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	<p class="supertitle"><a class="pagenum" id="page366" title="366">&nbsp;</a>A Sequel to “The Fifth-Dimension Catapult”</p>

	<div class="image">
		<a href="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:m:murray-leinster-the-fifth-dimension-tube-illo-lg.png"><img src="https://brian.carnell.com/wiki/_media/etext:m:murray-leinster-the-fifth-dimension-tube-illo.png" width="672" height="362" alt="A woman zombie-walks towards a large shadowy figure with huge shining eyes." /></a>
		<p class="caption">Evelyn swayed … and the Thing moved!</p>
	</div>

	<h1>The Fifth-Dimension Tube</h1>
	<p class="subtitle">A Complete Novelette</p>
	<p id="author">By Murray Leinster</p>

	<p id="synopsis">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.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span class="chapter_no">CHAPTER I</span><br />
	The Tube</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> generator rumbled and
	roared, building up to its
	maximum speed. The whole
	laboratory quivered from its
	vibration. The dynamo hummed and
	whined and the night silence outside
	seemed to make the noises
	within more deafening. Tommy
	Reames ran his eyes again over
	the power-leads to the monstrous,
	misshapen coils. Professor Denham
	bent over one of them, straightened,
	and nodded. Tommy Reames
	nodded to Evelyn, and she threw
	the heavy multiple-pole switch.</p>

	<p>There was a flash of jumping
	current. The masses of metal on
	the floor seemed to leap into ungainly
	life. The whine of the
	dynamo rose to a scream and its
	brushes streaked blue flame. The
	metal things on the floor flicked together
	and were a tube, three feet
	and more in diameter. That tube
	writhed and twisted. It began to
	form itself into an awkward and
	seemingly impossible shape, while
	metal surfaces sliding on each other
	produced screams that cut through
	the din of the motor and dynamo.
	The writhing tube strained and
	<a class="pagenum" id="page367" title="367"> </a>wriggled. Then there was a queer,
	inaudible <em>snap</em> and something gave.
	A part of the tube quivered into
	nothingness. Another part hurt the
	eyes that looked upon it.</p>

	<p>And then there
	was the smell of
	burned insulation
	and a wire was
	arcing somewhere,
	while thick rubbery
	smoke arose. A fuse blew out
	with a thunderous report, and
	Tommy Reames leaped to the suddenly
	racing motor-generator. The
	motor died amid gasps and rumblings.
	And Tommy Reames looked
	anxiously at the Fifth-Dimension
	Tube.</p>

	<p>It was important, that Tube.
	Through it, Tommy Reames and
	Professor Denham had reason to
	believe they
	could travel to
	another universe,
	of which other
	men had only
	dreamed. And it
	was important in other ways, too.
	At the moment Evelyn Denham
	threw the switch, last-edition newspapers
	in Chicago were showing
	headlines about “King” Jacaro’s
	forfeiture of two hundred thousand
	<a class="pagenum" id="page368" title="368"> </a>dollars’ bail by failing to appear in
	court. King Jacaro was a lord of
	racketeerdom.</p>

	<p>While Tommy inspected the
	Tube anxiously, a certain chief of
	police in a small town upstate was
	telling feverishly over the telephone
	of a posse having killed a
	monster lizard by torchlight, having
	discovered it 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 its neck. And jewel importers,
	in New York, were in anxious
	conference about a flood of untraced
	jewels upon the market.
	Their origin was unknown. The
	Fifth-Dimension Tube ultimately
	affected all of those affairs, and
	the Death Mist as well. And—though
	it was not considered dangerous
	then—everybody remembers
	the Death Mist now.</p>

	<p>But at the moment Professor
	Denham stared at the Tube concernedly,
	his daughter Evelyn shivered
	from pure excitement as she
	looked at it, and a red-headed man
	named Smithers looked impassively
	from the Tube to Tommy Reames
	and back again. He’d done most of
	the mechanical work on the Tube’s
	parts, and he was as anxious as the
	rest. But nobody thought of the
	world outside the laboratory.</p>

	<p>Professor Denham moved suddenly.
	He was nearest to the open
	end of the Tube. He sniffed curiously
	and seemed to listen. Within
	seconds the others became aware of
	a new smell in the laboratory. It
	seemed to come from the Tube
	itself, and it was a warm, damp
	smell that could only be imagined
	as coming from a jungle in the
	tropics. There were the rich odors
	of feverishly growing things; the
	heavy fragrance of unknown tropic
	blossoms, and a background of some
	curious blend of scents and smells
	which was alien and luring, and
	exotic. The whole was like the
	smell of another planet of the
	jungles of a strange world which
	men had never trod. And then, definitely
	coming out of the Tube,
	there was a hollow, booming noise.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">It</span> had been echoed and re-echoed
	amid the twistings of the Tube,
	but only 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.
	The beast-thing bellowed and an
	ululating chorus of joyous screams
	arose. The laboratory reverberated
	with the thunderous noise. Then
	there was the sound of crashing
	and of paddings, and abruptly the
	noise was diminishing as if its
	source were moving farther away.
	The beast-thing roared and bellowed
	as if in agony, and the yelling
	noise seemed to show that men
	were following close upon its
	flanks.</p>

	<p>Those in the laboratory seemed to
	awaken as if from a bad dream.
	Denham was kneeling before the
	mouth of the Tube, an automatic
	rifle in his hands. Tommy Reames
	stood grimly before Evelyn. He’d
	snatched up a pair of automatic
	pistols. Smithers clutched a spanner
	and watched the mouth of the Tube
	with a strained attention. Evelyn
	stood shivering behind Tommy.</p>

	<p>Tommy said with a hint of grim
	humor:</p>

	<p>“I don’t think there’s any doubt
	about the Tube having gotten
	through. That’s the Fifth Dimension
	planet, all right.”</p>

	<p>He smiled at Evelyn. She was
	deathly pale.</p>

	<p>“I—remember—hearing noises
	like that….”</p>

	<p>Denham stood up. He painstakingly
	slipped on the safety of his
	rifle and laid it on a bench with the
	other guns. There was a small arsenal
	on a bench at one side of the
	<a class="pagenum" id="page369" title="369"> </a>laboratory. The array looked much
	more like arms for in expedition
	into dangerous territory than a
	normal part of apparatus for an experiment
	in rather abstruse mathematical
	physics. There were even
	gas masks on the bench, and some
	of those converted brass Very pistols
	now used only for discharging
	tear- and sternutatory-gas bombs.</p>

	<p>“The Tube wasn’t seen, anyhow,”
	said Professor Denham briskly.
	“Who’s going through first?”</p>

	<p>Tommy slung a cartridge belt
	about his waist and a gas mask
	about his neck.</p>

	<p>“I am,” he said shortly. “We’ll
	want to camouflage the mouth of
	the Tube. I’ll watch a bit before
	I get out.”</p>

	<p>He crawled into the mouth of
	the twisted pipe.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> Tube was nearly three feet
	across, each section was five
	feet long, and there were gigantic
	solenoids at each end of each section.</p>

	<p>It was not an experiment made
	at random, nor was the world to
	which it reached an unknown one
	to Tommy or to Denham. Months
	before, Denham had built an instrument
	which would bend a ray
	of light into the Fifth Dimension
	and had found that he could fix a
	telescope to the device and look
	into a new and wholly strange cosmos.<span class="fn_marker">*</span> <span class="fn">* “The Fifth-Dimension Catapult”—see the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30177">January, 1931, issue of Astounding Stories</a>.</span>
	He had seen tree-fern jungles
	and a monstrous red sun, and
	all the flora and fauna of a planet
	in the carboniferous period of development.
	More, by the accident of
	its placing he had seen the towers
	and the pinnacles of a city whose
	walls and towers seemed plated
	with gold.</p>

	<p>Having gone so far, he had devised
	a catapult which literally
	flung objects to the surface of that
	incredible world. Insects, birds, and
	at last a cat had made the journey
	unharmed, and he had built a steel
	globe in which to attempt the
	journey in person. His daughter
	Evelyn had demanded to accompany
	him, and he believed it safe. The
	trip had been made in security, but
	return was another matter. A laboratory
	assistant, Von Holtz, had
	sent them into the Fifth Dimension,
	only to betray them. One King
	Jacaro, lord of Chicago racketeers,
	was convinced by him of the
	existence of the golden city of that
	other world, and that it was full
	of delectable loot. He offered a
	bribe past envy for the secret of
	Denham’s apparatus. And Von
	Holtz had removed the apparatus
	for Denham’s return before working
	the catapult to send him on his
	strange journey. He wanted to be
	free to sell full privileges of rapine
	and murder to Jacaro.</p>

	<p>The result was unexpected. Von
	Holtz could not unravel the secret
	of the catapult he himself had operated.
	He could not sell the secret
	for which he had committed a
	crime. In desperation he called in
	Tommy Reames—rather more than
	an amateur in mathematical physics—showed
	him Evelyn and her
	father marooned in a tree-fern
	jungle, and hypocritically asked for
	aid.</p>

	<p>Tommy’s enthusiastic efforts soon
	became more than merely enthusiastic.
	The men of the Golden City
	remained invisible, but there were
	strange, half-mad outlaws of the
	jungles who hated the city. Tommy
	Reames had watched helplessly as
	they hunted for the occupants of
	the steel globe. He had worked
	frenziedly to achieve a rescue. In
	the course of his labor he discovered
	the treachery of Von Holtz
	as well as the secret of the catapult,
	and with the aid of Smithers—who
	had helped to build the original
	<a class="pagenum" id="page370" title="370"> </a>catapult—he made a new small device
	to achieve the original end.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> whole affair came to an
	end on one mad afternoon
	when the Ragged Men captured
	first an inhabitant of the Golden
	City, and then Denham and Evelyn
	in a forlorn attempt at rescue.
	Tommy Reames went mad. He used
	a tiny sub-machine gun upon the
	Ragged Men through the model
	magnetic catapult he had made, and
	contrived communication with Denham
	afterward. Instructed by Denham,
	he brought about the return
	of father and daughter to Earth
	just before Ragged Men and
	Earthling alike would have perished
	in a vengeful gas cloud from
	the Golden City. Even then,
	though, his triumph was incomplete
	because Von Holtz had gotten word
	to Jacaro, and nattily-dressed gunmen
	raided the laboratory and made
	off with the model catapult, leaving
	three bullets in Tommy and one in
	Smithers as souvenirs.</p>

	<p>Now, using the principle developed
	in the catapult, Tommy
	and Denham had built a large Tube,
	and as Tommy climbed along its
	corrugated interior he knew a good
	part of what he should expect at
	the other end. A steady current of
	air blew past him. It was laden
	with a myriad unfamiliar scents.
	The Tube was a tunnel from one
	set of dimensions to another, a
	permanent way from Earth to a
	strange, carboniferous-period planet
	on which a monstrous dull-red sun
	shone hotly. Tommy should come
	out into a tree-fern forest whose
	lush vegetation would hide the sky,
	and which furnished a lurking
	place not only for strange reptilian
	monsters akin to those of the long-dead
	past of Earth, but for the
	bands of ragged, half-mad human
	beings who were outlaws from the
	civilization of which Denham and
	Evelyn had seen proofs.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> reached the third bend
	in the Tube. By now he had
	lost all sense of orientation. An object
	may be bent through one right
	angle only in two dimensions, and
	a second perfect right angle—at
	ninety degrees to all former paths—only
	in three dimensions. It follows
	that a third perfect right
	angle requires four dimensions for
	existence, and four perfect right
	angles five. The Tube bent itself
	through four perfect right angles,
	and since no human-being can ever
	have experience of more than three
	dimensions, plus time, it followed
	that Tommy was experiencing other
	dimensions than those of Earth as
	soon as he passed the third bend.
	In short, he was in another cosmos.</p>

	<p>There was a moment of awful
	sickness as he passed the third
	bend. He was hideously dizzy when
	he passed the fourth. For a time he
	felt as if he had no weight at all.
	But then, quite abruptly, he was
	climbing vertically upward and the
	soughing of tree-fern fronds was
	loud in his ears, and suddenly the
	end of the Tube was under his fingers
	and he stared out into the
	world of the Fifth Dimension.</p>

	<p>Now a gentle wind blew in his
	face. Tree-ferns rose to incredible
	heights above his head, and now
	and again by the movements of
	their fronds he caught stray
	glimpses of unfamiliar stars. There
	were red stars, and blue ones, and
	once he caught sight of a clearly
	distinguishable double star, of
	which each component was visible
	to the naked eye. And very, very
	far away he heard the beastly yellings
	he knew must be the outlaws,
	the Ragged Men, feasting horribly
	on half-scorched flesh torn from
	the quivering, yet-living flanks of
	a monstrous reptile.</p>

	<p>Something moved, whimpered—and
	fled suddenly. It sounded like
	a human being. And Tommy Reames
	was struck with the utterly impossible
	<a class="pagenum" id="page371" title="371"> </a>conviction that he had heard
	just that sound before. It was not
	dangerous, in any case, and he
	watched, and listened, and presently
	he slipped from the mouth
	of the Tube and by the glow of a
	flashlight stripped foliage from
	nearby growths and piled it about
	the Tube’s mouth. And then, because
	the purpose of the Tube was
	not adventure but science, he went
	back down into the laboratory.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> three men, with Evelyn,
	worked until dawn at the rest
	of their preparations for the use
	of the Tube. All that time the
	laboratory was filled with the heavy
	fragrance of a tree-fern jungle
	upon an unknown planet. The
	heavy, sickly-sweet scents of closed
	jungle blossoms filled their nostrils.
	The reek of feverishly growing
	green things saturated the air.
	A steady wind blew down the
	Tube, and it bore innumerable unfamiliar
	odors into the laboratory.
	Once a gigantic moth bumped and
	blundered into the Tube, and finally
	crawled heavily out into the light.
	It was scaled, and terrible because
	of its monstrous size, but it had
	broken a wing and could not fly.
	So it crawled with feverish haste
	toward a brilliant electric light. Its
	eyes were especially horrible because
	they were not compound like
	the moths of Earth. They were
	single, like those of a man, and
	were fixed in an expression of
	utter, fascinated hypnosis. The
	thing looked horribly human with
	those eyes staring from an insect’s
	head, and Smithers killed it in a
	flash of nerve-racked horror. None
	of them were able to go on with
	their work until the thing and its
	fascinated, staring eyes had been
	put out of sight. Then they labored
	on with the smell of the jungles
	of that unnamed planet thick about
	them, and noises now and then
	coming down the Tube. There were
	roars, and growlings, and once there
	was a thin high sound which
	seemed like the far-distant, death-startled
	scream of a man.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER II</span><br />
	The Death Mist</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Tommy Reames</span> saw the red
	sun rise while he was on guard
	at the mouth of the Tube. The
	tree-ferns above him came into
	view as vague gray outlines. The
	many-colored stars grew pale. And
	presently a bit of crimson light
	peeped through the jungle somewhere.
	It moved along the horizon
	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 took
	form and color in the daylight, displaying
	colors never seen on Earth.
	He saw flying things dart among
	the tree-fern fronds, and some were
	scaled and some were not, but none
	of them were feathered.</p>

	<p>Then a tiny buzzing noise. The
	telephone that now rested below the
	lip of the Tube was being used
	from the laboratory.</p>

	<p>“Smithers will relieve you,” said
	Denham’s voice in the receiver.
	“Come on down. We’re not the only
	people experimenting with the
	Fifth Dimension. Jacaro’s been
	working, and all hell’s loose!”</p>

	<p>Tommy slid down the Tube in an
	instant. The four right-angled turns
	made him sick and dizzy again, but
	he came out with his jaw set
	grimly. There was good reason for
	Tommy’s interest in Jacaro. Besides
	sides three bullet wounds, Tommy
	owed Jacaro something for stealing
	the first model Tube.</p>

	<p>He emerged in the laboratory on
	his hands and knees as the size of
	the Tube made necessary. Smithers
	smiled placidly at him and crawled
	in to take his place.</p>

	<p>“What the devil happened?” demanded
	Tommy.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page372" title="372"> </a>Denham was bitter. He held a
	newspaper before him. Evelyn had
	brought coffee and the morning
	paper to the laboratory. She seemed
	rather pale.</p>

	<p>“Jacaro’s gotten through too!”
	snapped Denham. “He’s gotten in a
	pack of trouble. And he’s loosed the
	devil on Earth. Here—look!” He
	jabbed his finger at one headline.
	“And here—and here!” He thrust
	at others. “Here’s proof.”</p>

	<p>The first headline read: “KING
	JACARO FORFEITS BOND.”
	Smaller headings beneath it read:
	“Racketeer Missing for Income Tax
	Trial. $200,000 Bail Forfeited.” The
	second headline was in smaller
	type: “Monster Lizard Killed!
	Giant Meat Eater Brought Down
	by Rifleman. Akin to Ancient
	Dinosaurs, Say Scientists.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“Jacaro’s</span> missing,” said Denham
	harshly. “This article says
	he’s vanished, and with him a dozen
	of his most prominent gunmen. You
	know he had a model catapult to
	duplicate—the one he got from you.
	Von Holtz could arrange the construction
	of a big Tube for him.
	And he knew about the Golden
	City. Look!”</p>

	<p>His finger, trembling, tapped on
	the flashlight picture of the giant
	lizard of which the story told. And
	it was a giant. A rope had upheld
	a colossal, leering, reptilian head
	while men with rifles posed self-consciously
	beside the dead creature.
	It was as big as a horse,
	and at first glance its kinship to the
	extinct dinosaurs of Earth was
	plain. Huge teeth in sharklike rows.
	A long, trailing tail. But there was
	a collar about the beast-thing’s
	neck.</p>

	<p>“It had killed and was devouring
	a cow when they shot it,” said
	Denham bitterly. “There’ve been
	reports of these creatures for days—so
	the news story says. They
	weren’t printed because nobody believed
	them. But there are a couple
	of people missing. A searching
	party was hunting for them. They
	found this!”</p>

	<p>Tommy Reames stared at the picture.
	His face went grimmer still.
	He thought of sounds he had
	heard beyond the Tube, not long
	since.</p>

	<p>“There’s no question where they
	came from. The Fifth Dimension.
	But if Jacaro brought them back,
	he’s a fool.”</p>

	<p>“Jacaro’s missing,” said Denham
	savagely. “Don’t you understand?
	He could get through to the
	Golden City. These beast-things are
	proof somebody did. And these
	things came down the Tube that
	somebody travelled through. Jacaro
	wouldn’t send them, but somebody
	did. They’ve got collars around
	their necks! Who sent them? And
	why?”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy’s</span> eyes narrowed.</p>

	<p>“If civilized men found the
	mouth of a Tube, it would seem
	like the mouth of an artificial
	tunnel or a cave—”</p>

	<p>“And if annoying vermin, like
	Jacaro’s gunmen”—Denham’s voice
	was brittle—“had come out of it,
	why, intelligent men might send
	something living and deadly down
	it, as men on Earth will send
	ferrets down 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 his Tube. And they’ve sent
	these things down….”</p>

	<p>“If <em>we</em> found rats coming from
	a rat-hole,” said Tommy very
	quietly, “and ferrets went down and
	didn’t come up, we’d gas them.”</p>

	<p>“And so,” Denham told him, “so
	would the Golden City.”</p>

	<p>He pointed to a boxed double
	paragraph news story under
	leaded twenty-point headline:
	“Poisonous Fog Kills Wild Life.”</p>

	<p>The story was not alarming. It
	<a class="pagenum" id="page373" title="373"> </a>said merely that state game wardens
	had found numerous dead
	game animals in a thinly-settled district
	near Coltsville, N.Y., and on
	investigation had found a bank of
	mist, all of half a mile across,
	which seemed to have caused the
	trouble. State chemists and biologists
	were investigating the phenomenon.
	Curiously, the bank of
	mist seemed not to dissipate in a
	normal fashion. Samples of the fog
	were being analyzed. It was probably
	akin to the Belgian fogs
	which on several occasions had
	caused much loss of life. The mist
	was especially interesting because
	in sunlight it displayed prismatic
	colorings. State troopers were
	warning the inhabitants of the
	neighborhood.</p>

	<p>“The gassing’s started,” said Denham
	savagely. “I know a gas that
	shows rainbow colors. The Golden
	City uses it. So we’ve got to find
	Jacaro’s Tube and seal it, or only
	God knows what will come out of
	it next. I’m going off, Tommy. You
	and Smithers guard our Tube. Blow
	it up, if necessary. It’s dangerous.
	I’ll get some authority in Albany,
	and we’ll find Jacaro’s Tube and
	blast it shut.”</p>

	<p>Tommy nodded, his eyes keen
	and thoughtful. Denham hurried
	out.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Minutes</span> later, only, they
	heard the roar of a car motor
	going down the long lane away
	from the laboratory. Evelyn tried
	to smile at Tommy.</p>

	<p>“It seems terrible, dangerous.”</p>

	<p>Tommy considered and shrugged.</p>

	<p>“This news is old,” he observed.
	“This paper was printed last night.
	I think I’ll make a couple of long-distance
	calls. If the Golden City’s
	had trouble with Jacaro, it’s going
	to make things bad for us.”</p>

	<p>He swept his eyes about and
	frowningly loaded a light rifle. He
	put it convenient to Evelyn’s hand
	and made for the dwelling-house
	and the telephone. It was odd that
	as he emerged into the open air, the
	familiar smells of Earth struck his
	nostrils as strange and unaccustomed.
	The laboratory was redolent
	of the tree-fern forest into
	which the Tube extended. And
	Smithers was watching amid those
	dank, incredible carboniferous-period
	growths now.</p>

	<p>Tommy put through calls, seeing
	all his and Denham’s plans for
	a peaceful exploration party and
	amicable contact with the civilization
	of that other planet, utterly
	shattered by presumed outrages by
	Jacaro. He made call after call,
	and his demands for information
	grew more urgent as he got closer
	to the source of trouble. His cause
	for worry was verified long before
	he had finished. Even as he made
	the first call, New York newspapers
	had crowded a second-grade murder
	off their front pages to make room
	for the white mist upstate.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> early-morning editions had
	termed it a “poisonous fog.”
	The breakfast editions spoke of it
	as a “poison fog.” But it grew and
	moved and by the time Tommy had
	a clear line to get actual information
	about it, a tabloid had christened
	it the “Death Mist” and
	there were three chartered planes
	circling about it for the benefit of
	their newspapers. State troopers
	were being reinforced. At ten
	o’clock it was necessary to post
	extra traffic police to take care of
	the cars headed 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.</p>

	<p>It was at twelve-thirty that the
	first casualty occurred. Before that
	time, the police had frantically demanded
	that the flood of sightseers
	be stopped. The Death Mist
	<a class="pagenum" id="page374" title="374"> </a>covered a square mile or more. It
	clung to the ground, nowhere more
	than fifty or sixty feet high, and
	glittered with all the colors of the
	rainbow. It moved with a velocity
	of anywhere from ten to twenty
	miles an hour. In its path were a
	myriad small tragedies—nesting
	birds stiff and still, and rabbits
	and other small furry bodies contorted
	in queer agonized postures.
	But until twelve-thirty no human
	beings were known to be its victims.</p>

	<p>Then, though, it was moving
	blindly across the wind with a thin
	trailing edge behind it and a rolling
	billow of descending mist as
	its forefront. It rolled up to and
	across a concrete highway, watched
	by perspiring motor cops who had
	performed miracles in clearing a
	path for it among the horde of
	sightseeing cars. It swept on into
	a spindling pine wood. Behind it
	lay a thinning sheet of vapor—thick
	white mist which seemed to
	rise and move more swiftly to overtake
	the main body. It lay across
	the highway in a sheet which was
	ten feet deep, then thinned to six,
	to three….</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> mist was no more than
	a foot thick, when a party of
	motorists essayed to drive through
	it as through a sheet of water. They
	dodged a swearing motorcycle cop
	and, yelling hilariously, plunged
	forward. It happened that they had
	not more than a hundred yards to
	go, so the whole thing was plainly
	seen.</p>

	<p>The car was ten yards across the
	sheet of mist before the effect of
	its motion was apparent. Then the
	mist, torn by the car-eddy, swirled
	madly in their wake. The motorists
	yelled delightedly. There is a picture
	extant, taken at just this moment.
	It shows the driver with a
	foolish grin on his face, clutching
	the wheel and very obviously
	stepping on the accelerator. A pandemonium
	of triumphant, hilarious
	shouting—and then a very sudden
	silence.</p>

	<p>The car roared on. The road
	curved slightly. The car did not.
	It went off the road, turned over,
	and its engine shrieked itself into
	silence. The Death Mist went on,
	draining from the roadway to follow
	the tall, prismatically-colored
	cloud. It moved swiftly and blindly.
	To the circling planes above it, it
	seemed like a blind thing imagining
	itself confined, and searching for
	the edges of its prison. It gave an
	uncanny impression of being directed
	by intelligence. But the
	Death Mist, itself, was not alive.</p>

	<p>Neither were the occupants of the
	motor car.</p>

	<p>When Tommy got back to the
	laboratory after his last call for
	news, he found Evelyn in the act
	of starting to fetch him.</p>

	<p>“Smithers called,” she said uneasily.
	“He says something’s moving
	about—” The buzzer of the
	telephone was humming stridently.
	Tommy answered quickly.</p>

	<p>“Just want you handy,” said
	Smithers’ calm voice. “I might have
	to duck. Some Ragged Men are
	chasin’ something. Get set, will
	ya?”</p>

	<p>“Ready for anything,” Tommy
	assured him.</p>

	<p>Then he made it true: rifles
	handy, a sub-machine gun, grenades,
	gas masks. He handed one to
	Evelyn. Smithers had one already.
	Then Tommy waited, grimly ready
	by the Tube-mouth.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> warm, scent-laden breeze
	blew upon him. Straining his
	ears, he could hear the sound of
	tree-fern fronds clashing in the
	wind. He heard the louder sounds
	made by Smithers, stirring ever so
	slightly in the Tube. And then he
	caught a vague, distant uproar. It
	would have been faint and confused
	<a class="pagenum" id="page375" title="375"> </a>at best but the Tube was
	partly blocked by Smithers’ body,
	and there were the multiple bends
	further to complicate the echoes.
	It was no more than a formless
	tumult through which faint yells
	came occasionally. It drew nearer
	and nearer. Tommy heard Smithers
	stir suddenly, almost as if he had
	jumped. Then there were scrapings
	which could only mean one thing:
	Smithers was climbing out of the
	Tube into the jungle of the Fifth-Dimension
	world.</p>

	<p>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.
	There was a sudden crackling
	sound and a voice screamed:</p>

	<p>“<em>Gott!</em>”</p>

	<p>The hair rose at the back of
	Tommy’s neck. Then there came the
	deafening report of an automatic
	pistol roaring itself empty above
	the end of the Tube. Smithers’
	voice, vastly calm:</p>

	<p>“It’s a’right, Mr. Reames. Don’t
	worry.”</p>

	<p>A second pistol took up the
	fusillade. Yells and howls and
	screams arose. Men fled. Something
	came crashing to the mouth of the
	Tube. Smithers’ voice again, with
	purring note in it: “Get down
	there. I’ll hold ’em off.” Then
	single deliberately spaced shots,
	while something came stumbling,
	fumbling, squirming down through
	the Tube, so filling it that Smithers’
	shooting was muted.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Then</span> came the subtly different
	explosions of the Very pistols,
	discharging gas bombs. And
	Tommy drew back, his jaw set, and
	he stood with his weapons very
	ready indeed, and a scratched,
	bleeding, exhausted, panting, terror-stricken
	human being in the tattered
	costume of Earth crawled
	from the Tube and groveled on the
	floor before him.</p>

	<p>Evelyn gave a little exclamation,
	partly of disgust and partly of
	horror. Because this man, who had
	had come from the world of the
	Fifth Dimension, was wholly familiar.
	He was tall, and he was lean,
	emaciated now; he wept sobbingly
	behind thick-lensed spectacles, and
	his lips were far too full and red.
	His name was Von Holtz; he had
	once been laboratory assistant to
	Professor Denham, and he had betrayed
	Evelyn and her father to the
	most ghastly of possible fates for
	a bribe offered him by Jacaro. Now
	he groveled. He was horrible to
	look at. Where he was not scratched
	and torn his flesh was reddened
	as if by fire. He was exhausted,
	and trembling with an awful terror,
	and he gasped out abject, placatory
	ejaculations and suddenly collapsed
	into a sobbing mass on the floor.</p>

	<p>Smithers emerged from the Tube
	with a look of unpleasant satisfaction
	on his face.</p>

	<p>“I chased off the Ragged Men
	with sneeze gas,” he observed with
	a vast calmness. “They ain’t comin’
	back for a while. An’ I always
	wanted to break this guy’s neck. I
	think I’ll do it now.”</p>

	<p>“Not till I’ve questioned him,”
	said Tommy savagely. “He and
	Jacaro have started hell to
	popping, with that Tube design
	they stole from me. 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 Ragged Men to work
	on!”</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER III</span><br />
	The Tree-Fern Jungle</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> watched Smithers drive
	away. The sun was sinking low
	toward the west, and the car stirred
	up a cloud of light-encarmined
	dust as it sped down the long,
	narrow lane to the main road. The
	laboratory had intentionally been
	<a class="pagenum" id="page376" title="376"> </a>built in an isolated spot, but at
	the moment Tommy would have
	given a good deal for a few men
	nearby. Smithers was taking Von
	Holtz to Albany to add his information
	to Denham’s pleas. Denham
	had 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 and ill as he was. And Evelyn
	had refused to go with him.</p>

	<p>“If I stay in the laboratory,” she
	insisted fiercely, “you can slip down
	and I can blow up the Tube after
	you, if the Ragged Men don’t stay
	away. But by yourself….”</p>

	<p>Tommy did not consent, but he
	was helpless. There was danger
	from the Tube. Not only from
	ghastly animals which might come
	through, but from men. Smithers
	had fought the Ragged Men above
	it. He had chased them off, but
	they would come back. Perhaps
	they would come very soon, perhaps
	not until Denham and Smithers
	had returned. If they could be
	held off, the as yet unknown dangers
	from the other Tube—of which
	only the lizards and the Death
	Mist were certainties—might be
	counteracted. In any case, the Tube
	must not be destroyed until its defense
	was hopeless.</p>

	<p>Tommy made up a grim bundle to
	go through the Tube with him: the
	sub-machine gun, extra drums of
	shells, more gas bombs and half a
	dozen grenades. He hung the
	various objects about himself.
	Evelyn watched him miserably.</p>

	<p>“You—you’ll be careful, Tommy?”</p>

	<p>“Nothing else but,” said Tommy.
	He grinned reassuringly. “There’s
	nothing to it, really. Just sitting
	still, listening. If I pop off some
	fireworks I’ll just have to sit down
	and watch them run.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> settled his gas mask about
	his neck and started to enter
	the Tube. Evelyn touched his arm.</p>

	<p>“I’m—frightened, Tommy.”</p>

	<p>“Shucks!” said Tommy. “Also a
	couple of tut-tuts.” He stood up,
	put his arms about her, and kissed
	her until she smiled. “Feel better
	now?” he asked interestedly.</p>

	<p>“Y-yes….”</p>

	<p>“Fine!” said Tommy, and grinned
	again. “When you feel scared again,
	ring me on the phone and I’ll give
	you another treatment.”</p>

	<p>But her smile faded as, beaming
	at her, he crawled into the first section
	of the Tube. And his own expression
	grew serious enough when
	she could see him no longer. The
	situation was not comfortable.
	Evelyn intended to marry him and
	he had to keep her cheerful, but he
	wished she were well away from
	here.</p>

	<p>He tried to move cautiously
	through the Tube, but his bundles
	bumped and rattled. It seemed
	hours before he was climbing up
	the last section into the tree-fern
	jungle. He was caution itself as
	he peered over the edge. It was
	already night upon Earth, but here
	the monstrous, dull-red sun was
	barely sinking. It moved slowly
	along the horizon as it dipped, but
	presently a gray cast come over the
	colorings in the forest. Flying
	things came clattering homeward
	through the masses of fern-fronds
	overhead. He saw a projectile-like
	thing with a lizard’s head and jaws
	go darting through an incredibly
	small opening. It seemed to have no
	wings at all. But then, in one instant,
	a vast wing-surface flashed
	out, made a single gigantic flap—and
	the thing was a projectile
	again, darting through a <em>cheraux-de-frise</em>
	of interlaced fronds without
	a sign of wings to support it.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> inspected his surroundings
	with an infinite care.
	As the darkness deepened he meditatively
	taped a flashlight below
	the barrel of the sub-machine gun.
	<a class="pagenum" id="page377" title="377"> </a>Turned on, it would cast a pitiless
	light upon his target, and the
	sights would be silhouetted against
	the thing to be killed. He hung
	his grenades in a handy row just
	inside the mouth of the Tube and
	set his gas bombs conveniently in
	place, then settled down to watch.</p>

	<p>It was assuredly necessary. Von
	Holtz’s story confirmed his own
	and Denham’s guesses and made
	their worst fears seem optimistic.
	Von Holtz had made a Tube for
	Jacaro, working from the model of
	Tommy’s own construction. It had
	been completed nearly a month before.
	But no jungle odors had
	seeped through that other Tube on
	its completion. It opened in a sub-cellar
	of a structure in the Golden
	City itself, the city of towers and
	soaring spires Denham had
	glimpsed long months before. By
	sheer fortune it opened upon a
	rarely used storeroom where improbable
	small animals—the equivalent
	of rats—played obscenely in
	the light of ever-glowing panels in
	the wall.</p>

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

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> and his men fled back to
	their Tube with plunder and
	precious gems. Their loot was vast
	even beyond their hopes, though
	they had killed other men in gathering
	it. The Golden City was rich
	beyond belief. The very crust of the
	Fifth-Dimension world seemed to
	be composed of other substances
	than those of Earth. The common
	metals of Earth were rare or even
	unknown. The rarer metals of Earth
	were the commonplace ones in the
	Golden City. Even the roofs seemed
	plated with gold, but Jacaro’s gunmen
	saw not one particle of iron
	save in a ring they took from a
	dead man’s finger. There, an acid-etched
	plate of steel was set as if to
	be used for a signet.</p>

	<p>Von Holtz had accompanied the
	raiders perforce on every journey.
	Jeweled bearings for motors; objects
	of commonest use, made of
	gold beat thin for lightness; huge
	ingots of silver for industry; once
	a queer-shaped spool of platinum
	wire that it took two men to carry—these
	things made up the loot
	they scurried back to their rathole
	with. Five raids they made, and
	twenty men they shot down before
	they came upon disaster. On the
	sixth raid an outcry rose and an
	ambush fell upon them.</p>

	<p>Flashes of incredibly vivid
	actinic flame leaped from queer engines
	that opened upon them.
	Curious small truncheonlike weapons
	spat paralyzing electric shocks
	upon them. The twelve gangsters
	fought with the desperation of cornered
	rats, with notched and explosive
	bullets and with streams of
	lead from tommy-guns.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">A chance</span> bullet blew something
	up. One of the flame
	weapons flew to bits, spouting
	what seemed to be liquid thermit
	upon friend and foe alike. The way
	of the gangsters back to their Tube
	was barred. The route they knew
	was a chaos of scorched bodies and
	melting metal. The thermit flowed
	in all directions, seeming to grow
	in volume as it flamed. Jacaro and
	his gangsters fled. They broke
	through the shaken remnants of the
	ambush. The six of them who survived
	the fighting found a man
	somnolently driving a ground
	vehicle with two wheels. They burst
	upon him and, with their scared
	<a class="pagenum" id="page378" title="378"> </a>faces constituting threats in themselves,
	forced him to drive them
	out of the Golden City. They fled
	along aluminum roads into the tree-fern
	forests, while the sky behind
	them seemed to flame as the city
	woke to the tumult in its ways.</p>

	<p>They killed the driver of their
	vehicle when he refused to take
	them farther, and it was that murder
	which saved their lives. It was
	seen by Ragged Men, the outlaws
	of the jungle, and it proved their
	enmity to 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 way to the city.
	Their weapons carried the convoy,
	and they watched wounded prisoners
	killed with excruciating tortures….</p>

	<p>They were with the Ragged Men
	now, Von Holtz believed. He had
	fled a week or more before, when
	Jacaro—already learning the language
	of his half-mad allies—began
	to plan a grandiose attack upon the
	Golden City. Von Holtz was born
	a coward, and he knew where
	Tommy Reames and Denham would
	shortly thrust a Tube through. It
	would come out just where the
	catapult had flung Evelyn and Denham,
	months before, the same spot
	where he had marooned them. He
	searched desperately for that Tube,
	and failed to find it. He was chased
	by carnivores, scratched by thorns,
	and at last pursued by a yelling
	horde of human devils who were
	fired into by Smithers from the
	mouth of the just-finished Tube.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> debated the story
	grimly as he stood guard in
	the Tube in the humid jungle
	night. Many-colored stars winked
	fitfully through the thatch of giant
	ferns overhead. The wind soughed
	unsteadily above the jungle. There
	were queer creakings, and once or
	twice there were distant cries, and
	when the wind died down there
	was a deep-toned croaking audible
	somewhere which sounded rather
	like the croaking of unthinkably,
	monstrous frogs. But it could not
	be that, of course. And once there
	was the sound of dainty movement
	and something passed nearby.
	Tommy Reames saw the shadowy
	outline of a bulk so vast that it
	turned him cold to think about it,
	and it did not seem fair for any
	creature as huge as that to move
	so quietly.</p>

	<p>Then there was a little scuffling
	noise beneath him. A hand touched
	his foot.</p>

	<p>“It’s—it’s me, Tommy.” Evelyn
	crowded up beside him and whispered
	shakenly: “It—it was so
	lonesome down there, so quiet.”</p>

	<p>Tommy frowned unhappily in the
	darkness. If he sent her back, she
	would know it was because he knew
	danger lurked here. Then she
	would worry. If he did not send
	her back….</p>

	<p>“I’ll go back the minute you
	tell me,” she insisted forlornly.
	“Honestly. But—I was lonesome.”</p>

	<p>Tommy slipped his arm about
	her.</p>

	<p>“Woman,” he said sternly. “I’m
	going to let you stay ten minutes,
	so you can brag to our grandchildren
	that you were the first
	Earth-girl ever to be kissed in the
	Fifth Dimension. But I want you
	down in the laboratory so you
	won’t be in my way if I start
	running!”</p>

	<p>His tone was the right one. She
	even laughed a little, softly, as he
	pressed her to him. Then she clung
	to his hand and tried eagerly to
	pierce the darkness all about them.</p>

	<p>“You’ll be able to see something
	presently,” he assured her in a low
	tone. “Just keep quiet, now.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">She</span> gazed up at the stars, then
	around in the so-nearly complete
	obscurity. Tommy answered
	<a class="pagenum" id="page379" title="379"> </a>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 shot into had run
	away. But they would come back
	and they might come with Jacaro
	and his gunmen as allies. If those
	distant sounds were men….</p>

	<p>She withdrew her hand from his.
	Her back was toward him then, as
	she tried to pierce the darkness
	with her eyes. Tommy listened uneasily
	to the distant sound. Suddenly
	he felt Evelyn bump against
	his shoulder. He turned sharply—and
	she was out of the Tube! She
	was walking steadily off into the
	darkness!</p>

	<p>“Evelyn! Evelyn!”</p>

	<p>She did not falter or turn. He
	switched on the flashlight beneath
	his gun barrel and leaped out of
	the Tube himself. The light swept
	about. Evelyn’s lithe figure kept
	moving away from him. Then his
	heart stood still. 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 and himself. Its eyes glowed
	unholily—fascinating, hypnotic, insane….</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Evelyn</span> swayed … and the
	Thing moved! Tommy leaped
	like a madman shouting. As his
	feet struck the ground a mass of
	sold-seeming fungus gave way beneath
	him. He fell sprawling, but
	clutching the gun fast. The spreading
	beam of the flashlight showed
	him Evelyn turning, her face filled
	with a wakening horror—the horror
	of one released from the fascination
	of a snake. She screamed his name.</p>

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

	<p>A stream of flame leaped from the
	gun-muzzle. Explosive bullets
	uttered their queer cracking noise.
	The thing screamed horribly. Its
	cry was hoarsely shrill. The flashlight
	showed it swinging ponderously
	about, with Evelyn held fast
	against its body in a fashion horribly
	reminiscent of a child holding
	a doll.</p>

	<p>Tommy was scrambling upright.
	Jaws clamped, cold horror filling
	him, he aimed again, at the sharp-toothed
	head above Evelyn’s body.
	He could not try a heart shot with
	her in the way. Again the gun spat
	out a burst of explosive lead. And
	Tommy should have been sickened
	by the effect of detonating missiles.
	The thing’s lower jaw was
	shattered, half severed, made useless.
	It should have been killed a
	dozen times over.</p>

	<p>But it screamed again until the
	jungle rang with the uproar, and
	then it fled, still screaming and still
	holding Evelyn clutched fast
	against its scaly breast.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER IV</span><br />
	The Fifth-Dimension World</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> flung himself in pursuit,
	despairing. Evelyn cried
	out once more as the lumbering
	thing fled with her, giving utterance
	to shrieking outcries at which
	the tree-fern jungle shook. It
	leaped once, upon monstrous hind
	legs, but came crashing heavily to
	the ground. Tommy’s explosive bullets
	<a class="pagenum" id="page380" title="380"> </a>had shattered the bones which
	supported the balancing tail. Now
	that huge fleshy member dragged
	uselessly. The thing could not
	progress in its normal fashion of
	leaps covering many yards. It began
	to waddle clumsily, shrieking,
	with Evelyn clasped close. Its jaw
	was a shattered horror. It went
	marching insanely through the
	blackness of the jungle, and with it
	went the unholy din of its anguish,
	and behind it Tommy Reames came
	flinging himself frenziedly in pursuit.</p>

	<p>Normally, the thing should have
	distanced him in seconds. Even
	crippled as it was, it moved swiftly.
	The scaly, duck-shaped head reared
	a good twenty feet above the fallen
	tree-fern fronds which carpeted the
	jungle. The monstrous splayed feet
	stretched a good yard and a half
	from front to rear upon the ground.
	Even its waddling footprints were
	yards apart, and it moved in terror.</p>

	<p>Tommy tripped, fell, and got to
	his feet again, and the shrieking
	tumult was farther away. He raced
	madly toward the sound, the flashlight
	beam cutting swordlike
	through the blackness. He caught
	sight of the warty, scaly bulk of
	the monster at the extreme limit of
	the rays. It was moving faster than
	he could travel. He sobbed helpless
	curses at the thing and put forth
	superhuman exertions. He leaped
	fallen tree-fern trunks, he splashed
	through shallow ponds—later, when
	he knew something of the inhabitants
	of such pools, Tommy would
	turn cold at that memory—and
	raced on, gasping for breath while
	the shrieking of the thing that
	bore Evelyn grew more and more
	distant.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">In</span> five minutes he was almost
	strangling and the thing was
	half a mile ahead of him. In ten,
	he was exhausted, and the shrieking
	noise it made as it waddled
	away was distinctly fainter. In
	fifteen minutes he only heard its
	hooting scream between the harsh
	laboring rasps of his own breath
	as he drew it into tortured lungs.
	But he ran on. He leaped and
	climbed and ran in a terrible obliviousness
	to all dangers the jungle
	might hold.</p>

	<p>He leaped down from one toppled
	tree-trunk upon what seemed be
	another. But the thing he landed
	upon gave beneath his boots in the
	unmistakable fashion of yielding
	flesh. Something vast and angry
	stirred and hissed furiously. Something—a
	head, perhaps—whipped
	toward him among the fallen fern-fronds.
	But he was racing on,
	sobbing, cursing, praying all at
	once.</p>

	<p>Then suddenly he broke out into
	a profuse sweat. His breathing became
	easier, and then he was
	running lightly. His second wind
	had come to him. He was no longer
	exhausted. He felt as if he could
	run forever, and ran on more
	swiftly still. Suddenly the flashlight
	beam showed him a deep
	furrow in the rotting vegetation
	underfoot, and something glistened.
	A musky reek filled his nostrils.
	The thing’s trail—the furrow left
	by its dragging tail! That musky
	reek was the thing’s blood. It was
	bleeding from the wounds the explosive
	bullets had made. It was
	spouting whatever filthy fluid ran
	in its veins even as it waddled onward,
	screaming.</p>

	<p>Five minutes more, and he felt
	that he was gaining on it. Then,
	and he was sure of it. But it was
	half an hour before he actually
	overtook the injured monster
	marching like a mad machine. Its
	mutilated ducklike head held high,
	its colossal feet lifting one after
	the other in a heavy, slowing
	waddle, and its hoarse screams re-echoing
	in a senseless uproar of
	agony.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page381" title="381"> </a><span class="first_word">Tommy’s</span> hands were shaking,
	but his brain was cool with a
	vast coolness. He raced past the
	shrieking monster, and halted in its
	path. He saw Evelyn, a huddled
	bundle, clasped still to the creature’s
	scaly breast. And Tommy
	sent a burst of explosive bullets
	into a gigantic, foot thick ankle-joint.</p>

	<p>The monster toppled, and flung
	out its prehensile lizard claws in
	an instinctive effort to catch itself.
	Evelyn was thrown clear. And
	Tommy, standing alone in the
	blackness of a carboniferous jungle
	upon an alien planet, sent bullet
	after bullet into the shaking, obscenely
	flabby body of the thing.
	The bullets penetrated, and exploded.
	Great masses of flesh upheaved
	and fell away. Great gouts
	of awful smelling fluid were flung
	out and blown to mist by the explosions.
	The thing did not so
	much die as disintegrate under the
	storm of detonating missiles.</p>

	<p>Then Tommy went to Evelyn.
	He was wild with grief. He had
	no faintest hope that she could still
	be living. But as he picked her up
	she moaned softly, and when he
	cried her name she clung to him,
	pressing close in an agony of thankfulness
	almost as devastating as her
	fear had been.</p>

	<p>It was minutes before either of
	them could think of anything other
	than her safety and the fact that
	they were together again. But then
	Tommy said, in a shaken effort to
	be himself again:</p>

	<p>“I—I’d have done better if—if
	I’d had roller skates, maybe.” His
	grin was wholly unconvincing.
	“Why’d you get out of the Tube?”</p>

	<p>“Its eyes!” Evelyn shuddered,
	her own eyes hidden against Tommy’s
	shoulder. “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 was like the way a snake
	fascinates—hypnotizes—a bird….”</p>

	<p>A vagrant wind-eddy submerged
	them in the foul reek of the dead
	thing’s flesh. Tommy stirred.</p>

	<p>“Ugh! Let’s get out of this.
	There’ll be things coming to feed
	on that carcass. They’ll smell it.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn tried to stand, and succeeded.
	She clung to his hand.</p>

	<p>“Do you think you can find the
	Tube again?”</p>

	<p>Tommy was already thinking of
	that. He grimaced.</p>

	<p>“Probably. Back-trail the damned
	thing. If the flashlight battery holds
	out. Its tail left plenty of sign
	for us to follow.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">They</span> started. And Evelyn had
	literally been forgotten in its
	agony by the monster which had
	carried her. Its body, though
	scaled and warty, was flabby and
	soft. Pressed against its breast she
	had been half strangled, but had no
	injuries beyond huge, purple
	bruises which had not yet reached
	the point of stiffness. She followed
	Tommy gamely, and the need for
	action kept her from yielding to the
	reaction from her terror.</p>

	<p>For a long, long time they back-trailed.
	Less than fifteen minutes
	after leaving the carcass of the
	thing Tommy had killed, they
	heard beast-roarings and the sound
	of fighting. But that noise died
	away as they traveled. Presently
	they reached the spot where
	Tommy had leaped upon a huge
	living thing. It was gone now, but
	the impress of a body the thickness
	of a barrel remained upon the
	rotted vegetation of the jungle
	floor. Evelyn shivered when Tommy
	pointed it out.</p>

	<p>“It was large,” said Tommy ruefully.
	“I didn’t even get a good
	look it the thing. Probably just as
	well, though. I might have been—er—delayed.
	Good Lord! What’s
	that?”</p>

	<p>A light had sprung into being
	<a class="pagenum" id="page382" title="382"> </a>somewhere. It was bright. It was
	blinding in its brilliance. Coming
	through the tangled jungle growth,
	it seemed as if spears of flame shot
	through the air, irradiating stray
	patches of scabrous tree-trunk with
	unbearable light. For an instant the
	illumination held. Then there was
	a distant, cracking detonation. The
	unmistakable explosion of gun-cotton
	split the air, and its echoes
	rolled and reverberated through the
	jungle. The light went out. Then
	came a thin, high yelling sound
	which, faint as it was, had something
	of the quality of hysterical
	glee. That crazy ululation kept up
	for several minutes. Evelyn shivered.</p>

	<p>“The Ragged Men,” said Tommy
	very quietly. “They sneaked up on
	the Tube. They flung blazing thermit,
	or something like it, with a
	weapon captured from the Golden
	City. That explosion was the grenades
	going off. I’m afraid the
	Tube’s blown up, Evelyn.”</p>

	<p>She caught her breath, looking
	mutely up at him.</p>

	<p>“Here’s a pistol,” he said briefly,
	“and shells. There’s no use our
	going to the Tube to-night. It
	would be dangerous. We’ll do our
	investigating at dawn.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> found a crevice where tree-fern
	trunks grew close together
	and closed in three sides of
	a sort of roofless cave. He seated
	himself grimly at the opening to
	wait for daybreak. He was not easy
	in his mind. There had been two
	Tubes to the Fifth-Dimension
	world. One had been made by
	Jacaro for his gunmen. That was
	now held by the men of the Golden
	City, as was proved by carnivorous
	lizards and the Death Mist that
	had come down it. The other was
	now blown up or, worse, in the
	hands of the Ragged Men. In any
	case Tommy and Evelyn were
	isolated upon a strange planet in a
	strange universe. To fall into the
	hands of the Ragged Men was to
	die horribly, and the Golden City
	would not now welcome inhabitants
	of the world Jacaro and his men
	had come from. To the civilized
	men of this world, Jacaro’s raids
	would seem invasion. They would
	seem acts of war on the part of
	the people of Earth. And the people
	of Earth, all of them, would
	seem enemies. Jacaro would never
	be identified as an unauthorized invader.
	He would seem to be a
	scout, an advance guard, a spy, for
	hordes of other invaders yet to
	come.</p>

	<p>As the long night wore away,
	Tommy’s grim hopelessness intensified.
	The Ragged Men would hunt
	them for sport and out of hatred
	for all sane human beings. The men
	of the Golden City would be merciless
	to compatriots of Jacaro’s gunmen.
	And Tommy had Evelyn to
	look out for.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">When</span> dawn came, his face
	was drawn and lined. Evelyn
	woke with a little gasp, staring affrightedly
	about her. Then she
	tried gamely to smile.</p>

	<p>“Morning, Tommy,” she said
	shakily. She added in a brave attempt
	at levity: “Where do we go
	from here?”</p>

	<p>“We look at the Tube,” said
	Tommy heavily. “There’s a bare
	chance….”</p>

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

	<p>The Tube was shattered. Its
	mouth was belled out and broken
	<a class="pagenum" id="page383" title="383"> </a>by the explosion of the grenades
	hung within it. A part of the metal
	was molten—from the thermit, past
	question. There was a veritable
	crater fifteen feet across where the
	Tube had come through, and there
	were only shattered shreds of metal
	where the first bend had been.
	Tommy regarded the wreckage
	grimly. A pair of oxidized copper
	wires, their insulation burnt off,
	stung his eyes as he traced them
	to where they vanished in torn-up
	earth. He took them in his bare
	hands. The tingling sting of a low-voltage
	current made his heart leap.
	Then he smiled grimly. He touched
	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.</p>

	<p>His hands stung sharply. Someone
	was there, ringing the phone!
	Evelyn came toward him, her face
	resolutely cheerful.</p>

	<p>“No hope, Tommy?” she asked.
	“I just saw the telephone, all battered
	up. I guess we’re pretty badly
	off.”</p>

	<p>“Get it!” said Tommy feverishly.
	“For Heaven’s sake, get it! The
	phone wires weren’t broken. If we
	can make it work….”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> instrument was a wreck.
	It was crumpled and torn and
	apparently useless. The diaphragm
	of the receiver was punctured. The
	transmitter seemed to have been
	crushed. But Tommy worked desperately
	over them, and twisted the
	earth-wires into place.</p>

	<p>“Hello, hello, hello!”</p>

	<p>The voice that answered was
	Smithers’, strained and fearful:</p>

	<p>“Mr. Reames! Thank Gawd!
	What’s happened? Is Miss Evelyn
	all right?”</p>

	<p>“So far,” said Tommy. “Listen!”
	He told curtly just what had happened.
	“Now, what’s happened on
	Earth?”</p>

	<p>“Hell!” panted Smithers bitterly.
	“Hell’s been poppin’! The Death
	Mist’s two miles across an’ still
	growin an’ movin’. Four townships
	under martial law an’ movin’ out
	the people. It got thirty of ’em
	this morning. An’ they think the
	professor’s crazy an’ nobody’ll
	listen to him!”</p>

	<p>“Damn!” said Tommy. He considered,
	grimly. “Look here, Von
	Holtz ought to convince them.”</p>

	<p>“He caved in, outa his head, before
	I got to Albany. He’s in hospital
	now, ravin’. He’s got some
	kinda fever the doctors don’t know
	nothin’ about. Sick as hell!”</p>

	<p>Tommy compressed his lips. Matters
	were more desperate even than
	he had believed. He informed his
	helper measuredly:</p>

	<p>“Evelyn and I can’t stay around
	here, Smithers. The Ragged Men
	may come back, and it’ll be weeks
	before you and the professor can
	get another Tube through. I’m
	going to make for the Golden City
	and work on them there to cut off
	the Death Mist.”</p>

	<p>There was an inarticulate sound
	from Smithers.</p>

	<p>“Tell the professor. If he can find
	Jacaro’s Tube, he’ll work out some
	way to communicate through it.
	We’ve got to stop that Death Mist
	somehow. And we don’t know what
	else they may try.”</p>

	<p>Smithers tried to speak, and
	could not. He merely made grief-stricken
	noises. He worshiped
	Evelyn and she was isolated in a
	hostile world which was vastly
	more unreachable than could be
	measured by millions or trillions of
	miles. But at last he said unsteadily:</p>

	<p>“We’ll be comin’, Mr. Reames.
	We’ll come, if we have t’ blow half
	the world apart!”</p>

	<p>Tommy said grimly: “Then hunt
	up the Golden City and bring extra
	ammunition. Mostly explosive bullets.
	Good-by.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page384" title="384"> </a><span class="first_word">He</span> untwisted the wires from
	the shattered phone units and
	thrust them in his pocket. Evelyn
	was picking up stray small objects
	from the ground.</p>

	<p>“I’ve found some cartridges,
	Tommy,” she said constrainedly,
	“and a pistol I think will work.”</p>

	<p>“Then listen for visitors,” commanded
	Tommy, “while I look for
	more.”</p>

	<p>For half in hour he scoured the
	area around the shattered Tube.
	He found where some clumsy-wheeled
	thing had been pushed to a
	spot near the Tube—undoubtedly
	the machine which had sprayed the
	flaming stuff upon it. He found
	two pockets full of shells. He found
	an extra magazine, for the sub-machine
	gun. It was nearly full
	and only a little bent. That was
	all.</p>

	<p>“Now,” he said briskly, “we’ll
	start. I’ve got a hunch the jungle
	thins out over that way. We’ll find
	a clearing, try to locate the Golden
	City either by seeing it or by
	watching for aircraft flying to it,
	and then make for it. They’re
	making war on Earth there. They
	don’t understand. We’ve got to
	make them understand. O. K.?”</p>

	<p>Evelyn nodded. She put out her
	hand suddenly, a brave slender figure
	amid the incredible growths
	about her.</p>

	<p>“I’m glad, Tommy,” she said
	slowly, “that if—if anything happens,
	it will be the—the two of
	us. Funny, isn’t it?”</p>

	<p>Tommy kissed the twisted little
	smile from her face.</p>

	<p>“And now that that’s over,” he
	observed, ashamed of his own emotion,
	“let’s go!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">They</span> went. Tommy watched
	the sun and kept approximately
	a straight line. They traveled three
	miles, and the jungle broke abruptly.
	Before them was a spongy
	surface neither solid earth or
	marsh. It shelved gently down to
	a vast and steaming morass upon
	which the dull-red sun shone hotly.
	It was vast, that marsh, and a
	steaming haze hung over it, and it
	seemed to reach to the world’s end.
	But vaguely, through the attenuating
	upper layers of the steamy
	haze, they saw the outlines of a city
	beyond: tall towers and soaring
	spires, buildings of a grace and
	perfection of outline unknown
	upon the Earth. And faint golden
	flashes came from the walls and
	pinnacles of that city. They were
	reflections of this planet’s monster
	sun, upon walls and roofs of plated
	gold.</p>

	<p>“The Golden City,” said Tommy
	heavily. He looked at the horrible
	marsh between. His heart sank.</p>

	<p>And then there was a sudden
	screaming ululation nearby. A half-naked
	man was running out of
	sight. Two others danced and
	capered and yelled in insane glee,
	pointing at Tommy and at Evelyn.
	The running man’s outcry was
	echoed from far away. Then it
	was taken up and repeated here
	and there in the jungle.</p>

	<p>“They saw our tracks near the
	Tube,” snapped Tommy bitterly.
	“Oh, what a fool I am! Now they’ll
	ring us in.”</p>

	<p>He seized Evelyn’s hand and began
	to run. There was a little rise
	in the ground a hundred yards
	away, with a clump of leafy ferns
	to shade it. They reached it as
	other half-naked, wholly mad human
	forms burst out of the jungle
	to yell and caper and make derisive
	and horrible gestures at the fugitives.</p>

	<p>“Here we fight,” said Tommy
	grimly. “The ground’s open, anyhow.
	We fight here, and very probably
	we die here. But first….”</p>

	<p>He knelt down and drew the
	finest of fine beads upon a bearded
	man who carried a glittering truncheonlike
	club which, by the way
	<a class="pagenum" id="page385" title="385"> </a>it was carried, was more than
	merely a bludgeon. He pulled the
	trigger for a single shot.</p>

	<p>The bullet struck the capering
	Ragged Man fairly in the chest.
	And it exploded.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER V</span><br />
	The Fight in the Marsh</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Twice,</span> within the next two
	hours, the Ragged Men mustered
	the courage to charge. They
	came racing across the semi-solid
	ooze like the madmen they were.
	Their yells and shouts were
	maniacal howls of blood-lust or
	worse. And twice Tommy broke
	their rush with a savage ruthlessness.
	The sub-machine-gun’s first
	magazine was nearly empty. It was
	an unhandy weapon for single-shot
	work but it was loaded with explosive
	shells. The second rush he
	stopped with an automatic pistol.
	There were half-naked bodies partly
	buried in the ooze all the way
	from the jungle’s edge to within
	ten yards of the hillock on which
	he and Evelyn had taken refuge.</p>

	<p>It was hot there, terribly hot.
	The air was stifling. It fairly
	reeked of moisture and the smells
	from the swamp behind them were
	sickening. Tommy began to transfer
	the shells from the spare bent
	magazine to the one he had carried
	with the gun.</p>

	<p>“We’ve a couple of reasons to
	be thankful,” he observed. “One is
	that there’s a bit of shade overhead.
	The other is that we had the
	big magazines for this gun. We
	still have nearly ninety shells, besides
	the ones for the pistols.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn said soberly:</p>

	<p>“We’re going to be killed, don’t
	you think, Tommy?”</p>

	<p>Tommy frowned.</p>

	<p>“I’m rather afraid we are,” he
	said irritably. “Confound it, and I’d
	thought of such excellent arguments
	to use in the City back yonder!
	Smithers said the Death Mist
	was two miles across, to-day, and
	still growing. The people in the
	city are still pouring the stuff
	down through Jacaro’s Tube.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn smiled faintly. She
	touched his hand.</p>

	<p>“Trying to keep me from worrying?
	Tommy….” She hesitated
	until he growled a question. “Please—remember
	that when Daddy and I
	were in the jungle before, we saw
	what these Ragged Men do to prisoners
	they take. I just want you to
	promise that—well, you won’t wait
	too long, in hopes of somehow saving
	me.”</p>

	<p>Tommy stared at her. Then he
	decisively reached forward and put
	his hand over her mouth.</p>

	<p>“Keep quiet,” he said gently.
	“They shan’t capture you. I promise
	that. Now keep quiet.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">There</span> was only silence for a
	long time. Now and again a
	hidden figure screamed in rage at
	them. Now and again some flapping
	thing sped toward the jungle’s
	edge. Once a naked arm thrust one
	of the golden truncheons from behind
	its cover, pointing at a flying
	thing a few yards overhead.
	The flying thing suddenly toppled,
	turning over and over before it
	crashed to the ground. There were
	howls of glee.</p>

	<p>“They seem mad,” said Tommy
	meditatively, “and they act like
	lunatics, but I’ve got a hunch of
	some sort about them. But what?”</p>

	<p>Sunlight gleamed on something
	golden beyond the jungle’s edge.
	Naked figures went running to the
	spot. An exultant tumult arose.</p>

	<p>“Now they try another trick,”
	Tommy observed dispassionately.
	“I remember that at the Tube they
	had pushed something on
	wheels….”</p>

	<p>The sub-machine gun was unhandy
	for accurate single shots,
	and no pistol can be used to effect
	<a class="pagenum" id="page386" title="386"> </a>at long ranges. To conserve ammunition,
	Tommy had been shooting
	only at relatively close targets,
	allowing the Ragged Men immunity
	at over two hundred yards. But
	now he flung over the continuous-fire
	stud. He watched grimly.</p>

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

	<p>“That’s the thing,” said Tommy
	dispassionately, “which made the
	flare of light last night. It blew
	up the Tube. And Von Holtz told
	me—hm—his friends, in the
	City….”</p>

	<p>He sighted carefully. The wagon
	and its contents were surrounded
	by a leaping, capering mob. They
	shook their fists in an insane
	hatred.</p>

	<p>A storm of bullets burst upon
	them. Tommy was traversing the
	little gun with the trigger pressed
	down. His lips were set tightly.
	And suddenly it seemed as if the
	solid earth burst asunder! There
	had been an instant in which the
	bullet-bursts were visible. They
	tore and shattered the howling mob
	of Ragged Men. But then they
	struck the golden weapon. A sheet
	of blue-white flame leaped skyward
	and round about. A blast of blistering,
	horrible heat smote upon the
	beleaguered pair. The moisture of
	the ooze between them and the
	jungle flashed into steam. A section
	of the jungle itself, a hundred
	yards across, shriveled and died.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Steam</span> shot upward in a monstrous
	cloud—miles high, it
	seemed. Then, almost instantly,
	there was nothing left of the
	Ragged Men about the golden
	weapon, or of the weapon itself,
	but an unbearable blue-white light
	which poured away and trickled
	here and there and seemed to grow
	in volume as it flamed.</p>

	<p>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’s neck lifted, as a dog’s
	hackles lift at sight of an enemy.</p>

	<p>“Keep your head down, Evelyn,”
	said Tommy composedly. “I have
	an idea that the burning stuff
	gives off a lot of ultra-violet. Von
	Holtz was badly burned, you remember.”</p>

	<p>Naked figures flashed forward
	from the jungle beyond the burned
	area. Tommy shot them down
	grimly. He discarded the sub-machine
	gun with its explosive
	shells for the automatics. Some of
	his targets were only wounded.
	Those wounded men dragged themselves
	forward, screaming their
	rage. Tommy felt sickened, as if he
	were shooting down madmen. A
	voice roared a rage-thickened order
	from the jungle. The assault slackened.</p>

	<p>Five minutes later it began again,
	and this time the attackers waded
	out into the softer ooze and flung
	themselves down, and then began
	a half-swimming, half-crawling
	progress behind bits of tree-fern
	stump, or merely pushing walls of
	the jellylike mud before them. The
	white light expanded and grew
	huge—but it dulled as it expanded,
	and presently seemed no hotter
	than molten steel, and later still it
	was no more than a dull-red heat,
	and later yet….</p>

	<p>Tommy shot savagely. Some of
	the Ragged Men died. More did
	not.</p>

	<p>“I’m afraid,” he said coolly,
	“they’re going to get us. It seems
	rather purposeless, but I’m afraid
	they’re going to win.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn thrust a shaking hand
	skyward. “There, Tommy!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page387" title="387"> </a><span class="first_word">A strange,</span> angular flying
	thing was moving steadily
	across the marsh, barely above the
	steamlike haze that hung in
	thinning layers about its foulness.
	The flying thing moved with a
	machinelike steadiness, and the sun
	twinkled upon something bright
	and shining before it.</p>

	<p>“A flying machine,” said Tommy
	shortly. His mind leaped ahead and
	his lips 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.”</p>

	<p>The flying thing grew closer,
	grew distinct. A wail arose from
	the Ragged Men. Some of them
	leaped to their feet and fled. A man
	came out into the open and shook
	his fists at the angular thing in the
	air. He screamed at it, and such
	ghastly hatred was in the sound
	that Evelyn shuddered.</p>

	<p>Tommy could see it plainly, now.
	Its single wing was thick and
	queerly unlike the air-foils of
	Earth. A framework hung below it,
	but it had no balancing tail. And
	there was a glittering something
	before it that obviously was its
	propelling mechanism, but as obviously
	was not a screw propeller.
	It swept overhead, with a man in
	it looking downward. Tommy
	watched coolly. It was past him,
	sweeping toward the jungle. It
	swung sharply to the right, banking
	steeply. Smoking things
	dropped from it, which expanded
	into columns of swiftly-descending
	vapor. They reached the jungle and
	blotted it out. The flying machine
	swung again and swept back to the
	left. More smoking things dropped.
	Ragged Men erupted from the jungle’s
	edge in screaming groups,
	only to writhe and fall 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 his fire,
	looking upward. A hundred yards,
	fifty yards, twenty-five….</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> flying machine soared in
	easy, effortless circles. The man
	in it was watching, making no effort
	to interfere.</p>

	<p>Tommy shot down the five men,
	one after the other, with a curiously
	detached feeling that their vice-brutalized
	faces would haunt him
	forever. Then he stood up.</p>

	<p>The flying machine banked,
	turned, and swept toward him, and
	a smoking thing dropped toward the
	earth. It was a gas bomb like those
	that had wiped out the Ragged Men.
	It would strike not ten yards away.</p>

	<p>“Your mask!” snapped Tommy.</p>

	<p>He helped Evelyn adjust it. The
	billowing white cloud rolled around
	him. He held his breath, clapped on
	his mask, exhaled until his lungs
	ached, and was breathing comfortably.
	The mask was effective protection.
	And then he held Evelyn
	comfortably close.</p>

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

	<p>The flying machine was circling
	and soaring silently overhead. As
	the mist drew aside, the pilot dived
	down and down. And Tommy
	emptied his automatic at the glittering
	thing which drew it. There
	was a crashing bolt of blue light.
	The machine canted, spun about
	with one wing almost vertical, that
	wing-tip struck the marsh, and it
	settled with a monstrous splashing
	of mud. All was still.</p>

	<p>Tommy reloaded, watching it
	keenly.</p>

	<p>“The framework isn’t smashed
	up, anyhow,” he observed grimly.
	<a class="pagenum" id="page388" title="388"> </a>“The pilot 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
	watched again, his eyes narrow.
	The pilot was utterly still. “He may
	be knocked out. I hope so! I’m
	going to see.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Automatic</span> held ready,
	Tommy moved toward the
	crashed machine. It had splashed
	into the ooze less than a hundred
	yards away. Tommy moved cautiously.
	Twenty yards away, the
	pilot moved feebly. He had knocked
	his head against some part of his
	machine. A moment later he opened
	his eyes and stared about. The next
	instant he had seen Tommy and
	moved convulsively. A glittering
	thing appeared in his hand—and
	Tommy fired. The glittering thing
	flew to one side and the pilot
	clapped his hand to a punctured
	forearm. He went white, but his
	jaw set. He stared at Tommy, waiting
	for death.</p>

	<p>“For the love of Pete,” said
	Tommy irritably, “I’m not going to
	kill you! You tried to kill me,
	and it was very annoying, but I
	have some things I want to tell
	you.”</p>

	<p>He stopped and felt foolish because
	his words were, of course,
	unintelligible. The pilot was staring
	amazedly at him. Tommy’s tone
	had been irritated, certainly, but
	there was neither hatred nor
	triumph in it. He waved his hand.</p>

	<p>“Come on and I’ll bandage you
	up and see if we can make you
	understand a few things.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn came running through
	the muck.</p>

	<p>“He didn’t hurt you, Tommy?”
	she gasped. “I saw you shoot—”</p>

	<p>The pilot fairly jumped. At first
	glance he had recognized her as a
	woman. Tommy growled that he’d
	had to “shoot the damn fool
	through the arm.” The pilot spoke,
	curiously. Evelyn looked at his arm
	and exclaimed. He was holding it
	above the wound to stop the bleeding.
	Evelyn looked about helplessly
	for something with which to
	bandage it.</p>

	<p>“Make pads with your handkerchief,”
	grunted Tommy. “Take my
	tie to hold them in place.”</p>

	<p>The prisoner looked curiously
	from one to the other. His color
	was returning. As Evelyn worked
	on his arm he seemed to grow excited
	at some inner thought. He
	spoke again, and looked at once
	puzzled and confirmed in some conviction
	when they were unable to
	comprehend. When Evelyn finished
	her first-aid task he smiled suddenly,
	flashing white teeth at them.
	He even made a little speech which
	was humorously apologetic, to
	judge by its tone. When they
	turned to go back to their fortress
	he went with them without a trace
	of hesitation.</p>

	<p>“Now what?” asked Evelyn.</p>

	<p>“They’ll be looking for him in a
	little while,” said Tommy curtly.
	“If we can convince him we’re not
	enemies, he’ll keep them from giving
	us more gas.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> 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 metal came out, with
	a silvery-white stylus attached to
	it. The pilot sat down the instant
	they stopped and began to draw in
	white lines on the black surface.
	He drew a picture of a man and an
	angular flying machine, and then
	a sketchy, impressionistic outline
	of a city’s towers. He drew a circle
	to enclose all three drawings and
	indicated himself, the machine, and
	the distant city. Tommy nodded
	comprehension as the pilot looked
	up. Then came a picture of a half-naked
	man shaking his fists at the
	three encircled sketches. The half-naked
	<a class="pagenum" id="page389" title="389"> </a>man stood beneath a roughly
	indicated tree-fern.</p>

	<p>“Clever,” said Tommy, as a larger
	circle enclosed that with the city
	and the machine. “He’s identifying
	himself, and saying the Ragged
	Men are enemies of himself and his
	Golden City, too. That much is not
	hard to get.”</p>

	<p>He nodded vigorously as the pilot
	looked up again. And then he
	watched as a lively, tiny sketch
	grew on the black slab, showing
	half a dozen men, garbed almost as
	Tommy was, using weapons which
	could only be sub-machine guns and
	automatic pistols. They were obviously
	Jacaro’s gangsters. The
	pilot handed over the plate and
	watched absorbedly as Tommy fumbled
	with the stylus. He drew, not
	well but well enough, an outline
	of the towers of New York. The
	difference in architecture was striking.
	There followed tiny figures of
	himself and Evelyn—with a drily
	murmured, “This isn’t a flattering
	portrait of you, Evelyn!”—and a
	circle enclosing them with the
	towers of New York.</p>

	<p>The pilot nodded in his turn.
	And then Tommy encircled the
	previously drawn figures of the
	gangsters with New York, just as
	the Ragged Men had been linked
	with the other city. And a second
	circle linked gangsters and Ragged
	Men together.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“I’m</span> saying,” observed Tommy,
	“that Jacaro and his mob are
	the Ragged Men of our world,
	which may not be wrong, at that.”</p>

	<p>There was no question but that
	the pilot took his meaning. He
	grinned in a friendly fashion, and
	winced as his wounded arm hurt
	him. Ruefully, he looked down at
	his bandage. Then he pressed a
	tiny stud at the top of the black-metal
	pad and all the white lines
	vanished instantly. He drew a new
	circle, with tree-ferns scattered
	about its upper third—a tiny sketch
	of a city’s towers. He pointed to
	that and to the city visible through
	the mist—a second city, and a third,
	in other places. He waved his hand
	vaguely about, then impatiently
	scribbled over the middle third of
	the circle and handed it back to
	Tommy.</p>

	<p>Tommy grinned ruefully.</p>

	<p>“A map,” he said amusedly. “He’s
	pointed out his own city and a
	couple of others, and he wants us
	to tell him where we come from.
	Evelyn—er—how are we going to
	explain a trip through five dimensions
	in a sketch?”</p>

	<p>Evelyn shook her head. But a
	shadow passed over their heads.
	The pilot leaped to his feet and
	shouted. There were three planes
	soaring above them, and the pilot
	in the first was in the act of releasing
	a smoking object over the
	side. At the grounded pilot’s shout,
	he flung his ship into a frantic dive,
	while behind him the smoking
	thing billowed out a thicker and
	thicker cloud. His plane was nearly
	hidden by the vapor when he released
	it. It fell two hundred yards
	and more away, and the white mist
	spread and spread. But it fell short
	of the little hillock.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“Quick</span> thinking,” said Tommy
	coolly. “He thought we had
	this man a prisoner, and he’d be
	better off dead. But—”</p>

	<p>Their captive was shouting again.
	His head thrown back, he called
	sentence after sentence aloft while
	the three ships soared back and
	forth above their heads, soundless
	as bats. One of the three rose
	steeply and soared away toward the
	city. Their captive, grinning,
	turned and nodded his head
	satisfiedly. Then he sat down to
	wait.</p>

	<p>Twenty minutes later a monstrous
	machine with ungainly flapping
	wings came heavily over the swamp.
	<a class="pagenum" id="page390" title="390"> </a>It checked and settled with a terrific
	flapping and an even more terrific
	din. Half a dozen armed men
	waited warily for the three to approach.
	The golden weapons lifted
	alertly as they drew near. The
	wounded man explained at some
	length. His explanation was dismissed
	brusquely. A man advanced
	and held out his hands for Tommy’s
	weapons.</p>

	<p>“I don’t like it,” growled Tommy,
	“but we’ve got to think of Earth.
	If you get a chance hide your
	gun, Evelyn.”</p>

	<p>He pushed on the safety catches
	and passed over his guns. The pilot
	he had shot down led them onto
	the fenced-in deck of the monstrous
	ornithopter. Machinery roared. The
	wings began to beat. They were
	nearly invisible from the speed of
	their flapping when the ship lifted
	vertically from the ground. It rose
	straight up for fifty feet, the motion
	of the wings changed subtly,
	and it swept forward.</p>

	<p>It swung in a vast half circle
	and headed back across the marsh
	for the Golden City. Five minutes
	of noisy flight during which the
	machine flapped its way higher and
	higher above the marsh—which
	seemed more noisome and horrible
	still from above—and then the
	golden towers of the city were below.
	Strange and tapering and
	beautiful, they were. No single line
	was perfectly straight, nor was any
	form ungraceful. These towers
	sprang upward in clean-soaring
	curves toward the sky. Bridges between
	them were gossamerlike
	things that seemed lace spun out
	in metal. And as Tommy looked
	keenly and saw the jungle crowding
	close against the city’s metal
	walls, the flapping of the ornithopter’s
	wings changed again and it
	seemed to plunge downward like a
	stone toward a narrow landing
	place amid the great city’s towering
	buildings.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER VI</span><br />
	The Golden City</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> thing that struck Tommy
	first of all was the scarcity of
	men in the city, compared to its
	size. The next thing was the entire
	absence of women. The roar of
	machines smote upon his consciousness
	as a bad third, though they
	made din enough. Perhaps he
	ignored the machine noises because
	the ornithopter on which they had
	arrived made such a racket itself.</p>

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

	<p>“Evelyn! They launch these planes
	with catapults like those our battleships
	use! They don’t take off
	under their own power!”</p>

	<p>The six men on the ornithopter
	put their shoulders to their machine
	and trundled it out of the way.
	Tommy blinked at the sight.</p>

	<p>“No field attendants!” He gazed
	out across the open portion of the
	land area and saw an elevated
	thoroughfare below. Some sort of
	vehicle, gleaming like gold, moved
	swiftly on two wheels. There was a
	walkway in the center of the street
	with room for a multitude. But
	only two men were in sight upon
	it. “Lord!” said Tommy. “Where
	are the people?”</p>

	<p>There was brief talk among the
	crew of the ornithopter. Two of
	<a class="pagenum" id="page391" title="391"> </a>them picked up Tommy’s weapons,
	and the pilot he had wounded
	made a gesture indicating that he
	should follow. He led the way to
	an arched door in the nearest
	tower. A little two-wheeled car was
	waiting. They got into it and the
	pilot fumbled with the controls. As
	he worked at it—rather clumsily on
	account of his arm—the rest of the
	ornithopter’s crew came in. They
	wheeled out another vehicle,
	climbed into it, and shot away down
	a sloping passage.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Their</span> own vehicle followed
	and emerged upon the paved
	and nearly empty thoroughfare.
	Tall buildings rose all about them,
	with curved walls soaring dizzily
	skyward. There was every sign of
	a populous city, including the dull
	drumming roar of many machines,
	but the streets were empty. The
	little machine moved swiftly for
	minutes. Twice it swung aside and
	entered a sloping incline. Once it
	went up. The other time it dived
	down seventy feet on a four-hundred-foot
	ramp. Then it swung
	sharply to the right, meandered into
	a street-level way leading into the
	heart of a monster building, and
	stopped. And in all its travel it had
	not passed fifty people.</p>

	<p>The pilot-turned-chauffeur turned
	and grinned amiably, and led the
	way again. Steps—twenty or thirty
	of them. Then they emerged suddenly
	into a vast room. It must
	have been a hundred and fifty feet
	long, fifty wide, and nearly as high.
	It was floored with alternate blocks
	of what seemed to be an iron-hard
	black wood and the omnipresent
	golden metal. Columns and pilasters
	about the place gave forth the same
	subdued deep golden glow. Light
	streamed from panels inset in the
	wall and ceiling—a curious saffron-red
	light. There was a massive
	table of the hard black wood.
	Chairs with curiously designed
	backs were ranged about it. They
	were benches, really, but they
	served the purpose of chairs. Each
	was too narrow to hold more than
	one person. The room was empty.</p>

	<p>They waited. After a long time
	a man in a blue tunic came into the
	room and sat down on one of the
	benches. A long time later, another
	man came in, in red; and another
	and another, until there were a
	dozen in all. They regarded Tommy
	and Evelyn with a weary suspicion.
	One of them—an old man
	with a white beard—asked questions.
	The pilot answered them. At
	a word, the two men with Tommy’s
	weapons placed them on the table.
	They were inspected casually, as
	familiar things. They probably
	were, since some of Jacaro’s gunmen
	had been killed in a fight in
	this city. Another question.</p>

	<p>The pilot explained briefly and
	offered Tommy the black-metal pad
	again. It still contained the incomplete
	map of a hemisphere, and
	was obviously a repetition of the
	question of where he came from.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> took it, frowning
	thoughtfully. Then an idea
	struck him. He found the little
	stud which, pressed by the pad’s
	owner, had erased the previous
	drawings. He pressed it and the
	lines disappeared. And Tommy
	drew, crudely enough, that complicated
	diagram which is supposed to
	represent a cube which is a cube
	in four dimensions: a tesseract.
	Upon one surface of the cube he
	indicated the curving towers of the
	Golden City. Upon a surface representing
	a plane beyond the three
	dimensions of normal experience,
	he repeated the angular tower
	structures of New York. He
	shrugged rather hopelessly as he
	passed it over, but to his amazement
	it was understood at once.</p>

	<p>The little black pad passed from
	hand to hand and an animated discussion
	<a class="pagenum" id="page392" title="392"> </a>took place. One rather hard-faced
	man was the most animated
	of all. The bearded old man demurred.
	The hard-faced man insisted.
	Tommy could see that his
	pilot’s expression was becoming
	uneasy. But then a compromise
	seemed to be arrived at. The
	bearded man spoke a single, ceremonial
	phrase and the twelve men
	rose. They moved toward various
	doors and one by one left, until the
	room was empty.</p>

	<p>But the pilot looked relieved. He
	grinned cheerfully at Tommy and
	led the way back to the two-wheeled
	vehicle. The two men with
	Tommy’s weapons vanished. And
	again there was a swift, cyclonelike
	passage along empty ways with the
	throbbing of machinery audible
	everywhere. Into the base of a second
	building, up endless stairs, past
	innumerable doors. It seemed to
	Tommy that he heard voices behind
	some of them, and they were women’s
	voices.</p>

	<p>At a private, triple knock a door
	opened wide, and the pilot led the
	way into a room, closed and locked
	the door behind him, and called.
	A woman’s voice cried out in astonishment.
	Through an inner arch a
	woman came running eagerly. Her
	face went blank at sight of Tommy
	and Evelyn, and her hand flew to
	a tiny golden object at her waist.
	Then, at the pilot’s chuckle, she
	flushed vividly.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Hours</span> later, Tommy and
	Evelyn were able to talk it
	over. They were alone then, and
	could look out an oval window
	upon the Golden City all about
	them. It was dark, but saffron-red
	panels glowed in building walls all
	along the thoroughfares, and tiny
	glowing dots in the soaring spires
	of gold told of people within other
	dwellings like this.</p>

	<p>“As I see it,” said Tommy restlessly,
	“the Council—and it must
	have been that in the big room
	to-day—put us in our friend’s hands
	to learn the language. He’s been
	working with me four hours, drawing
	pictures, and I’ve been writing
	down words I’ve learned. I must
	have several hundred of them. But
	we do our best talking with pictures.
	And Evelyn, this city’s in a
	bad fix.”</p>

	<p>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
	even guess at.”</p>

	<p>“You probably have,” admitted
	Tommy, frowning. “Check up on
	this: our friend’s name is Aten,
	and he’s an air-pilot and also has
	something to do with growing foodstuffs
	in some special towers where
	they grow crops by artificial light
	only. Some of the plants he
	sketched look amazingly like wheat,
	by the way. The name of the town
	is”—he looked at his notes—“Yugna.
	There are some other
	towns, ten or twelve of them. Rahn
	is the nearest, and it’s worse off
	than this one.”</p>

	<p>“Of course,” said Evelyn, smiling.
	“They use <em>cuyal</em> openly, there!”</p>

	<p>“How’d you learn all that?” demanded
	Tommy.</p>

	<p>“Ahnya told me. We made gestures
	and smiled at each other. We
	understood perfectly. She’s crazy
	about her husband, and I—well
	she knows I’m going to marry you,
	so….”</p>

	<p>Tommy grunted.</p>

	<p>“I suppose she explained with
	a smile and gestures just how much
	of a strain it is, simply keeping the
	city going?”</p>

	<p>“Of course,” said Evelyn calmly.
	“The city’s fighting against the
	jungle, which grows worse all the
	time. They used to grow their foodstuffs
	in the open fields. Then
	within the city. Now they use
	empty towers and artificial light. I
	don’t know why.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page393" title="393"> </a><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> grunted again.</p>

	<p>“This planet’s just had, or is
	having, a change of geologic period,”
	he explained, frowning. “The
	plants people need to live on aren’t
	adapted to the new climate and new
	plants fit for food are scarce. They
	have to grow food under shelter,
	now, and their machines take an
	abnormal amount of supervision—I
	don’t know why. The air-conditions
	for the food plants; the
	machines that fight back the jungle
	creepers which thrive in the new
	climate and try to crawl into the
	city to smother it; the power
	machines; the clothing machines—a
	million machines have to be kept
	going to keep back the jungle and
	fight off starvation and just hold
	on doggedly to the bare fact of
	civilization. And they’re short-handed.
	The law of diminishing returns
	seems to operate. They’re
	trying to maintain a civilization
	higher than their environment will
	support. They work until they’re
	ready to drop, just to stay in the
	same place. And the monotony and
	the strain makes some of them take
	to <em>cuyal</em> for relief.”</p>

	<p>He surveyed the city from the
	oval window, frowning in thought.</p>

	<p>“It’s a drug which grows wild,”
	he added slowly. “It peps them up.
	It makes the monotony and the
	weariness bearable. And then, suddenly,
	they break. They hate the
	machines and the city and everything
	they ever knew or did. It’s
	a sort of delayed-action psychosis
	which goes off with a bang. Some
	of them go amuck in the city,
	using their belt-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 to the jungle.
	And then they’re Ragged Men, half
	mad at all times and wholly mad
	as far as the city and its machines
	are concerned.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn linked her arm in his.</p>

	<p>“Somehow,” she told him, smiling,
	“I think one Thomas Reames is
	working out ways and means to
	help a city named Yugna.”</p>

	<p>“Not yet,” said Tommy grimly.
	“We have to think of Earth. Not
	everybody in the Council approved
	of us. Aten told me one chap
	argued that we ought to be shoved
	out into the jungle again as compatriots
	of Jacaro. And the
	machines were especially short-handed
	to-day because of a diversion
	of labor to get ready something
	monstrous and really deadly
	to send down the Tube to Earth.
	We’ve got to find out what that is,
	and stop it.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">But</span> on the second day afterward,
	when he and Evelyn
	were summoned before the Council
	again, he still had not found out.
	During those two days 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 which brought up
	superheated steam from the source
	of boiling springs long since built
	over; that iron was a rare metal,
	and consequently there was no
	dynamo in the city and magnetism
	was practically an unknown force;
	that electrokinetics was a laboratory
	puzzle—or had been, when
	there was leisure for research—while
	the science of electrostatics
	had progressed far past its state on
	Earth. The little truncheonlike
	weapons carried a stored-up static
	charge measurable only in hundreds
	of thousands of volts, which could
	be released in flashes which were
	effective up to a hundred feet or
	more.</p>

	<p>And he learned that the thermit-throwers
	actually spat out in normal
	operation tiny droplets of
	matter Aten could not describe
	clearly, but which seemed to be
	<a class="pagenum" id="page394" title="394"> </a>radioactive with a period of five
	minutes or less; that in Rahn, the
	nearest other city, <em>cuyal</em> was taken
	openly, and the jungle was growing
	into the town with no one to hold
	it back; that two generations since
	there had been twenty cities like
	this one, but that a bare dozen still
	survived; that there was a tradition
	that human beings had come
	upon this planet from another
	world where other human beings
	had harried them, and that in that
	other world there were divers races
	of humanity, of different colors,
	whereas in the world of the Golden
	City all mankind was one race;
	that Tommy’s declaration that he
	came from another group of dimensions
	had been debated and, on
	re-examination of Jacaro’s Tube, accepted,
	and that there was keen
	argument going on as to the measures
	to be taken concerning it.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">These</span> things Tommy had
	learned, and he and Evelyn
	went to their second interrogation
	by the city’s Council armed with
	written vocabularies of nearly a
	thousand words, which they had
	sorted out and made ready for use.
	But they were still ignorant of
	the weapons the Golden City might
	use against Earth.</p>

	<p>The Council meeting took place
	in the same hall, with its alternating
	black-and-gold flooring and
	the saffron-red lighting panels casting
	a soft light everywhere. This
	was a scheduled meeting, foreseen
	and arranged for. The twelve chairs
	above the heavy table were all occupied
	from the first. But Tommy
	realized that the table had been
	intended to seat a large number of
	councilors. There were guards stationed
	formally behind the chairs.
	There were spectators, auditors of
	the deliberations of the Council.
	They were dressed in a myriad
	colors, and they talked quietly
	among themselves; but it seemed to
	Tommy that nowhere had he seen
	weariness, as an ingrained expression,
	upon so many faces.</p>

	<p>Tommy and Evelyn were led to
	the foot of the Council table. The
	bearded old man in blue began the
	questioning. As Keeper of Foodstuffs—according
	to Aten—he was
	a sort of presiding officer.</p>

	<p>Tommy answered the questions
	crisply. He had known what they
	would be, and he had developed a
	vocabulary to answer them. He told
	them of Earth, of Professor Denham,
	of his and the professor’s experiments.
	He outlined the first experiment
	with the Fifth-Dimension
	catapult and the result of it—when
	the Golden City had sent the Death
	Mist to wipe out a band of Ragged
	Men who had captured a citizen,
	and after him Evelyn and her
	father.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">This</span> they remembered. Nods
	went around the table. Tommy
	told them of Jacaro, stressing the
	fact that Jacaro was an outlaw,
	a criminal upon Earth. He explained
	the theft of the model
	Tube, and how it was that their
	first contact with Earth had been
	with the dregs of Earth humanity.
	On behalf of his countrymen he
	offered reparation for all the damage
	Jacaro and his men had done.
	He proposed a peaceful commerce
	between worlds, to the infinite
	benefit of both.</p>

	<p>There was silence until he finished.
	The faces before him were
	immobile. But a hawk-faced man in
	brown asked dry questions. Were
	there more races than one upon
	Earth? Were they of diverse colors?
	Did they ever war among
	themselves? At Tommy’s answers
	the atmosphere seemed to change.
	And the hawk-faced man rose to
	speak.</p>

	<p>Tommy and Evelyn, he conceded
	caustically, had certainly come from
	another world. Their own most
	<a class="pagenum" id="page395" title="395"> </a>ancient legends described just such
	a world as his: a world of many
	races of many colors, who fought
	many wars among themselves. Their
	ancestors had fled from such a
	world, according to legend through
	a twisting cavern which they had
	sealed behind them. The conditions
	Tommy described had been the
	cause of their ancestors’ flight.
	They, the people of Yugna, would
	do well to follow the example of
	their forebears: strip these Earth
	folk of their weapons, exile them
	to the jungles, destroy the Tube
	through which the Mist of Many
	Colors had been sent. All should be
	as in past ages.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> 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 “<em>Cuyal!</em>” and
	Tommy understood that this man
	used the drug which was destroying
	the city’s citizens, but gave a
	transient energy to its victims. He
	spoke in fiery phrases, urging action
	which would be drastic and certain.
	He spoke confidently, persuasively.
	There was a rustling among those
	who watched and listened to the
	debate. He had caught at their
	imagination.</p>

	<p>Evelyn, exerting every faculty to
	understand, saw Tommy’s lips set
	grimly.</p>

	<p>“What—what is it?” she whispered.
	“I—I don’t understand….”</p>

	<p>Tommy spoke in a savage growl.</p>

	<p>“He says,” he told her bitterly,
	“that in one blow they can defeat
	both the jungle and the invaders
	from Earth. In past ages their
	ancestors were faced by enemies
	they could not defeat. They fled to
	this world. Now they are faced
	by jungles they cannot defeat. He
	proposes that they flee to our
	world. The Death Mist is a toy, he
	reminds them, compared with gases
	they know. There is a gas of which
	one part in ten hundred million is
	fatal! In a hundred of their days
	they can make and send through
	the Tube enough of it to kill every
	living thing on Earth. They’ve figures
	on the Earth’s size and atmosphere
	from me, damn ’em! And he
	reminds them that that deadly gas
	changes of itself into a harmless
	substance. He urges them to gas
	Earth humanity out of existence,
	call upon the other cities of this
	world, and presently move through
	the Tube to Earth. They’ll carry
	their food-plants, rebuild their
	cities, and abandon this planet to
	the jungles and the Ragged Men.
	And the hell of it is, they can do
	it!”</p>

	<p>A sudden approving buzz went
	through the Council hall.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER VII</span><br />
	The Fleet from Rahn</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> approval of the citizens
	of Yugna was not enthusiastic.
	It was desperate. Their faces were
	weary. Their lives were warped.
	They had been 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 they knew it. Nearly
	half the cities of their race were
	overwhelmed and their inhabitants
	reduced to savage hunters in the
	victorious jungles. Now the people
	of Yugna saw a chance to escape
	from the jungle. They were offered
	rest. Peace. Relaxation from the
	desperate need to serve insatiable
	machines. Sheer desperation impelled
	them. In their situation, the
	people of Earth would annihilate
	a solar system for relief, let alone
	the inhabitants of a single planet.</p>

	<p>Shouts began to be heard above
	the uproar in the Council hall—approving
	shouts, demands that one
	be appointed to conduct the operation
	<a class="pagenum" id="page396" title="396"> </a>which was to give them a new
	planet on which to live, where their
	food-plants would thrive in the
	open, where jungles would no
	longer press on them.</p>

	<p>Tommy’s face went savage and
	desperate, itself. He clenched and
	unclenched his hands, struggling
	among his meagre supply of words
	for promises of help from Earth,
	which promises would tip the scales
	for peace again. He raised his voice
	in a shout for attention. He was
	unheard. The Council hall was in
	an uproar of desperate approval.
	The orator stood flushed and
	triumphant. The Council members
	looked from eye to eye, and slowly
	the old, white-bearded Keeper of
	Foodstuffs placed a golden box upon
	the table. He touched it in a certain
	fashion, and handed it to the
	next man. That second man touched
	it, and passed it to a third. And
	that man….</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">A hush</span> fell instantly. Tommy
	understood. The measure was
	being decided by solemn vote. The
	voting device had reached the fifth
	man when there was a frantic
	clatter of footsteps, a door burst
	in, and babbling men stood in the
	opening, white-faced and stammering
	and overwhelmed, but trying
	to make a report.</p>

	<p>Consternation reigned, incredulous,
	amazed consternation. The
	bearded old man rose dazedly and
	strode from the hall with the rest
	of the Council following him. A
	pause of stunned stupefaction, and
	the spectators in the hall rushed
	for other doors.</p>

	<p>“Stick to Aten,” snapped Tommy.
	“Something’s broken, and it has to
	be our way. Let’s see what it is.”</p>

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

	<p>And above the city swirled a
	swarm of aircraft. Tommy counted
	three of the clumsy ornithopters,
	high and motelike. There were
	twenty or thirty of the small, one-man
	craft. There were a dozen or
	more two-man planes. And there
	were at least forty giant single-wing
	ships which looked as if they
	had been made for carrying freight.
	They soared and circled above the
	city in soundless confusion. Before
	each of them glittered something
	silvery, like glass, which was not
	a screw propeller but somehow
	drew them on.</p>

	<p>The Council was massed two hundred
	yards away. A single-seater
	dived downward, soared and circled
	noiselessly fifty yards overhead, and
	its pilot shouted a message. Then
	he climbed swiftly and rejoined his
	fellows. The men about Tommy
	looked stunned, as if they could
	not believe their ears. Aten seemed
	stricken beyond the passability of
	reaction.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“I got</span> part of it,” snapped
	Tommy, to Evelyn’s whispered
	question. “I think I know the rest.
	Aten!” He snapped question after
	question in his inadequate phrasing
	of the city’s tongue. Evelyn saw
	Aten answer dully, then bitterly,
	and then, as Tommy caught his arm
	and whispered savagely to him,
	Aten’s eyes caught fire. He nodded
	violently and turned on his heel.</p>

	<p>“Come on!” And Tommy seized
	Evelyn’s arm again.</p>

	<p>They followed closely as Aten
	wormed his way through the crowd.
	They raced behind him downstairs
	and through a door into a dusty
	and unvisited room. It was a
	museum. Aten pointed grimly.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page397" title="397"> </a>Here were the automatic pistols
	taken from those of Jacaro’s men
	who had been killed, a nasty sub-machine
	gun which had been
	Tommy’s, and grenades—Jacaro’s.
	Tommy checked shell calibres and
	carried off a ninety-shot magazine
	full of explosive bullets, and a repeating
	rifle.</p>

	<p>“I can do more accurate work
	with this than the machine gun,”
	he said cryptically. “Let’s go!”</p>

	<p>It was not until they were racing
	away from the Council building in
	one of the two-wheeled vehicles
	that Evelyn spoke again.</p>

	<p>“I—understand part,” she said unsteadily.
	“Those planes overhead
	are from Rahn. And they’re threatening—”</p>

	<p>“Blackmail,” said Tommy between
	clenched teeth. “It sounds
	like a perfectly normal Earth
	racket. A fleet from Rahn is over
	Yugna, loaded with the Death Mist.
	Yugna pays food and goods and
	women or it’s wiped out by gas.
	Further, it surrenders its aircraft
	to make further collections easier.
	Rahn refuses to die, though it’s let
	in the jungle. It’s turned pirate
	stronghold. Fed and clothed by
	a few other cities 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
	like Jacaro.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> little vehicle darted madly
	through empty highways, passing
	groups of men staring dazedly
	upward at the soaring motes overhead.
	It darted down this inclined
	way, up that one. It shot into a
	building and around a winding
	ramp. It stopped with a jerk and
	Aten was climbing out. He ran
	through a doorway, Tommy and
	Evelyn following. Planes of all
	sizes, still and lifeless, filled a vast
	hall. And Aten struggled with a
	door mechanism and a monster
	valve swung wide. Then Tommy
	threw his weight with Aten’s to
	roll out the plane he had selected.
	It was a small, triangular ship,
	with seats for three, but it was
	heavy. The two men moved it with
	desperate exertion. Aten pointed,
	panting, to slide-rail and it took
	them five minutes to get the plane
	about that rail and engage a curious
	contrivance in a slot in the ship’s
	fuselage.</p>

	<p>“Tommy,” said Evelyn, “you’re
	not going to—”</p>

	<p>“Run away? Hardly!” said
	Tommy. “We’re going up. I’m going
	to fight the fleet with bullets. They
	don’t have missile-weapons here,
	and Aten will know the range of
	their electric-charge outfits.”</p>

	<p>“I’m coming too,” said Evelyn
	desperately.</p>

	<p>Tommy hesitated, then agreed.</p>

	<p>“If we fail they’ll gas the city
	anyway. One way or the other….”</p>

	<p>There was a sudden rumble as
	Evelyn took her place. The plane
	shot forward with a swift smooth
	acceleration. There was no sound
	of any motor. There was no movement
	of the glittering thing at the
	forepart of 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 hundred
	feet above the ground.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> spoke urgently. Aten
	nodded. The ship had started
	to climb. He leveled it out and
	darted straight forward. He swung
	madly to dodge a soaring tower.
	He swept upward a little to avoid
	a flying bridge. The ship was travelling
	with an enormous speed, and
	the golden walls of the city flashed
	past below them and they sped
	away across feathery jungle.</p>

	<p>“If we climbed at once,” observed
	Tommy shortly, “they’d
	think we meant to fight. They
	might start their gassing. As it is,
	we look like we’re running away.”</p>

	<p>Evelyn said nothing. For five
	<a class="pagenum" id="page398" title="398"> </a>miles the plane fled as if in panic.
	Evelyn clung to the filigree side
	of the cockpit. The city dwindled
	behind them. Then Aten climbed
	steeply. Tommy was looking keenly
	at the glittering thing which propelled
	the ship. It seemed like a
	crystal gridwork, like angular lace
	contrived of glass. But a cold blue
	flame burned in it and Tommy was
	obscurely reminded of a neon tube,
	though the color was wholly unlike.
	A blast of air poured back
	through the grid. Somehow, by
	some development of electro-statics,
	the “static jet” which is merely a
	toy in Earth laboratories had become
	usable as a means of propelling
	aircraft.</p>

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

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

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> other plane zoomed suddenly
	as a flash of blue flame
	spouted before it. It dived, then,
	fluttering and swooping, began to
	drift helplessly toward the spires
	of the city below it.</p>

	<p>“Good!” snapped Tommy. “Another
	one, Aten.”</p>

	<p>Aten made no reply. He flung
	his ship sidewise and dived steeply
	before a monstrous freight carrier.
	Tommy fired deliberately as they
	swept past. The propelling grid
	flashed blue flame in a vast, crashing
	flame. It, too, began to flutter
	down.</p>

	<p>Tommy did not miss until the
	fifth time, and Aten turned with
	a grimace of disappointment.
	Tommy’s second shot burst in a
	freight compartment and a man
	screamed. His voice carried horribly
	in the silence of these heights.
	But Tommy shot again, and, again,
	and there was a satisfying blue
	flash as a fifth big ship went fluttering
	helplessly down.</p>

	<p>Aten began to circle for height
	Tommy refilled the magazine.</p>

	<p>“I’m bringing ’em down,” he explained
	unnecessarily to Evelyn,
	“by smashing their propellers. They
	have to land, and when they land
	they’re hostages—I hope!”</p>

	<p>Confusion became apparent
	among the hostile planes. The one
	Yugna ship was identified as the
	source of disaster. Tommy worked
	his rifle in cold 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 big freight ships, they
	were circles fifteen feet across.
	They were perfect targets, and
	Aten seemed to grasp the necessary
	tactics almost instantly. Dead ahead
	or from straight astern, Tommy
	could not miss a shot. The fleet of
	Rahn went fluttering downward.
	Fifteen of the biggest were down,
	and six of the two-man planes. A
	sixteenth and seventeenth flashed at
	their bows and drifted helplessly….</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Then</span> the one-man ships attacked.
	Six of them at once.
	Aten grinned and dived for all of
	them. One by one, Tommy smashed
	their crystal grids and watched
	them sinking unsteadily toward the
	towers of the city. As his 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 which the blaze was
	blown out.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page399" title="399"> </a>Another freight ship helpless—and
	another. Then the air fleet of
	Rahn turned and fled. The ornithopters
	winged away in heavy,
	creaking terror. The others dived
	for speed and flattened out hardly
	above the tree-fern jungle. They
	streaked away in ignominious
	panic. Aten darted and circled
	above them and, as Tommy failed
	to fire, turned and went racing
	back toward the city.</p>

	<p>“After the first ones went down,”
	observed Tommy, “they knew that
	if they gassed the city we’d shoot
	them down into their own gas
	cloud. So they ran away. I hope
	this gives us a pull.”</p>

	<p>The city’s towers loomed before
	them. The lacy bridges swarmed
	with human figures.  Somewhere a
	fight was in progress about a
	grounded plane from Rahn. Others
	seemed to have surrendered sullenly
	on alighting. For the first
	time Tommy saw the city as a
	thronging mass of humanity, and
	for the first time he realized how
	terrible must be the strain upon
	the city if with so large a population
	so few could be free for leisure
	in normal times.</p>

	<p>The little plane settled down and
	landed lightly. There were a dozen
	men on the landing platform now,
	and they were herding disarmed
	men from Rahn away from a big
	ship Tommy had brought down.
	Tommy looked curiously at the
	prisoners. They seemed freer than
	the inhabitants of Yugna. Their
	faces showed no such signs of
	strain. But they did not seem well-fed,
	nor did they appear as capable
	or as resolute.</p>

	<p>“<em>Cuyal</em>,” said Aten in an explanatory
	tone, seeing Tommy’s expression.
	He put his shoulder to the
	big ship, to wheel it back into its
	shed.</p>

	<p>“You son of a gun,” grunted
	Tommy, “it’s all in the day’s work
	to you, fighting an invading fleet!”</p>

	<p>A messenger came panting
	through the doorway. Tommy
	grinned.</p>

	<p>“The Council wants us, Evelyn.
	Now maybe they’ll listen.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> atmosphere of the resumed
	Council meeting was, as a
	matter of fact, considerably
	changed. The white-bearded Keeper
	of Foodstuffs thanked them with
	dignity. He invited Tommy to offer
	advice, since his services had
	proved so useful.</p>

	<p>“Advice?” said Tommy, in the
	halting, fumbling phrases he had
	slaved to acquire. “I would put the
	prisoners from Rahn to work at the
	machines, releasing citizens.” There
	was a buzz of approval, and he
	added drily in English: “I’m playing
	politics, Evelyn.” Again in
	the speech of Yugna he added:
	“And I would have the fleet of
	Yugna soar above Rahn, not to demand
	tribute as that city did, but
	to disable all its aircraft, so that
	such piracy as to-day may not be
	tried again!” There was a second
	buzz of approval. “And third,” said
	Tommy earnestly, “I would communicate
	with Earth, rather than
	assassinate it. I would require the
	science of Earth for the benefit of
	this world, rather than use the
	science of this world to annihilate
	that! I—”</p>

	<p>For the second time the Council
	meeting was interrupted. An armed
	messenger came pounding into the
	room. He reported swiftly. Tommy
	grasped Evelyn’s wrist in what was
	almost a painful grip.</p>

	<p>“Noises in the Tube!” he told
	her sharply. “Earth-folk doing
	something in the Tube Jacaro came
	through. Your father….”</p>

	<p>There was an alert silence in the
	Council hall. The white-bearded
	old man had listened to the messenger.
	Now he asked a grim question
	of Tommy.</p>

	<p>“They may be my friends, or
	<a class="pagenum" id="page400" title="400"> </a>your enemies,” said Tommy briefly.
	“Mass thermit-throwers and let me
	find out!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">It</span> was the only possible thing to
	do. Tommy and Evelyn went
	with the Council, in a body, in a
	huge wheeled vehicle that raced
	across the city. Lingering groups
	still searched the sky above them,
	now blessedly empty again. But the
	Council’s vehicle dived down and
	down to ground level, where the
	rumble of machines was loud indeed,
	and then turned into a tunnel
	which went down still farther.
	There was feverish activity ahead,
	where it stopped, and a golden
	thermit-thrower came into sight
	upon a dull-colored truck.</p>

	<p>Questions. Feverish replies. The
	white-bearded man touched Tommy
	on the shoulder, regarding him with
	a peculiarly noncommittal gaze, and
	pointed to a doorway that someone
	was just opening. The door
	swung wide. There was a confusion
	of prismatically-colored mist
	within it, and Tommy noticed that
	tanks upon tanks were massed outside
	the metal wall of that compartment,
	and seemingly had been
	pouring something into the room.</p>

	<p>The mist drew back from the
	door. Saffron-red lighting panels
	appeared dimly, then grew distinct.
	There were small, collapsed bundles
	of fur upon the floor of the storeroom
	being exposed to view. They
	were, probably, the equivalent of
	rats. And then the last remnant of
	mist vanished with a curiously
	wraithlike abruptness, and the end
	of Jacaro’s Tube came into view.</p>

	<p>Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging
	to his sleeve. There were clanking
	noises audible in this room
	even above the dull rumble of the
	city’s machines. The noises came
	from the Tube’s mouth. It was four
	feet and more across, and it projected
	at a crazy angle out of a
	previously solid wall.</p>

	<p>“Hello!” shouted Tommy. “Down
	the Tube!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> clattering noise stopped,
	then continued at a faster rate.</p>

	<p>“The gas is cut off!” shouted
	Tommy again. “Who’s there?”</p>

	<p>A voice gasped from the Tube’s
	depths:</p>

	<p>“It’s him!” The tone was made
	metallic by echoing and reechoing
	in the bends of the Tube, but it
	was Smithers. “We’re comin’, Mr.
	Reames.”</p>

	<p>“Is—is Daddy there?” called
	Evelyn eagerly. “Daddy!”</p>

	<p>“Coming,” said a grim voice.</p>

	<p>The clattering grew nearer. A
	goggled, gas-masked head appeared,
	and a body followed it out of the
	Tube, laden with a multitude of
	burdens. A second climbed still
	more heavily after the first. The
	brightly-colored citizens of the
	Golden City reached quietly to the
	weapons at their waists. A third
	voice came up the Tube, distant and
	nearly unintelligible. It roared a
	question.</p>

	<p>Smithers ripped off his gas mask
	and said distinctly:</p>

	<p>“Sure we’re through. Go ahead.
	An’ go to hell!”</p>

	<p>Then there was a thunderous
	detonation somewhere down in the
	Tube’s depths. The visible part of
	it jerked spasmodically and cracked
	across. A wisp of brownish smoke
	puffed out of it, and the stinging
	reek of high explosive tainted the
	air. Then Evelyn was clinging close
	to her father, and he was patting
	her comfortingly, and Smithers was
	pumping both of Tommy’s hands,
	his normal calmness torn from him
	for once. But after a bare moment
	he had gripped himself again. He
	unloaded an impressive number of
	parcels from about his person. Then
	he regarded the citizens of the
	Golden City with an impersonal,
	estimating gaze, ignoring twenty
	weapons trained upon him.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page401" title="401"> </a>“Those damn fools back on
	Earth,” he observed impassively,
	“decided the professor an’ me was
	better off of it. So they let us
	come through the Tube before they
	blew it up. We brought the explosive
	bullets, Mr. Reames. I hope
	we brought enough.”</p>

	<p>And Tommy grinned elatedly as
	Denham turned to crush his hands
	in his own.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span class="chapter_no">CHAPTER VIII</span><br />
		“Those Devils Have Got Evelyn!”</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">That</span> night the three of them
	talked, on a high terrace with
	most of the Golden City spread
	out below them. Over their heads,
	lights of many colors moved and
	shifted slowly in the sky. There
	were a myriad glowing specks of
	saffron-red about the ways of the
	city, and the air was full of fragrant
	odors. The breath of the
	jungle reached them even a thousand
	feet above ground. And the
	dull, persistent roar of the machines
	reached them too. There were five
	people on the terrace: Tommy,
	Denham, Smithers, Aten and the
	white-bearded old Keeper of Foodstuffs.
	He looked on as the Earthmen
	talked.</p>

	<p>“We’re marooned,” Tommy was
	saying crisply, “and for the time
	being we’ve got to throw in with
	these people. I believe they came
	from Earth originally. Four, five
	thousand years ago, perhaps. Their
	tale is of a cave they sealed up behind
	them. It might have been a
	primitive Tube, if such a thing can
	be imagined.”</p>

	<p>Denham filled his pipe and
	lighted it meditatively.</p>

	<p>“Half the American Indian
	tribes,” he observed drily, “had
	legends of coming originally from
	an underworld. I wonder if Tubes
	are less your own invention than
	we thought?”</p>

	<p>Tommy shrugged.</p>

	<p>“In any case, Earth is safe.”</p>

	<p>“Is it?” insisted Denham. “You
	say they understood at once when
	you talked of dimension-travel. Ask
	the old chap there.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> frowned, then labored
	with the question. The bearded
	old man spoke gravely. At his answer,
	Tommy grimaced.</p>

	<p>“Datl’s gone looking for the cave
	their legends tell of,” he said reluctantly.
	“He’s the lad who wanted
	the city to gas Earth with some
	ghastly stuff they know of, and
	move over when the gas was harmless
	again. But the cave has been
	lost for centuries, and it’s in the
	torrid zone—which <em>is</em> torrid! We’re
	near the North Pole of this planet,
	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 any case
	it’ll be some time before he’s dangerous.
	Meanwhile, as I said, we’re
	marooned.”</p>

	<p>“And more,” said Denham deliberately.
	“By the time the authorities
	halfway believed me, and
	Von Holtz could talk, there were
	more deaths from the Death Mist.
	It wiped out a village, clean. So
	when it was realized that I’d caused
	it—or that was their interpretation—and
	was the only man who could
	cause it again, why, the authorities
	thought it a splendid idea for me
	to come through the Tube. They
	invited me to commit suicide. My
	knowledge was too dangerous for a
	man to have. So,” he added grimly,
	“I have committed suicide. We will
	not be welcomed back on Earth,
	Tommy.”</p>

	<p>Tommy made an impatient gesture.</p>

	<p>“Worry about that later,” he said
	impatiently. “Right now there’s a
	war on. Rahn’s desperate, and the
	prisoners we took this morning
	say Jacaro and his gunmen are
	there, advising them. Ragged Men
	<a class="pagenum" id="page402" title="402"> </a>have joined in to help kill civilized
	humans. And they’ve still got aircraft.”</p>

	<p>“Which can still bombard this
	city,” observed Denham. “Can’t
	they?”</p>

	<p>Tommy pointed to the many-colored
	beams of light playing through
	the sky overhead.</p>

	<p>“No. Those lights were invented
	to guide night-flying planes back
	home. They’re static lights—cold
	lights, by the way—and they register
	powerfully when a static-discharge
	propeller comes within
	range of them. If Rahn tries a
	night attack, Aten and I take off
	and shoot them down again. That’s
	that. But we’ve got to design gas
	masks for these people, and I think
	I can persuade the Council to send
	over and take all Rahn’s aircraft
	away to-morrow. But the real emergency
	is the jungle.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> expounded the situation of
	the city as he understood it.
	He labored painstakingly to make
	his meaning clear while Denham
	blew meditative smoke rings and
	Smithers listened quietly. But when
	Tommy had finished, Smithers said
	in a vast calm:</p>

	<p>“Say, Mr. Reames, y’know I asked
	you to get somebody to take me
	through some o’ these engine rooms.
	That’s kinda my specialty. An’
	these folks are good, no question!
	There’s engines—even steam engines—we
	couldn’t build on Earth.
	But, my Gawd, they’re dumb! There
	ain’t a piece of automatic machinery
	on the place. There’s one man to
	every motor, handlin’ the controls
	or the throttle. They got stuff we
	couldn’t come near, but they never
	thought of a steam governor.”</p>

	<p>Tommy turned kindling eyes
	upon him. “Go on!”</p>

	<p>“Hell,” said Smithers, “gimme
	some tools an’ I’ll go through one
	shop an’ cut the workin’ force in
	half, just slammin’ governors, reducin’
	valves, an’ automatic cut-offs
	on the machines I understand!”</p>

	<p>Tommy jumped to his feet. He
	paced up and down, then halted
	and began to spout at Aten and
	the Keeper of Foodstuffs. He gesticulated,
	fumbling for words, and
	hunted absurdly for the ones he
	wanted among his written lists, and
	finally was drawing excitedly on
	Aten’s black-metal tablet. Smithers
	got up and looked over his shoulder.</p>

	<p>“That ain’t it, Mr. Reames,” he
	said slowly. “Maybe I….”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> pressed the stud that
	erased the page. Smithers took
	the tablet and began to draw painstakingly.
	Aten, watching, exclaimed
	suddenly. Smithers was
	drawing an actual machine, actually
	used in the Golden City, and he
	was making a working sketch of
	a governor so that it would operate
	without supervision while the steam
	pressure continued. Aten began to
	talk excitedly. The Keeper of
	Foodstuffs took the tablet and examined
	it. He looked blank, then
	amazed, and as the utterly foreign
	idea of a machine which controlled
	itself struck home, his hands shook
	and color deepened in his cheeks.</p>

	<p>He gave an order to Aten, who
	dashed away. In ten minutes other
	men began to arrive. They bent
	over the drawing. Excited comments,
	discussions and disputes
	began. A dawning enthusiasm manifested
	itself. Two of them approached
	Smithers respectfully,
	with shining eyes. They drew their
	tablets from their belts, rather skilfully
	drew the governor he had indicated
	in larger scale, and by gestures
	asked for more detailed plans.
	Smithers stood up to go with them.</p>

	<p>“You’re a hero, now, Smithers,”
	Tommy informed him exultantly.
	“They’ll work you to death and
	call you blessed!”</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page403" title="403"> </a>“Yes, sir,” said Smithers. “These
	fellas are right good mechanics.
	They just happened to miss this
	trick.” He paused. “Uh—where’s
	Miss Evelyn?”</p>

	<p>“With Aten’s—wife,” said
	Tommy. This was no time to discuss
	the marital system of Yugna.
	“We were prisoners until this
	morning. Now we’re guests of
	honor. Evelyn’s talking to a lot of
	women and trying to boost our
	prestige.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Smithers</span> went over to the
	gesticulating group of draftsmen.
	He settled down to explain
	by drawings, since he had not a
	word of their language. In a few
	minutes a group went rushing away
	with the sketch tablets held jealously
	to their breasts, bound for
	workshops. Other men appeared to
	present new problems. A wave of
	sheer enthusiasm was in being. A
	new idea which would lessen the
	demands of the machines was a godsend
	to these folk.</p>

	<p>Then Denham blew a smoke ring
	and said meditatively:</p>

	<p>“I think I’ve got something too,
	Tommy. Ultra-sonic vibrations.
	Sound waves at two to three hundred
	thousand per second. Air won’t
	carry them. Liquids will. They use
	’em to sterilize milk, killing the
	germs by sound waves carried
	through the fluid. I think we can
	start some ultra-sonic generators
	out there that will go through the
	wet soil and kill all vegetation
	within a given range. We might
	clear away the jungle for half a
	mile or so and then use ultra-sonic
	beams to help it clear while new
	food-plants are tried out.”</p>

	<p>Tommy’s eyes glowed.</p>

	<p>“You’ve given yourself a job!
	We’ll turn this planet upside
	down.”</p>

	<p>“We’ll have to,” said Denham
	drily. “This city may believe in
	you, but there are others, and these
	folk are a little too clever. There’s
	no reason why some other city
	shouldn’t attack Earth, if they
	seriously attack the problem of
	building a Tube.”</p>

	<p>Tommy ground his teeth, frowning.
	Then he started up. There was
	a new noise down in the city. A
	sudden flare of intolerable illumination
	broke out. There was an explosion,
	many screams, then the
	yelling tumult of men in deadly
	battle.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Every</span> man on the tower terrace
	was facing toward the
	noise, staring. The white-bearded
	man gave an order, deliberately.
	Men rushed. But as they swarmed
	toward an exit, a green beam of
	light appeared near the uproar. It
	streaked upward, wavering from
	side to side and making the golden
	walls visible in a ghostly fashion.
	It shivered in a hasty rhythm.</p>

	<p>Aten groaned, almost sobbed.
	There was another flash of that unbearable
	actinic flame. A thermit-thrower
	was in action. Then a third
	flash. This was farther away. The
	tumult died suddenly, but the green
	light-beam continued its motion.</p>

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

	<p>“The prisoners!” he said in a
	hoarse voice. “The men from
	Rahn! They broke loose. They
	rushed an arsenal. With hand weapons
	and a thermit-thrower they
	fought their way to a place where
	the big vehicles are kept. They
	raided a dwelling-tower on the way
	and seized women. They’ve gone
	off on the metal roads through the
	jungle!” He tried to ease his collar.
	Aten, still watching the green beam,
	croaked another sentence. “Those
	devils have got Evelyn!” cried
	Tommy hoarsely. “My God! Aten’s
	<a class="pagenum" id="page404" title="404"> </a>wife, and his….” He jerked a
	hand toward the Councilor. “Fifty
	women—gone through the jungle
	with them, toward Rahn! Those
	devils have got Evelyn!”</p>

	<p>He whirled upon Aten, seizing
	his shoulder, shaking the man as he
	roared questions.</p>

	<p>“No chance of catching them.”
	Far away, in the jungle, the infinitely
	vivid actinic flame blazed
	for several seconds. “They’ve
	sprayed thermit on the road. It’s
	melted and ruined. It’d take hours
	to haul the ground vehicles past
	the gap. They’re got arms and
	lights. They can fight off the beasts
	and Ragged Men. They’ll make
	Rahn. And then”—he shook with
	the rage that possessed him—“Jacaro’s
	there with those gunmen
	of his and his friends the Ragged
	Men!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> seemed to control himself
	with a terrific effort. He
	turned to the white-bearded Councilor,
	whose bearing was that of a
	man stunned by disaster. Tommy
	spoke measuredly, choosing words
	with a painstaking care, clipping
	the words crisply as he spoke.</p>

	<p>The Councilor stiffened. Old as
	he was, an undeniable fighting light
	came into his eyes. He barked orders
	right and left. Men woke
	from the paralysis of shock and
	fled upon errands of his command.
	And Tommy turned to Denham and
	Smithers.</p>

	<p>“The women will be safe until
	dawn,” he said evenly. “Our late
	prisoners can’t lose the way—aluminum
	roads that are no longer much
	used lead between all the cities—but
	they won’t dare stop in the
	jungles. They’ll go straight on
	through. They should reach Rahn
	at dawn or a little before. And at
	dawn our air fleet will be over the
	city and they’ll give back the
	women, unharmed, or we’ll turn
	their own trick on them, by God!
	It’d be better for Evelyn to die of
	gas than as—as the Ragged Men
	would kill her!”</p>

	<p>His hands were clenched and he
	breathed noisily for an instant.
	Then he swallowed, and went on in
	the same unnatural calm:</p>

	<p>“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.
	They might try to stalemate us by
	repeating their threat, with our
	guns over Rahn. I’ll give orders.”</p>

	<p>He turned again to the Councilor,
	who nodded, glanced at Smithers,
	and repeated the command.</p>

	<p>“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.”</p>

	<p>He led the way steadily toward
	a door. But he reached up to his
	collar, once, as if he were choking,
	and ripped away collar and coat
	and all, unconscious of the resistance
	of the cloth.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">That</span> night the Golden City
	made savage preparation for
	war. Ships were loaded and ranged
	in order. Crews armed themselves,
	and helped in the loading and arming
	of other ships. Oddly enough, it
	was to Tommy that men came to
	ask if the directing apparatus for
	the Death Mist should be 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. This had
	been done on Earth, with the directional
	impulses sent blindly
	down the Tube merely to keep the
	Mist moving always. The controlling
	apparatus could be carried in
	a monster freight plane. Tommy
	ordered it done. Also he had the
	captured planes from Rahn refitted
	for flight by replacing their
	smashed propelling grids. Fresh
	crews of men for these ships organized
	themselves.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page405" title="405"> </a>When the fleet took off there
	was only darkness in all the world.
	The unfamiliar stars above shone
	bright and very near as Tommy’s
	ship, leading, winged noiselessly
	up and down and straight away
	from the play of prismatic lights
	above the city. Behind him, silhouetted
	against that many-colored
	glow, were the angular shapes of
	many other noiseless shadows. The
	ornithopters with their racket
	would start later, so the planes
	would be soaring above Rahn before
	their presence was even suspected.
	The rest of the fleet flew
	in darkness.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> flight above the jungle
	would have been awe-inspiring
	at another time. There were the
	stars above, nearer and brighter
	than those of Earth. There was no
	Milky Way in the firmament of
	this universe. The stars were separate
	and fewer in number. There
	was no moon. And below there was
	only utter, unrelieved darkness,
	from which now and again beast-sounds
	arose. They were clearly
	audible on board the silent air fleet.
	Roarings, bellowings, and hoarse
	screamings. Once the ships passed
	above a tumult as of unthinkable
	monsters in deadly battle, when for
	an instant the very clashing of
	monstrous jaws was audible and a
	hissing sound which seemed filled
	with deadly hate.</p>

	<p>Then lights—few of them, and
	dim ones. Then blazing fires—Ragged
	Men, camped without the
	walls of Rahn or in some gold-walled
	courtyard where the jungle
	thrust greedy, invading green tentacles.
	The air fleet circled noiselessly
	in a huge batlike cloud. Then
	things came racing from the darkness,
	down below, and there was a
	tumult and a shouting, and presently
	the hilarious, insanely gleeful
	uproar of the Ragged Men.
	Tommy’s face went gray. These
	were the escaped prisoners, arrived
	actually after the air fleet which
	was to demand the return of their
	captives.</p>

	<p>Tommy wet his lips and spoke
	grimly to his pilot. There were
	six men and many Death-Mist
	bombs in his ship. He was asking
	if communication could be had with
	the other ships. It was wise to let
	Rahn know at once that avengers
	lurked overhead for the captives
	just delivered there.</p>

	<p>For answer, a green signal-beam
	shot out. It wavered here and there.
	Tommy commanded again. And as
	the signal-beam flickered, he somehow
	sensed the obedience of the
	invisible ships about him. They
	were sweeping off to right and
	left. Bombs of the Death Mist were
	dropping in the darkness. Even in
	the starlight, Tommy could see
	great walls of pale vapor building
	themselves up above the jungle.
	And a sudden confused noise of
	yapping defiance and raging hatred
	came up from the city of Rahn.
	But before dawn came there was
	no other sign that their presence
	was known.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> ornithopters came squeaking
	and rattling in their heavy
	flight just as the dull-red sun of
	this world peered above the horizon.
	The tree-fern fronds waved
	languidly in the morning breeze.
	The walls and towers of Rahn
	gleamed bright gold, in parts, and
	in parts they seemed dull and scabrous
	with some creeping fungus
	stuff, and on one side of the city
	the wall was overwhelmed by a triumphant
	tide of green. There the
	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 enter and
	then destroy the man-made structures.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page406" title="406"> </a>But about the city there now
	reared a new rampart, rising above
	the tree-fern tops: there was a
	wall of the Death Mist encompassing
	the city. No living thing
	could enter or leave the city without
	passing through that cloud.
	And at Tommy’s order it moved
	forward to the very encampments
	of the Ragged Men.</p>

	<p>He spoke, beginning his ultimatum.
	But a movement below
	checked him. On a landing stage
	that was spotted with molds and
	lichens, women were being herded
	into clear view. They were the
	women of the Golden City. Tommy
	saw a tiny figure in khaki—Evelyn!
	Then there was a sudden uproar
	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 of Death
	Mist. And they laughed uproariously
	and ran into and out of the
	Mist again.</p>

	<p>His pilot dived down. The
	Ragged Men yelled and capered
	and howled derisively at him. He
	saw that they removed masklike
	things from their faces in order to
	shout, and donned them again before
	running again into the Mist.
	At once he understood. The Ragged
	Men had gas masks!</p>

	<p>Then, a sudden cracking noise.
	Three men had opened fire with
	rifles from below. Their garments
	were drab-colored, in contrast to
	the vivid tints of the clothing of
	the inhabitants of Rahn. They were
	Jacaro’s gunmen. And a great
	freight carrier from Yugna veered
	suddenly, and a bluish flash burst
	out before it, and it began to
	flutter helplessly down into the
	city beneath.</p>

	<p>The weapons of Tommy’s fleet
	were useless, since the citizens of
	Rahn were protected by gas masks.
	And Tommy’s fighting ships were
	subject to the same rifle fire against
	their propelling grids that had defeated
	the fleet from Rahn. The
	only thing the avenging fleet could
	now accomplish was the death of
	the women it could not save.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER IX</span><br />
	War!</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">A huge</span> ornithopter came
	heavily out on the landing
	stage in the city of Rahn. Its crew
	took their places. With a creaking
	and rattling noise it rose toward
	the invading fleet. From its filigree
	cockpit sides, men waved green
	branches. A green light wavered
	from the big plane that carried the
	bearded Council man and Denham.
	That plane swept forward and hovered
	above the ornithopter. The
	two flying things seemed almost
	fastened together, so closely did
	their pilots maintain that same
	speed and course. A snaky rope
	went coiling down into the lower
	ship’s cockpit. A burly figure began
	to climb it hand over hand. A
	second figure followed. A third
	figure, in the drab clothing that
	distinguished Jacaro’s men from all
	others, wrapped the rope about
	himself and was hauled up bodily.
	And Tommy had seen Jacaro but
	once, yet he was suddenly grimly
	convinced that this was Jacaro himself.</p>

	<p>The two planes swept apart. The
	ornithopter descended toward the
	landing stage of Rahn. The freight
	plane swept toward the ship that
	carried Tommy. Again the snaky
	rope coiled down. And Tommy
	swung up the fifteen feet that alone
	separated the two soaring planes,
	and looked into the hard, amused
	eyes of Jacaro where he sat between
	two other emissaries of Rahn. One
	of them was half naked and savage,
	with the light of madness in his
	eyes. A Ragged Man. The other
	was lean and desperate, despite the
	colored tunic of a civilized man that
	he wore.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page407" title="407"> </a><span class="first_word">“Hello,”</span> said Jacaro blandly.
	“We come up to talk things
	over.”</p>

	<p>Tommy gave him the briefest of
	nods. He looked at Denham—who
	was deathly white and grim—and
	the bearded Councilor.</p>

	<p>“I’ been givin’ ’em the dope,”
	said Jacaro easily. “We got the
	whip hand now. We got gas masks,
	we got guns just the same as you
	have, an’ we got the women.”</p>

	<p>“You haven’t ammunition,” said
	Tommy evenly, “or damned little.
	Your men brought down one ship,
	and stopped. If you had enough
	shells would you have stopped
	there?”</p>

	<p>Jacaro grinned.</p>

	<p>“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 about
	throwin’ in with me, you an’ the
	professor?”</p>

	<p>“No,” said Tommy.</p>

	<p>“In a coupla months, Rahn’ll be
	runnin’ this planet,” said Jacaro
	blandly, “and I’m runnin’ Rahn! I
	didn’t know how easy the racket’d
	be, 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 bucks in
	solid gold. An’ Rahn an’ the other
	cities for kinda country homes for
	us an’ our friends. All the women
	we want, good liquor, an’ a swell
	time!”</p>

	<p>“Talk sense,” said Tommy, without
	even contempt in his tone.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Jacaro</span> snarled.</p>

	<p>“No sense actin’ too big!” But
	the snarl encouraged Tommy, because
	it proved Jacaro less confidant
	than he tried to seem. His
	next change of tone proved it. “Aw,
	hell!” he said placatingly. “This is
	what I’m figurin’ on. These guys
	ain’t used to fighting, but they got
	the stuff. They got gases that are
	hell-roarin’. They got ships can
	beat any 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 wherever y’
	want it. Figure the shake-down.
	We could pull a hundred million
	from 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’ll give y’ Canada or Mexico,
	whichever y’ want. Name y’ price,
	guy. A coupla months organizin’
	here, buildin’ a big Tube, then….”</p>

	<p>Tommy’s expression did not
	change.</p>

	<p>“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
	want something we’ve got, and you
	want it badly. Cut out the oratory
	and tell me the real price for the
	return of the women, unharmed.”</p>

	<p>Jacaro burst into a flood of profanity.</p>

	<p>“I’d rather Evelyn died from
	gas,” said Tommy, “than as your
	filthy Ragged Men would kill her.
	And you know I mean it.” He
	switched to the language of the
	cities to go on coldly: “If one
	woman is harmed, Rahn dies. We
	will shoot down every ship that
	rises from her stages. We will
	spray burning thermit through her
	streets. We will cover her towers
	with gas until her people starve
	in the gas masks they’ve made!”</p>

	<p>The lean man in the tunic of
	Rahn snarled bitterly: “What
	matter? We starve now!”</p>

	<p>Tommy turned upon him as
	Jacaro whirled and cursed him bitterly
	for the revealing outburst.</p>

	<p>“We will ransom the women with
	food,” said Tommy coldly—and
	then his eyes flamed, “and thrash
	you afterwards for fools!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page408" title="408"> </a><span class="first_word">He</span> made a gesture to the
	Keeper of Foodstuffs. It was
	unconsciously an authoritative gesture,
	though the Keeper of Foodstuffs
	was in the state of affairs in
	Yugna the head of the Council.
	But that old man spoke deliberately.
	The man from Rahn snarled
	his reply. And Tommy turned aside
	as the bargaining went on. He could
	see Evelyn down below, a tiny
	speck of khaki amid the rainbow-colored
	robes of the other women.
	This had been a savage expedition,
	to rescue or to avenge. It had deteriorated
	into a bargain. Tommy
	heard, dully, amounts of unfamiliar
	weights and measures of foodstuffs
	he did not recognize. He heard the
	time and place of payment named:
	the gate of Yugna, the third dawn
	hence. He hardly looked up as at
	some signal one of their own ornithopters
	slid below and the three
	ambassadors of Rahn prepared to
	go over the side. But Jacaro snarled
	out of one corner of his mouth.</p>

	<p>“These guys are takin’ each
	other’s words. Maybe that’s all
	right, but I’m warnin’ you, if there’s
	any double-crossin’….”</p>

	<p>He was gone. The Keeper of
	Foodstuffs touched Tommy’s shoulder.</p>

	<p>“Our flier,” he said slowly, “will
	make sure our women are as yet unharmed.
	We are to deliver the foods
	at our own city gate, and after
	the women have been returned.
	Rahn dares not keep them or harm
	them. We of Yugna keep our word.
	Even in Rahn they know it.”</p>

	<p>“But they won’t keep theirs,”
	said Tommy heavily. “Not with a
	man of Earth to lead them.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> watched with his heart in
	his mouth as the ornithopter
	alighted near the assembled women
	of Yugna. As the three ambassadors
	climbed out, he could hear the faint
	murmur of voices. The men of
	Yugna, under truce, called across
	the landing stage to the women of
	their own city, and the women replied
	to them. Then the crew of
	the one grounded freighter arrived
	on the landing stage and the
	flapping flier rose slowly and rejoined
	the fleet. Its crew shouted
	a shamefaced reassurance to the
	flagship.</p>

	<p>“I suppose,” said Tommy bitterly,
	“we’d better go back—if you’re sure
	the women are safe.”</p>

	<p>“I am sure,” said the old man
	unhappily, “or I had not agreed to
	pay half the foodstuffs in Yugna
	for their return.”</p>

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

	<p>“Tommy—Evelyn—”</p>

	<p>“She is all right so far,” said
	Tommy bitterly. “She’s to be ransomed
	by foodstuffs, paid at the
	gates of Yugna. And Jacaro
	bragged he’s running Rahn—and
	they’ve got gas masks. We’d better
	be ready for trouble after the women
	are returned.”</p>

	<p>Denham nodded grimly. Tommy
	reached out and took one of the
	black tablets from the man beside
	him. He began to draw carefully,
	his eyes savage.</p>

	<p>“What’s that?”</p>

	<p>“There’s high-pressure steam in
	Yugna,” said Tommy coldly. “I’m
	designing steam guns. Gravity feed
	of spherical projectiles. A jet of
	steam instead of gunpowder.
	They’ll be low-velocity, but we can
	use big-calibre balls for shock effect,
	and with long barrels they
	ought to serve for a hundred yards
	or better. Smooth bore, of course.”</p>

	<p>Denham stirred. His lips were
	pinched.</p>

	<p>“I’ll design a gas mask,” he said
	restlessly, “and Smithers and I, between
	us, will do what we can.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page409" title="409"> </a><span class="first_word">The</span> air fleet went on over the
	waving tree-fern jungle in an
	unvarying monotony of bitterness.
	Presently Tommy wearily explained
	his design to the bearded Councilor
	who, with the quick comprehension
	of mechanical design apparently instinctive
	in these folk, grasped it
	immediately. He selected three of
	the six-man crew and passed
	Tommy’s drawings to them. While
	the jungle flowed beneath the fleet
	they studied the sketches, made
	other drawings, and showed them
	eagerly to Tommy. When the fleet
	soared down to the scattered landing
	stages, not only was the design
	understood but apparently plans for
	production had been made. It did
	not take the men of the Golden City
	long to respond.</p>

	<p>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 be done and he set to work
	to do it, commanding men and
	materials as if there could be no
	question of disobedience. As a
	matter of fact, he yielded impatiently
	to an order of the Council
	that he should present himself in
	the Council hall, and, since no
	questions were asked him, continued
	his organizing in the very
	presence of the Council, sending
	for information and giving orders
	in a low tone while the Council deliberated.
	A vote was taken by the
	voting machine. At its end, he was
	solemnly informed that, though not
	a native of Yugna, he was entrusted
	with the command of the
	defense forces of the city. His skill
	in arms—as evidenced by his defeat
	of the fleet of Rahn—and his ability
	in command—when he met the gas-mask
	defense of Rahn with a threat
	of starvation—moved the Council
	to that action. He accepted the command
	almost abstractedly, and hurried
	away to pick gun emplacements.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Within</span> four hours after the
	return of the fleet, the first
	steam gun was ready for trial.
	Smithers appeared, sweat-streaked
	and vastly calm, to announce that
	others could be turned out in quantity.</p>

	<p>“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 got
	steel, an’ copper’s scarce, but they
	got some alloys that are good an’
	tough. One’s part tungsten or I’m
	crazy.”</p>

	<p>Tommy nodded.</p>

	<p>“Turn out all the guns you can,”
	he said. “I look for fighting.”</p>

	<p>“Yeah,” said Smithers. “Miss
	Evelyn’s still all right?”</p>

	<p>“Up to three hours ago,” said
	Tommy grimly. “Every three hours
	one of our ships lands in Rahn and
	reports. We give the Rahnians their
	stuff at our own city gates. I’ve
	warned Jacaro that we’ve mounted
	thermit-throwers on our food stores.
	If he manages to gas us by surprise,
	nevertheless our foodstuffs
	can’t be captured. They’ve got to
	turn over Evelyn and cart off their
	food before they dare to fight, else
	they’ll starve.”</p>

	<p>“But—uh—there’re other cities
	they could stick up, ain’t there?”</p>

	<p>“We’ve warned them,” said
	Tommy curtly. “They’ve got thermit-throwers
	mounted on their food
	supplies, too. And they’re desperate
	enough to keep Rahn off. They’re
	willing enough to let Yugna do the
	fighting, but they know what Rahn’s
	winning will mean.”</p>

	<p>Smithers turned away, then
	turned back.</p>

	<p>“Uh—Mr. Reames,” he said
	heavily, “these fellas’ve gone near
	crazy about governors an’ reducing
	valves an’ such. They’re inventin’
	ways to use ’em on machines I
	don’t make head or tail of. We got
	three-four hundred men loose from
	machines already, an’ they’re turnin’
	<a class="pagenum" id="page410" title="410"> </a>out these steam guns as soon as
	you check up. There’ll be more
	loose by night. I had ’em spray
	some castin’s for another Tube, too.
	Workin’ like they do, an’ with the
	tools they got, they make speed.”</p>

	<p>Tommy responded impatiently:
	“There’s no steel, no iron for magnets.”</p>

	<p>“I know,” admitted Smithers.
	“I’m tryin’ steam cylinders to—uh—energize
	the castin’s, instead o’
	coils. It’ll be ready by mornin’. I
	wish you’d look it over, Mr.
	Reames. If Miss Evelyn gets safe
	into the city, we could send her
	down the Tube to Earth until the
	fightin’s over.”</p>

	<p>“I’ll try to see it,” said Tommy
	impatiently. “I’ll try!”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">He</span> turned back to the set-up
	steam gun. A flexible pipe
	from a heavily insulated cylinder
	ran to it. A hopper dropped metallic
	balls down into a bored-out
	barrel, where they were sucked
	into the blast of superheated steam
	from the storage cylinder. At a
	touch of the trigger a monstrous
	cloud of steam poured out. It was
	six feet from the gun muzzle before
	it condensed enough to be
	visible. Then a huge white cloud
	developed; but the metal pellets
	went on with deadly force. Half an
	inch in diameter, they carried seven
	hundred yards at extreme elevation.
	Point-blank range was seventy-five
	yards. They would kill at
	three hundred, and stun or disable
	beyond that. At a hundred yards
	they would tear through a man’s
	body.</p>

	<p>Tommy was promised a hundred
	of the weapons, with their boilers,
	in two days. He selected their emplacements.
	He directed that a disabling
	device be inserted, so if
	rushed they could not be turned
	against their owners. He inspected
	the gas masks being turned out by
	the women, who in this emergency
	worked like the men. Though helpless
	before machinery, it seemed,
	they could contrive a fabric device
	like a gas mask.</p>

	<p>The second day the work went
	on more desperately still. But
	Smithers’ work in releasing men
	was telling. There were fifteen
	hundred governors, or reducing
	valves, or autocratic cut-outs in
	operation now. And fifteen hundred
	men were released from the
	machines, which had to be kept
	going to keep the city alive. With
	that many men, intelligent mechanics
	all, Tommy and Smithers
	worked wonders. Smithers drove
	them mercilessly, using profanity
	and mechanical drawings instead of
	speech. Denham withdrew twenty
	men and labored on top of one of
	the towers. Toward sunset of the
	second day, vast clouds of steam
	bellied out from it at odd, irregular
	intervals. Nothing else manifested
	itself. Those irregular belchings of
	steam continued until dark, but
	Tommy paid no attention to them.
	He was driving the gunners of the
	machine guns to practice. He was
	planning patrols, devising a reserve,
	mounting thermit-throwers,
	and arranging for the delivery of
	the promised ransom at the specified
	city gate. So far, there was no
	sign of anything unusual in Rahn.
	Messengers from Yugna saw the
	captive women regularly, once
	every three hours. The last to leave
	had reported them being loaded
	into great ground vehicles under a
	defending escort, to travel through
	the dark jungle roads to Yugna.
	A vast concourse of empty vehicles
	was trailing into the jungle after
	them, to bring back the food which
	would keep Rahn from starving,
	for a while. It all seemed wholly
	regular.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">At</span> dawn, the remaining ships
	of the air fleet of Rahn were
	soaring silently above the jungle
	<a class="pagenum" id="page411" title="411"> </a>about the Golden City. They made
	no threat. They offered no affront.
	But they soared, and soared….</p>

	<p>A little after dawn, glitterings in
	the jungle announced the arrival of
	the convoy. Messengers, in advance,
	shouted the news. Men from Yugna
	went out to inspect. The atmosphere
	grew tense. The air fleet of
	Rahn drew closer.</p>

	<p>Slowly, a great golden gateway
	yawned. Four ground vehicles
	rolled forward, and under escort
	of the Rahnians entered the city.
	Half the captive women from
	Yugna were within them. They
	alighted, weeping for joy, and were
	promptly whisked away. Evelyn
	was not among them. Tommy
	ground his teeth. An explanation
	came. When one half the promised
	ransom was paid, the others would
	be forthcoming.</p>

	<p>Tommy gave grim orders. Half
	the foodstuffs were taken to the
	city gate—half, no more. At his
	direction, it was explained gently
	to the Rahnians that the rest of
	the ransom remained under guard
	of the thermit-throwers. It would
	not be exposed to capture until
	the last of the captives were released.
	There was argument, expostulation.
	The rest of the women
	appeared. Aten, at Tommy’s express
	command, piled Evelyn and
	his own wife into a ground vehicle
	and came racing madly to the tower
	from which Tommy could see all
	the circuit of the city.</p>

	<p>“You’re all right?” asked Tommy.
	At Evelyn’s speechless nod, he put
	his hand heavily on her shoulder.
	“I’m glad,” he managed to say.
	“Put on that gas mask. Hell’s going
	to pop in a minute.”</p>

	<p>He watched, every muscle tense.
	There was confusion about the city
	gate. Ground vehicles, loaded with
	foodstuffs, poured out of the gate
	and back toward the jungle. Other
	vehicles with improvised enlargements
	to their carrying platforms—making
	them into huge closed
	boxes—rolled up to the gate. The
	loaded vehicles rolled back and
	back and back, and ever more apparently
	empty ones crowded about
	the city gate waiting for admission.</p>

	<p>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 circling air fleet turned as one
	ship and plunged for the city. The
	leaders began to drop smoking
	things that turned into monstrous
	pillars of prismatically-colored
	mist. A wave of deadly vapor
	rolled over the ramparts of the
	city. And then there was a long-continued
	ululation and the noise
	of battle. Ragged Men, hidden in
	the jungle, had swarmed upon the
	walls with ladders made of jungle
	reeds. They came over the parapet
	in a wave of howling madness. And
	they surged into the city, flinging
	gas bombs as they came.</p>

	<h2 class="chapter_title"><span  class="chapter_no">CHAPTER X</span><br />
	The Fight</h2>

	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> city was pandemonium.
	Tommy, looking down from
	his post of command, swore softly
	under his breath. The Death Mist
	was harmless to the defenders of
	Yugna as a gas, because of their
	gas masks. But it served as a
	screen. It blotted out the waves of
	attackers so the steam guns could
	not be aimed save at the shortest
	of short ranges. His precautions
	were taking effect, to be sure. Two
	thirds of the attackers were Ragged
	Men drawn from about half the
	surviving cities, and against such
	a horde Yugna could not have held
	out at all but for his preparations.
	Now the defenders took a heavy
	toll. Swarms of men came racing
	toward the open gate, their truncheons
	aglow in the sunlight. The
	ring of Death Mist was contracting
	as if to strangle the city, and it
	<a class="pagenum" id="page412" title="412"> </a>left the ramparts bare again. And
	from more than one point upon the
	battlements the roaring clouds of
	steam burst out again. A dozen
	guns concentrated on the racing
	men of Rahn, plunging from 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 irregular column was
	wiped out utterly. Wide swathes
	were cut in the rest. The survivors
	ran wildly forward over a litter of
	dead and dying men. Electric-charge
	weapons sent crackling discharges
	among them. Their contorted
	figures reeled and fell or
	leaped convulsively to lie forever
	still where they struck. And then
	the steam guns turned about to fire
	into the rear of the men who had
	charged past them.</p>

	<p>The steam guns had literally
	blasted away the line of Ragged
	Men where they stood. But the
	line went on, with great ragged
	gaps in it, to be sure, but still
	vastly outnumbering the defenders
	of the city. Here and there a steam
	gun was silent, its gun crew dead.
	And presently those that were left
	were useless, immobile upon the
	ramparts in the rear of the attack.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Down</span> in the ways of the city
	the fight rose to a riotous
	clamor. At Tommy’s order the women
	of the city had been concentrated
	into a few strong towers.
	The machines of the city were left
	undefended for a time. A few
	strong patrols of fighting men,
	strategically placed, flung themselves
	with irresistible force upon
	certain bands of maddened Ragged
	Men. But where a combat raged,
	there the Ragged Men swarmed
	howling. Their hatred impelled
	them to suicidal courage and to unspeakable
	atrocities. From his
	tower, Tommy saw a man of Yugna,
	evidently a prisoner. Four Ragged
	Men surrounded him, literally tearing
	him to pieces like the maniacs
	they were. Then he saw dust spurting
	up in a swift-advancing line,
	and all four Ragged Men twitched
	and collapsed on top of their victim.
	A steam gun had done that.
	A fighting patrol of the men of
	Yugna swept fiercely down a paved
	way in one of the Golden City’s
	vehicles. There was the glint of
	gold from it. A solid, choked mass
	of invaders rushed upon it. Without
	slackening speed, without a
	pause, the vehicle raced ahead. Intolerable
	flashes of light appeared.
	A thermit-thrower was mounted on
	the machine. It drove forward like
	a flaming meteor, and as electric-charge
	weapons flashed upon it
	men screamed and died. It tore into
	a vast cloud of the Death Mist and
	the unbearable flames of its weapon
	could only be seen as illuminations
	of that deadly vapor.</p>

	<p>A part of the city was free of
	defenders, save the isolated steam
	gunners left behind upon the walls.
	Ragged Men, drunk with success,
	ran through its ways, slashing at
	the walls, battering at the light-panels,
	pounding upon the doorways
	of the towers. Tommy saw
	them hacking at the great doorway
	of a tower. It gave. They rushed
	within. Almost instantly thereafter
	the opening spouted them forth
	again and after them, leaping upon
	them, snapping and biting and
	striking out with monstrous paws
	and teeth, were green lizard-things
	like the one that had been killed—years
	back, it seemed—on Earth.
	A deadly combat began 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 the fight.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">But</span> this was not the main
	battle. The main battle was
	hidden under the Death-Mist cloud,
	<a class="pagenum" id="page413" title="413"> </a>concentrated in a vast thick mass
	in the very center of the city.
	Tommy watched that grimly. Perhaps
	eight thousand men had assailed
	the city. Certainly two thousand
	of them were represented by
	the still or twitching forms in
	queer attitudes here and there, in
	single dots or groups. There were
	seven hundred corpses before the
	city gate alone, where the steam
	guns had mowed down a reinforcing
	column. And there were
	others scattered all about. The defenders
	had lost heavily enough,
	but Tommy’s defense behind the
	line of the ramparts was soundly
	concentrated in strong points,
	equipped with steam guns and
	mostly armed with thermit-throwers
	as well. From the center
	of the city there came only a vast,
	unorganized tumult of battle and
	death.</p>

	<p>Then a huge winged thing came
	soaring down past Tommy’s tower.
	It landed with a crash on the roofs
	below, spilling its men like ants.
	Tommy strained his eyes. There
	was a billowing outburst of steam
	from the tower where Denham had
	been working the night before. A
	big flier burst into the weird bright
	flame of the thermit fluid. It fell,
	splitting apart as it dropped. Again
	the billowing steam. No result—but
	beyond the city walls showed a
	flash of thermit flame.</p>

	<p>“Denham!” muttered  Tommy.
	“He’s got a steam cannon; he’s
	shooting shells loaded with thermit!
	They smash when they hit.
	Good!”</p>

	<p>He dispatched a man with orders,
	but a messenger was panting
	his way up as the runner left. He
	thrust a scribbled bit of paper into
	Tommy’s hand.</p>

	<div class="letter">
		<p>“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.</p>

		<p class="signature">Denham.”</p>
	</div>

	<p>Tommy began to snap out his
	commands. He raced downward toward
	the street. Men seemed to
	spring up like magic about him. A
	ship with one wing aflame was tottering
	in mid-air, and another was
	dropping like a plummet.</p>

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

	<p>Tommy led five hundred men in
	savage assault, cleaving the mass of
	invaders 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 the enemy. More men of Yugna
	came leaping from a dozen doorways
	and joined them. Tommy
	found Smithers by his side, powder-stained
	and sweat-streaked.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“Miss</span> Evelyn’s all right?”
	Smithers asked in a great
	calm.</p>

	<p>“She is,” growled Tommy. “On
	the top floor of a tower, with a
	hundred men to guard her.”</p>

	<p>“You didn’t look at the Tube I
	made,” said Smithers impassively;
	“but I 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.”</p>

	<p>He opened fire with a magazine
	<a class="pagenum" id="page414" title="414"> </a>rifle into the thick of the mob that
	assailed the two towers. Tommy
	left him with fifty men to block a
	highway and led his men again into
	the mass of mingled Ragged Men
	and Rahnians. His followers saw
	his tactics now. They split off a
	section of the mob and fell upon it
	ferociously. There were sudden awful
	screams. Thermit flame was
	rising from two places in the very
	thick of the mob. It burst up from
	a third, and fourth, and fifth….
	Denham, atop his tower, had the
	range with his steam cannon, and
	was flinging heavy shells into the
	attackers of the two central buildings.
	And then there was a roaring
	of steam and a ground vehicle came
	to a stop not fifty feet away. A gun
	crew of Yugnans had shifted their
	unwieldy weapon and its insulated
	steam boiler to a freight-carrying
	vehicle. Now the gunner pulled
	trigger and traversed his weapon
	into the thick of the massed invaders,
	while his companions
	worked desperately to keep the
	hopper full of projectiles.</p>

	<p>The invaders melted away. Steam
	guns in the towers, thermit projectiles
	from the cannon far away:
	now this…. And the concealing
	cloud of Death Mist was rising
	still, headed straight up toward the
	zenith. It looked like a tiny, dwindling
	pearl.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> assault upon Yugna had
	been a mad one, a frantic one.
	But the flight from Yugna was the
	flight of men trying to escape from
	hell. Wild panic characterized the
	fleeing men. They threw aside their
	weapons and ran with screams of
	terror no whit less horrible than
	their howls of triumph had been.
	And Tommy would have stopped
	the slaughter, but there was no way
	to send orders to the rampart gunners
	in time. As the fugitives
	swarmed toward the walls again,
	the storms of steam-propelled missiles
	mowed them down. Even
	those who scrambled down to the
	ground outside and fled sobbing
	for the jungle were pursued by
	hails of bullets. Of the eight thousand
	men who assailed Yugna, less
	than one in five escaped.</p>

	<p>Pursuit was still in progress.
	Here and there, through the city,
	the sound of isolated combats still
	went on. Denham came down from
	his tower, looking rather sick as he
	saw the carnage about him. A
	strong escort brought Evelyn.
	Aten was grinning proudly, as
	though he had in person defeated
	the enemy. And as Evelyn shakingly
	put out her hand to touch
	Tommy’s arm—it was only later
	that he realized he had been
	wounded in half a dozen minor
	ways—a shadow roared over their
	heads. The crackle of firearms came
	from it.</p>

	<p>“Jacaro!” snarled Tommy. He
	leaped instinctively to pursue. But
	the flying thing was bound for a
	landing in an open square, the same
	one which not long since had seen
	the heaviest fighting. It alighted
	there and toppled askew on contact.
	Figures tumbled out of it, in
	torn and ragged garments fashioned
	in the style of the very best tailors
	of the Earth’s underworld.</p>

	<p>Men of Yugna raced to intercept
	them. Firearms spat and bellowed
	luridly. In a close-knit, flame-spitting
	group, the knot of men raced
	over fallen bodies and hurtled
	areas where the pavement had
	cooled to no more than a dull-red
	heat where a thermit shell had
	struck. One man, two, three men
	fell under the small-arms fire. The
	gangsters went racing on, firing
	desperately. They dived into a tunnel
	and disappeared.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">“The</span> Tube!” roared Smithers.
	“They’ goin’ for the Tube!”</p>

	<p>He plunged forward, and Tommy
	seized his arm.</p>

	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page415" title="415"> </a>“They’ll go through your Tube,”
	he said curtly. “It looks like the
	one they came through. They’ll
	think it is. Let ’em!”</p>

	<p>Smithers tried to tear free.</p>

	<p>“But they’ll get back to Earth!”
	he raged. “They’ll get off clear!”</p>

	<p>The sharp, cracking sound of a
	gun-cotton explosion came out of
	the doorway into which Jacaro and
	his men had dived. Tommy smiled
	very grimly indeed.</p>

	<p>“They’ve gone through,” he said
	drily, “and they’ve blown up the
	Tube behind 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
	one pair of castings. They
	didn’t satisfy you. Your pupils
	forgot that. They hooked them all
	together.”</p>

	<p>Smithers gulped.</p>

	<p>“Instead of four right-angled
	bends,” said Tommy grimly, “you
	have six connected together. You
	turned on the steam in a hurry,
	not noticing. And I don’t know
	how many series of dimensions
	there are in this universe of ours.
	We know of two. There may be
	any number. But Jacaro and 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. Nobody
	knows. The main thing is that
	Earth is safe now. The Death Mist
	has faded out of the picture.”</p>

	<p>He turned and smiled warmly at
	Evelyn. He was a rather horrible
	sight just then, though he did not
	know it. He was bloody and burned
	and wounded. He ignored all matters
	but success, however.</p>

	<p>“I think,” he said drily, “we have
	won the confidence of the Golden
	City, Evelyn, and that there’ll be
	no more talk of gassing Earth. As
	soon as the Council meets again,
	we’ll make sure. And then—well, I
	think 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.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Again</span> the Council hall in the
	tower of government in the
	Golden City of Yugna. Again the
	queer benches about the black wood
	table—though two of the seats that
	had been occupied were now empty.
	Again the guards behind the chairs,
	and the crowd of watchers—visitors,
	citizens of Yugna attending
	the deliberations of the Council.
	The audience was a queer one, this
	time. There were bandages here
	and there. There were men who
	were wounded, broken, bent and
	crippled in the fighting. But a
	warmly welcoming murmur spread
	through the hall as Tommy came
	in, himself rather extensively
	patched. He was wearing the tunic
	and breeches of the Golden City,
	because his own clothes were hopelessly
	beyond repair. The bearded
	old Councilor gathered the eyes of
	his fellows. They rose. This Council
	seated itself as one man.</p>

	<p>Quiet, placid formalities. The
	Keeper of Foodstuffs murmured
	that the ransom paid to Rahn had
	been recaptured after the fight. The
	Keeper of Rolls reported with
	savage satisfaction the number of
	enemies who had been slain in
	battle. He added that the loss to
	Yugna was less than one man to
	ten of the enemy. And he added
	with still greater emphasis that the
	shops being fitted with automatic
	controls had released now—it had
	grown so much—two thousand men
	from the necessary day-and-night
	working force, and further releases
	were to be expected. The demands
	of the machines were lessened
	already beyond the memory of man.
	Eyes turned to Tommy. There was
	an expectant pause for his reply.</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page416" title="416"> </a><span class="first_word">“I have</span> been Commander of
	Defense Forces,” he told them
	slowly, “in this fighting. I have
	given you weapons. My two friends
	have done more. The machines will
	need fewer and fewer attendants as
	the hints they have given you are
	developed by yourselves. And there
	is some hope that one of my friends
	may show you, in ultra-sonic vibrations,
	a weapon against the jungle
	itself. My own work is finished.
	But I ask again for friendship for
	my planet Earth. I ask that no war
	be made on my own people. I ask
	that what benefits you receive from
	us be passed to the other surviving
	cities on the same terms. And since
	there can be no further fighting on
	this scale, I give back my commission
	as Commander of Defense.”</p>

	<p>There was a little murmur among
	the men of Yugna, looking on. It
	rose to a protesting babble, to a
	shout of denial. The bearded old
	Keeper of Foodstuffs smiled.</p>

	<p>“It is proposed that the appointment
	as Commander of Defense
	Forces be permanent,” he said
	mildly.</p>

	<p>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 around
	the table. It passed a second time,
	but this time each man merely
	looked at the top.</p>

	<p>“You command the defense forces
	of Yugna for always,” said the
	bearded old man, gently. “Now give
	orders that your requests become
	laws.”</p>

	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />

	<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Tommy</span> stared blankly. He was
	suddenly aware of Aten in the
	background, smiling triumphantly
	and very happily at him. There was
	something like a roar of approval
	from the men of Yugna, assembled.</p>

	<p>“Just what,” demanded Tommy,
	“does this mean?”</p>

	<p>“For many years,” said a hawk-faced
	man ungraciously, “we have
	had no Commander of Defense. We
	have had no wars. But we see it is
	needful. We have chosen you, with
	all agreeing. The Commander of
	Defense”—he sniffed a little, pugnaciously—“has
	the authority the
	ancient kings once owned.”</p>

	<p>Tommy leaned back in the curious
	benchlike chair, his eyes narrow
	and thoughtful. This would
	simplify matters. No danger of
	trouble to Earth. A free hand for
	Denham and Smithers to help these
	folk, and for Denham to learn
	scientific facts—in the sciences they
	had developed—which would be of
	inestimable value to Earth. And it
	could be possible to open a peaceful
	trade with the nations of Earth
	without any danger of war. And
	maybe….</p>

	<p>He smiled suddenly. It widened
	almost into a grin.</p>

	<p>“All right. I’ll settle down here
	for a while. But—er—just how
	does one set about getting married
	here?”</p>

	<div id="the_end">
		&nbsp;
	</div>

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