An hour later, Tommy took his eyes away from the dimensoscope
eye-piece. He could not bear to look any longer.
"Why don't they kill him?" he demanded sickly, filled with a horrible,
a monstrous rage. "Oh, why don't they kill him?"
He felt maddeningly impotent. In another world entirely, a mob of
half-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely
surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Men
guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves
unspeakably by small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful but
not weakening. And they capered and howled with glee when the bound
man writhed.
The prisoner was a brave man, though. Helpless as he was, he presently
flung back his head and set his teeth. Sweat stood out in great
droplets upon his body and upon his forehead. And he stilled his
writhings, and looked at his captors with a grim and desperate
defiance.
The guards made gestures which were all too clear, all too luridly
descriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man of
the Golden City was ashen and hopeless and utterly despairing--and yet
defiant.
Smithers took Tommy's place at the eye-piece of the instrument. His
nostrils quivered at what he saw. The vehicle from the Golden City was
being plundered, of course. Weapons from the dead men were being
squabbled over, even fought over. And the Ragged Men fought as madly
among themselves as if in combat with their enemies. The big golden
weapon on its cart was already being dragged away to its former
hiding-place. And somehow, it was clear that those who dragged it away
expected and demanded that the solitary prisoner not be killed until
their return.
It was that prisoner, in the agony which was only the beginning of his
death, who made Smithers' teeth set tightly.
* * * * *
"I don't see the Professor or Miss Evelyn," said Smithers in a vast
calmness. "I hope to Gawd they--don't see this."
Tommy swung on his heel, staring and ashen.
"They were near," he said stridently. "I saw them! They saw what
happened in the ambush! They'll--they'll see that man tortured!"
Smithers' hand closed and unclosed.
"Maybe the Professor'll have sense enough to take Miss
Evelyn--uh--where she--can't hear," he said slowly, his voice level.
"I hope so."
Tommy flung out his hands desperately.
"I want to help that man!" he cried savagely. "I want to do something!
I saw what they promised to do to him. I want to--to kill him, even!
It would be mercy!"
Smithers said, with a queer, stilly shock in his voice:
"I see the Professor now. He's got that gun-thing in his hand.... Miss
Evelyn's urging him to try to do something.... He's looking at the
sky.... It'll be a long time before it's dark.... He's gone back out
of sight...."
"If we had some dynamite!" said Tommy desperately, "we could take a
chance on blowing ourselves to bits and try to fling it through and
into the middle of those devils...."
* * * * *
He was pacing up and down the laboratory, harrowed by the fate of that
gray-faced man who awaited death by torture; filled with a wild terror
that Evelyn and her father would try to rescue him and be caught to
share his fate; racked by his utter impotence to do more than
watch....
Then Smithers said thickly:
"God!"
He stumbled away from the eye-piece. Tommy took his place,
dry-throated with terror. He saw the Ragged Men laughing uproariously.
The bearded man who was their leader was breaking the arms and legs of
the prisoner so that he would be helpless when released from the stake
to which he was bound. And if ever human beings looked like devils out
of hell, it was at that moment. The method of breaking the bones was
excruciating. The prisoner screamed. The Ragged Men rolled upon the
ground in their maniacal mirth.
And then a man dropped, heaving convulsively, and then another, and
still another.... The grim, gaunt figure of Denham came out of the
tree-fern forest, the queer small golden-metal trunchion in his hand.
A fourth man dropped before the Ragged Men quite realized what had
happened. The fourth man himself was armed--and a flashing slender
body came plunging from the forest and Evelyn flung herself upon the
still-heaving body and plucked away that weapon.
* * * * *
Tommy groaned, in the laboratory in another world. He could not look
away, and yet it seemed that the heart would be torn from his body by
that sight. Because the Ragged Men had turned upon Denham with a
concentrated ferocity, somehow knowing instantly that he was more
nearly akin to the men of the Golden City than to them. But at sight
of Evelyn, her garments rent by the thorns of the forest, her white
body gleaming through the largest tears, they seemed to go mad. And
Tommy's eyes, glazing, saw the look on Denham's face as he realized
that Evelyn had not fled, but had followed him in his desperate and
wholly hopeless effort.
Then the swarming mass of Ragged Men surged over the two of them.
Buried them under reaching, hating, lusting fiends who fought even
among themselves to be first to seize them.
Then there was only madness, and Denham was bound beside the man of
the Golden City, and Evelyn was the center of a fighting group which
was suddenly flung aside by the bearded giant, and the encampment of
the Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow Tommy knew with a terrible
clarity that a man of the Golden City to torture was bliss
unimaginable to these half-mad enemies of that city. But a woman--
He turned from the instrument, three-quarters out of his head. He
literally did not see Von Holtz gazing furtively in the doorway. His
eyes were fixed and staring. It seemed that his brain would burst.
Then he heard his own voice saying with an altogether unbelievable
steadiness:
"Smithers! They've got Evelyn. Get the sub-machine gun."
* * * * *
Smithers cried out hoarsely. His face was not quite human, for an
instant. But Tommy was bringing the work bench on which he had
installed his magnetic catapult, close over by the dimensoscope.
"This cannot work," he said in the same incredible calmness. "Not
possibly. It should not work. It will not work. But it has to work!"
He was clamping the catapult to a piece of heavy timber.
"Put the gun so it shoots into the first magnet," he said steadily.
"The magnet-windings shouldn't stand the current we've got to put into
them. They've got to."
Smithers' fingers were trembling and unsteady. Tommy helped him, not
looking through the dimensoscope at all.
"Start the dynamo," he said evenly--and marveled foolishly at the
voice that did not seem to belong to him at all, talking so steadily
and so quietly. "Give me all the juice you've got. We'll cut out this
rheostat."
He was tightening a vise which would hold the deadly little weapon in
place while Smithers got the crude-oil engine going and accelerated it
recklessly to its highest speed. Tommy flung the switch. Rubber
insulation steamed and stank. He pulled the trigger of the little gun
for a single shot. The bullet flew into the first hollow magnet, just
as he had beforehand thrust an iron wire. It vanished. The series of
magnets seemed unharmed.
* * * * *
With a peculiar, dreamlike steadiness, Tommy put his hand where an
undeflected bullet would go through it. He pressed the trigger again.
He felt a tiny breeze upon his hand. But the bullet had been unable to
elude the compound-wound magnets, each of which now had quite four
times the designed voltage impressed upon its coils.
Tommy flung off the switch.
"Work the gun," he ordered harshly. "When I say fire, send a burst of
shots through it. Keep the switch off except when you're actually
firing, so--God willing--the coils don't burn out. Fire!"
He was gazing through the dimensoscope. Evelyn was struggling
helplessly while two Ragged Men held her arms, grinning as only devils
could have grinned, and others squabbled and watched with a fascinated
attention some cryptic process which could only be the drawing of
lots....
Tommy saw, and paid no attention. The machine-gun beside him rasped
suddenly. He saw a tree-fern frond shudder. He saw a gaping, irregular
hole where a fresh frond was uncurling. Tommy put out his hand to the
gun.
"Let me move it, bench and all," he said steadily. "Now try it again.
Just a burst."
* * * * *
Again the gun rasped. And the earth was kicked up suddenly where the
bullets struck in that other world. The little steel-jacketed missiles
were deflected by the terribly overstrained magnets of the catapult,
but their energy was not destroyed. It was merely altered in
direction. Fired within the laboratory upon our own and normal world,
the bullets came out into the world of tree-ferns and monstrous
things. They came out, as it happened, sideways instead of point
first, which was due to some queer effect of dimension change upon an
object moving at high velocity. Because of that, they ricocheted much
more readily, and where they struck they made a much more ghastly
wound. But the first two bursts caused no effect at all. They were not
even noticed by the Ragged Men. The noise of the little gun was
thunderous and snarling in the laboratory, but in the world of the
fifth dimension there was no sound at all.
"Like this," said Tommy steadily. "Just like this.... Now fire!"
He had tilted the muzzle upward. And then with a horrible grim
intensity he traversed the gun as it roared.
And it was butchery. Three Ragged Men were cut literally to bits
before the storm of bullets began to do real damage. The squabbling
group, casting lots for Evelyn, had a swathe of dead men in its midst
before snarls begun had been completed.
"Again," said Tommy coldly. "Again, Smithers, again!"
* * * * *
And again the little gun roared. The burly bearded man clutched at his
throat--and it was a gory horror. A Thing began to run insanely. It
did not even look human any longer. It stumbled over the leader of the
Ragged Men and died as he had done. The bullets came tumbling over
themselves erratically. They swooped and curved and dispersed
themselves crazily. Spinning as they were, at right angles to their
line of flight, their trajectories were incalculable and their impacts
were grisly.
The little gun fired ten several bursts, aimed in a desperate
cold-bloodedness, before the smell of burnt rubber became suddenly
overpowering and the rasping sound of an electric arc broke through
the rumbling of the crude-oil engine in the back.
Smithers sobbed.
"Burnt out!"
But Tommy waved his hand.
"I think," he said savagely, "that maybe a dozen of them got away.
Evelyn's staggering toward her father. She'll turn him loose. That
prisoner's dead, though. Didn't mean to shoot him, but those bullets
flew wild."
He gave Smithers the eye-piece. Sweat was rolling down his forehead in
great drops. His hands were trembling uncontrollably.
He paced shakenly up and down the laboratory, trying to shut out of
his own sight the things he had seen when the bullets of his own
aiming literally splashed into the living flesh of men. He had seen
Ragged Men disemboweled by those spinning, knifelike projectiles. He
had turned a part of the mad world of that other dimension into a
shambles, and he did not regret it because he had saved Evelyn, but he
wanted to shut out the horror of seeing what he had done.
"But now," he said uncertainly to himself, "they're no better off,
except they've got weapons.... If that man from the Golden City hadn't
been killed...."
* * * * *
He was looking at the magnetic catapult, burned out and useless. His
eyes swung suddenly to the other one. Just a little while since he had
made ready a missile to be thrown through into the other world by
that. It contained snapshots, and diagrams, and it was an attempt to
communicate with the men of the Golden City without any knowledge of
their language.
"But--I can communicate with Denham!"
He began to write feverishly. If he had looked out of the laboratory
window, he would have seen Von Holtz running like a deer, waving his
arms jerkily, and--when out of earshot of the laboratory--shouting
loudly. And Von Holtz was carrying a small black box which Tommy would
have identified instantly as a motion picture camera, built for
amateurs but capable of taking pictures indoors and with a
surprisingly small amount of light. And if Tommy had listened, he
might possibly have heard the beginnings of those shoutings to men
hidden in a patch of woodland about a quarter of a mile away. The men,
of course, were Jacaro's, waiting until either Von Holtz had secured
the information that was wanted, or until an assault in force upon the
laboratory would net them a catapult ready for use--to be examined,
photographed, and duplicated at leisure.
But Tommy neither looked nor listened. He wrote feverishly, saying to
Smithers at the dimensoscope:
"Denham'll be looking around to see what killed those men. When he
does, we want to be ready to shoot a smoke-bomb through to him, with a
message attached."
Smithers made a gesture of no especial meaning save that he had heard.
And Tommy went on writing swiftly, saying who he was and what he had
done, and that another globe was being built so that he and Smithers
could come with supplies and arms to help....
"He's lookin'' around now, Mr. Reames," said Smithers quietly. "He's
picked up a ricocheted bullet an' is staring at it."
* * * * *
The crude-oil engine was running at a thunderous rate. Tommy fastened
his note in the little missile he had made ready. He placed it under
the solenoid of the catapult after Denham's design, with the springs
and rings of metallic ammonium. He turned to Smithers.
"I'll watch for him," said Tommy unsteadily. "You know, watch for the
right moment to fling it through. Slow up the generator a little.
It'll rack itself to pieces."
He put his eye to the eye-piece. He winced as he saw again what the
bullets of his aiming had done. But he saw Denham almost at once. And
Denham was scratched and bruised and looked very far indeed from the
ideal of a professor of theoretic physics, with hardly more than a few
shreds of clothing left upon him, and a ten-day's beard upon his face.
He limped as he walked. But he had stopped in the task of gathering up
weapons to show Evelyn excitedly what it was that he had found. A
spent and battered bullet, but indubitably a bullet from the world of
his own ken. He began to stare about him, hopeful yet incredulous.
Tommy took his eye from the dimensoscope just long enough to light the
fuse of the smoke-bomb.
"Here it goes, Smithers!"
He flung the switch. The missile with its thickly smoking fuse leaped
upward as the concentric rings flickered and whirled bewilderingly.
The missile hurt the eyes that watched it. It vanished. The solenoid
dropped to the floor from the broken small contrivance.
Then Tommy's heart stood still as he gazed through the eye-piece
again. He could see nothing but an opaque milkiness. But it drifted
away, and he realised that it was smoke. More, Denham was staring at
it. More yet, he was moving cautiously towards its source, one of the
strange golden weapons held ready....
Denham was investigating.
* * * * *
The generator at the back of the laboratory slowed down. Smithers was
obeying orders. Tommy hung close by the vision instrument, his hands
moving vaguely and helplessly, as one makes gestures without volition
when anxious for someone else to duplicate the movements for which he
sets the example.
He saw Denham, very near, inspecting the smoking thing on the ground
suspiciously. The smoke-fuse ceased to burn. Denham stared. After an
age-long delay, he picked up the missile Tommy had prepared. And Tommy
saw that there was a cord attached to it. He had fastened that cord
when planning to try to communicate with the men of the Golden City,
when he had expected them to be victorious.
But he saw Denham's face light up with pathetic hope. He called to
Evelyn. He hobbled excitedly to her, babbling....
Tommy watched, and his heart pounded suddenly as Evelyn turned and
smiled in the direction in which she knew the dimensoscope must be. A
huge butterfly, its wings a full yard across, fluttered past her head.
Denham talked excitedly to her. A clumsy batlike thing swooped by
overhead. Its shadow blanketed her face for an instant. A running
animal, small and long, ran swiftly in full view from one side of the
dimensoscope's field of vision to the other. Then a snake, curiously
horned, went writhing past....
Denham talked excitedly. He turned and made gestures as of writing,
toward the spot where he had picked up Tommy's message. He began to
search for a charred stick where the Ragged Men had built a fire some
days now past. A fleeing furry thing sped across his feet, running....
* * * * *
Denham looked up. And Evelyn was staring now. She was staring in the
direction of the Golden City. And now what was almost a wave of
animals, all wild and all fleeing, swept across the field of vision of
the dimensoscope. There were gazelles, it seemed--slender-limbed,
graceful animals, at any rate--and there were tiny hoofed things which
might have been eohippi, and then a monstrous armadillo clanked and
rattled past....
Tommy swung the dimensoscope. He gasped. All the animal world was in
flight. The insects had taken to wing. Flying creatures were soaring
upward and streaking through the clear blue sky, and all in the one
direction. And then out of the morass came monstrous shapes;
misshapen, unbelievable reptilian shapes, which fled bellowing
thunderously for the tree-fern forest. They were gigantic, those
things from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out of
nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might
have been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And there
were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast
palpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, and
long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the ghastly things fled
bellowing....
And the cause of the mad panic was a slowly moving white curtain of
mist. It was flowing over the marsh, moving with apparent
deliberation, but, as Tommy saw, actually very swiftly. It shimmered
and quivered and moved onward steadily. Its upper surface gleamed with
elusive prismatic colors. It had blotted out the horizon and the
Golden City, and it came onward....
* * * * *
Denham made frantic, despairing gestures toward the dimensoscope. The
thing was coming too fast. There was no time to write. Denham held
high the cord that trailed from the message-bearing missile. He
gesticulated frantically, and raced to the gutted steel globe and
heaved mightily upon it and swung it about so that Tommy saw a great
steel ring set in its side, which had been hidden before. He made more
gestures, urgently, and motioned Evelyn inside.
Tommy struck at his forehead.
"It's poison gas," he muttered. "Revenge for the smashed-up
vehicle.... They knew it by an automatic radio signal, maybe. This is
their way of wiping out the Ragged Men.... Poison gas.... It'll kill
Denham and Evelyn.... He wants me to do something...."
He drew back, staring, straining every nerve to think.... And somehow
his eyes were drawn to the back of the laboratory and he saw Smithers
teetering on his feet, with his hands clasped queerly to his body, and
a strange man standing in the door of the laboratory with an automatic
pistol in his hand. The automatic had a silencer on it, and its
clicking had been drowned out, anyhow, by the roaring of the crude-oil
engine.
The man was small and dark and natty. His lips were drawn back in a
peculiar mirthless grin as Smithers teetered stupidly back and forth
and then fell....
The explosion of Tommy's own revolver astounded him as much as it did
Jacaro's gunman. He did not ever remember drawing it or aiming. The
natty little gunman was blotted out by a spouting mass of white
smoke--and suddenly Tommy knew what it was that Denham wanted him to
do.
* * * * *
There was rope in a loose and untidy coil beneath a work bench. Tommy
sprang to it in a queer, nightmarish activity. He knew what was
happening, of course. Von Holtz had seen the magnetic catapult at
work. That couldn't be destroyed or its workings hidden like the ring
catapult of Denham's design. He'd gone out to call in Jacaro's men.
And they'd shot down Smithers as a cold-blooded preliminary to the
seizure of the instrument Jacaro wanted.
It was necessary to defend the laboratory. But Tommy could not spare
the time. That white mist was moving upon Evelyn and her father, in
that other world. It was death, as the terror of the wild things
demonstrated. They had to be helped....
He knotted the rope to the end of the cord that vanished curiously
somewhere among the useless mass of rings. He tugged at the cord--and
it was tugged in return. Denham, in another world, had felt his signal
and had replied to it....
A window smashed suddenly and a bullet missed Tommy's neck by inches.
He fired at that window, and absorbedly guided the knot of the rope
past its vanishing point. The knot ceased to exist and the rope crept
onward--and suddenly moved more and more swiftly to a place where
abruptly it was not. For the length of half an inch, the rope hurt the
eyes that looked at it. Beyond that it was not possible to see it at
all.
Tommy leaped up. He plunged ahead of two separate spurts of shots from
two separate windows. The shots pierced the place where he had been.
He was racing for the crude-oil engine. There was a chain wound upon a
drum, there, and a clutch attached the drum to the engine.
He stopped and seized the repeating shotgun Smithers had brought as
his own weapon against Jacaro's gangsters. He sent four loads of
buckshot at the windows of the laboratory. A man yelled.
And Tommy had dropped the gun to knot the rope to the chain,
desperately, fiercely, in a terrible haste.
* * * * *
The chain began to pay out to that peculiar vanishing point which was
here an entry-way to another world--perhaps another universe.
A bullet nicked his ribs. He picked up the gun and fired it nearly at
random. He saw Smithers moving feebly, and Tommy had a vast compassion
for Smithers, but-- He shuddered suddenly. Something had struck him a
heavy blow in the shoulder. And something else battered at his leg.
There was no sound that could be heard above the thunder of the
crude-oil motor, but Tommy, was queerly aware of buzzing things flying
about him, and of something very warm flowing down his body and down
his leg. And he felt very dizzy and weak and extremely tired.... He
could not see clearly, either.
But he had to wait until Denham had the chain fast to the globe. That
was the way he had intended to come back, of course. The ring was in
the globe, and this chain was in the laboratory to haul the globe back
from wherever it had been sent. And Von Holtz had disconnected it
before sending away the globe with Denham in it. If the chain remained
unbroken, of course it could be hauled in, as it would turn all
necessary angles and force the globe to follow those angles, whatever
they might be....
Tommy was on his hands and knees, and men were saying savagely:
"Where's that thing, hey? Where's th' thing Jacaro wants?"
He wanted to tell them that they should say if the chain had stopped
moving to a place where it ceased to exist, so that he could throw a
clutch and bring Denham and his daughter back from the place where Von
Holtz had marooned them when he wanted to steal Denham's secret. Tommy
wanted to explain that. But the floor struck him in the face, and
something said to him:
"They've shot you."
* * * * *
But it did not seem to matter, somehow, and he lay very still until he
felt himself strangling, and he was breathing in strong ammonia which
made his eyes smart and his tired lungs gasp.
Then he saw flames, and heard a motor car roaring away from close by
the laboratory.
"They've stolen the catapult and set fire to the place," he remembered
dizzily, "and now they're skipping out...."
Even that did not seem to matter. But then he heard the chain clank,
next to him on the floor. The white mist! Denham and Evelyn waiting
for the white mist to reach them, and Denham jerking desperately on
the chain to signal that he was ready....
The flames had released ammonia from the metal Von Holtz had made.
That had roused Tommy. But it did not give him strength. It is
impossible to say where Tommy's strength came from, when somehow he
crawled to the clutch lever, with the engine roaring steadily above
him, and got one hand on the lever, and edged himself up, and up, and
up, until he could swing his whole weight on that lever. That instant
of dangling hurt excruciatingly, too, and Tommy saw only that the drum
began to revolve swiftly, winding the chain upon it, before his grip
gave way.
And the chain came winding in and in from nowhere, and the tall
laboratory filled more and more thickly with smoke, and lurid flames
appeared somewhere, and a rushing sound began to be audible as the
fire roared upward to the inflammable roof, and the engine ran
thunderously....
* * * * *
Then, suddenly, there was a shape in the middle of the laboratory
floor. A huge globular shape which it hurt the eyes to look upon. It
became visible out of nowhere as if evoked by magic amid the flames of
hell. But it came, and was solid and substantial, and it slid along
the floor upon small wheels until it wound up with a crash against the
winding drum, and the chain shrieked as it tightened unbearably--and
the engine choked and died.
Then a door opened in the monstrous globe. Two figures leaped out,
aghast. Two ragged, tattered, strangely-armed figures, who cried out
to each other and started for the door. But the girl stumbled over
Tommy and called, choking, to her father. Groping toward her, he found
Smithers. And then Tommy smiled drowsily to himself as soft arms
tugged bravely at him, and a slender, glorious figure staggered with
him to fresh air.
"It's Von Holtz," snapped Denham, and coughed as he fought his way to
the open. "I'll blast him to hell with these things we brought
back...."
* * * * *
That was the last thing Tommy knew until he woke up in bed with a
feeling of many bandages and an impression that his lungs hurt.
Denham seemed to have heard him move. He looked in the door.
"Hullo, Reames. You're all right now."
Tommy regarded him curiously until he realized. Denham was shaved and
fully clothed. That was the strangeness about him. Tommy had been
watching him for many days as his clothing swiftly deteriorated and
his beard grew.
"You are, too, I see," he said weakly. "I'm damned glad." Then he felt
foolish, and querulous, and as if he should make some apology, and
instead said, "But five dimensions does seem extreme. Three is enough
for ordinary use, and four is luxurious. Five seems to be going a bit
too far."
Denham blinked, and then grinned suddenly. Tommy had admired the man
who could face so extraordinary a situation with such dogged courage,
and now he found, suddenly, that he liked Denham.
"Not too far," said Denham grimly. "Look!" He held up one of the
weapons Tommy had seen in that other world, one of the golden-colored
truncheons. "I brought this back. The same metal they built that wagon
of theirs with. All their weapons. Most of their tools--as I know.
It's gold, man! They use gold in that world as we use steel here.
That's why Jacaro was ready to kill to get the secret of getting
there. Von Holtz enlisted him."
"How did you know--" began Tommy weakly.
"Smithers," said Denham. "We dragged both of you out before the lab
went-up in smoke. He's going to be all right, too. Evelyn's nursing
both of you. She wants to talk to you, but I want to say this first:
You did a damned fine thing, Reames! The only man who could have saved
us, and you just about killed yourself doing it. Smithers saw you
swing that clutch lever with three bullets in your body. And you're a
scientist, too. You're my partner, Reames, in what we do in the fifth
dimension."
* * * * *
Tommy blinked. "But five dimensions does seem extreme...."
"We are the Interdimensional Trading Company," said Denham, smiling.
"Somehow, I think we'll find something in this world we can trade for
the gold in that. And we've got to get there, Reames, because Jacaro
will surely try to make use of that catapult principle you worked out.
He'll raise the devil; and I think the people of that Golden City
would be worth knowing. No, we're partners. Sooner or later, you'll
know how I feel about what you've done. I'm going to bring Evelyn in
here now."
He vanished. An instant later Tommy heard a voice--a girl's voice. His
heart began to pound. Denham came back into the room and with him was
Evelyn. She smiled warmly upon Tommy, though as his eyes fell blankly
upon the smart sport clothes she was again wearing, she flushed.
"My daughter Evelyn," said Denham. "She wants to thank you."
And Tommy felt a warm soft hand pressing his, and he looked deep into
the eyes of the girl he had never before spoken to, but for whom he
had risked his life, and whom he knew he would love forever. There
were a thousand things crowding to his lips for utterance. He had
watched Evelyn, and he loved her--
"H-how do you do?" said Tommy, lamely. "I'm--awfully glad to meet
you."
But before he was well he learned to talk more sensibly.
[Illustration: _--And the ships, at that touch, fell helplessly down
from the heights._]
The Pirate Planet
PART THREE OF A FOUR-PART NOVEL
_By Charles W. Diffin_
Two fighting Yankees--war-torn Earth's sole representatives on
Venus--set out to spike the greatest gun of all time.
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
The attack comes without warning; its reason is unknown. But Venus is
approaching the earth, and flashes from the planet are followed by
terrific explosions that wreak havoc throughout the world. Lieutenant
McGuire and Captain Blake of the U. S. Army Air Service see a great
ship fly in from space. Blake attacks it with the 91st Squadron in
support, and Blake alone survives. McGuire and Professor Sykes, an
astronomer of Mount Lawson, are captured.
The bombardment ceases as Venus passes on, and the people of Earth
sink into hopeless despondency. Less than a year and a half and the
planet will return, and then--the end! The armament of Earth is futile
against an enemy who has conquered space. Blake hopes that science
might provide a means; might show our fighters how to go out into
space and throttle the attack at its source. But the hope is blasted,
until a radio from McGuire supplies a lead.
McGuire is on Venus. He and Sykes land on that distant planet,
captives of a barbarous people. They are taken before Torg, the
emperor, and his council, and they learn that these red, man-shaped
beasts intend to conquer the earth. Spawning in millions, they are
crowded, and Earth is to be their colony.
Imprisoned on a distant island, the two captives are drugged and
hypnotized before a machine which throws their thoughts upon a screen.
Involuntary traitors, they disclose the secrets of Earth and its
helplessness; then attempt to escape and end their lives rather than
be forced to further betrayal of their own people.
McGuire finds a radio station and sends a message back to Earth. He
implores Blake to find a man named Winslow, for Winslow has invented a
space ship and claims to have reached the moon.
No time for further sending--McGuire does not even know if his message
has been received--but they reach the ocean where death offers them
release. A force of their captors attacking on land, they throw
themselves from a cliff, then swim out to drown beyond reach in the
ocean. An enemy ship sweeps above them: its gas cloud threatens not
the death they desire but unconsciousness and capture. "God help us,"
says Sykes; "we can't even die!"
They sink, only to be buoyed up by a huge metal shape. A metal
projector raises from the ocean, bears upon the enemy ship and sends
it, a mass of flame and molten metal, into the sea. And friendly
voices are in McGuire's ears as careful hands lift the two men and
carry them within the craft that has saved them.