_The Fight in the Marsh_
Twice, 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.
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.
"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."
Evelyn said soberly:
"We're going to be killed, don't you think, Tommy?"
Tommy frowned.
"I'm rather afraid we are," he said irritably. "Confound it, and I'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."
Evelyn smiled faintly. She touched his hand.
"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."
Tommy stared at her. Then he decisively reached forward and put his
hand over her mouth.
"Keep quiet," he said gently. "They shan't capture you. I promise
that. Now keep quiet."
* * * * *
There 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.
"They seem mad," said Tommy meditatively, "and they act like lunatics,
but I've got a hunch of some sort about them. But what?"
Sunlight gleamed on something golden beyond the jungle's edge. Naked
figures went running to the spot. An exultant tumult arose.
"Now they try another trick," Tommy observed dispassionately. "I
remember that at the Tube they had pushed something on wheels...."
The sub-machine gun was unhandy for accurate single shots, and no
pistol can be used to effect 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.
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.
"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...."
He sighted carefully. The wagon and its contents were surrounded by a
leaping, capering mob. They shook their fists in an insane hatred.
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.
* * * * *
Steam 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.
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.
"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."
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.
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....
Tommy shot savagely. Some of the Ragged Men died. More did not.
"I'm afraid," he said coolly, "they're going to get us. It seems
rather purposeless, but I'm afraid they're going to win."
Evelyn thrust a shaking hand skyward. "There, Tommy!"
* * * * *
A strange, angular flying thing was moving steadily across the marsh,
barely above the steamlike haze that hung in thinning layers about its
foulness. The flying thing moved with a machinelike steadiness, and
the sun twinkled upon something bright and shining before it.
"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."
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.
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....
* * * * *
The flying machine soared in easy, effortless circles. The man in it
was watching, making no effort to interfere.
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.
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.
"Your mask!" snapped Tommy.
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.
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.
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.
Tommy reloaded, watching it keenly.
"The framework isn't smashed up, anyhow," he observed grimly. "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."
* * * * *
Automatic 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.
"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."
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.
"Come on and I'll bandage you up and see if we can make you understand
a few things."
Evelyn came running through the muck.
"He didn't hurt you, Tommy?" she gasped. "I saw you shoot--"
The pilot fairly jumped. At first glance he had recognized her as 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.
"Make pads with your handkerchief," grunted Tommy. "Take my tie to
hold them in place."
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.
"Now what?" asked Evelyn.
"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."
* * * * *
The pilot was fumbling at a belt about the curious tunic he wore.
Tommy watched him warily. But a pad of what seemed to be black 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 man
stood beneath a roughly indicated tree-fern.
"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."
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.
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.
* * * * *
"I'm saying," observed Tommy, "that Jacaro and his mob are the Ragged
Men of our world, which may not be wrong, at that."
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.
Tommy grinned ruefully.
"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?"
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.
* * * * *
"Quick thinking," said Tommy coolly. "He thought we had this man a
prisoner, and he'd be better off dead. But--"
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.
Twenty minutes later a monstrous machine with ungainly flapping wings
came heavily over the swamp. 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.
"I don't like it," growled Tommy, "but we've got to think of Earth. If
you get a chance hide your gun, Evelyn."
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.
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.