furrow in the rotting vegetation underfoot, and somethingglistened. A musky reek filled his nostrils. The thing's trail--thefurrow left by its dragging tail! That musky reek was the thing'sblood. It was bleeding from the wounds the explosive bullets had made. It was spouting whatever filthy fluid ran in its veins even as itwaddled onward, screaming. 

Five minutes more, and he felt that he was gaining on it. Then, and hewas sure of it. But it was half an hour before he actually overtookthe injured monster marching like a mad machine. Its mutilatedducklike head held high, its colossal feet lifting one after the otherin a heavy, slowing waddle, and its hoarse screams re-echoing in asenseless uproar of agony. 

 * * * * *

Tommy's hands were shaking, but his brain was cool with a vastcoolness. He raced past the shrieking monster, and halted in its path. He saw Evelyn, a huddled bundle, clasped still to the creature's scalybreast. And Tommy sent a burst of explosive bullets into a gigantic, foot thick ankle-joint. 

The monster toppled, and flung out its prehensile lizard claws in aninstinctive effort to catch itself. Evelyn was thrown clear. AndTommy, standing alone in the blackness of a carboniferous jungle uponan alien planet, sent bullet after bullet into the shaking, obscenelyflabby body of the thing. The bullets penetrated, and exploded. Greatmasses of flesh upheaved and fell away. Great gouts of awful smellingfluid were flung out and blown to mist by the explosions. The thingdid not so much die as disintegrate under the storm of detonatingmissiles. 

Then Tommy went to Evelyn. He was wild with grief. He had no faintesthope that she could still be living. But as he picked her up shemoaned softly, and when he cried her name she clung to him, pressingclose in an agony of thankfulness almost as devastating as her fearhad been. 

It was minutes before either of them could think of anything otherthan her safety and the fact that they were together again. But thenTommy said, in a shaken effort to be himself again:

"I--I'd have done better if--if I'd had roller skates, maybe. " Hisgrin was wholly unconvincing. "Why'd you get out of the Tube?"

"Its eyes!" Evelyn shuddered, her own eyes hidden against Tommy'sshoulder. "I saw them suddenly, looking at me. And I--hadn't any will. I felt myself getting out of the Tube and walking toward it. It waslike the way a snake fascinates--hypnotizes--a bird. .. . "

A vagrant wind-eddy submerged them in the foul reek of the deadthing's flesh. Tommy stirred. 

"Ugh! Let's get out of this. There'll be things coming to feed on thatcarcass. They'll smell it. "

Evelyn tried to stand, and succeeded. She clung to his hand. 

"Do you think you can find the Tube again?"

Tommy was already thinking of that. He grimaced. 

"Probably. Back-trail the damned thing. If the flashlight batteryholds out. Its tail left plenty of sign for us to follow. "

 * * * * *

They started. And Evelyn had literally been forgotten in its agony bythe monster which had carried her. Its body, though scaled and warty, was flabby and soft. Pressed against its breast she had been halfstrangled, but had no injuries beyond huge, purple bruises which hadnot yet reached the point of stiffness. She followed Tommy gamely, andthe need for action kept her from yielding to the reaction from herterror. 

For a long, long time they back-trailed. Less than fifteen minutesafter leaving the carcass of the thing Tommy had killed, they heardbeast-roarings and the sound of fighting. But that noise died away asthey traveled. Presently they reached the spot where Tommy had leapedupon a huge living thing. It was gone now, but the impress of a bodythe thickness of a barrel remained upon the rotted vegetation of thejungle floor. Evelyn shivered when Tommy pointed it out. 

"It was large, " said Tommy ruefully. "I didn't even get a good look it thething. Probably just as well, though. I might have been--er--delayed. Good Lord! What's that?"

A light had sprung into being somewhere. It was bright. It wasblinding in its brilliance. Coming through the tangled jungle growth, it seemed as if spears of flame shot through the air, irradiatingstray patches of scabrous tree-trunk with unbearable light. For aninstant the illumination held. Then there was a distant, crackingdetonation. The unmistakable explosion of gun-cotton split the air, and its echoes rolled and reverberated through the jungle. The lightwent out. Then came a thin, high yelling sound which, faint as it was, had something of the quality of hysterical glee. That crazy ululationkept up for several minutes. Evelyn shivered. 

"The Ragged Men, " said Tommy very quietly. "They sneaked up on theTube. They flung blazing thermit, or something like it, with a weaponcaptured from the Golden City. That explosion was the grenades goingoff. I'm afraid the Tube's blown up, Evelyn. "

She caught her breath, looking mutely up at him. 

"Here's a pistol, " he said briefly, "and shells. There's no use ourgoing to the Tube to-night. It would be dangerous. We'll do ourinvestigating at dawn. "

 * * * * *

He found a crevice where tree-fern trunks grew close together andclosed in three sides of a sort of roofless cave. He seated himselfgrimly at the opening to wait for daybreak. He was not easy in hismind. There had been two Tubes to the Fifth-Dimension world. One hadbeen made by Jacaro for his gunmen. That was now held by the men ofthe Golden City, as was proved by carnivorous lizards and the DeathMist that had come down it. The other was now blown up or, worse, inthe hands of the Ragged Men. In any case Tommy and Evelyn wereisolated upon a strange planet in a strange universe. To fall into thehands of the Ragged Men was to die horribly, and the Golden City wouldnot now welcome inhabitants of the world Jacaro and his men had comefrom. To the civilized men of this world, Jacaro's raids would seeminvasion. They would seem acts of war on the part of the people ofEarth. And the people of Earth, all of them, would seem enemies. Jacaro would never be identified as an unauthorized invader. He wouldseem to be a scout, an advance guard, a spy, for hordes of otherinvaders yet to come. 

As the long night wore away, Tommy's grim hopelessness intensified. The Ragged Men would hunt them for sport and out of hatred for allsane human beings. The men of the Golden City would be merciless tocompatriots of Jacaro's gunmen. And Tommy had Evelyn to look out for. 

 * * * * *

When dawn came, his face was drawn and lined. Evelyn woke with alittle gasp, staring affrightedly about her. Then she tried gamely tosmile. 

"Morning, Tommy, " she said shakily. She added in a brave attempt atlevity: "Where do we go from here?"

"We look at the Tube, " said Tommy heavily. "There's a bare chance. .. . "

He led the way as on the night before, with his gun held ready. Theytraveled for half an hour through the awakening jungle. Then for long, long minutes Tommy searched for a sign of living men before heventured forth to look at the wreckage of the Tube. He found no livemen, and only two dead ones. But a glimpse of their bestial, vice-ridden faces was enough to remove any regret for their deaths. 

The Tube was shattered. Its mouth was belled out and broken by theexplosion of the grenades hung within it. A part of the metal wasmolten--from the thermit, past question. There was a veritable craterfifteen feet across where the Tube had come through, and there were onlyshattered shreds of metal where the first bend had been. Tommy regardedthe wreckage grimly. A pair of oxidized copper wires, their insulationburnt off, stung his eyes as he traced them to where they vanished intorn-up earth. He took them in his bare hands. The tingling sting of alow-voltage current made his heart leap. Then he smiled grimly. Hetouched them to each other. Dot-dot-dot--dash-dash-dash--dot-dot-dot. S O S! If there was anybody in the laboratory, that would tell them. 

His hands stung sharply. Someone was there, ringing the phone! Evelyncame toward him, her face resolutely cheerful. 

"No hope, Tommy?" she asked. "I just saw the telephone, all batteredup. I guess we're pretty badly off. "

"Get it!" said Tommy feverishly. "For Heaven's sake, get it! The phonewires weren't broken. If we can make it work. .. . "

 * * * * *

The instrument was a wreck. It was crumpled and torn and apparentlyuseless. The diaphragm of the receiver was punctured. The transmitterseemed to have been crushed. But Tommy worked desperately over them, and twisted the earth-wires into place. 

"Hello, hello, hello!"

The voice that answered was Smithers', strained and fearful:

"Mr. Reames! Thank Gawd! What's happened? Is Miss Evelyn all right?"

"So far, " said Tommy. "Listen!" He told curtly just what had happened. "Now, what's happened on Earth?"

"Hell!" panted Smithers bitterly. "Hell's been poppin'! The DeathMist's two miles across an' still growin an' movin'. Four townshipsunder martial law an' movin' out the people. It got thirty of 'em thismorning. An' they think the professor's crazy an' nobody'll listen tohim!"

"Damn!" said Tommy. He considered, grimly. "Look here, Von Holtz oughtto convince them. "

"He caved in, outa his head, before I got to Albany. He's in hospitalnow, ravin'. He's got some kinda fever the doctors don't know nothin'about. Sick as hell!"

Tommy compressed his lips. Matters were more desperate even than hehad believed. He informed his helper measuredly:

"Evelyn and I can't stay around here, Smithers. The Ragged Men maycome back, and it'll be weeks before you and the professor can getanother Tube through. I'm going to make for the Golden City and workon them there to cut off the Death Mist. "

There was an inarticulate sound from Smithers. 

"Tell the professor. If he can find Jacaro's Tube, he'll work out someway to communicate through it. We've got to stop that Death Mistsomehow. And we don't know what else they may try. "

Smithers tried to speak, and could not. He merely made grief-strickennoises. He worshiped Evelyn and she was isolated in a hostile worldwhich was vastly more unreachable than could be measured by millionsor trillions of miles. But at last he said unsteadily:

"We'll be comin', Mr. Reames. We'll come, if we have t' blow half theworld apart!"

Tommy said grimly: "Then hunt up the Golden City and bring extraammunition. Mostly explosive bullets. Good-by. "

 * * * * *

He untwisted the wires from the shattered phone units and thrust themin his pocket. Evelyn was picking up stray small objects from theground. 

"I've found some cartridges, Tommy, " she said constrainedly, "and apistol I think will work. "

"Then listen for visitors, " commanded Tommy, "while I look for more. "

For half in hour he scoured the area around the shattered Tube. Hefound where some clumsy-wheeled thing had been pushed to a spot nearthe Tube--undoubtedly the machine which had sprayed the flaming stuffupon it. He found two pockets full of shells. He found an extramagazine, for the sub-machine gun. It was nearly full and only alittle bent. That was all. 

"Now, " he said briskly, "we'll start. I've got a hunch the junglethins out over that way. We'll find a clearing, try to locate theGolden City either by seeing it or by watching for aircraft flying toit, and then make for it. They're making war on Earth there. Theydon't understand. We've got to make them understand. O. K. ?"

Evelyn nodded. She put out her hand suddenly, a brave slender figureamid the incredible growths about her. 

"I'm glad, Tommy, " she said slowly, "that if--if anything happens, itwill be the--the two of us. Funny, isn't it?"

Tommy kissed the twisted little smile from her face. 

"And now that that's over, " he observed, ashamed of his own emotion, "let's go!"

 * * * * *

They went. Tommy watched the sun and kept approximately a straightline. They traveled three miles, and the jungle broke abruptly. Beforethem was a spongy surface neither solid earth or marsh. It shelvedgently down to a vast and steaming morass upon which the dull-red sunshone hotly. It was vast, that marsh, and a steaming haze hung overit, and it seemed to reach to the world's end. But vaguely, throughthe attenuating upper layers of the steamy haze, they saw the outlinesof a city beyond: tall towers and soaring spires, buildings of a graceand perfection of outline unknown upon the Earth. And faint goldenflashes came from the walls and pinnacles of that city. They werereflections of this planet's monster sun, upon walls and roofs ofplated gold. 

"The Golden City, " said Tommy heavily. He looked at the horrible marshbetween. His heart sank. 

And then there was a sudden screaming ululation nearby. A half-nakedman was running out of sight. Two others danced and capered and yelledin insane glee, pointing at Tommy and at Evelyn. The running man'soutcry was echoed from far away. Then it was taken up and repeatedhere and there in the jungle. 

"They saw our tracks near the Tube, " snapped Tommy bitterly. "Oh, whata fool I am! Now they'll ring us in. "

He seized Evelyn's hand and began to run. There was a little rise inthe ground a hundred yards away, with a clump of leafy ferns to shadeit. They reached it as other half-naked, wholly mad human forms burstout of the jungle to yell and caper and make derisive and horriblegestures at the fugitives. 

"Here we fight, " said Tommy grimly. "The ground's open, anyhow. Wefight here, and very probably we die here. But first. .. . "

He knelt down and drew the finest of fine beads upon a bearded man whocarried a glittering truncheonlike club which, by the way it wascarried, was more than merely a bludgeon. He pulled the trigger for asingle shot. 

The bullet struck the capering Ragged Man fairly in the chest. And itexploded. 

CHAPTER V

_The Fight in the Marsh_

Twice, within the next two hours, the Ragged Men mustered the courageto charge. They came racing across the semi-solid ooze like the madmenthey were. Their yells and shouts were maniacal howls of blood-lust orworse. And twice Tommy broke their rush with a savage ruthlessness. The sub-machine-gun's first magazine was nearly empty. It was anunhandy weapon for single-shot work but it was loaded with explosiveshells. The second rush he stopped with an automatic pistol. Therewere half-naked bodies partly buried in the ooze all the way from thejungle's edge to within ten yards of the hillock on which he andEvelyn had taken refuge. 

It was hot there, terribly hot. The air was stifling. It fairly reekedof moisture and the smells from the swamp behind them were sickening. Tommy began to transfer the shells from the spare bent magazine to theone he had carried with the gun. 

"We've a couple of reasons to be thankful, " he observed. "One is thatthere's a bit of shade overhead. The other is that we had the bigmagazines for this gun. We still have nearly ninety shells, besidesthe ones for the pistols. "

Evelyn said soberly:

"We're going to be killed, don't you think, Tommy?"

Tommy frowned. 

"I'm rather afraid we are, " he said irritably. "Confound it, and I'dthought of such excellent arguments to use in the City back yonder!Smithers said the Death Mist was two miles across, to-day, and stillgrowing. The people in the city are still pouring the stuff downthrough Jacaro's Tube. "

Evelyn smiled faintly. She touched his hand. 

"Trying to keep me from worrying? Tommy. .. . " She hesitated until hegrowled a question. "Please--remember that when Daddy and I were inthe jungle before, we saw what these Ragged Men do to prisoners theytake. I just want you to promise that--well, you won't wait too long, in hopes of somehow saving me. "

Tommy stared at her. Then he decisively reached forward and put hishand over her mouth. 

"Keep quiet, " he said gently. "They shan't capture you. I promisethat. Now keep quiet. "

 * * * * *

There was only silence for a long time. Now and again a hidden figurescreamed in rage at them. Now and again some flapping thing spedtoward the jungle's edge. Once a naked arm thrust one of the goldentruncheons from behind its cover, pointing at a flying thing a fewyards overhead. The flying thing suddenly toppled, turning over andover before it crashed to the ground. There were howls of glee. 

"They seem mad, " said Tommy meditatively, "and they act like lunatics, but I've got a hunch of some sort about them. But what?"

Sunlight gleamed on something golden beyond the jungle's edge. Nakedfigures went running to the spot. An exultant tumult arose. 

"Now they try another trick, " Tommy observed dispassionately. "Iremember that at the Tube they had pushed something on wheels. .. . "

The sub-machine gun was unhandy for accurate single shots, and nopistol can be used to effect at long ranges. To conserve ammunition, Tommy had been shooting only at relatively close targets, allowing theRagged Men immunity at over two hundred yards. But now he flung overthe continuous-fire stud. He watched grimly. 

The foliage at the edge of the jungle parted. A crude wagon appeared. Its axles were lesser tree-trunks. Its wheels were clumsy and crudebeyond belief. But mounted upon it there was a queer mass of goldenmetal which looked strangely beautiful and strangely deadly. 

"That's the thing, " said Tommy dispassionately, "which made the flareof light last night. It blew up the Tube. And Von Holtz toldme--hm--his friends, in the City. .. . "

He sighted carefully. The wagon and its contents were surrounded by aleaping, capering mob. They shook their fists in an insane hatred. 

A storm of bullets burst upon them. Tommy was traversing the littlegun with the trigger pressed down. His lips were set tightly. Andsuddenly it seemed as if the solid earth burst asunder! There had beenan instant in which the bullet-bursts were visible. They tore andshattered the howling mob of Ragged Men. But then they struck thegolden weapon. A sheet of blue-white flame leaped skyward and roundabout. A blast of blistering, horrible heat smote upon the beleagueredpair. The moisture of the ooze between them and the jungle flashedinto steam. A section of the jungle itself, a hundred yards across, shriveled and died. 

 * * * * *

Steam shot upward in a monstrous cloud--miles high, it seemed. Then, almost instantly, there was nothing left of the Ragged Men about thegolden weapon, or of the weapon itself, but an unbearable blue-whitelight which poured away and trickled here and there and seemed to growin volume as it flamed. 

From the rest of the jungle a howl arose. It was a howl of such loss, and of such unspeakable rage, that the hair at the back of Tommy'sneck lifted, as a dog's hackles lift at sight of an enemy. 

"Keep your head down, Evelyn, " said Tommy composedly. "I have an ideathat the burning stuff gives off a lot of ultra-violet. Von Holtz wasbadly burned, you remember. "

Naked figures flashed forward from the jungle beyond the burned area. Tommy shot them down grimly. He discarded the sub-machine gun with itsexplosive shells for the automatics. Some of his targets were onlywounded. Those wounded men dragged themselves forward, screaming theirrage. Tommy felt sickened, as if he were shooting down madmen. A voiceroared a rage-thickened order from the jungle. The assault slackened. 

Five minutes later it began again, and this time the attackers wadedout into the softer ooze and flung themselves down, and then began ahalf-swimming, half-crawling progress behind bits of tree-fern stump, or merely pushing walls of the jellylike mud before them. The whitelight expanded and grew huge--but it dulled as it expanded, andpresently seemed no hotter than molten steel, and later still it wasno more than a dull-red heat, and later yet. .. . 

Tommy shot savagely. Some of the Ragged Men died. More did not. 

"I'm afraid, " he said coolly, "they're going to get us. It seemsrather purposeless, but I'm afraid they're going to win. "

Evelyn thrust a shaking hand skyward. "There, Tommy!"

 * * * * *

A strange, angular flying thing was moving steadily across the marsh, barely above the steamlike haze that hung in thinning layers about itsfoulness. The flying thing moved with a machinelike steadiness, andthe sun twinkled upon something bright and shining before it. 

"A flying machine, " said Tommy shortly. His mind leaped ahead and hislips parted in a mirthless smile. "Get your gas mask ready, Evelyn. The explosion of that thermit-thrower made them curious in the City. They sent a ship to see. "

The flying thing grew closer, grew distinct. A wail arose from theRagged Men. Some of them leaped to their feet and fled. A man came outinto the open and shook his fists at the angular thing in the air. Hescreamed at it, and such ghastly hatred was in the sound that Evelynshuddered. 

Tommy could see it plainly, now. Its single wing was thick and queerlyunlike the air-foils of Earth. A framework hung below it, but it hadno balancing tail. And there was a glittering something before it thatobviously was its propelling mechanism, but as obviously was not ascrew propeller. It swept overhead, with a man in it looking downward. Tommy watched coolly. It was past him, sweeping toward the jungle. Itswung sharply to the right, banking steeply. Smoking things droppedfrom it, which expanded into columns of swiftly-descending vapor. Theyreached the jungle and blotted it out. The flying machine swung againand swept back to the left. More smoking things dropped. Ragged Menerupted from the jungle's edge in screaming groups, only to writhe andfall and lie still. But a group of five of them sped toward Tommy, shrieking their rage upon him as the cause of disaster. Tommy held hisfire, looking upward. A hundred yards, fifty yards, twenty-five. .. . 

 * * * * *

The flying machine soared in easy, effortless circles. The man in itwas watching, making no effort to interfere. 

Tommy shot down the five men, one after the other, with a curiouslydetached feeling that their vice-brutalized faces would haunt himforever. Then he stood up. 

The flying machine banked, turned, and swept toward him, and a smokingthing dropped toward the earth. It was a gas bomb like those that hadwiped out the Ragged Men. It would strike not ten yards away. 

"Your mask!" snapped Tommy. 

He helped Evelyn adjust it. The billowing white cloud rolled aroundhim. He held his breath, clapped on his mask, exhaled until his lungsached, and was breathing comfortably. The mask was effectiveprotection. And then he held Evelyn comfortably close. 

For what seemed a long, long while they were surrounded by the whitemist. The cloud was so dense, indeed, that the light about them fadedto a gray twilight. But gradually, bit by bit, the mist grew thinner. Then it moved aside. It drifted before the wind toward the tree-fernforest and was lost to sight. 

The flying machine was circling and soaring silently overhead. As themist drew aside, the pilot dived down and down. And Tommy emptied hisautomatic at the glittering thing which drew it. There was a crashingbolt of blue light. The machine canted, spun about with one wingalmost vertical, that wing-tip struck the marsh, and it settled with amonstrous splashing of mud. All was still. 

Tommy reloaded, watching it keenly. 

"The framework isn't smashed up, anyhow, " he observed grimly. "Thepilot thinks we're some of Jacaro's gang. My guns were proof, to him. So, since the Ragged Men didn't get us, he gassed us. " He watchedagain, his eyes narrow. The pilot was utterly still. "He may beknocked out. I hope so! I'm going to see. "

 * * * * *

Automatic held ready, Tommy moved toward the crashed machine. It hadsplashed into the ooze less than a hundred yards away. Tommy movedcautiously. Twenty yards away, the pilot moved feebly. He had knockedhis head against some part of his machine. A moment later he openedhis eyes and stared about. The next instant he had seen Tommy andmoved convulsively. A glittering thing appeared in his hand--and Tommyfired. The glittering thing flew to one side and the pilot clapped hishand to a punctured forearm. He went white, but his jaw set. He staredat Tommy, waiting for death. 

"For the love of Pete, " said Tommy irritably, "I'm not going to killyou! You tried to kill me, and it was very annoying, but I have somethings I want to tell you. "

He stopped and felt foolish because his words were, of course, unintelligible. The pilot was staring amazedly at him. Tommy's tonehad been irritated, certainly, but there was neither hatred nortriumph in it. He waved his hand. 

"Come on and I'll bandage you up and see if we can make you understanda few things. "

Evelyn came running through the muck. 

"He didn't hurt you, Tommy?" she gasped. "I saw you shoot--"

The pilot fairly jumped. At first glance he had recognized her as awoman. Tommy growled that he'd had to "shoot the damn fool through thearm. " The pilot spoke, curiously. Evelyn looked at his arm andexclaimed. He was holding it above the wound to stop the bleeding. Evelyn looked about helplessly for something with which to bandage it. 

"Make pads with your handkerchief, " grunted Tommy. "Take my tie tohold them in place. "

The prisoner looked curiously from one to the other. His color wasreturning. As Evelyn worked on his arm he seemed to grow excited atsome inner thought. He spoke again, and looked at once puzzled andconfirmed in some conviction when they were unable to comprehend. WhenEvelyn finished her first-aid task he smiled suddenly, flashing whiteteeth at them. He even made a little speech which was humorouslyapologetic, to judge by its tone. When they turned to go back to theirfortress he went with them without a trace of hesitation. 

"Now what?" asked Evelyn. 

"They'll be looking for him in a little while, " said Tommy curtly. "Ifwe can convince him we're not enemies, he'll keep them from giving usmore gas. "

 * * * * *

The pilot was fumbling at a belt about the curious tunic he wore. Tommy watched him warily. But a pad of what seemed to be black metalcame out, with a silvery-white stylus attached to it. The pilot satdown the instant they stopped and began to draw in white lines on theblack surface. He drew a picture of a man and an angular flyingmachine, and then a sketchy, impressionistic outline of a city'stowers. He drew a circle to enclose all three drawings and indicatedhimself, the machine, and the distant city. Tommy nodded comprehensionas the pilot looked up. Then came a picture of a half-naked manshaking his fists at the three encircled sketches. The half-naked manstood beneath a roughly indicated tree-fern. 

"Clever, " said Tommy, as a larger circle enclosed that with the cityand the machine. "He's identifying himself, and saying the Ragged Menare enemies of himself and his Golden City, too. That much is not hardto get. "

He nodded vigorously as the pilot looked up again. And then he watchedas a lively, tiny sketch grew on the black slab, showing half a dozenmen, garbed almost as Tommy was, using weapons which could only besub-machine guns and automatic pistols. They were obviously Jacaro'sgangsters. The pilot handed over the plate and watched absorbedly asTommy fumbled with the stylus. He drew, not well but well enough, anoutline of the towers of New York. The difference in architecture wasstriking. There followed tiny figures of himself and Evelyn--with adrily murmured, "This isn't a flattering portrait of you, Evelyn!"--and a circle enclosing them with the towers of New York. 

The pilot nodded in his turn. And then Tommy encircled the previouslydrawn figures of the gangsters with New York, just as the Ragged Menhad been linked with the other city. And a second circle linkedgangsters and Ragged Men together. 

 * * * * *

"I'm saying, " observed Tommy, "that Jacaro and his mob are the RaggedMen of our world, which may not be wrong, at that. "

There was no question but that the pilot took his meaning. He grinnedin a friendly fashion, and winced as his wounded arm hurt him. Ruefully, he looked down at his bandage. Then he pressed a tiny studat the top of the black-metal pad and all the white lines vanishedinstantly. He drew a new circle, with tree-ferns scattered about itsupper third--a tiny sketch of a city's towers. He pointed to that andto the city visible through the mist--a second city, and a third, inother places. He waved his hand vaguely about, then impatientlyscribbled over the middle third of the circle and handed it back toTommy. 

Tommy grinned ruefully. 

"A map, " he said amusedly. "He's pointed out his own city and a coupleof others, and he wants us to tell him where we come from. Evelyn--er--how are we going to explain a trip through five dimensionsin a sketch?"

Evelyn shook her head. But a shadow passed over their heads. The pilotleaped to his feet and shouted. There were three planes soaring abovethem, and the pilot in the first was in the act of releasing a smokingobject over the side. At the grounded pilot's shout, he flung his shipinto a frantic dive, while behind him the smoking thing billowed out athicker and thicker cloud. His plane was nearly hidden by the vaporwhen he released it. It fell two hundred yards and more away, and thewhite mist spread and spread. But it fell short of the little hillock. 

 * * * * *

"Quick thinking, " said Tommy coolly. "He thought we had this man aprisoner, and he'd be better off dead. But--"

Their captive was shouting again. His head thrown back, he calledsentence after sentence aloft while the three ships soared back andforth above their heads, soundless as bats. One of the three rosesteeply and soared away toward the city. Their captive, grinning, turned and nodded his head satisfiedly. Then he sat down to wait. 

Twenty minutes later a monstrous machine with ungainly flapping wingscame heavily over the swamp. It checked and settled with a terrificflapping and an even more terrific din. Half a dozen armed men waitedwarily for the three to approach. The golden weapons lifted alertly asthey drew near. The wounded man explained at some length. Hisexplanation was dismissed brusquely. A man advanced and held out hishands for Tommy's weapons. 

"I don't like it, " growled Tommy, "but we've got to think of Earth. Ifyou get a chance hide your gun, Evelyn. "

He pushed on the safety catches and passed over his guns. The pilot hehad shot down led them onto the fenced-in deck of the monstrousornithopter. Machinery roared. The wings began to beat. They werenearly invisible from the speed of their flapping when the ship liftedvertically from the ground. It rose straight up for fifty feet, themotion of the wings changed subtly, and it swept forward. 

It swung in a vast half circle and headed back across the marsh forthe Golden City. Five minutes of noisy flight during which the machineflapped its way higher and higher above the marsh--which seemed morenoisome and horrible still from above--and then the golden towers ofthe city were below. Strange and tapering and beautiful, they were. Nosingle line was perfectly straight, nor was any form ungraceful. Thesetowers sprang upward in clean-soaring curves toward the sky. Bridgesbetween them were gossamerlike things that seemed lace spun out inmetal. And as Tommy looked keenly and saw the jungle crowding closeagainst the city's metal walls, the flapping of the ornithopter'swings changed again and it seemed to plunge downward like a stonetoward a narrow landing place amid the great city's toweringbuildings. 

CHAPTER VI

_The Golden City_

The thing that struck Tommy first of all was the scarcity of men inthe city, compared to its size. The next thing was the entire absenceof women. The roar of machines smote upon his consciousness as a badthird, though they made din enough. Perhaps he ignored the machinenoises because the ornithopter on which they had arrived made such aracket itself. 

They landed on a paved space perhaps a hundred yards by two hundred, three sides of which were walled off by soaring towers. The fourthgave off on empty space, and he realized that he was still at least ahundred feet above the ground. The ornithopter landed with a certainskilful precision and its wings ceased to beat. Behind it, the twofixed-wing machines soared down, leveled, hovered, and settled uponamazingly inadequate wheels. Their pilots got out and began to pushthem toward one side of the landing area. Tommy noticed it, of course. He was noticing everything, just now. He said amazedly:

"Evelyn! They launch these planes with catapults like those ourbattleships use! They don't take off under their own power!"

The six men on the ornithopter put their shoulders to their machineand trundled it out of the way. Tommy blinked at the sight. 

"No field attendants!" He gazed out across the open portion of theland area and saw an elevated thoroughfare below. Some sort ofvehicle, gleaming like gold, moved swiftly on two wheels. There was awalkway in the center of the street with room for a multitude. Butonly two men were in sight upon it. "Lord!" said Tommy. "Where are thepeople?"

There was brief talk among the crew of the ornithopter. Two of thempicked up Tommy's weapons, and the pilot he had wounded made a gestureindicating that he should follow. He led the way to an arched door inthe nearest tower. A little two-wheeled car was waiting. They got intoit and the pilot fumbled with the controls. As he worked at it--ratherclumsily on account of his arm--the rest of the ornithopter's crewcame in. They wheeled out another vehicle, climbed into it, and shotaway down a sloping passage. 

 * * * * *

Their own vehicle followed and emerged upon the paved and nearly emptythoroughfare. Tall buildings rose all about them, with curved wallssoaring dizzily skyward. There was every sign of a populous city, including the dull drumming roar of many machines, but the streetswere empty. The little machine moved swiftly for minutes. Twice itswung aside and entered a sloping incline. Once it went up. The othertime it dived down seventy feet on a four-hundred-foot ramp. Then itswung sharply to the right, meandered into a street-level way leadinginto the heart of a monster building, and stopped. And in all itstravel it had not passed fifty people. 

The pilot-turned-chauffeur turned and grinned amiably, and led the wayagain. Steps--twenty or thirty of them. Then they emerged suddenlyinto a vast room. It must have been a hundred and fifty feet long, fifty wide, and nearly as high. It was floored with alternate blocksof what seemed to be an iron-hard black wood and the omnipresentgolden metal. Columns and pilasters about the place gave forth thesame subdued deep golden glow. Light streamed from panels inset in thewall and ceiling--a curious saffron-red light. There was a massivetable of the hard black wood. Chairs with curiously designed backswere ranged about it. They were benches, really, but they served thepurpose of chairs. Each was too narrow to hold more than one person. The room was empty. 

They waited. After a long time a man in a blue tunic came into theroom and sat down on one of the benches. A long time later, anotherman came in, in red; and another and another, until there were a dozenin all. They regarded Tommy and Evelyn with a weary suspicion. One ofthem--an old man with a white beard--asked questions. The pilotanswered them. At a word, the two men with Tommy's weapons placed themon the table. They were inspected casually, as familiar things. Theyprobably were, since some of Jacaro's gunmen had been killed in afight in this city. Another question. 

The pilot explained briefly and offered Tommy the black-metal padagain. It still contained the incomplete map of a hemisphere, and wasobviously a repetition of the question of where he came from. 

 * * * * *

Tommy took it, frowning thoughtfully. Then an idea struck him. Hefound the little stud which, pressed by the pad's owner, had erasedthe previous drawings. He pressed it and the lines disappeared. AndTommy drew, crudely enough, that complicated diagram which is supposedto represent a cube which is a cube in four dimensions: a tesseract. Upon one surface of the cube he indicated the curving towers of theGolden City. Upon a surface representing a plane beyond the threedimensions of normal experience, he repeated the angular towerstructures of New York. He shrugged rather hopelessly as he passed itover, but to his amazement it was understood at once. 

The little black pad passed from hand to hand and an animateddiscussion took place. One rather hard-faced man was the most animatedof all. The bearded old man demurred. The hard-faced man insisted. Tommy could see that his pilot's expression was becoming uneasy. Butthen a compromise seemed to be arrived at. The bearded man spoke asingle, ceremonial phrase and the twelve men rose. They moved towardvarious doors and one by one left, until the room was empty. 

But the pilot looked relieved. He grinned cheerfully at Tommy and ledthe way back to the two-wheeled vehicle. The two men with Tommy'sweapons vanished. And again there was a swift, cyclonelike passagealong empty ways with the throbbing of machinery audible everywhere. Into the base of a second building, up endless stairs, pastinnumerable doors. It seemed to Tommy that he heard voices behind someof them, and they were women's voices. 

At a private, triple knock a door opened wide, and the pilot led theway into a room, closed and locked the door behind him, and called. Awoman's voice cried out in astonishment. Through an inner arch a womancame running eagerly. Her face went blank at sight of Tommy andEvelyn, and her hand flew to a tiny golden object at her waist. Then, at the pilot's chuckle, she flushed vividly. 

 * * * * *

Hours later, Tommy and Evelyn were able to talk it over. They werealone then, and could look out an oval window upon the Golden City allabout them. It was dark, but saffron-red panels glowed in buildingwalls all along the thoroughfares, and tiny glowing dots in thesoaring spires of gold told of people within other dwellings likethis. 

"As I see it, " said Tommy restlessly, "the Council--and it must havebeen that in the big room to-day--put us in our friend's hands tolearn the language. He's been working with me four hours, drawingpictures, and I've been writing down words I've learned. I must haveseveral hundred of them. But we do our best talking with pictures. AndEvelyn, this city's in a bad fix. "

Evelyn said irrelevantly: "Her name is Ahnya, Tommy, and she's a dear. We got along beautifully. I'll bet I found out things you don't evenguess at. "

"You probably have, " admitted Tommy, frowning. "Check up on this: ourfriend's name is Aten, and he's an air-pilot and also has something todo with growing foodstuffs in some special towers where they growcrops by artificial light only. Some of the plants he sketched lookamazingly like wheat, by the way. The name of the town is"--he lookedat his notes--"Yugna. There are some other towns, ten or twelve ofthem. Rahn is the nearest, and it's worse off than this one. "

"Of course, " said Evelyn, smiling. "They use _cuyal_ openly, there!"

"How'd you learn all that?" demanded Tommy. 

"Ahnya told me. We made gestures and smiled at each other. Weunderstood perfectly. She's crazy about her husband, and I--well sheknows I'm going to marry you, so. .. . "

Tommy grunted. 

"I suppose she explained with a smile and gestures just how much of astrain it is, simply keeping the city going?"

"Of course, " said Evelyn calmly. "The city's fighting against thejungle, which grows worse all the time. They used to grow theirfoodstuffs in the open fields. Then within the city. Now they useempty towers and artificial light. I don't know why. "

 * * * * *

Tommy grunted again. 

"This planet's just had, or is having, a change of geologic period, "he explained, frowning. "The plants people need to live on aren'tadapted to the new climate and new plants fit for food are scarce. They have to grow food under shelter, now, and their machines take anabnormal amount of supervision--I don't know why. The air-conditionsfor the food plants; the machines that fight back the jungle creeperswhich thrive in the new climate and try to crawl into the city tosmother it; the power machines; the clothing machines--a millionmachines have to be kept going to keep back the jungle and fight offstarvation and just hold on doggedly to the bare fact of civilization. And they're short-handed. The law of diminishing returns seems tooperate. They're trying to maintain a civilization higher than theirenvironment will support. They work until they're ready to drop, justto stay in the same place. And the monotony and the strain makes someof them take to _cuyal_ for relief. "

He surveyed the city from the oval window, frowning in thought. 

"It's a drug which grows wild, " he added slowly. "It peps them up. Itmakes the monotony and the weariness bearable. And then, suddenly, they break. They hate the machines and the city and everything theyever knew or did. It's a sort of delayed-action psychosis which goesoff with a bang. Some of them go amuck in the city, using theirbelt-weapons until they're killed. More of them bolt for the jungle. The city loses better than one per cent of its population a year tothe jungle. And then they're Ragged Men, half mad at all times andwholly mad as far as the city and its machines are concerned. "

Evelyn linked her arm in his. 

"Somehow, " she told him, smiling, "I think one Thomas Reames isworking out ways and means to help a city named Yugna. "

"Not yet, " said Tommy grimly. "We have to think of Earth. Noteverybody in the Council approved of us. Aten told me one chap arguedthat we ought to be shoved out into the jungle again as compatriots ofJacaro. And the machines were especially short-handed to-day becauseof a diversion of labor to get ready something monstrous and reallydeadly to send down the Tube to Earth. We've got to find out what thatis, and stop it. "

 * * * * *

But on the second day afterward, when he and Evelyn were summonedbefore the Council again, he still had not found out. During those twodays he learned many other things, to be sure: that Aten for instance, was relieved from duty at the machines only because he was wounded;that the power of the main machines came from a deep bore whichbrought up superheated steam from the source of boiling springs longsince built over; that iron was a rare metal, and consequently therewas no dynamo in the city and magnetism was practically an unknownforce; that electrokinetics was a laboratory puzzle--or had been, whenthere was leisure for research--while the science of electrostaticshad progressed far past its state on Earth. The little truncheonlikeweapons carried a stored-up static charge measurable only in hundredsof thousands of volts, which could be released in flashes which wereeffective up to a hundred feet or more. 

And he learned that the thermit-throwers actually spat out in normaloperation tiny droplets of matter Aten could not describe clearly, butwhich seemed to be radioactive with a period of five minutes or less;that in Rahn, the nearest other city, _cuyal_ was taken openly, andthe jungle was growing into the town with no one to hold it back; thattwo generations since there had been twenty cities like this one, butthat a bare dozen still survived; that there was a tradition thathuman beings had come upon this planet from another world where otherhuman beings had harried them, and that in that other world there weredivers races of humanity, of different colors, whereas in the world ofthe Golden City all mankind was one race; that Tommy's declarationthat he came from another group of dimensions had been debated and, onre-examination of Jacaro's Tube, accepted, and that there was keenargument going on as to the measures to be taken concerning it. 

 * * * * *

These things Tommy had learned, and he and Evelyn went to their secondinterrogation by the city's Council armed with written vocabularies ofnearly a thousand words, which they had sorted out and made ready foruse. But they were still ignorant of the weapons the Golden City mightuse against Earth. 

The Council meeting took place in the same hall, with its alternatingblack-and-gold flooring and the saffron-red lighting panels casting asoft light everywhere. This was a scheduled meeting, foreseen andarranged for. The twelve chairs above the heavy table were alloccupied from the first. But Tommy realized that the table had beenintended to seat a large number of councilors. There were guardsstationed formally behind the chairs. There were spectators, auditorsof the deliberations of the Council. They were dressed in a myriadcolors, and they talked quietly among themselves; but it seemed toTommy that nowhere had he seen weariness, as an ingrained expression, upon so many faces. 

Tommy and Evelyn were led to the foot of the Council table. Thebearded old man in blue began the questioning. As Keeper ofFoodstuffs--according to Aten--he was a sort of presiding officer. 

Tommy answered the questions crisply. He had known what they would be, and he had developed a vocabulary to answer them. He told them ofEarth, of Professor Denham, of his and the professor's experiments. Heoutlined the first experiment with the Fifth-Dimension catapult andthe result of it--when the Golden City had sent the Death Mist to wipeout a band of Ragged Men who had captured a citizen, and after himEvelyn and her father. 

 * * * * *

This they remembered. Nods went around the table. Tommy told them ofJacaro, stressing the fact that Jacaro was an outlaw, a criminal uponEarth. He explained the theft of the model Tube, and how it was thattheir first contact with Earth had been with the dregs of Earthhumanity. On behalf of his countrymen he offered reparation for allthe damage Jacaro and his men had done. He proposed a peacefulcommerce between worlds, to the infinite benefit of both. 

There was silence until he finished. The faces before him wereimmobile. But a hawk-faced man in brown asked dry questions. Werethere more races than one upon Earth? Were they of diverse colors? Didthey ever war among themselves? At Tommy's answers the atmosphereseemed to change. And the hawk-faced man rose to speak. 

Tommy and Evelyn, he conceded caustically, had certainly come fromanother world. Their own most ancient legends described just such aworld as his: a world of many races of many colors, who fought manywars among themselves. Their ancestors had fled from such a world, according to legend through a twisting cavern which they had sealedbehind them. The conditions Tommy described had been the cause oftheir ancestors' flight. They, the people of Yugna, would do well tofollow the example of their forebears: strip these Earth folk of theirweapons, exile them to the jungles, destroy the Tube through which theMist of Many Colors had been sent. All should be as in past ages. 

 * * * * *

Tommy opened his mouth to answer, but another man sprang to his feet. His face alone was not weary and worn. As he stood up, Aten murmured"_Cuyal!_" and Tommy understood that this man used the drug which wasdestroying the city's citizens, but gave a transient energy to itsvictims. He spoke in fiery phrases, urging action which would bedrastic and certain. He spoke confidently, persuasively. There was arustling among those who watched and listened to the debate. He hadcaught at their imagination. 

Evelyn, exerting every faculty to understand, saw Tommy's lips setgrimly. 

"What--what is it?" she whispered. "I--I don't understand. .. . "

Tommy spoke in a savage growl. 

"He says, " he told her bitterly, "that in one blow they can defeatboth the jungle and the invaders from Earth. In past ages theirancestors were faced by enemies they could not defeat. They fled tothis world. Now they are faced by jungles they cannot defeat. Heproposes that they flee to our world. The Death Mist is a toy, hereminds them, compared with gases they know. There is a gas of whichone part in ten hundred million is fatal! In a hundred of their daysthey can make and send through the Tube enough of it to kill everyliving thing on Earth. They've figures on the Earth's size andatmosphere from me, damn 'em! And he reminds them that that deadly gaschanges of itself into a harmless substance. He urges them to gasEarth humanity out of existence, call upon the other cities of thisworld, and presently move through the Tube to Earth. They'll carrytheir food-plants, rebuild their cities, and abandon this planet tothe jungles and the Ragged Men. And the hell of it is, they can doit!"

A sudden approving buzz went through the Council hall. 

CHAPTER VII

_The Fleet from Rahn_

The approval of the citizens of Yugna was not enthusiastic. It wasdesperate. Their faces were weary. Their lives were warped. They hadbeen fighting since birth against the encroachment of the jungle, which until the days of their grandparents had been no menace at all. But for two generations these people had been foredoomed, and theyknew it. Nearly half the cities of their race were overwhelmed andtheir inhabitants reduced to savage hunters in the victorious jungles. Now the people of Yugna saw a chance to escape from the jungle. Theywere offered rest. Peace. Relaxation from the desperate need to serveinsatiable machines. Sheer desperation impelled them. In theirsituation, the people of Earth would annihilate a solar system forrelief, let alone the inhabitants of a single planet. 

Shouts began to be heard above the uproar in the Councilhall--approving shouts, demands that one be appointed to conduct theoperation which was to give them a new planet on which to live, wheretheir food-plants would thrive in the open, where jungles would nolonger press on them. 

Tommy's face went savage and desperate, itself. He clenched andunclenched his hands, struggling among his meagre supply of words forpromises of help from Earth, which promises would tip the scales forpeace again. He raised his voice in a shout for attention. He wasunheard. The Council hall was in an uproar of desperate approval. Theorator stood flushed and triumphant. The Council members looked fromeye to eye, and slowly the old, white-bearded Keeper of Foodstuffsplaced a golden box upon the table. He touched it in a certainfashion, and handed it to the next man. That second man touched it, and passed it to a third. And that man. .. . 

 * * * * *

A hush fell instantly. Tommy understood. The measure was being decidedby solemn vote. The voting device had reached the fifth man when therewas a frantic clatter of footsteps, a door burst in, and babbling menstood in the opening, white-faced and stammering and overwhelmed, buttrying to make a report. 

Consternation reigned, incredulous, amazed consternation. The beardedold man rose dazedly and strode from the hall with the rest of theCouncil following him. A pause of stunned stupefaction, and thespectators in the hall rushed for other doors. 

"Stick to Aten, " snapped Tommy. "Something's broken, and it has to beour way. Let's see what it is. "

He clung alike to Evelyn and to Aten as the air-pilot fought to cleara way. The doors were jammed. It was minutes before they could maketheir way through and plunge up the interminable steps Aten mounted, only to fling himself out to the open air. Then they were upon aflying bridge between two of the towers of the city. All about thecity human figures were massing, staring upward. 

And above the city swirled a swarm of aircraft. Tommy counted three ofthe clumsy ornithopters, high and motelike. There were twenty orthirty of the small, one-man craft. There were a dozen or more two-manplanes. And there were at least forty giant single-wing ships whichlooked as if they had been made for carrying freight. They soared andcircled above the city in soundless confusion. Before each of themglittered something silvery, like glass, which was not a screwpropeller but somehow drew them on. 

The Council was massed two hundred yards away. A single-seater diveddownward, soared and circled noiselessly fifty yards overhead, and itspilot shouted a message. Then he climbed swiftly and rejoined hisfellows. The men about Tommy looked stunned, as if they could notbelieve their ears. Aten seemed stricken beyond the passability ofreaction. 

 * * * * *

"I got part of it, " snapped Tommy, to Evelyn's whispered question. "Ithink I know the rest. Aten!" He snapped question after question inhis inadequate phrasing of the city's tongue. Evelyn saw Aten answerdully, then bitterly, and then, as Tommy caught his arm and whisperedsavagely to him, Aten's eyes caught fire. He nodded violently andturned on his heel. 

"Come on!" And Tommy seized Evelyn's arm again. 

They followed closely as Aten wormed his way through the crowd. Theyraced behind him downstairs and through a door into a dusty andunvisited room. It was a museum. Aten pointed grimly. 

Here were the automatic pistols taken from those of Jacaro's men whohad been killed, a nasty sub-machine gun which had been Tommy's, andgrenades--Jacaro's. Tommy checked shell calibres and carried off aninety-shot magazine full of explosive bullets, and a repeating rifle. 

"I can do more accurate work with this than the machine gun, " he saidcryptically. "Let's go!"

It was not until they were racing away from the Council building inone of the two-wheeled vehicles that Evelyn spoke again. 

"I--understand part, " she said unsteadily. "Those planes overhead arefrom Rahn. And they're threatening--"

"Blackmail, " said Tommy between clenched teeth. "It sounds like aperfectly normal Earth racket. A fleet from Rahn is over Yugna, loadedwith the Death Mist. Yugna pays food and goods and women or it's wipedout by gas. Further, it surrenders its aircraft to make furthercollections easier. Rahn refuses to die, though it's let in thejungle. It's turned pirate stronghold. Fed and clothed by a few othercities like this one, it should be able to hold out. It's a racket, Evelyn. A stick-up. A hijacking of a civilised city. Sounds likeJacaro. "

 * * * * *

The little vehicle darted madly through empty highways, passing groupsof men staring dazedly upward at the soaring motes overhead. It darteddown this inclined way, up that one. It shot into a building andaround a winding ramp. It stopped with a jerk and Aten was climbingout. He ran through a doorway, Tommy and Evelyn following. Planes ofall sizes, still and lifeless, filled a vast hall. And Aten struggledwith a door mechanism and a monster valve swung wide. Then Tommy threwhis weight with Aten's to roll out the plane he had selected. It was asmall, triangular ship, with seats for three, but it was heavy. Thetwo men moved it with desperate exertion. Aten pointed, panting, toslide-rail and it took them five minutes to get the plane about thatrail and engage a curious contrivance in a slot in the ship'sfuselage. 

"Tommy, " said Evelyn, "you're not going to--"

"Run away? Hardly!" said Tommy. "We're going up. I'm going to fightthe fleet with bullets. They don't have missile-weapons here, and Atenwill know the range of their electric-charge outfits. "

"I'm coming too, " said Evelyn desperately. 

Tommy hesitated, then agreed. 

"If we fail they'll gas the city anyway. One way or the other. .. . "

There was a sudden rumble as Evelyn took her place. The plane shotforward with a swift smooth acceleration. There was no sound of anymotor. There was no movement of the glittering thing at the forepartof the plane. But the ship reached the end of the slide and lifted, and then was in mid-air, fifty feet above the vehicular way, a hundredfeet above the ground. 

 * * * * *

Tommy spoke urgently. Aten nodded. The ship had started to climb. Heleveled it out and darted straight forward. He swung madly to dodge asoaring tower. He swept upward a little to avoid a flying bridge. Theship was travelling with an enormous speed, and the golden walls ofthe city flashed past below them and they sped away across featheryjungle. 

"If we climbed at once, " observed Tommy shortly, "they'd think wemeant to fight. They might start their gassing. As it is, we look likewe're running away. "

Evelyn said nothing. For five miles the plane fled as if in panic. Evelyn clung to the filigree side of the cockpit. The city dwindledbehind them. Then Aten climbed steeply. Tommy was looking keenly atthe glittering thing which propelled the ship. It seemed like acrystal gridwork, like angular lace contrived of glass. But a coldblue flame burned in it and Tommy was obscurely reminded of a neontube, though the color was wholly unlike. A blast of air poured backthrough the grid. Somehow, by some development of electro-statics, the"static jet" which is merely a toy in Earth laboratories had becomeusable as a means of propelling aircraft. 

Back they swept toward the Golden City, five thousand feet or morealoft. The ground was partly obscured by the hazy, humid atmosphere, but glinting sun-reflections from the city guided them. Soaring thingstook shape before them and grew swiftly nearer. Tommy spoke again, busily loading the automatic rifle with explosive shells. 

Aten swung to follow a vast dark shape in its circular soaring, ahundred feet above it and a hundred yards behind. Wind whistled, rising to a shriek. Tommy fired painstakingly. 

 * * * * *

The other plane zoomed suddenly as a flash of blue flame spoutedbefore it. It dived, then, fluttering and swooping, began to drifthelplessly toward the spires of the city below it. 

"Good!" snapped Tommy. "Another one, Aten. "

Aten made no reply. He flung his ship sidewise and dived steeplybefore a monstrous freight carrier. Tommy fired deliberately as theyswept past. The propelling grid flashed blue flame in a vast, crashingflame. It, too, began to flutter down. 

Tommy did not miss until the fifth time, and Aten turned with agrimace of disappointment. Tommy's second shot burst in a freightcompartment and a man screamed. His voice carried horribly in thesilence of these heights. But Tommy shot again, and, again, and therewas a satisfying blue flash as a fifth big ship went flutteringhelplessly down. 

Aten began to circle for height Tommy refilled the magazine. 

"I'm bringing 'em down, " he explained unnecessarily to Evelyn, "bysmashing their propellers. They have to land, and when they landthey're hostages--I hope!"

Confusion became apparent among the hostile planes. The one Yugna shipwas identified as the source of disaster. Tommy worked his rifle incold fury. He aimed at no man, but the propelling grids were large. For a one-man ship they were five feet in diameter, and for the bigfreight ships, they were circles fifteen feet across. They wereperfect targets, and Aten seemed to grasp the necessary tactics almostinstantly. Dead ahead or from straight astern, Tommy could not miss ashot. The fleet of Rahn went fluttering downward. Fifteen of thebiggest were down, and six of the two-man planes. A sixteenth andseventeenth flashed at their bows and drifted helplessly. .. . 

 * * * * *

Then the one-man ships attacked. Six of them at once. Aten grinned anddived for all of them. One by one, Tommy smashed their crystal gridsand watched them sinking unsteadily toward the towers of the city. Ashis own ship drove over them, little golden flashes licked out. Electric-charge weapons. One flash struck the wingtip of their plane, and flame burst out, but Aten flung the ship into a mad whirl in whichthe blaze was blown out. 

Another freight ship helpless--and another. Then the air fleet of Rahnturned and fled. The ornithopters winged away in heavy, creakingterror. The others dived for speed and flattened out hardly above thetree-fern jungle. They streaked away in ignominious panic. Aten dartedand circled above them and, as Tommy failed to fire, turned and wentracing back toward the city. 

"After the first ones went down, " observed Tommy, "they knew that ifthey gassed the city we'd shoot them down into their own gas cloud. Sothey ran away. I hope this gives us a pull. "

The city's towers loomed before them. The lacy bridges swarmed withhuman figures. Somewhere a fight was in progress about a groundedplane from Rahn. Others seemed to have surrendered sullenly onalighting. For the first time Tommy saw the city as a thronging massof humanity, and for the first time he realized how terrible must bethe strain upon the city if with so large a population so few could befree for leisure in normal times. 

The little plane settled down and landed lightly. There were a dozenmen on the landing platform now, and they were herding disarmed menfrom Rahn away from a big ship Tommy had brought down. Tommy lookedcuriously at the prisoners. They seemed freer than the inhabitants ofYugna. Their faces showed no such signs of strain. But they did notseem well-fed, nor did they appear as capable or as resolute. 

"_Cuyal_, " said Aten in an explanatory tone, seeing Tommy'sexpression. He put his shoulder to the big ship, to wheel it back intoits shed. 

"You son of a gun, " grunted Tommy, "it's all in the day's work to you, fighting an invading fleet!"

A messenger came panting through the doorway. Tommy grinned. 

"The Council wants us, Evelyn. Now maybe they'll listen. "

 * * * * *

The atmosphere of the resumed Council meeting was, as a matter offact, considerably changed. The white-bearded Keeper of Foodstuffsthanked them with dignity. He invited Tommy to offer advice, since hisservices had proved so useful. 

"Advice?" said Tommy, in the halting, fumbling phrases he had slavedto acquire. "I would put the prisoners from Rahn to work at themachines, releasing citizens. " There was a buzz of approval, and headded drily in English: "I'm playing politics, Evelyn. " Again in thespeech of Yugna he added: "And I would have the fleet of Yugna soarabove Rahn, not to demand tribute as that city did, but to disable allits aircraft, so that such piracy as to-day may not be tried again!"There was a second buzz of approval. "And third, " said Tommyearnestly, "I would communicate with Earth, rather than assassinateit. I would require the science of Earth for the benefit of thisworld, rather than use the science of this world to annihilate that!I--"

For the second time the Council meeting was interrupted. An armedmessenger came pounding into the room. He reported swiftly. Tommygrasped Evelyn's wrist in what was almost a painful grip. 

"Noises in the Tube!" he told her sharply. "Earth-folk doing somethingin the Tube Jacaro came through. Your father. .. . "

There was an alert silence in the Council hall. The white-bearded oldman had listened to the messenger. Now he asked a grim question ofTommy. 

"They may be my friends, or your enemies, " said Tommy briefly. "Massthermit-throwers and let me find out!"

 * * * * *

It was the only possible thing to do. Tommy and Evelyn went with theCouncil, in a body, in a huge wheeled vehicle that raced across thecity. Lingering groups still searched the sky above them, nowblessedly empty again. But the Council's vehicle dived down and downto ground level, where the rumble of machines was loud indeed, andthen turned into a tunnel which went down still farther. There wasfeverish activity ahead, where it stopped, and a goldenthermit-thrower came into sight upon a dull-colored truck. 

Questions. Feverish replies. The white-bearded man touched Tommy onthe shoulder, regarding him with a peculiarly noncommittal gaze, andpointed to a doorway that someone was just opening. The door swungwide. There was a confusion of prismatically-colored mist within it, and Tommy noticed that tanks upon tanks were massed outside the metalwall of that compartment, and seemingly had been pouring somethinginto the room. 

The mist drew back from the door. Saffron-red lighting panels appeareddimly, then grew distinct. There were small, collapsed bundles of furupon the floor of the storeroom being exposed to view. They were, probably, the equivalent of rats. And then the last remnant of mistvanished with a curiously wraithlike abruptness, and the end ofJacaro's Tube came into view. 

Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging to his sleeve. There were clankingnoises audible in this room even above the dull rumble of the city'smachines. The noises came from the Tube's mouth. It was four feet andmore across, and it projected at a crazy angle out of a previouslysolid wall. 

"Hello!" shouted Tommy. "Down the Tube!"

 * * * * *

The clattering noise stopped, then continued at a faster rate. 

"The gas is cut off!" shouted Tommy again. "Who's there?"

A voice gasped from the Tube's depths:

"It's him!" The tone was made metallic by echoing and reechoing in thebends of the Tube, but it was Smithers. "We're comin', Mr. Reames. "

"Is--is Daddy there?" called Evelyn eagerly. "Daddy!"

"Coming, " said a grim voice. 

The clattering grew nearer. A goggled, gas-masked head appeared, and abody followed it out of the Tube, laden with a multitude of burdens. Asecond climbed still more heavily after the first. The brightly-coloredcitizens of the Golden City reached quietly to the weapons at theirwaists. A third voice came up the Tube, distant and nearlyunintelligible. It roared a question. 

Smithers ripped off his gas mask and said distinctly:

"Sure we're through. Go ahead. An' go to hell!"

Then there was a thunderous detonation somewhere down in the Tube'sdepths. The visible part of it jerked spasmodically and crackedacross. A wisp of brownish smoke puffed out of it, and the stingingreek of high explosive tainted the air. Then Evelyn was clinging closeto her father, and he was patting her comfortingly, and Smithers waspumping both of Tommy's hands, his normal calmness torn from him foronce. But after a bare moment he had gripped himself again. Heunloaded an impressive number of parcels from about his person. Thenhe regarded the citizens of the Golden City with an impersonal, estimating gaze, ignoring twenty weapons trained upon him. 

"Those damn fools back on Earth, " he observed impassively, "decidedthe professor an' me was better off of it. So they let us come throughthe Tube before they blew it up. We brought the explosive bullets, Mr. Reames. I hope we brought enough. "

And Tommy grinned elatedly as Denham turned to crush his hands in hisown. 

CHAPTER VIII

"_Those Devils Have Got Evelyn!_"

That night the three of them talked, on a high terrace with most ofthe Golden City spread out below them. Over their heads, lights ofmany colors moved and shifted slowly in the sky. There were a myriadglowing specks of saffron-red about the ways of the city, and the airwas full of fragrant odors. The breath of the jungle reached them evena thousand feet above ground. And the dull, persistent roar of themachines reached them too. There were five people on the terrace:Tommy, Denham, Smithers, Aten and the white-bearded old Keeper ofFoodstuffs. He looked on as the Earthmen talked. 

"We're marooned, " Tommy was saying crisply, "and for the time beingwe've got to throw in with these people. I believe they came fromEarth originally. Four, five thousand years ago, perhaps. Their taleis of a cave they sealed up behind them. It might have been aprimitive Tube, if such a thing can be imagined. "

Denham filled his pipe and lighted it meditatively. 

"Half the American Indian tribes, " he observed drily, "had legends ofcoming originally from an underworld. I wonder if Tubes are less yourown invention than we thought?"

Tommy shrugged. 

"In any case, Earth is safe. "

"Is it?" insisted Denham. "You say they understood at once when youtalked of dimension-travel. Ask the old chap there. "

 * * * * *

Tommy frowned, then labored with the question. The bearded old manspoke gravely. At his answer, Tommy grimaced. 

"Datl's gone looking for the cave their legends tell of, " he saidreluctantly. "He's the lad who wanted the city to gas Earth with someghastly stuff they know of, and move over when the gas was harmlessagain. But the cave has been lost for centuries, and it's in thetorrid zone--which _is_ torrid! We're near the North Pole of thisplanet, and it's tropic here. It must be mighty hot at the equator. Datl took a ship and supplies and sailed off. He may be killed. In anycase it'll be some time before he's dangerous. Meanwhile, as I said, we're marooned. "

"And more, " said Denham deliberately. "By the time the authoritieshalfway believed me, and Von Holtz could talk, there were more deathsfrom the Death Mist. It wiped out a village, clean. So when it wasrealized that I'd caused it--or that was their interpretation--and wasthe only man who could cause it again, why, the authorities thought ita splendid idea for me to come through the Tube. They invited me tocommit suicide. My knowledge was too dangerous for a man to have. So, "he added grimly, "I have committed suicide. We will not be welcomedback on Earth, Tommy. "

Tommy made an impatient gesture. 

"Worry about that later, " he said impatiently. "Right now there's awar on. Rahn's desperate, and the prisoners we took this morning sayJacaro and his gunmen are there, advising them. Ragged Men have joinedin to help kill civilized humans. And they've still got aircraft. "

"Which can still bombard this city, " observed Denham. "Can't they?"

Tommy pointed to the many-colored beams of light playing through thesky overhead. 

"No. Those lights were invented to guide night-flying planes backhome. They're static lights--cold lights, by the way--and theyregister powerfully when a static-discharge propeller comes withinrange of them. If Rahn tries a night attack, Aten and I take off andshoot them down again. That's that. But we've got to design gas masksfor these people, and I think I can persuade the Council to send overand take all Rahn's aircraft away to-morrow. But the real emergency isthe jungle. "

 * * * * *

He expounded the situation of the city as he understood it. He laboredpainstakingly to make his meaning clear while Denham blew meditativesmoke rings and Smithers listened quietly. But when Tommy hadfinished, Smithers said in a vast calm:

"Say, Mr. Reames, y'know I asked you to get somebody to take methrough some o' these engine rooms. That's kinda my specialty. An'these folks are good, no question! There's engines--even steamengines--we couldn't build on Earth. But, my Gawd, they're dumb! Thereain't a piece of automatic machinery on the place. There's one man toevery motor, handlin' the controls or the throttle. They got stuff wecouldn't come near, but they never thought of a steam governor. "

Tommy turned kindling eyes upon him. "Go on!"

"Hell, " said Smithers, "gimme some tools an' I'll go through one shopan' cut the workin' force in half, just slammin' governors, reducin'valves, an' automatic cut-offs on the machines I understand!"

Tommy jumped to his feet. He paced up and down, then halted and beganto spout at Aten and the Keeper of Foodstuffs. He gesticulated, fumbling for words, and hunted absurdly for the ones he wanted amonghis written lists, and finally was drawing excitedly on Aten'sblack-metal tablet. Smithers got up and looked over his shoulder. 

"That ain't it, Mr. Reames, " he said slowly. "Maybe I. .. . "

 * * * * *

Tommy pressed the stud that erased the page. Smithers took the tabletand began to draw painstakingly. Aten, watching, exclaimed suddenly. Smithers was drawing an actual machine, actually used in the GoldenCity, and he was making a working sketch of a governor so that itwould operate without supervision while the steam pressure continued. Aten began to talk excitedly. The Keeper of Foodstuffs took the tabletand examined it. He looked blank, then amazed, and as the utterlyforeign idea of a machine which controlled itself struck home, hishands shook and color deepened in his cheeks. 

He gave an order to Aten, who dashed away. In ten minutes other menbegan to arrive. They bent over the drawing. Excited comments, discussions and disputes began. A dawning enthusiasm manifesteditself. Two of them approached Smithers respectfully, with shiningeyes. They drew their tablets from their belts, rather skilfully drewthe governor he had indicated in larger scale, and by gestures askedfor more detailed plans. Smithers stood up to go with them. 

"You're a hero, now, Smithers, " Tommy informed him exultantly. "They'll work you to death and call you blessed!"

"Yes, sir, " said Smithers. "These fellas are right good mechanics. They just happened to miss this trick. " He paused. "Uh--where's MissEvelyn?"

"With Aten's--wife, " said Tommy. This was no time to discuss themarital system of Yugna. "We were prisoners until this morning. Nowwe're guests of honor. Evelyn's talking to a lot of women and tryingto boost our prestige. "

 * * * * *

Smithers went over to the gesticulating group of draftsmen. He settleddown to explain by drawings, since he had not a word of theirlanguage. In a few minutes a group went rushing away with the sketchtablets held jealously to their breasts, bound for workshops. Othermen appeared to present new problems. A wave of sheer enthusiasm wasin being. A new idea which would lessen the demands of the machineswas a godsend to these folk. 

Then Denham blew a smoke ring and said meditatively:

"I think I've got something too, Tommy. Ultra-sonic vibrations. Soundwaves at two to three hundred thousand per second. Air won't carrythem. Liquids will. They use 'em to sterilize milk, killing the germsby sound waves carried through the fluid. I think we can start someultra-sonic generators out there that will go through the wet soil andkill all vegetation within a given range. We might clear away thejungle for half a mile or so and then use ultra-sonic beams to help itclear while new food-plants are tried out. "

Tommy's eyes glowed. 

"You've given yourself a job! We'll turn this planet upside down. "

"We'll have to, " said Denham drily. "This city may believe in you, butthere are others, and these folk are a little too clever. There's noreason why some other city shouldn't attack Earth, if they seriouslyattack the problem of building a Tube. "

Tommy ground his teeth, frowning. Then he started up. There was a newnoise down in the city. A sudden flare of intolerable illuminationbroke out. There was an explosion, many screams, then the yellingtumult of men in deadly battle. 

 * * * * *

Every man on the tower terrace was facing toward the noise, staring. The white-bearded man gave an order, deliberately. Men rushed. But asthey swarmed toward an exit, a green beam of light appeared near theuproar. It streaked upward, wavering from side to side and making thegolden walls visible in a ghostly fashion. It shivered in a hastyrhythm. 

Aten groaned, almost sobbed. There was another flash of thatunbearable actinic flame. A thermit-thrower was in action. Then athird flash. This was farther away. The tumult died suddenly, but thegreen light-beam continued its motion. 

Tommy was snapping questions. Aten spoke, and choked upon his words. Tommy swore in a sudden raging passion and then turned a chalky facetoward the other two men from Earth. 

"The prisoners!" he said in a hoarse voice. "The men from Rahn! Theybroke loose. They rushed an arsenal. With hand weapons and athermit-thrower they fought their way to a place where the bigvehicles are kept. They raided a dwelling-tower on the way and seizedwomen. They've gone off on the metal roads through the jungle!" Hetried to ease his collar. Aten, still watching the green beam, croakedanother sentence. "Those devils have got Evelyn!" cried Tommyhoarsely. "My God! Aten's wife, and his. .. . " He jerked a hand towardthe Councilor. "Fifty women--gone through the jungle with them, towardRahn! Those devils have got Evelyn!"

He whirled upon Aten, seizing his shoulder, shaking the man as heroared questions. 

"No chance of catching them. " Far away, in the jungle, the infinitelyvivid actinic flame blazed for several seconds. "They've sprayedthermit on the road. It's melted and ruined. It'd take hours to haulthe ground vehicles past the gap. They're got arms and lights. Theycan fight off the beasts and Ragged Men. They'll make Rahn. Andthen"--he shook with the rage that possessed him--"Jacaro's there withthose gunmen of his and his friends the Ragged Men!"

 * * * * *

He seemed to control himself with a terrific effort. He turned to thewhite-bearded Councilor, whose bearing was that of a man stunned bydisaster. Tommy spoke measuredly, choosing words with a painstakingcare, clipping the words crisply as he spoke. 

The Councilor stiffened. Old as he was, an undeniable fighting lightcame into his eyes. He barked orders right and left. Men woke from theparalysis of shock and fled upon errands of his command. And Tommyturned to Denham and Smithers. 

"The women will be safe until dawn, " he said evenly. "Our lateprisoners can't lose the way--aluminum roads that are no longer muchused lead between all the cities--but they won't dare stop in thejungles. They'll go straight on through. They should reach Rahn atdawn or a little before. And at dawn our air fleet will be over thecity and they'll give back the women, unharmed, or we'll turn theirown trick on them, by God! It'd be better for Evelyn to die of gasthan as--as the Ragged Men would kill her!"

His hands were clenched and he breathed noisily for an instant. Thenhe swallowed, and went on in the same unnatural calm:

"Smithers, you're going to stay behind, with part of the air fleet. You'll get aloft before dawn and shoot down any strange aircraft. Theymight try to stalemate us by repeating their threat, with our gunsover Rahn. I'll give orders. "

He turned again to the Councilor, who nodded, glanced at Smithers, andrepeated the command. 

"You, sir, " he spoke to Denham, "you'll come with me. It's your right, I suppose. And we'll go down and get ready. "

He led the way steadily toward a door. But he reached up to hiscollar, once, as if he were choking, and ripped away collar and coatand all, unconscious of the resistance of the cloth. 

 * * * * *

That night the Golden City made savage preparation for war. Ships wereloaded and ranged in order. Crews armed themselves, and helped in theloading and arming of other ships. Oddly enough, it was to Tommy thatmen came to ask if the directing apparatus for the Death Mist shouldbe carried. The Death Mist could, of course, be used as a gas alone, drifting with the wind, or it could be directed from a distance. Thishad been done on Earth, with the directional impulses sent blindlydown the Tube merely to keep the Mist moving always. The controllingapparatus could be carried in a monster freight plane. Tommy orderedit done. Also he had the captured planes from Rahn refitted for flightby replacing their smashed propelling grids. Fresh crews of men forthese ships organized themselves. 

When the fleet took off there was only darkness in all the world. Theunfamiliar stars above shone bright and very near as Tommy's ship, leading, winged noiselessly up and down and straight away from theplay of prismatic lights above the city. Behind him, silhouettedagainst that many-colored glow, were the angular shapes of many othernoiseless shadows. The ornithopters with their racket would startlater, so the planes would be soaring above Rahn before their presencewas even suspected. The rest of the fleet flew in darkness. 

 * * * * *

The flight above the jungle would have been awe-inspiring at anothertime. There were the stars above, nearer and brighter than those ofEarth. There was no Milky Way in the firmament of this universe. Thestars were separate and fewer in number. There was no moon. And belowthere was only utter, unrelieved darkness, from which now and againbeast-sounds arose. They were clearly audible on board the silent airfleet. Roarings, bellowings, and hoarse screamings. Once the shipspassed above a tumult as of unthinkable monsters in deadly battle, when for an instant the very clashing of monstrous jaws was audibleand a hissing sound which seemed filled with deadly hate. 

Then lights--few of them, and dim ones. Then blazing fires--RaggedMen, camped without the walls of Rahn or in some gold-walled courtyardwhere the jungle thrust greedy, invading green tentacles. The airfleet circled noiselessly in a huge batlike cloud. Then things cameracing from the darkness, down below, and there was a tumult and ashouting, and presently the hilarious, insanely gleeful uproar of theRagged Men. Tommy's face went gray. These were the escaped prisoners, arrived actually after the air fleet which was to demand the return oftheir captives. 

Tommy wet his lips and spoke grimly to his pilot. There were six menand many Death-Mist bombs in his ship. He was asking if communicationcould be had with the other ships. It was wise to let Rahn know atonce that avengers lurked overhead for the captives just deliveredthere. 

For answer, a green signal-beam shot out. It wavered here and there. Tommy commanded again. And as the signal-beam flickered, he somehowsensed the obedience of the invisible ships about him. They weresweeping off to right and left. Bombs of the Death Mist were droppingin the darkness. Even in the starlight, Tommy could see great walls ofpale vapor building themselves up above the jungle. And a suddenconfused noise of yapping defiance and raging hatred came up from thecity of Rahn. But before dawn came there was no other sign that theirpresence was known. 

 * * * * *

The ornithopters came squeaking and rattling in their heavy flightjust as the dull-red sun of this world peered above the horizon. Thetree-fern fronds waved languidly in the morning breeze. The walls andtowers of Rahn gleamed bright gold, in parts, and in parts they seemeddull and scabrous with some creeping fungus stuff, and on one side ofthe city the wall was overwhelmed by a triumphant tide of green. Therethe jungle had crawled over the ramparts and surged into the city. Three of the towers had their bases in the welter of growing things, and creepers had climbed incredibly and were still climbing to enterand then destroy the man-made structures. 

But about the city there now reared a new rampart, rising above thetree-fern tops: there was a wall of the Death Mist encompassing thecity. No living thing could enter or leave the city without passingthrough that cloud. And at Tommy's order it moved forward to the veryencampments of the Ragged Men. 

He spoke, beginning his ultimatum. But a movement below checked him. On a landing stage that was spotted with molds and lichens, women werebeing herded into clear view. They were the women of the Golden City. Tommy saw a tiny figure in khaki--Evelyn! Then there was a suddenuproar from an encampment of the Ragged Men. His eyes flicked there, and he saw the Ragged Men running into and out of the tall wall ofDeath Mist. And they laughed uproariously and ran into and out of theMist again. 

His pilot dived down. The Ragged Men yelled and capered and howledderisively at him. He saw that they removed masklike things from theirfaces in order to shout, and donned them again before running againinto the Mist. At once he understood. The Ragged Men had gas masks!

Then, a sudden cracking noise. Three men had opened fire with riflesfrom below. Their garments were drab-colored, in contrast to the vividtints of the clothing of the inhabitants of Rahn. They were Jacaro'sgunmen. And a great freight carrier from Yugna veered suddenly, and abluish flash burst out before it, and it began to flutter helplesslydown into the city beneath. 

The weapons of Tommy's fleet were useless, since the citizens of Rahnwere protected by gas masks. And Tommy's fighting ships were subjectto the same rifle fire against their propelling grids that haddefeated the fleet from Rahn. The only thing the avenging fleet couldnow accomplish was the death of the women it could not save. 

CHAPTER IX

_War!_

A huge ornithopter came heavily out on the landing stage in the cityof Rahn. Its crew took their places. With a creaking and rattlingnoise it rose toward the invading fleet. From its filigree cockpitsides, men waved green branches. A green light wavered from the bigplane that carried the bearded Council man and Denham. That planeswept forward and hovered above the ornithopter. The two flying thingsseemed almost fastened together, so closely did their pilots maintainthat same speed and course. A snaky rope went coiling down into thelower ship's cockpit. A burly figure began to climb it hand over hand. A second figure followed. A third figure, in the drab clothing thatdistinguished Jacaro's men from all others, wrapped the rope abouthimself and was hauled up bodily. And Tommy had seen Jacaro but once, yet he was suddenly grimly convinced that this was Jacaro himself. 

The two planes swept apart. The ornithopter descended toward thelanding stage of Rahn. The freight plane swept toward the ship thatcarried Tommy. Again the snaky rope coiled down. And Tommy swung upthe fifteen feet that alone separated the two soaring planes, andlooked into the hard, amused eyes of Jacaro where he sat between twoother emissaries of Rahn. One of them was half naked and savage, withthe light of madness in his eyes. A Ragged Man. The other was lean anddesperate, despite the colored tunic of a civilized man that he wore. 

 * * * * *

"Hello, " said Jacaro blandly. "We come up to talk things over. "

Tommy gave him the briefest of nods. He looked at Denham--who wasdeathly white and grim--and the bearded Councilor. 

"I' been givin' 'em the dope, " said Jacaro easily. "We got the whiphand now. We got gas masks, we got guns just the same as you have, an'we got the women. "

"You haven't ammunition, " said Tommy evenly, "or damned little. Yourmen brought down one ship, and stopped. If you had enough shells wouldyou have stopped there?"

Jacaro grinned. 

"You got arithmetic, Reames, " he conceded. "That's so. But--I'm sayin'it again--we got the women. Your girl, for one! Now, how aboutthrowin' in with me, you an' the professor?"

"No, " said Tommy. 

"In a coupla months, Rahn'll be runnin' this planet, " said Jacaroblandly, "and I'm runnin' Rahn! I didn't know how easy the racket'dbe, or I'd 've let Yugna alone. I'd 've come here first. Now get it!Rahn runnin' the planet, with a couple guys runnin' Rahn an' passin'down through a Tube any little thing we want, like a few million bucksin solid gold. An' Rahn an' the other cities for kinda country homesfor us an' our friends. All the women we want, good liquor, an' aswell time!"

"Talk sense, " said Tommy, without even contempt in his tone. 

 * * * * *

Jacaro snarled. 

"No sense actin' too big!" But the snarl encouraged Tommy, because itproved Jacaro less confidant than he tried to seem. His next change oftone proved it. "Aw, hell!" he said placatingly. "This is what I'mfigurin' on. These guys ain't used to fighting, but they got thestuff. They got gases that are hell-roarin'. They got ships can beatany we got back home. Figure out the racket. A couple big Tubes, that'll let a ship--maybe folded--go through. A fleet of 'em floatin'over N'York, loaded with gas--that white stuff y' can steer wherevery' want it. Figure the shake-down. We could pull a hundred millionfrom Chicago! We c'd take over the whole United States! Try that on y'piano! Me, King Jacaro, King of America!" His dark eyes flashed. "I'llgive y' Canada or Mexico, whichever y' want. Name y' price, guy. Acoupla months organizin' here, buildin' a big Tube, then. .. . "

Tommy's expression did not change. 

"If it were that easy, " he said drily, "you wouldn't be bargaining. I'm not altogether a fool, Jacaro. We want those women back. You wantsomething we've got, and you want it badly. Cut out the oratory andtell me the real price for the return of the women, unharmed. "

Jacaro burst into a flood of profanity. 

"I'd rather Evelyn died from gas, " said Tommy, "than as your filthyRagged Men would kill her. And you know I mean it. " He switched to thelanguage of the cities to go on coldly: "If one woman is harmed, Rahndies. We will shoot down every ship that rises from her stages. Wewill spray burning thermit through her streets. We will cover hertowers with gas until her people starve in the gas masks they'vemade!"

The lean man in the tunic of Rahn snarled bitterly: "What matter? Westarve now!"

Tommy turned upon him as Jacaro whirled and cursed him bitterly forthe revealing outburst. 

"We will ransom the women with food, " said Tommy coldly--and then hiseyes flamed, "and thrash you afterwards for fools!"

 * * * * *

He made a gesture to the Keeper of Foodstuffs. It was unconsciously anauthoritative gesture, though the Keeper of Foodstuffs was in thestate of affairs in Yugna the head of the Council. But that old manspoke deliberately. The man from Rahn snarled his reply. And Tommyturned aside as the bargaining went on. He could see Evelyn downbelow, a tiny speck of khaki amid the rainbow-colored robes of theother women. This had been a savage expedition, to rescue or toavenge. It had deteriorated into a bargain. Tommy heard, dully, amounts of unfamiliar weights and measures of foodstuffs he did notrecognize. He heard the time and place of payment named: the gate ofYugna, the third dawn hence. He hardly looked up as at some signal oneof their own ornithopters slid below and the three ambassadors of Rahnprepared to go over the side. But Jacaro snarled out of one corner ofhis mouth. 

"These guys are takin' each other's words. Maybe that's all right, butI'm warnin' you, if there's any double-crossin'. .. . "

He was gone. The Keeper of Foodstuffs touched Tommy's shoulder. 

"Our flier, " he said slowly, "will make sure our women are as yetunharmed. We are to deliver the foods at our own city gate, and afterthe women have been returned. Rahn dares not keep them or harm them. We of Yugna keep our word. Even in Rahn they know it. "

"But they won't keep theirs, " said Tommy heavily. "Not with a man ofEarth to lead them. "

 * * * * *

He watched with his heart in his mouth as the ornithopter alightednear the assembled women of Yugna. As the three ambassadors climbedout, he could hear the faint murmur of voices. The men of Yugna, undertruce, called across the landing stage to the women of their own city, and the women replied to them. Then the crew of the one groundedfreighter arrived on the landing stage and the flapping flier roseslowly and rejoined the fleet. Its crew shouted a shamefacedreassurance to the flagship. 

"I suppose, " said Tommy bitterly, "we'd better go back--if you're surethe women are safe. "

"I am sure, " said the old man unhappily, "or I had not agreed to payhalf the foodstuffs in Yugna for their return. "

He withdrew into a troubled silence as the fleet swept far fromtriumphantly for him. Denham had not spoken at all, though his eyeshad blazed savagely upon the men of Rahn. Now he spoke, dry-throatedly:

"Tommy--Evelyn--"

"She is all right so far, " said Tommy bitterly. "She's to be ransomedby foodstuffs, paid at the gates of Yugna. And Jacaro bragged he'srunning Rahn--and they've got gas masks. We'd better be ready fortrouble after the women are returned. "

Denham nodded grimly. Tommy reached out and took one of the blacktablets from the man beside him. He began to draw carefully, his eyessavage. 

"What's that?"

"There's high-pressure steam in Yugna, " said Tommy coldly. "I'mdesigning steam guns. Gravity feed of spherical projectiles. A jet ofsteam instead of gunpowder. They'll be low-velocity, but we can usebig-calibre balls for shock effect, and with long barrels they oughtto serve for a hundred yards or better. Smooth bore, of course. "

Denham stirred. His lips were pinched. 

"I'll design a gas mask, " he said restlessly, "and Smithers and I, between us, will do what we can. "

 * * * * *

The air fleet went on over the waving tree-fern jungle in an unvaryingmonotony of bitterness. Presently Tommy wearily explained his designto the bearded Councilor who, with the quick comprehension ofmechanical design apparently instinctive in these folk, grasped itimmediately. He selected three of the six-man crew and passed Tommy'sdrawings to them. While the jungle flowed beneath the fleet theystudied the sketches, made other drawings, and showed them eagerly toTommy. When the fleet soared down to the scattered landing stages, notonly was the design understood but apparently plans for production hadbeen made. It did not take the men of the Golden City long to respond. 

Tommy flung himself savagely into the work he had taken upon himself. It did not occur to him to ask for authority. He knew what had to bedone and he set to work to do it, commanding men and materials as ifthere could be no question of disobedience. As a matter of fact, heyielded impatiently to an order of the Council that he should presenthimself in the Council hall, and, since no questions were asked him, continued his organizing in the very presence of the Council, sendingfor information and giving orders in a low tone while the Councildeliberated. A vote was taken by the voting machine. At its end, hewas solemnly informed that, though not a native of Yugna, he wasentrusted with the command of the defense forces of the city. Hisskill in arms--as evidenced by his defeat of the fleet of Rahn--andhis ability in command--when he met the gas-mask defense of Rahn witha threat of starvation--moved the Council to that action. He acceptedthe command almost abstractedly, and hurried away to pick gunemplacements. 

 * * * * *

Within four hours after the return of the fleet, the first steam gunwas ready for trial. Smithers appeared, sweat-streaked and vastlycalm, to announce that others could be turned out in quantity. 

"These guys have got the stuff, " he said steadily. "Instead o' castin'their stuff, they shoot it on a core in a melted spray. They ain't gotsteel, an' copper's scarce, but they got some alloys that are good an'tough. One's part tungsten or I'm crazy. "

Tommy nodded. 

"Turn out all the guns you can, " he said. "I look for fighting. "

"Yeah, " said Smithers. "Miss Evelyn's still all right?"

"Up to three hours ago, " said Tommy grimly. "Every three hours one ofour ships lands in Rahn and reports. We give the Rahnians their stuffat our own city gates. I've warned Jacaro that we've mountedthermit-throwers on our food stores. If he manages to gas us bysurprise, nevertheless our foodstuffs can't be captured. They've gotto turn over Evelyn and cart off their food before they dare to fight, else they'll starve. "

"But--uh--there're other cities they could stick up, ain't there?"

"We've warned them, " said Tommy curtly. "They've got thermit-throwersmounted on their food supplies, too. And they're desperate enough tokeep Rahn off. They're willing enough to let Yugna do the fighting, but they know what Rahn's winning will mean. "

Smithers turned away, then turned back. 

"Uh--Mr. Reames, " he said heavily, "these fellas've gone near crazyabout governors an' reducing valves an' such. They're inventin' waysto use 'em on machines I don't make head or tail of. We got three-fourhundred men loose from machines already, an' they're turnin' out thesesteam guns as soon as you check up. There'll be more loose by night. Ihad 'em spray some castin's for another Tube, too. Workin' like theydo, an' with the tools they got, they make speed. "

Tommy responded impatiently: "There's no steel, no iron for magnets. "

"I know, " admitted Smithers. "I'm tryin' steam cylindersto--uh--energize the castin's, instead o' coils. It'll be ready bymornin'. I wish you'd look it over, Mr. Reames. If Miss Evelyn getssafe into the city, we could send her down the Tube to Earth until thefightin's over. "

"I'll try to see it, " said Tommy impatiently. "I'll try!"

 * * * * *

He turned back to the set-up steam gun. A flexible pipe from a heavilyinsulated cylinder ran to it. A hopper dropped metallic balls downinto a bored-out barrel, where they were sucked into the blast ofsuperheated steam from the storage cylinder. At a touch of the triggera monstrous cloud of steam poured out. It was six feet from the gunmuzzle before it condensed enough to be visible. Then a huge whitecloud developed; but the metal pellets went on with deadly force. Halfan inch in diameter, they carried seven hundred yards at extremeelevation. Point-blank range was seventy-five yards. They would killat three hundred, and stun or disable beyond that. At a hundred yardsthey would tear through a man's body. 

Tommy was promised a hundred of the weapons, with their boilers, intwo days. He selected their emplacements. He directed that a disablingdevice be inserted, so if rushed they could not be turned againsttheir owners. He inspected the gas masks being turned out by thewomen, who in this emergency worked like the men. Though helplessbefore machinery, it seemed, they could contrive a fabric device likea gas mask. 

The second day the work went on more desperately still. But Smithers'work in releasing men was telling. There were fifteen hundredgovernors, or reducing valves, or autocratic cut-outs in operationnow. And fifteen hundred men were released from the machines, whichhad to be kept going to keep the city alive. With that many men, intelligent mechanics all, Tommy and Smithers worked wonders. Smithersdrove them mercilessly, using profanity and mechanical drawingsinstead of speech. Denham withdrew twenty men and labored on top ofone of the towers. Toward sunset of the second day, vast clouds ofsteam bellied out from it at odd, irregular intervals. Nothing elsemanifested itself. Those irregular belchings of steam continued untildark, but Tommy paid no attention to them. He was driving the gunnersof the machine guns to practice. He was planning patrols, devising areserve, mounting thermit-throwers, and arranging for the delivery ofthe promised ransom at the specified city gate. So far, there was nosign of anything unusual in Rahn. Messengers from Yugna saw thecaptive women regularly, once every three hours. The last to leave hadreported them being loaded into great ground vehicles under adefending escort, to travel through the dark jungle roads to Yugna. Avast concourse of empty vehicles was trailing into the jungle afterthem, to bring back the food which would keep Rahn from starving, fora while. It all seemed wholly regular. 

 * * * * *

At dawn, the remaining ships of the air fleet of Rahn were soaringsilently above the jungle about the Golden City. They made no threat. They offered no affront. But they soared, and soared. .. . 

A little after dawn, glitterings in the jungle announced the arrivalof the convoy. Messengers, in advance, shouted the news. Men fromYugna went out to inspect. The atmosphere grew tense. The air fleet ofRahn drew closer. 

Slowly, a great golden gateway yawned. Four ground vehicles rolledforward, and under escort of the Rahnians entered the city. Half thecaptive women from Yugna were within them. They alighted, weeping forjoy, and were promptly whisked away. Evelyn was not among them. Tommyground his teeth. An explanation came. When one half the promisedransom was paid, the others would be forthcoming. 

Tommy gave grim orders. Half the foodstuffs were taken to the citygate--half, no more. At his direction, it was explained gently to theRahnians that the rest of the ransom remained under guard of thethermit-throwers. It would not be exposed to capture until the last ofthe captives were released. There was argument, expostulation. Therest of the women appeared. Aten, at Tommy's express command, piledEvelyn and his own wife into a ground vehicle and came racing madly tothe tower from which Tommy could see all the circuit of the city. 

"You're all right?" asked Tommy. At Evelyn's speechless nod, he puthis hand heavily on her shoulder. "I'm glad, " he managed to say. "Puton that gas mask. Hell's going to pop in a minute. "

He watched, every muscle tense. There was confusion about the citygate. Ground vehicles, loaded with foodstuffs, poured out of the gateand back toward the jungle. Other vehicles with improvisedenlargements to their carrying platforms--making them into huge closedboxes--rolled up to the gate. The loaded vehicles rolled back and backand back, and ever more apparently empty ones crowded about the citygate waiting for admission. 

Then there was a sudden flare of intolerable light. A wild yell arose. Clouds of steam shot up from the ready steam guns. But the circlingair fleet turned as one ship and plunged for the city. The leadersbegan to drop smoking things that turned into monstrous pillars ofprismatically-colored mist. A wave of deadly vapor rolled over theramparts of the city. And then there was a long-continued ululationand the noise of battle. Ragged Men, hidden in the jungle, had swarmedupon the walls with ladders made of jungle reeds. They came over theparapet in a wave of howling madness. And they surged into the city, flinging gas bombs as they came. 

CHAPTER X

_The Fight_

The city was pandemonium. Tommy, looking down from his post ofcommand, swore softly under his breath. The Death Mist was harmless tothe defenders of Yugna as a gas, because of their gas masks. But itserved as a screen. It blotted out the waves of attackers so the steamguns could not be aimed save at the shortest of short ranges. Hisprecautions were taking effect, to be sure. Two thirds of theattackers were Ragged Men drawn from about half the surviving cities, and against such a horde Yugna could not have held out at all but forhis preparations. Now the defenders took a heavy toll. Swarms of mencame racing toward the open gate, their truncheons aglow in thesunlight. The ring of Death Mist was contracting as if to strangle thecity, and it left the ramparts bare again. And from more than onepoint upon the battlements the roaring clouds of steam burst outagain. A dozen guns concentrated on the racing men of Rahn, plungingfrom the jungle to enter by the gate. They were racing forward, without order but at top speed, to share in the fighting and loot. Then streams of metal balls tore into them. The front of the irregularcolumn was wiped out utterly. Wide swathes were cut in the rest. Thesurvivors ran wildly forward over a litter of dead and dying men. Electric-charge weapons sent crackling discharges among them. Theircontorted figures reeled and fell or leaped convulsively to lieforever still where they struck. And then the steam guns turned aboutto fire into the rear of the men who had charged past them. 

The steam guns had literally blasted away the line of Ragged Men wherethey stood. But the line went on, with great ragged gaps in it, to besure, but still vastly outnumbering the defenders of the city. Hereand there a steam gun was silent, its gun crew dead. And presentlythose that were left were useless, immobile upon the ramparts in therear of the attack. 

 * * * * *

Down in the ways of the city the fight rose to a riotous clamor. AtTommy's order the women of the city had been concentrated into a fewstrong towers. The machines of the city were left undefended for atime. A few strong patrols of fighting men, strategically placed, flung themselves with irresistible force upon certain bands ofmaddened Ragged Men. But where a combat raged, there the Ragged Menswarmed howling. Their hatred impelled them to suicidal courage and tounspeakable atrocities. From his tower, Tommy saw a man of Yugna, evidently a prisoner. Four Ragged Men surrounded him, literallytearing him to pieces like the maniacs they were. Then he saw dustspurting up in a swift-advancing line, and all four Ragged Mentwitched and collapsed on top of their victim. A steam gun had donethat. A fighting patrol of the men of Yugna swept fiercely down apaved way in one of the Golden City's vehicles. There was the glint ofgold from it. A solid, choked mass of invaders rushed upon it. Withoutslackening speed, without a pause, the vehicle raced ahead. Intolerable flashes of light appeared. A thermit-thrower was mountedon the machine. It drove forward like a flaming meteor, and aselectric-charge weapons flashed upon it men screamed and died. It toreinto a vast cloud of the Death Mist and the unbearable flames of itsweapon could only be seen as illuminations of that deadly vapor. 

A part of the city was free of defenders, save the isolated steamgunners left behind upon the walls. Ragged Men, drunk with success, ran through its ways, slashing at the walls, battering at thelight-panels, pounding upon the doorways of the towers. Tommy saw themhacking at the great doorway of a tower. It gave. They rushed within. Almost instantly thereafter the opening spouted them forth again andafter them, leaping upon them, snapping and biting and striking outwith monstrous paws and teeth, were green lizard-things like the onethat had been killed--years back, it seemed--on Earth. A deadly combatbegan instantly. But when the last of the fighting creatures was down, no more than a dozen were left of the three score who had begun thefight. 

 * * * * *

But this was not the main battle. The main battle was hidden under theDeath-Mist cloud, concentrated in a vast thick mass in the very centerof the city. Tommy watched that grimly. Perhaps eight thousand men hadassailed the city. Certainly two thousand of them were represented bythe still or twitching forms in queer attitudes here and there, insingle dots or groups. There were seven hundred corpses before thecity gate alone, where the steam guns had mowed down a reinforcingcolumn. And there were others scattered all about. The defenders hadlost heavily enough, but Tommy's defense behind the line of theramparts was soundly concentrated in strong points, equipped withsteam guns and mostly armed with thermit-throwers as well. From thecenter of the city there came only a vast, unorganized tumult ofbattle and death. 

Then a huge winged thing came soaring down past Tommy's tower. Itlanded with a crash on the roofs below, spilling its men like ants. Tommy strained his eyes. There was a billowing outburst of steam fromthe tower where Denham had been working the night before. A big flierburst into the weird bright flame of the thermit fluid. It fell, splitting apart as it dropped. Again the billowing steam. Noresult--but beyond the city walls showed a flash of thermit flame. 

"Denham!" muttered Tommy. "He's got a steam cannon; he's shootingshells loaded with thermit! They smash when they hit. Good!"

He dispatched a man with orders, but a messenger was panting his wayup as the runner left. He thrust a scribbled bit of paper into Tommy'shand. 

 "I'm trying to bring down the ship that's controlling the Death Mist. I'll shell those devils in the middle of town as soon as our controls can handle the Mist. 

 Denham. "

Tommy began to snap out his commands. He raced downward toward thestreet. Men seemed to spring up like magic about him. A ship with onewing aflame was tottering in mid-air, and another was dropping like aplummet. 

Then Tommy uttered a roar of pure joy. The huge globe of beautiful, deadly vapor was lifting! Its control-ship was shattered, and men ofthe Golden City had found its setting. The Mist rose swiftly in asingle vast globule of varicolored reflections. And the situation inthe center of the city was clear. Two towers were besieged. Densemasses of the invaders crowded about them, battering at them. Steamguns opened from their windows. Thermit-throwers shot out flashes ofdeadly fire. 

Tommy led five hundred men in savage assault, cleaving the mass ofinvaders like a wedge. He cut off a hundred men and wiped them out, while a rear guard poured electric charges into the main body of theenemy. More men of Yugna came leaping from a dozen doorways and joinedthem. Tommy found Smithers by his side, powder-stained andsweat-streaked. 

 * * * * *

"Miss Evelyn's all right?" Smithers asked in a great calm. 

"She is, " growled Tommy. "On the top floor of a tower, with a hundredmen to guard her. "

"You didn't look at the Tube I made, " said Smithers impassively; "butI turned on the steam. Looks like it worked. It's ready to go through, anyways. It's the same place the other one was, down in that cellar. I'm tellin' you in case anything happens. "

He opened fire with a magazine rifle into the thick of the mob thatassailed the two towers. Tommy left him with fifty men to block ahighway and led his men again into the mass of mingled Ragged Men andRahnians. His followers saw his tactics now. They split off a sectionof the mob and fell upon it ferociously. There were sudden awfulscreams. Thermit flame was rising from two places in the very thick ofthe mob. It burst up from a third, and fourth, and fifth. .. . Denham, atop his tower, had the range with his steam cannon, and was flingingheavy shells into the attackers of the two central buildings. And thenthere was a roaring of steam and a ground vehicle came to a stop notfifty feet away. A gun crew of Yugnans had shifted their unwieldyweapon and its insulated steam boiler to a freight-carrying vehicle. Now the gunner pulled trigger and traversed his weapon into the thickof the massed invaders, while his companions worked desperately tokeep the hopper full of projectiles. 

The invaders melted away. Steam guns in the towers, thermitprojectiles from the cannon far away: now this. .. . And the concealingcloud of Death Mist was rising still, headed straight up toward thezenith. It looked like a tiny, dwindling pearl. 

 * * * * *

The assault upon Yugna had been a mad one, a frantic one. But theflight from Yugna was the flight of men trying to escape from hell. Wild panic characterized the fleeing men. They threw aside theirweapons and ran with screams of terror no whit less horrible thantheir howls of triumph had been. And Tommy would have stopped theslaughter, but there was no way to send orders to the rampart gunnersin time. As the fugitives swarmed toward the walls again, the stormsof steam-propelled missiles mowed them down. Even those who scrambleddown to the ground outside and fled sobbing for the jungle werepursued by hails of bullets. Of the eight thousand men who assailedYugna, less than one in five escaped. 

Pursuit was still in progress. Here and there, through the city, thesound of isolated combats still went on. Denham came down from histower, looking rather sick as he saw the carnage about him. A strongescort brought Evelyn. Aten was grinning proudly, as though he had inperson defeated the enemy. And as Evelyn shakingly put out her hand totouch Tommy's arm--it was only later that he realized he had beenwounded in half a dozen minor ways--a shadow roared over their heads. The crackle of firearms came from it. 

"Jacaro!" snarled Tommy. He leaped instinctively to pursue. But theflying thing was bound for a landing in an open square, the same onewhich not long since had seen the heaviest fighting. It alighted thereand toppled askew on contact. Figures tumbled out of it, in torn andragged garments fashioned in the style of the very best tailors of theEarth's underworld. 

Men of Yugna raced to intercept them. Firearms spat and bellowedluridly. In a close-knit, flame-spitting group, the knot of men racedover fallen bodies and hurtled areas where the pavement had cooled tono more than a dull-red heat where a thermit shell had struck. Oneman, two, three men fell under the small-arms fire. The gangsters wentracing on, firing desperately. They dived into a tunnel anddisappeared. 

 * * * * *

"The Tube!" roared Smithers. "They' goin' for the Tube!"

He plunged forward, and Tommy seized his arm. 

"They'll go through your Tube, " he said curtly. "It looks like the onethey came through. They'll think it is. Let 'em!"

Smithers tried to tear free. 

"But they'll get back to Earth!" he raged. "They'll get off clear!"

The sharp, cracking sound of a gun-cotton explosion came out of thedoorway into which Jacaro and his men had dived. Tommy smiled verygrimly indeed. 

"They've gone through, " he said drily, "and they've blown up the Tubebehind them. But--I didn't tell you--I took a look at your castings. Your pupils were putting them together, ready for the steam to go in, in place of the coils I used. But--er--Smithers! You'd discarded onepair of castings. They didn't satisfy you. Your pupils forgot that. They hooked them all together. "

Smithers gulped. 

"Instead of four right-angled bends, " said Tommy grimly, "you have sixconnected together. You turned on the steam in a hurry, not noticing. And I don't know how many series of dimensions there are in thisuniverse of ours. We know of two. There may be any number. But Jacaroand his men didn't go back to Earth. God only knows where they landed, or what it's like. Maybe somewhere a million miles in space. Nobodyknows. The main thing is that Earth is safe now. The Death Mist hasfaded out of the picture. "

He turned and smiled warmly at Evelyn. He was a rather horrible sightjust then, though he did not know it. He was bloody and burned andwounded. He ignored all matters but success, however. 

"I think, " he said drily, "we have won the confidence of the GoldenCity, Evelyn, and that there'll be no more talk of gassing Earth. Assoon as the Council meets again, we'll make sure. And then--well, Ithink we can devote a certain amount of time to our personal affairs. You are the first Earth-girl to be kissed in the Fifth Dimension. We'll have to see if you can't distinguish yourself further. "

 * * * * *

Again the Council hall in the tower of government in the Golden Cityof Yugna. Again the queer benches about the black wood table--thoughtwo of the seats that had been occupied were now empty. Again theguards behind the chairs, and the crowd of watchers--visitors, citizens of Yugna attending the deliberations of the Council. Theaudience was a queer one, this time. There were bandages here andthere. There were men who were wounded, broken, bent and crippled inthe fighting. But a warmly welcoming murmur spread through the hall asTommy came in, himself rather extensively patched. He was wearing thetunic and breeches of the Golden City, because his own clothes werehopelessly beyond repair. The bearded old Councilor gathered the eyesof his fellows. They rose. This Council seated itself as one man. 

Quiet, placid formalities. The Keeper of Foodstuffs murmured that theransom paid to Rahn had been recaptured after the fight. The Keeper ofRolls reported with savage satisfaction the number of enemies who hadbeen slain in battle. He added that the loss to Yugna was less thanone man to ten of the enemy. And he added with still greater emphasisthat the shops being fitted with automatic controls had releasednow--it had grown so much--two thousand men from the necessaryday-and-night working force, and further releases were to be expected. The demands of the machines were lessened already beyond the memory ofman. Eyes turned to Tommy. There was an expectant pause for his reply. 

 * * * * *

"I have been Commander of Defense Forces, " he told them slowly, "inthis fighting. I have given you weapons. My two friends have donemore. The machines will need fewer and fewer attendants as the hintsthey have given you are developed by yourselves. And there is somehope that one of my friends may show you, in ultra-sonic vibrations, aweapon against the jungle itself. My own work is finished. But I askagain for friendship for my planet Earth. I ask that no war be made onmy own people. I ask that what benefits you receive from us be passedto the other surviving cities on the same terms. And since there canbe no further fighting on this scale, I give back my commission asCommander of Defense. "

There was a little murmur among the men of Yugna, looking on. It roseto a protesting babble, to a shout of denial. The bearded old Keeperof Foodstuffs smiled. 

"It is proposed that the appointment as Commander of Defense Forces bepermanent, " he said mildly. 

He produced the queer black box and touched it in a certain fashion. He passed it to the next man, and the next and next. It went aroundthe table. It passed a second time, but this time each man merelylooked at the top. 

"You command the defense forces of Yugna for always, " said the beardedold man, gently. "Now give orders that your requests become laws. "

 * * * * *

Tommy stared blankly. He was suddenly aware of Aten in the background, smiling triumphantly and very happily at him. There was something likea roar of approval from the men of Yugna, assembled. 

"Just what, " demanded Tommy, "does this mean?"

"For many years, " said a hawk-faced man ungraciously, "we have had noCommander of Defense. We have had no wars. But we see it is needful. We have chosen you, with all agreeing. The Commander of Defense"--hesniffed a little, pugnaciously--"has the authority the ancient kingsonce owned. "

Tommy leaned back in the curious benchlike chair, his eyes narrow andthoughtful. This would simplify matters. No danger of trouble toEarth. A free hand for Denham and Smithers to help these folk, and forDenham to learn scientific facts--in the sciences they haddeveloped--which would be of inestimable value to Earth. And it couldbe possible to open a peaceful trade with the nations of Earth withoutany danger of war. And maybe. .. . 

He smiled suddenly. It widened almost into a grin. 

"All right. I'll settle down here for a while. But--er--just how doesone set about getting married here?"