Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931

Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 Page 8

by Various

  [Illustration _"The globe leaped upward into the huge coil, whichwhirled madly."_]

  The Fifth-Dimension Catapult

  A COMPLETE NOVELETTE

  _By Murray Leinster_

  The story of Tommy Reames' extraordinary rescue of Professor Denham and his daughter--marooned in the fifth dimension.

  FOREWORD

  This story has no normal starting-place, because there are too manyplaces where it might be said to begin. One might commence whenProfessor Denham, Ph. D., M. A., etc., isolated a metal thatscientists have been talking about for many years without ever beingable to smelt. Or it might start with his first experimental use ofthat metal with entirely impossible results. Or it might veryplausibly begin with an interview between a celebrated leader ofgangsters in the city of Chicago and a spectacled young laboratoryassistant, who had turned over to him a peculiar heavy object of solidgold and very nervously explained, and finally managed to prove, whereit came from. With also impossible results, because it turned "King"Jacaro, lord of vice-resorts and rum-runners, into a passionateenthusiast in non-Euclidean geometry. The whole story might be said tobegin with the moment of that interview.

  But that leaves out Smithers, and especially it leaves out TommyReames. So, on the whole, it is best to take up the narrative at themoment of Tommy's first entrance into the course of events.

  CHAPTER I

  He came to a stop in a cloud of dust that swirled up to and all aboutthe big roadster, and surveyed the gate of the private road. The gatewas rather impressive. At its top was a sign. "Keep Out!" Halfway downwas another sign. "Private Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted."On one gate-post was another notice, "Live Wires Within." and on theother a defiant placard. "Savage Dogs At Large Within This Fence."

  The fence itself was all of seven feet high and made of the heaviestof woven-wire construction. It was topped with barbed wire, and wentall the way down both sides of a narrow right of way until it vanishedin the distance.

  Tommy got out of the car and opened the gate. This fitted thedescription of his destination, as given him by a brawny, red-headedfilling-station attendant in the village some two miles back. He drovethe roadster through the gate, got out and closed it piously, got backin the car and shot it ahead.

  He went humming down the narrow private road at forty-five miles anhour. That was Tommy Reames' way. He looked totally unlike theconventional description of a scientist of any sort--as much unlike ascientist as his sport roadster looked unlike a scientist's customarymeans of transit--and ordinarily he acted quite unlike one. As amatter of fact, most of the people Tommy associated with had nofaintest inkling of his taste for science as an avocation. There wasPeter Dalzell, for instance, who would have held up his hands in holyhorror at the idea of Tommy Reames being the author of that article."On the Mass and Inertia of the Tesseract," which in the_Philosophical Journal_ had caused a controversy.

  And there was one Mildred Holmes--of no importance in the matter ofthe Fifth-Dimension Catapult--who would have lifted beautifully archedeyebrows in bored unbelief if anybody had suggested that Tommy Reameswas that Thomas Reames whose "Additions to Herglotz's Mechanics ofContinua" produced such diversities of opinion in scientific circles.She intended to make Tommy propose to her some day, and thought sheknew all about him. And everybody, everywhere, would have beenincredulous of his present errand.

  * * * * *

  Gliding down the narrow, fenced-in road. Tommy was a trifle dubiousabout this errand himself. A yellow telegraph-form in his pocket readrather like a hoax, but was just plausible enough to have brought himaway from a rather important tennis match. The telegram read:

  PROFESSOR DENHAM IN EXTREME DANGER THROUGH EXPERIMENT BASED ON YOUR ARTICLE ON DOMINANT COORDINATES YOU ALONE CAN HELP HIM IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY COME AT ONCE.

  A. VON HOLTZ.

  The fence went on past the car. A mile, a mile and a half of narrowlane, fenced in and made as nearly intruder-proof as possible.

  "Wonder what I'd do," said Tommy Reames, "if another car came alongfrom the other end?"

  He deliberately tried not to think about the telegram any more. Hedidn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. But he couldn't ignore it,either. Nobody could: few scientists, and no human being with a normalamount of curiosity. Because the article on dominant coordinates hadappeared in the _Journal of Physics_ and had dealt with a state ofthings in which the normal coordinates of everyday existence wereassumed to have changed their functions: when the coordinates of time,the vertical, the horizontal and the lateral changed places and a manwent east to go up and west to go "down" and ran his street-numbers ina fourth dimension. It was mathematical foolery, from one standpoint,but it led to some fascinating if abstruse conclusions.

  * * * * *

  But his brain would not remain away from the subject of the telegram,even though a chicken appeared in the fenced-in lane ahead of him andwent flapping wildly on before the car. It rose in mid-air, the carovertook it as it rose above the level of the hood, and there was arolling, squawking bundle of shedding feathers tumbling over and overalong the hood until it reached the slanting windshield. There it spunwildly upward, left a cloud of feather's fluttering about Tommy'shead, and fell still squawking into the road behind. By the back-viewmirror, Tommy could see it picking itself up and staggering dizzilyback to the side of the road.

  "My point was," said Tommy vexedly to himself, speaking of the articlethe telegram referred to, "that a man can only recognize threedimensions of space and one of time. So that if he got shot out ofthis cosmos altogether he wouldn't know the difference. He'd stillseem to be in a three-dimensioned universe. And what is there in thatstuff to get Denham in trouble?"

  A house appeared ahead. A low, rambling sort of bungalow with a hugebrick barn behind it. The house of Professor Denham, very certainly,and that barn was the laboratory in which he made his experiments.

  Instinctively, Tommy stepped on the gas. The car leaped ahead. Andthen he was braking frantically. A pipe-framed gate with thinner,unpainted wire mesh filling its surface loomed before him, much toolate for him to stop. There was a minor shock, a crashing andsqueaking, and then a crash and shattering of glass. Tommy bent low asthe top bar of the gate hit his windshield. The double glass crackedand crumpled and bent, but did not fly to bits. And the car came to ahalt with its wheels intricately entangled in torn-away fence wire.The gate had been torn from its hinges and was draped rakishly overthe roadster. A tire went flat with a loud hissing noise, and TommyReames swore softly under his breath and got out to inspect thedamage.

  * * * * *

  He was deciding that nothing irreparable was wrong when a man camebursting out of the brick building behind the house. A tall, lean,youngish man who waved his arms emphatically and approached shouting:

  "You had no right to come in here! You must go away at once! You havedamaged property! I will tell the Professor! You must pay for thedamage! You must--"

  "Damn!" said Tommy Reames. He had just seen that his radiator waspunctured. A spout of ruddy, rusty water was pouring out on the grass.

  The youngish man came up furiously. A pale young man, Tommy noticed. Ayoung man with bristling, close-cropped hair and horn-rimmedspectacles before weak-looking eyes. His mouth was very full and veryred, in marked contrast to the pallor of his cheeks.

  "Did you not see the sign upon the gate?" he demanded angrily, incuriously stilted English. "Did you not see that trespassers areforbidden? You must go away at once! You will be prosecuted! You willbe imprisoned! You--"

  Tommy said irritably:

  "Are you Von Holtz? My name is Reames. You telegraphed me."

  The waving, lanky arms stopped in the middle of an excited gesture.The weak-looking eyes behind the lenses widened. A pink tongue lickedthe too-full, too-red lips.

  "Reames? The Herr Reames?" Von Holtz st
ammered. Then he saidsuspiciously, "But you are not--you cannot be the Herr Reames of thearticle on dominant coordinates!"

  "I don't know why," said Tommy annoyedly. "I'm also the Herr Reames ofseveral other articles, such as on the mechanics of continua and themass and inertia of the tesseract. And I believe the current_Philosophical Journal_--"

  * * * * *

  He surveyed the spouting red stream from the radiator and shruggedruefully.

  "I wish you'd telephone the village to have somebody come out and fixmy car," he said shortly, "and then tell me if this telegram is a jokeor not."

  He pulled out a yellow form and offered it. He had taken aninstinctive dislike to the lean figure before him, but suppressed thefeeling.

  Von Holtz took the telegram and read it, and smoothed it out, and saidagitatedly:

  "But I thought the Herr Reames would be--would be a venerablegentleman! I thought--"

  "You sent that wire," said Tommy. "It puzzled me just enough to makeme rush out here. And I feel like a fool for having done it. What'sthe matter? Is it a joke?"

  Von Holtz shook his head violently, even as he bit his lips.

  "No! No!" he protested. "The Herr Professor Denham is in the mostterrible, most deadly danger! I--I have been very nearly mad, HerrReames. The Ragged Men may seize him!... I telegraphed to you. I havenot slept for four nights. I have worked! I have racked my brains! Ihave gone nearly insane, trying to rescue the Herr Professor! And I--"

  * * * * *

  Tommy stared.

  "Four days?" he said. "The thing, whatever it is, has been going onfor four days?"

  "Five," said Von Holtz nervously. "It was only to-day that I thoughtof you, Herr Reames. The Herr Professor Denham had praised yourarticles highly. He said that you were the only man who would be ableto understand his work. Five days ago--"

  Tommy grunted.

  "If he's been in danger for five days," he said skeptically, "he's notin such a bad fix or it'd have been over. Will you phone for arepairman? Then we'll see what it's all about."

  The lean arms began to wave again as Von Holtz said desperately:

  "But Herr Reames, it is urgent! The Herr Professor is in deadlydanger!"

  "What's the matter with him?"

  "He is marooned," said Von Holtz. Again he licked his lips. "He ismarooned, Herr Reames, and you alone--"

  "Marooned?" said Tommy more skeptically still. "In the middle of NewYork State? And I alone can help him? You sound more and more as ifyou were playing a rather elaborate and not very funny practical joke.I've driven sixty miles to get here. What is the joke, anyhow?"

  Von Holtz said despairingly:

  "But it is true, Herr Reames! He is marooned. He has changed hiscoordinates. It was an experiment. He is marooned in the fifthdimension!"

  * * * * *

  There was dead silence. Tommy Reames stared blankly. Then his gorgerose. He had taken an instinctive dislike to this lean young man,anyhow. So he stared at him, and grew very angry, and wouldundoubtedly have gotten into his car and turned it about and driven itaway again if it had been in any shape to run. But it wasn't. One tirewas flat, and the last ruddy drops from the radiator were drippingslowly on the grass. So he pulled out a cigarette case and lighted acigarette and said sardonically:

  "The fifth dimension? That seems rather extreme. Most of us get alongvery well with three dimensions. Four seems luxurious. Why pick on thefifth?"

  Von Holtz grew pale with anger in his turn. He waved his arms,stopped, and said with stiff formality:

  "If the Herr Reames will follow me into the laboratory I will show himProfessor Denham and convince him of the Herr Professor's extremedanger."

  Tommy had a sudden startling conviction that Von Holtz was in earnest.He might be mad, but he was in earnest. And there was undoubtedly aProfessor Denham, and this was undoubtedly his home and laboratory.

  "I'll look, anyway," said Tommy less skeptically. "But it is ratherincredible, you know!"

  "It is impossible," said Von Holtz stiffly. "You are right, HerrReames. It is quite impossible. But it is a fact."

  He turned and stalked toward the big brick barn behind the house.Tommy went with him, wholly unbelieving and yet beginning to wonderif, just possibly, there was actually an emergency of a more normaland ghastly nature in being. Von Holtz might be a madman. He might....

  Gruesome, grisly thoughts ran through Tommy's head. A madman dabblingin science might do incredible things, horrible things, and thendemand assistance to undo an unimaginable murder....

  * * * * *

  Tommy was tense and alert as Von Holtz opened the door of the barnlikelaboratory. He waved the lean young man on ahead.

  "After you," he said curtly.

  He felt almost a shiver as he entered. But the interior of thelaboratory displayed no gruesome scene. It was a huge, high-ceilingedroom with a concrete floor. A monster dynamo was over in one corner,coupled to a matter-of-fact four-cylinder crude-oil engine, to whichwas also coupled by a clutch an inexplicable windlass-drum withseveral hundred feet of chain wrapped around it. There were ammetersand voltmeters on a control panel, and one of the most delicate ofdynamometers on its own stand, and there were work benches and amotor-driven lathe and a very complete equipment for the working ofmetals. And there was an electric furnace, with splashes of solidifiedmetal on the floor beside it, and there was a miniature casting-floor,and at the farther end of the monster room there was a giganticsolenoid which evidently had once swung upon gymbals and as evidentlynow was broken, because it lay toppled askew upon its supports.

  The only totally unidentifiable piece of apparatus in the place wasone queer contrivance at one side. It looked partly like amachine-gun, because of a long brass barrel projecting from it. Butthe brass tube came out of a bulging casing of cast aluminum and therewas no opening through which shells could be fed.

  * * * * *

  Von Holz moved to that contrivance, removed a cap from the end of thebrass tube, looked carefully into the opening, and waved stiffly forTommy to look in.

  Again Tommy was suspicious; watched until Von Holtz was some distanceaway. But the instant he put his eye to the end of the brass tube heforgot all caution, all suspicion, all his doubts. He forgoteverything in his amazement.

  There was a lens in the end of the brass tube. It was, in fact,nothing more or less than a telescope, apparently looking at somethingin a closed box. But Tommy was not able to believe that he looked atan illuminated miniature for even the fraction of a second. He lookedinto the telescope, and he was seeing out-of-doors. Through thealuminum casting that enclosed the end of the tube. Through the thickbrick walls of the laboratory. He was gazing upon a landscape such asshould not--such as could not--exist upon the earth.

  There were monstrous, feathery tree-ferns waving languid fronds in abreeze that came from beyond them. The telescope seemed to be pointingat a gentle slope, and those tree-ferns cut off a farther view, butthere was an impenetrable tangle of breast-high foliage between theinstrument and that slope, and halfway up the incline there rested ahuge steel globe.

  Tommy's eyes fixed themselves upon the globe. It was man-made, ofcourse. He could see where it had been bolted together. There wereglassed-in windows in its sides, and there was a door.

  * * * * *

  As Tommy looked, that door opened partway, stopped as if someonewithin had hesitated, and then opened fully. A man came out. And Tommysaid dazedly:

  "My God!"

  Because the man was a perfectly commonplace sort of individual,dressed in a perfectly commonplace fashion, and he carried a perfectlycommonplace briar pipe in his hand. Moreover, Tommy recognized him. Hehad seen pictures of him often enough, and he was Professor EdwardDenham, entitled to put practically all the letters of the alphabetafter his name, the author of "Polymerization of the Pseudo-MetallicNi
trides" and the proper owner of this building and its contents. ButTommy saw him against a background of tree-ferns such as should havebeen extinct upon this earth since the Carboniferous Period, somemillions of years ago.

  He was looking hungrily at his briar pipe. Presently he began to huntcarefully about on the ground. He picked together half a handful ofbrownish things which had to be dried leaves. He stuffed them into thepipe, struck a match, and lighted it. He puffed away gloomily,surrounded by wholly monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered overthe top of the steel globe. Its wings were fully a yard across. Itflittered lightly to a plant and seemed to wait, and abruptly a vividcarmine blossom opened wide; wide enough to admit it.

  Denham watched curiously enough, smoking the rank and plainlyunsatisfying dried leaves. He turned his head and spoke over hisshoulder. The door opened again. Again Tommy Reames was dazed. Becausea girl came out of the huge steel sphere--and she was a girl of themost modern and most normal sort. A trim sport frock, slim silkenlegs, bobbed hair....

  Tommy did not see her face until she turned, smiling, to make somecomment to Denham. Then he saw that she was breath-takingly pretty. Heswore softly under his breath.

  * * * * *

  The butterfly backed clumsily out of the gigantic flower. It flewlightly away, its many-colored wings brilliant in the sunshine. Andthe huge crimson blossom closed slowly.

  Denham watched the butterfly go away. His eyes returned to the girlwho was smiling at the flying thing, now out of the field of vision ofthe telescope. And there was utter discouragement visible in everyline of Denham's figure. Tommy saw the girl suddenly reach out herhand and put it on Denham's shoulder. She patted it, speaking in anevident attempt to encourage him. She smiled, and talked coaxingly,and presently Denham made a queer, arrested gesture and went heavilyback into the steel globe. She followed him, though she looked wearilyall about before the door closed behind her, and when Denham could notsee her face, her expression was tired and anxious indeed.

  Tommy had forgotten Von Holtz, had forgotten the laboratory, hadforgotten absolutely everything. If his original suspicions of VonHoltz had been justified, he could have been killed half a dozen timesover. He was oblivious to everything but the sight before his eyes.

  Now he felt a touch on his shoulder and drew his head away with ajerk. Von Holtz was looking down at him, very pale, with hisweak-looking eyes anxious.

  "They are still all right?" he demanded.

  "Yes," said Tommy dazedly. "Surely. Who is that girl?"

  "That is the Herr Professor's daughter Evelyn," said Von Holtzuneasily. "I suggest, Herr Reames, that you swing the dimensoscopeabout."

  "The--what?" asked Tommy, still dazed by what he had seen.

  "The dimensoscope. This." Von Holtz shifted the brass tube. The wholething was mounted so that it could be swung in any direction. Themounting was exactly like that of a normal telescope. Tommy instantlyput his eye to the eyepiece again.

  * * * * *

  He saw more tree-ferns, practically the duplicates of the backgroundbeyond the globe. Nothing moved save small, fugitive creatures amongtheir fronds. He swung the telescope still farther. The landscapeswept by before his eyes. The tree-fern forest drew back. He saw thebeginning of a vast and noisome morass, over which lay a thick haze asof a stream raised by the sun. He saw something move in that morass;something huge and horrible with a long and snake-like neck and thetiniest of heads at the end of it. But he could not see the thingclearly.

  He swung the telescope yet again. And he looked over miles and milesof level, haze-blanketed marsh. Here and there were clumps of tallervegetation. Here and there were steaming, desolate pools. And three orfour times he saw monstrous objects moving about clumsily in themarsh-land.

  But then a glitter at the skyline caught his eye. He tilted thetelescope to see more clearly, and suddenly he caught his breath.There, far away at the very horizon, was a city. It was tall andgleaming and very strange. No earthly city ever flung its towers sosplendidly high and soaring. No city ever built by man gave off thefiery gleam of gold from all its walls and pinnacles. It looked likean artist's dream, hammered out in precious metal, with its outlinessoftened by the haze of distance.

  And something was moving in the air near the city. Staring, tense,again incredulous, Tommy Reames strained his eyes and saw that it wasa machine. An air-craft; a flying-machine of a type wholly unlikeanything ever built upon the planet Earth. It swept steadily andswiftly toward the city, dwindling as it went. It swooped downwardtoward one of the mighty spires of the city of golden gleams, andvanished.

  * * * * *

  It was with a sense of shock, of almost physical shock, that Tommycame back to realization of his surroundings to feel Von Holtz's handupon his shoulder and to hear the lean young man saying harshly:

  "Well, Herr Reames? Are you convinced that I did not lie to you? Areyou convinced that the Herr Professor Denham is in need of help?"

  Tommy blinked dazedly as he looked around the laboratory again. Brickwalls, an oil-spattered crude-oil engine in one corner, a concretefloor and an electric furnace and a casting-box....

  "Why--yes...." said Tommy dazedly. "Yes. Of course!" Clarity came tohis brain with a jerk. He did not understand at all, but he believedwhat he had seen. Denham and his daughter were somewhere in some otherdimension, yet within range of the extraordinary device he had lookedthrough. And they were in trouble. So much was evident from theirposes and their manner. "Of course," he repeated. "They're--there,wherever it is, and they can't get back. They don't seem to be in anyimminent danger...."

  Von Holtz licked his lips.

  "The Ragged Men have not found them yet," he said in a hushed, harshvoice. "Before they went in the globe we saw the Ragged Men. Wewatched them. If they do find the Herr Professor and his daughter,they will kill them very slowly, so that they will take days ofscreaming agony to die. It is that that I am afraid of, Herr Reames.The Ragged Men roam the tree-fern forests. If they find the HerrProfessor they will trace each nerve to its root of agony until hedies. And we will be able only to watch...."

  CHAPTER II

  "The thing is," said Tommy feverishly, "that we've got to find a wayto get them back. Whether it duplicates Denham's results or not. Howfar away are they?"

  "A few hundred yards, perhaps," said Von Holtz wearily, "or tenmillion miles. It is the same thing. They are in a place where thefifth dimension is the dominant coordinate."

  Tommy was pacing up and down the laboratory. He stopped and lookedthrough the eyepiece of the extraordinary vision apparatus. He torehimself away from it again.

  "How does this thing work?" he demanded.

  Von Holtz began to unscrew two wing-nuts which kept the top of thealuminum casting in place.

  "It is the first piece of apparatus which Professor Denham made," hesaid precisely. "I know the theory, but I cannot duplicate it. Everydimension is at right angles to all other dimensions, of course. TheHerr Professor has a note, here--"

  He stopped his unscrewing to run over a heap of papers on thework-bench--papers over which he seemed to have been poringdesperately at the time of Tommy's arrival. He handed a sheet toTommy, who read:

  "If a creature who was aware of only two dimensions made tworight-angled objects and so placed them that all the angles formed bythe combination were right angles, he would contrive a figurerepresented by the corner of a box; he would discover a thirddimension. Similarly, if a three-dimensioned man took three rightangles and placed them so that all the angles formed were rightangles, he would discover a fourth dimension. This, however, wouldprobably be the time dimension, and to travel in time would instantlybe fatal. But with four right angles he could discover a fifthdimension, and with five right angles he could discover a sixth...."

  * * * * *

  Tommy Reames put down the paper impatiently.

  "Of course" he said brusquely. "I
know all that stuff. But up to thepresent time nobody has been able to put together even three rightangles, in practise."

  Von Holtz had returned to the unscrewing of the wing-nuts. He liftedoff the cover of the dimensoscope.

  "It is the thing the Herr Professor did not confide to me," he saidbitterly. "The secret. The one secret! Look in here."

  Tommy looked. The objective-glass at the end of the telescope faced amirror, which was inclined to its face at an angle of forty-fivedegrees. A beam of light from the objective would be reflected to asecond mirror, twisted in a fashion curiously askew. Then the lightwould go to a third mirror....

  Tommy looked at that third mirror, and instantly his eyes ached. Heclosed them and opened them again. Again they stung horribly. It wasexactly the sort of eye-strain which comes of looking through a lenswhich does not focus exactly, or through a strange pair of eyeglasses.He could see the third mirror, but his eyes hurt the instant theylooked upon it, as if that third mirror were distorted in animpossible fashion. He was forced to draw them away. He could see,though, that somehow that third mirror would reflect his imaginarybeam of light into a fourth mirror of which he could see only theedge. He moved his head--and still saw only the edge of a mirror. Hewas sure of what he saw, because he could look into the wavy, bluishtranslucency all glass shows upon its edge. He could even see the thinlayer of silver backing. But he could not put himself into a positionin which more than the edge of that mirror was visible.

  "Good Lord!" said Tommy Reames feverishly. "That mirror--"

  "A mirror at forty-five degrees," said Von Holtz precisely, "reflectslight at a right angle. There are four mirrors, and each bends a rayof light through a right angle which is also a right angle to all theothers. The result is that the dimensoscope looks into what is a fifthdimension, into which no man ever looked before. But I cannot moveother mirrors into the positions they have in this instrument. I donot know how."

  * * * * *

  Tommy shook his head impatiently, staring at the so-simple, yetincredible device whose theory had been mathematically provennumberless times, but never put into practice before.

  "Having made this device," said Von Holtz, "the Herr Professorconstructed what he termed a catapult. It was a coil of wire, like thelarge machine there. It jerked a steel ball first vertically, thenhorizontally, then laterally, then in a fourth-dimensional direction,and finally projected it violently off in a fifth-dimensional path. Hemade small hollow steel balls and sent a butterfly, a small sparrow,and finally a cat into that other world. The steel balls opened ofthemselves and freed those creatures. They seemed to suffer nodistress. Therefore he concluded that it would be safe for him to go,himself. His daughter refused to permit him to go alone, and he was sosure of his safety that he allowed her to enter the globe with him.She did. I worked the catapult which flung the globe in the fifthdimension, and his device for returning failed to operate. Hence he ismarooned."

  "But the big catapult--"

  "Can you not see that the big catapult is broken?" demanded Von Holtzbitterly. "A special metal is required for the missing parts. That, Iknow how to make. Yes. I can supply that. But I cannot shape it! Icannot design the gears which will move it as it should be moved! Icannot make another dimensoscope. I cannot, Herr Reames, calculate anymethod of causing four right angles to be all at right angles to eachother. It is my impossibility! It is for that that I have appealed toyou. You see it has been done. I see that it is done. I can make themetal which alone can be moved in the necessary direction. But Icannot calculate any method of moving it in that direction! If you cando so, Herr Reames, we can perhaps save the Herr Professor Denham. Ifyou cannot--Gott! The death he will die is horrible to think of!"

  "And his daughter," said Tommy grimly. "His daughter, also."

  * * * * *

  He paced up and down the laboratory again. Von Holtz moved to thework-bench from which he had taken Denham's note. There was a pile ofsuch memoranda, thumbed over and over. And there were papers in theangular, precise handwriting which was Von Holtz's own, andcalculations and speculations and the remains of frantic efforts towork out, somehow, the secret which as one manifestation had placedone mirror so that it hurt the eyes to look at it, and one othermirror so that from every angle of a normal existence, one could seeonly the edge.

  "I have worked, Herr Reames," said Von Holtz drearily. "Gott! How Ihave worked! But the Herr Professor kept some things secret, and thatso-essential thing is one of them."

  Presently he said tiredly:

  "The dimension-traveling globe was built in this laboratory. It restedhere." He pointed. "The Herr Professor was laughing and excited at themoment of departure. His daughter smiled at me through the window ofthe globe. There was an under-carriage with wheels upon it. You cannotsee those wheels through the dimensoscope. They got into the globe andclosed the door. The Herr Professor nodded to me through the glasswindow. The dynamo was running at its fullest speed. The laboratorysmelled of hot oil, and of ozone from the sparks. I lifted my hand,and the Herr Professor nodded again, and I threw the switch. Thisswitch, Herr Reames! It sparked as I closed it, and the flash partlyblinded me. But I saw the globe rush toward the giant catapult yonder.It leaped upward into the huge coil, which whirled madly. Dazed, I sawthe globe hanging suspended in mid-air, two feet from the floor. Itshook! Once! Twice! With violence! Suddenly its outline became hazyand distorted. My eyes ached with looking at it. And then it wasgone!"

  * * * * *

  Von Holtz's arms waved melodramatically.

  "I rushed to the dimensoscope and gazed through it into the fifthdimension. I saw the globe floating onward through the air, towardthat bank of glossy ferns. I saw it settle and turn over, and thenslowly right itself as it came to rest. The Herr Professor got out ofit. I saw him through the instrument which could look into thedimension into which he had gone. He waved his hand to me. Hisdaughter joined him, surveying the strange cosmos in which they were.The Herr Professor plucked some of the glossy ferns, took photographs,then got back into the globe.

  "I awaited its return to our own world. I saw it rock slightly as heworked upon the apparatus within. I knew that when it vanished fromthe dimensoscope it would have returned to our own universe. But itremained as before. It did not move. After three hours of anguishedwaiting, the Herr Professor came out and made signals to me ofdespair. By gestures, because no sound could come through thedimensoscope itself, he begged me to assist him. And I was helpless!Made helpless by the Herr Professor's own secrecy! For four days andnights I have toiled, hoping desperately to discover what the HerrProfessor had hidden from me. At last I thought of you. I telegraphedto you. If you can assist me...."

  "I'm going to try it, of course," said Tommy shortly.

  He paced back and forth. He stopped and looked through the brass-tubedtelescope. Giant tree-ferns, unbelievable but real. The steel globeresting partly overturned upon a bank of glossy ferns. Breast-high,incredible foliage between the point of vision and that extraordinaryvehicle.

  * * * * *

  While Tommy had been talking and listening, while he had been awayfrom the eyepiece, one or other of the occupants of the globe hademerged from it. The door was open. But now the girl came boundingsuddenly through the ferns. She called, though it seemed to Tommy thatthere was a curious air of caution even in her calling. She wasexcited, hopefully excited.

  Denham came out of the globe with a clumsy club in his hand. ButEvelyn caught his arm and pointed up into the sky. Denham stared, andthen began to make wild and desperate gestures as if trying to attractattention to himself.

  Tommy watched for minutes, and then swung the dimensoscope around. Itwas extraordinary, to be sitting in the perfectly normal brick-walledlaboratory, looking into a slender brass tube, and seeing anotheruniverse entirely, another wild and unbelievable landscape.

  The tree-fern forest drew back and the v
ast and steaming morass wasagain in view. There were distant bright golden gleams from the city.But Tommy was searching the sky, looking in the sky of a world in thefifth dimension for a thing which would make a man gesticulatehopefully.

  He found it. It was an aircraft, startlingly close through thetelescope. A single figure was seated at its controls, motionless asif bored, with exactly the air of a weary truck driver piloting avehicle along a roadway he does not really see. And Tommy, being nearenough to see the pilot's pose, could see the aircraft clearly. It wastotally unlike a terrestrial airplane. A single huge and thick wingsupported it. But the wing was angular and clumsy-seeming, and itsform was devoid of the grace of an earthly aircraft wing, and therewas no tail whatever to give it the appearance of a living thing.There was merely a long, rectangular wing with a framework beneath it,and a shimmering thing which was certainly not a screw propeller, butwhich seemed to draw it.

  * * * * *

  It moved on steadily and swiftly, dwindling in the distance, with itsmotionless pilot seated before a mass of corded bundles. It looked asif this were a freight plane of some sort, and therefore made in astrictly utilitarian fashion.

  It vanished in the haze above the monster swamp, going in a straightline for the golden city at the world's edge.

  Tommy stared at it, long after it had ceased to be visible. Then hesaw a queer movement on the earth near the edge of the morass. Figureswere moving. Human figures. He saw four of them, shaking clenchedfists and capering insanely, seeming to bellow insults after theoblivious and now invisible flying thing. He could see that they werenearly naked, and that one of them carried a spear. But theindubitable glint of metal was reflected from one of them for aninstant, when some metal accoutrement about him glittered in thesunlight.

  They moved from sight behind thick, feathery foliage, and Tommy swungback the brass tube to see the globe again. Denham and his daughterwere staring in the direction in which Tommy had seen those humanfigures. Denham clutched his clumsy club grimly. His face was drawnand his figure tensed. And suddenly Evelyn spoke quietly, and the twoof then dived into the fern forest and disappeared. Minutes later theyreturned, dragging masses of tree-fern fronds with which they maskedthe globe from view. They worked hastily, desperately, concealing thesteel vehicle from sight. And then Denham stared tensely all about,shading his eyes with his hand. He and the girl withdrew cautiouslyinto the forest.

  * * * * *

  It was minutes later that Tommy was roused by Von Holtz's hand on hisshoulder.

  "What has happened, Herr Reames?" he asked uneasily. "The--RaggedMen?"

  "I saw men," said Tommy briefly, "shaking clenched fists at anaircraft flying overhead. And Denham and his daughter have hidden theglobe behind a screen of foliage."

  Von Holtz licked his lips fascinatedly.

  "The Ragged Men," he said in a hushed voice. "The Herr Professorcalled them that, because they cannot be of the people who live in theGolden City. They hate the people of the Golden City. I think thatthey are bandits; renegades, perhaps. They live in the tree-fernforests and scream curses at the airships which fly overhead. And theyare afraid of those airships."

  "How long did Denham use this thing to look through, before he builthis globe?"

  Von Holtz considered.

  "Immediately it worked," he said at last, "he began work on a smallcatapult. It took him one week to devise exactly how to make that. Heexperimented with it for some days and began to make the large globe.That took nearly two months--the globe and the large catapulttogether. And also the dimensoscope was at hand. His daughter lookedthrough it more than he did, or myself."

  "He should have known what he was up against," said Tommy, frowning."He ought to have taken guns, at least. Is he armed?"

  Von Holtz shook his head.

  "He expected to return at once," he said desperately. "Do you see,Herr Reames, the position it puts me in? I may be suspected of murder!I am the Herr Professor's assistant. He disappears. Will I not beaccused of having put him out of the way?"

  "No," said Tommy thoughtfully. "You won't." He glanced through thebrass tube and paced up and down the room. "You telephone for someoneto repair my car," he said suddenly and abruptly. "I am going to stayhere and work this thing out. I've got just the glimmering of an idea.But I'll need my car in running order, in case we have to go out andget materials in a hurry."

  * * * * *

  Von Holtz bowed stiffly and went out of the laboratory. Tommy lookedafter him. Even moved to make sure he was gone. And then Tommy Reameswent quickly to the work bench on which were the littered notes andcalculations Von Holtz had been using and which were now at hisdisposal. But Tommy did not leaf through them. He reached under theblotter beneath the whole pile. He had seen Von Holtz furtively pushsomething out of sight, and he had disliked and distrusted Von Holtzfrom the beginning. Moreover, it was pretty thoroughly clear thatDenham had not trusted him too much. A trusted assistant should beable to understand, at least, any experiment performed in alaboratory.

  A folded sheet of paper came out. Tommy glanced at it.

  "You messed things up right! Denham marooned and you got nothing. No plans or figures either. When you get them, you get your money. If you don't you are out of luck. If this Reames guy can't fix up what you want it'll be just too bad for you."

  There was no salutation nor any signature beyond a scrawled andsprawling "J."

  Tommy Reames' jaw set grimly. He folded the scrap of paper and thrustit back out of sight again.

  "Pretty!" he said harshly. "So a gentleman named 'J' is going to payVon Holtz for plans or calculations it is hoped I'll provide! Whichsuggests--many things! But at least I'll have Von Holtz's help untilhe thinks my plans or calculations are complete. So that's allright...."

  Tommy could not be expected, of course, to guess that the note he hadread was quite astounding proof of the interest taken in non-Euclideangeometry by a vice king of Chicago, or that the ranking beer baron ofthat metropolis was the man who was so absorbed in abstruse theoreticphysics.

  * * * * *

  Tommy moved toward the great solenoid which lay askew upon its wreckedsupport. It had drawn the steel globe toward it, had made that globevibrate madly, twice, and then go hazy and vanish. It had jerked theglobe in each of five directions, each at right angles to all theothers, and had released it when started in the fifth dimension. Thehuge coil was quite nine feet across and would take the steel globeeasily. It was pivoted in concentric rings which made up a set ofgymbals far more elaborate than were ever used to suspend a mariner'scompass aboard ship.

  There were three rings, one inside the other. And two rings will takecare of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too,so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given tothe solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivothad given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy becameabsorbed. Some oddity bothered him....

  He pieced the thing together mentally. And he exclaimed suddenly.There had been four rings of metal! One was gone! He comprehended,very suddenly. The third mirror in the dimensoscope was the one sostrangely distorted by its position, which was at half of a rightangle to all the dimensions of human experience. It was the third ringin the solenoid's supports which had vanished. And Tommy, staring atthe gigantic apparatus and summoning all his theoretic knowledge andall his brain to work, saw the connection between the two things.

  "The time dimension and the world-line," he said sharply, excited inspite of himself. "Revolving in the time dimension means telescopingin the world-line.... It would be a strain no matter could endure...."

  * * * * *

  The mirror in the dimensoscope was not pointing in a fourth dimension.It did not need to. It was reflecting light at a right angle, andhence needed to be only at half of a right angle to the two courses
ofthe beam it reflected. But to whirl the steel globe into a fifthdimension, the solenoid's support had for one instant to revolve intime! For the fraction of a second it would have literally to passthrough its own substance. It would be required to undergo preciselythe sort of strain involved in turning a hollow seamless metal globe,inside out! No metal could stand such a strain. No form of matterknown to man could endure it.

  "It would explode!" said Tommy excitedly to himself, alone in thegreat bare laboratory. "Steel itself would vaporize! It would wreckthe place!"

  And then he looked blank. Because the place had very obviously notbeen wrecked. And yet a metal ring had vanished, leaving no trace....

  Von Holtz came back. He looked frightened.

  "A--a repairman, Herr Reames," he said, stammering, "is on the way.And--Herr Reames...."

  Tommy barely heard him. For a moment, Tommy was all scientist,confronted with the inexplicable, yet groping with a blind certaintytoward a conclusion he very vaguely foresaw. He waved his handimpatiently....

  "The Herr Jacaro is on the way here," stammered Von Holtz.

  * * * * *

  Tommy blinked, remembering that Von Holtz had told him he could make acertain metal, the only metal which could be moved in the fourthdimension.

  "Jacaro?" he said blankly.

  "The--friend of the Herr Professor Denham. He advanced the money forthe Herr Professor's experiments."

  Tommy heard him with only half his brain, though that half instantlydecided that Von Holtz was lying. The only Jacaro Tommy knew of was aprominent gangster from Chicago, who had recently cemented hisposition in Chicago's underworld by engineering the amalgamation oftwo once-rival gangs. Tommy knew, in a vague fashion, that Von Holtzwas frightened. That he was terrified in some way. And that he wasinordinately suspicious of someone, and filled with a queerdesperation.

  "Well?" said Tommy abstractedly. The thought he needed was coming. Ametal which would have full tensile strength up to a certain instant,and then disrupt itself without violence into a gas, a vapor.... Itwould be an alloy, perhaps. It would be....

  He struck at his own head with his clenched fist, angrily demandingthat his brain bring forth the thought that was forming slowly. Themetal that could be revolved in time without producing a disastrousexplosion and without requiring an impossible amount of power....

  * * * * *

  He did not see Von Holtz looking in the eyepiece of the dimensoscope.He stared at nothing, thinking concentratedly, putting every bit ofenergy into sheer thought. And suddenly, like the explosion he soughta way to avoid, the answer came, blindingly clear.

  He surveyed that answer warily. A tremendous excitement filled him.

  "I've got it!" he said softly to himself. "By God, I know how he didthe thing!"

  And as if through a mist the figure of Von Holtz became clear beforehis eyes. Von Holtz was looking into the dimensoscope tube. He wasstaring into that other, extraordinary world in which Denham and hisdaughter were marooned. And Von Holtz's face was utterly, deathlywhite, and he was making frantic, repressed gestures, and whisperinglittle whimpering phrases to himself. They were unintelligible, butthe deathly pallor of his cheeks, and the fascinated, dribblingfullness of his lips brought Tommy Reames suddenly down to earth.

  "What's happening?" demanded Tommy sharply.

  Von Holtz did not answer. He made disjointed, moaning littleexclamations to himself. He was twitching horribly as he lookedthrough the telescope into that other world....

  Tommy flung him aside and clapped his own eye to the eyepiece. Andthen he groaned.

  * * * * *

  The telescope was pointed at the steel globe upon that ferny bank, nomore than a few hundred yards away but two dimensions removed fromEarth. The screening mass of tree-fronds had been torn away. A swarmof ragged, half-naked men was gathered about the globe. They werearmed with spears and clubs, in the main, but there were other weaponsof intricate design whose uses Tommy could not even guess at. He didnot try. He was watching the men as they swarmed about and over thesteel sphere. Their faces were brutal and savage, and now they weredistorted with an insane hate. It was the same awful, gibbering hatredhe had sensed in the caperings of the four he had seen bellowingvituperation at an airplane.

  They were not savages. Somehow he could not envision them asprimitive. Their features were hard-bitten, seamed with hatred andwith vice unspeakable. And they were white. The instant impression anyman would have received was that here were broken men; fugitives,bandits, assassins. Here were renegades or worse from some higher,civilized race.

  They battered hysterically upon the steel globe. It was not the attackof savages upon a strange thing. It was the assault of desperate,broken men upon a thing they hated. A glass pane splintered andcrashed. Spears were thrust into the opening, while mouths opened asif in screams of insane fury. And then, suddenly, the door of theglobe flew wide.

  The Ragged Men did not wait for anyone to come out. They fought eachother to get into the opening, their eyes glaring madly, filled withthe lust to kill.

  CHAPTER III

  A battered and antiquated flivver came chugging down the wire-fencedlane to the laboratory, an hour later. It made a prodigious din, andTommy Reames went out to meet it. He was still a little pale. He hadwatched the steel globe turned practically inside out by the RaggedMen. He had seen them bringing out cameras, cushions, and even thepadding of the walls, to be torn to bits in a truly maniacal fury. Buthe had not seen one sign of a human being killed. Denham and hisdaughter had not been in the globe when it was found and ransacked. Sofar, then, they were probably safe. Tommy had seen them vanish intothe tree-fern forest. They had been afraid, and with good reason. Whatdangers they might encounter in the fern forest he could not guess.How long they would escape the search of the Ragged Men, he could notknow. How he could ever hope to find them if he succeeded induplicating Denham's dimension-traveling apparatus he could not eventhink of, just now. But the Ragged Men were not searching the fernforest. So much was sure. They were encamped by the steel sphere, anda scurvy-looking lot they were.

  Coming out of the brick laboratory, Tommy saw a brawny figure gettingout of the antiquated flivver whose arrival had been so thunderous.That brawny figure nodded to him and grinned. Tommy recognized him.The red-headed, broad-shouldered filling station attendant in the lastvillage, who had given him specific directions for reaching thisplace.

  "You hit that gate a lick, didn't you?" asked the erstwhile fillingstation attendant amiably. "Mr. Von Holtz said you had a flat and abusted radiator. That right?"

  * * * * *

  Tommy nodded. The red-headed man walked around the car, scratched hischin, and drew out certain assorted tools. He put them on the grasswith great precision, pumped a gasoline blow-torch to pressure andtouched a match to its priming-basin, and while the gasoline flamedsmokily he made a half dozen casual movements with a file, and thebroken radiator tube was exposed for repair.

  He went back to the torch and observed placidly:

  "The Professor ain't around, is he?"

  Tommy shook his head.

  "Thought not," said the red-headed one. "He gen'rally comes out andtalks a while. I helped him build some of them dinkuses in the barnyonder."

  Tommy said eagerly:

  "Say, which of those things did you help him build? That big thingwith the solenoid--the coil?"

  "Yeah. How'd it work?" The red-headed one set a soldering iron inplace and began to jack up the rear wheel to get at the tire. "Crazyidea, if you ask me. I told Miss Evelyn so. She laughed and said she'dbe in the ball when it was tried. Did it work?"

  "Too damn well," said Tommy briefly. "I've got to repair thatsolenoid. How about a job helping?"

  The red-headed man unfastened the lugs of the rim, kicked the tirespeculatively, and said, "Gone to hell." He put on the spare tire withease and dispatch.

  "Um,"
he said. "How about that Mr. Von Holtz? Is he goin' to boss thejob?"

  "He is not," said Tommy, with a shade of grimness in his tone.

  * * * * *

  The red-headed man nodded and took the soldering iron in hand. Heunwound a strip of wire solder, mended the radiator tube with placidease, and seemed to bang the cooling-flanges with a total lack ofcare. They went magically back into place, and it took closeinspection to see that the radiator had been damaged.

  "She's all right," he observed. He regarded Tommy impersonally."Suppose you tell me how come you horn in on this," he suggested, "an'maybe I'll play. That guy Von Holtz is a crook, if you ask me abouthim."

  Tommy ran his hand across his forehead, and told him.

  "Um," said the red-headed man calmly. "I think I'll go break Mr. VonHoltz's neck. I got me a hunch."

  He took two deliberate steps forward. But Tommy said:

  "I saw Denham not an hour ago. So far, he's all right. How long he'llbe all right is a question. But I'm going after him."

  The red-headed man scrutinized him exhaustively.

  "Um. I might try that myself. I kinda like the Professor. An' MissEvelyn. My name's Smithers. Let's go look through the dinkus theProfessor made."

  They went together into the laboratory. Von Holtz was looking throughthe dimensoscope. He started back as they entered, and looked acutelyuneasy when he saw the red-headed man.

  "How do you do," he said nervously. "They--the Ragged Men--have justbrought in a dead man. But it is not the Herr Professor."

  Without a word, Tommy took the brass tube in his hand. Von Holtz movedaway, biting his lips. Tommy stared into that strange other world.

  * * * * *

  The steel sphere lay as before, slightly askew upon a bank of glossyferns. But its glass windows were shattered, and fragments ofeverything it had contained were scattered about. The Ragged Men hadmade a camp and built a fire. Some of them were roasting meat--thehuge limb of a monstrous animal with a scaly, reptilian hide. Otherswere engaged in vehement argument over the body of one of theirnumber, lying sprawled out upon the ground.

  Tommy spoke without moving his eyes from the eyepiece.

  "I saw Denham with a club just now. This man was killed by a club."

  The Ragged Men in the other world debated acrimoniously. One of thempointed to the dead man's belt, and spread out his hands. Somethingwas missing from the body. Tommy saw, now, three or four other menwith objects that looked rather like policemen's truncheons, save thatthey were made of glittering metal. They were plainly weapons. Denham,then, was armed--if he could understand how the weapon was used.

  The Ragged Men debated, and presently their dispute attracted theattention of a man with a huge black beard. He rose from where he satgnawing at a piece of meat and moved grandly toward the disputatiousgroup. They parted at his approach, but a single member continued thedebate against even the bearded giant. The bearded one plucked theglittering truncheon from his belt. The disputatious one gasped infear and flung himself desperately forward. But the bearded man keptthe truncheon pointed steadily.... The man who assailed him staggered,reached close enough to strike a single blow, and collapsed. Thebearded man pointed the metal truncheon at him as he lay upon theground. He heaved convulsively, and was still.

  The bearded man went back to his seat and picked up the gnawed bit ofmeat again. The dispute had ceased. The chattering group of mendispersed.

  * * * * *

  Tommy was about to leave the eyepiece of the instrument when amovement nearby caught his eye. A head peered cautiously toward theencampment. A second rose beside it. Denham and his daughter Evelyn.They were apparently no more than thirty feet from the dimensoscope.Tommy could see them talking cautiously, saw Denham lift and examine ametal truncheon like the bearded man's, and force his daughter toaccept it. He clutched a club, himself, with a grim satisfaction.

  Moments later they vanished quietly in the thick fern foliage, andthough Tommy swung the dimensoscope around in every direction, hecould see nothing of their retreat.

  He rose from that instrument with something approaching hopefulness.He'd seen Evelyn very near and very closely. She did not look happy,but she did look alert rather than worn. And Denham was displaying aform of competence in the face of danger which was really more thanwould have been expected in a Ph.D., a M.A., and other academicdistinctions running to most of the letters of the alphabet.

  "I've just seen Denham and Evelyn again," said Tommy crisply. "They'resafe so far. And I've seen one of the weapons of the Ragged Men inuse. If we can get a couple of automatics and some cartridges toDenham, he'll be safe until we can repair the big solenoid."

  "There was the small catapult," said Von Holtz bitterly, "but it wasdismantled. The Herr Professor saw me examining it, and he dismantledit. So that I did not learn how to calculate the way of changing theposition--"

  * * * * *

  Tommy's eyes rested queerly on Von Holtz for a moment.

  "You know how to make the metal required," he said suddenly. "You'dbetter get busy making it. Plenty of it. We'll need it."

  Von Holtz stared at him, his weak eyes almost frightened.

  "You _know_? You know how to combine the right angles?"

  "I think so," said Tommy. "I've got to find out if I'm right. Will youmake the metal?"

  Von Holtz bit at his too-red lips.

  "But Herr Reames!" he said stridently, "I wish to know the equation!Tell me the method of pointing a body in a fourth or a fifthdirection. It is only fair--"

  "Denham didn't tell you," said Tommy.

  Von Holtz's arms jerked wildly.

  "But I will not make the metal! I insist upon being told the equation!I insist upon it! I will not make the metal if you do not tell me!"

  Smithers was in the laboratory, of course. He had been surveying thebig solenoid-catapult and scratching his chin reflectively. Now heturned.

  * * * * *

  But Tommy took Von Holtz by the shoulders. And Tommy's hands were thefirm and sinewy hands of a sportsman, if his brain did happen to bethe brain of a scientist. Von Holtz writhed in his grip.

  "There is only one substance which could be the metal I need, Von Holtz,"he said gently. "Only one substance is nearly three-dimensional.Metallic ammonium! It's known to exist, because it makes a mercuryamalgam, but nobody has been able to isolate it because nobody hasbeen able to give it a fourth dimension--duration in time. Denham didit. You can do it. And I need it, and you'd better set to work at thejob. You'll be very sorry if you don't, Von Holtz!"

  Smithers said with a vast calmness.

  "I got me a hunch. So if y'want his neck broke...."

  Tommy released Von Holtz and the lean young man gasped and sputteredand gesticulated wildly in a frenzy of rage.

  "He'll make it," said Tommy coldly. "Because he doesn't dare not to!"

  Von Holtz went out of the laboratory, his weak-looking eyes staringand wild, and his mouth working.

  "He'll be back," said Tommy briefly. "You've got to make a small modelof that big catapult, Smithers. Can you do it?"

  "Sure," said Smithers. "The ring'll be copper tubing, withpin-bearings. Wind a coil on the lathe. It'll be kinda rough, butit'll do. But gears, now...."

  "I'll attend to them. You know how to work that metallic ammonium?"

  "If that's what it was," agreed Smithers. "I worked it for theProfessor."

  Tommy leaned close and whispered:

  "You never made any gears of that. But did you make some springs?"

  "Uh-huh!"

  Tommy grinned joyously.

  "Then we're set and I'm right! Von Holtz wants a mathematical formula,and no one on earth could write one, but we don't need it!"

  * * * * *

  Smithers rummaged around the laboratory with a casual air, acquiredthis and that and the other
thing, and set to work with an astoundingabsence of waste motions. From time to time he inspected the greatcatapult thoughtfully, verified some impression, and went about theconstruction of another part.

  And when Von Holtz did not return, Tommy hunted for him. He suddenlyremembered hearing his car motor start. He found his car missing. Heswore, then, and grimly began to hunt for a telephone in the house.But before he had raised central he heard the deep-toned purring ofthe motor again. His car was coming swiftly back to the house. And hesaw, through a window, that Von Holtz was driving it.

  The lean young man got out of it, his face white with passion. Hestarted for the laboratory. Tommy intercepted him.

  "I--went to get materials for making the metal," said Von Holtzhoarsely, repressing his rage with a great effort. "I shall begin atonce, Herr Reames."

  Tommy said nothing whatever. Von Holtz was lying. Of course. Hecarried nothing in the way of materials. But he had gone away from thehouse, and Tommy knew as definitely as if Von Holtz had told him, thatVon Holtz had gone off to communicate in safety with someone whosigned his correspondence with a J.

  Von Holtz went into the laboratory. The four-cylinder motor began tothrob at once. The whine of the dynamo arose almost immediately after.Von Holtz came out of the laboratory and dived into a shed thatadjoined the brick building. He remained in there.

  Tommy looked at the trip register on his speedometer. Like most peoplewith methodical minds, he had noted the reading on arriving at a newdestination. Now he knew how far Von Holtz had gone. He had been tothe village and back.

  "Meaning," said Tommy grimly to himself, "that the J who wants plansand calculations is either in the village or at the end of along-distance wire. And Von Holtz said he was on the way. He'llprobably turn up and try to bribe me."

  * * * * *

  He went back into the laboratory and put his eye to the eyepiece ofthe dimensoscope. Smithers had his blow-torch going and was busilyaccumulating an apparently unrelated series of discordant bits ofqueerly-shaped metal. Tommy looked through at the strange mad world hecould see through the eyepiece.

  The tree-fern forest was still. The encampment of the Ragged Men wasnearly quiet. Sunset seemed to be approaching in this other world,though it was still bright outside the laboratory. The hours of dayand night were obviously not the same in the two worlds, so closetogether that a man could be flung from one to the other by amechanical contrivance.

  The sun seemed larger, too, than the orb which lights our normalearth. When Tommy swung the vision instrument about to search for it,he found a great red ball quite four times the diameter of our ownsun, neatly bisected by the horizon. Tommy watched, waiting for it tosink. But it did not sink straight downward as the sun seems to do inall temperate latitudes. It descended, yes, but it moved along thehorizon as it sank. Instead of a direct and forthright dip downward,the sun seemed to progress along the horizon, dipping more deeply asit swam. And Tommy watched it blankly.

  "It's not our sun.... But it's not our world. Yet it revolves, andthere are men on it. And a sun that size would bake the earth.... Andit's sinking at an angle that would only come at a latitude of--"

  That was the clue. He understood at once. The instrument through whichhe regarded the strange world looked out upon the polar regions ofthat world. Here, where the sun descended slantwise, were the highlatitudes, the coldest spaces upon all the whole planet. And if herethere were the gigantic growths of a carboniferous era, the tropicregions of this planet must be literal infernos.

  And then he saw in its gradual descent the monster sun was going alongbehind the golden city, and the outlines of its buildings, themagnificence of its spires, were limned clearly for him against thedully glowing disk.

  Nowhere upon earth had such a city ever been dreamed of. No man hadever envisioned such a place, where far-flung arches interconnectedsoaring, towering columns, where curves of perfect grace were unitedin forms of utterly perfect proportion....

  * * * * *

  The sunlight died, and dusk began and deepened, and vividly brilliantstars began to come out overhead, and Tommy suddenly searched theheavens eagerly for familiar constellations. And found not one. Allthe stars were strange. These stars seemed larger and much more nearthan the tiny pinpoints that blink down upon our earth.

  And then he swung the instrument again and saw great fires roaring andthe Ragged Men crouched about them. Within them, rather, because theyhad built fires about themselves as if to make a wall of flame. Andonce Tommy saw twin, monstrous eyes, gazing from the blackness of thetree-fern forest. They were huge eyes, and they were far apart, sothat the head of the creature who used them must have been enormous.And they were all of fifteen feet above the ground when theyspeculatively looked over the ring of fires and the ragged, degradedmen within them. Then that creature, whatever it was, turned away andvanished.

  But Tommy felt a curious shivering horror of the thing. It had movedsoundlessly, without a doubt, because not one of the Ragged Men hadnoted its presence. It had been kept away by the fires. But Denham andEvelyn were somewhere in the tree-fern forest, and they would not dareto make fires....

  Tommy drew away from the dimensoscope, shivering. He had been lookingonly, but the place into which he looked was real, and the dangersthat lay hidden there were very genuine, and there was a man and agirl of his own race and time struggling desperately, without arms orhope, to survive.

  * * * * *

  Smithers was casually fitting together an intricate array of littlerings made of copper tubing. There were three of them, and each wasfitted into the next largest by pins which enabled them to spinnoiselessly and swiftly at the touch of Smithers' finger. He had themspinning now, each in a separate direction, and the effect wasbewildering.

  As Tommy watched, Smithers stopped them, oiled the pins carefully, andpainstakingly inserted a fourth ring. Only this ring was of a whitemetal that looked somehow more pallid than silver. It had a whitenesslike that of ivory beneath its metallic gleam.

  Tommy blinked.

  "Did Von Holtz give you that metal?" he asked suddenly.

  Smithers looked up and puffed at a short brown pipe.

  "Nope. There was some splashes of it by the castin' box. I melted 'emtogether an' run a ring. Pressed it to shape; y' can't hammer thisstuff. It goes to water and dries up quicker'n lightning--an' you holdy'nose an' run. I used it before for the Professor."

  Tommy went over to him excitedly. He picked up the little contrivanceof many concentric rings. The big motor was throbbing rhythmically,and the generator was humming at the back of the laboratory. Von Holtzwas out of sight.

  * * * * *

  With painstaking care Tommy went over the little device. He looked up.

  "A coil?"

  "I wound one," said Smithers calmly. "On the lathe. Not so hot, butit'll do, I guess. But I can't fix these rings like the Professordid."

  "I think I can," said Tommy crisply. "Did you make some wire forsprings?"

  "Yeah!"

  Tommy fingered the wire. Stout, stiff, and surprisingly springy wireof the same peculiar metal. It was that metallic ammonium whichchemists have deduced must exist because of the chemical behavior ofthe compound NH3, but which Denham alone had managed to procure.Tommy deduced that it was an allotropic modification of the substancewhich forms an amalgam with mercury, as metallic tin is an allotropeof the amorphous gray powder which is tin in its normal, stable state.

  He set to work with feverish excitement. For one hour, for two heworked. At the end of that time he was explaining the matter curtly toSmithers, so intent on his work that he wholly failed to hear a motorcar outside or to realize that it had also grown dark in this world ofours.

  "You see, Smithers, if a two-dimensioned creature wanted to adjust tworight angles at right angles to each other, he'd have them laid flat,of course. And if he put a spring at the far ends of those righta
ngles--they'd look like a T, put together--so that the cross-bar ofthat T was under tension, he'd have the equivalent of what I'm doing.To make a three-dimensioned figure, that imaginary man would have tobend one side of the cross-bar up. As if the two ends of it were undertension by a spring, and the spring would only be relieved of tensionwhen that cross-bar was bent. But the vertical would be his timedimension, so he'd have to have something thin, or it couldn't bebent. He'd need something 'thin in time.'

  "We have the same problem. But metallic ammonium is 'thin in time.'It's so fugitive a substance that Denham is the only man ever tosecure it. So we use these rings and adjust these springs to them sothey're under tension which will only be released when they're all atright angles to each other. In our three dimensions that's impossible,but we have a metal that can revolve in a fourth, and we reinforcetheir tendency to adjust themselves by starting them off with a jerk.We've got 'em flat. They'll make a good stiff jerk when they try toadjust themselves. And the solenoid's a bit eccentric--"

  "Shut up!" snapped Smithers suddenly.

  * * * * *

  He was facing the door, bristling. Von Holtz was in the act of comingin, with a beefy, broad-shouldered man with blue jowls. Tommystraightened up, thought swiftly, and then smiled grimly.

  "Hullo, Von Holtz," he said pleasantly. "We've just completed a modelcatapult. We're all set to try it out. Watch!"

  He set a little tin can beneath the peculiar device of copper-tubingrings. The can was wholly ordinary, made of thin sheet-iron platedwith tin as are all the tin cans of commerce.

  "You have the catapult remade?" gasped Von Holtz. "Wait! Wait! Let melook at it!"

  For one instant, and one instant only, Tommy let him see. The massedset of concentric rings, each one of them parallel to all the others.It looked rather like a flat coil of tubing; certainly like noparticularly obscure form of projector. But as Von Holtz's weak eyesfastened avidly upon it, Tommy pressed the improvised electric switch.At once that would energize the solenoid and release all the tensedsprings from their greater tension, for an attempt to reach apermanent equilibrium.

  As Von Holtz and the blue-jowled man stared, the little tin can leapedupward into the tiny coil. The small copper rings twinkled one withinthe other as the springs operated. The tin can was wrenched this wayand that, then for the fraction of a second hurt the eyes that gazedupon it--and it was gone! And then the little coil came spinning downto the work bench top from its broken bearings and the remainingcopper rings spun aimlessly for a moment. But the third ring ofwhitish metal had vanished utterly, and so had the coiled-wire springswhich Von Holtz had been unable to distinguish. And there was anoverpowering smell of ammonia in the room.

  * * * * *

  Von Holtz flung himself upon the still-moving little instrument. Heinspected it savagely, desperately. His full red lips drew back in asnarl.

  "How did you do it?" he cried shrilly. "You must tell me! I--I--I willkill you if you do not tell me!"

  The blue-jowled man was watching Von Holtz. Now his lips twisteddisgustedly. He turned to Tommy and narrowed his eyes.

  "Look here," he rumbled. "This fool's no good! I want the secret ofthat trick you did. What's your price?"

  "I'm not for sale," said Tommy, smiling faintly.

  The blue-jowled man regarded him with level eyes.

  "My name's Jacaro," he said after an instant. "Maybe you've heard ofme. I'm from Chicago."

  Tommy smiled more widely.

  "To be sure," he admitted. "You were the man who introducedmachine-guns into gang warfare, weren't you? Your gunmen lined up halfa dozen of the Buddy Haines gang against a wall and wiped them out, Ibelieve. What do you want this secret for?"

  The level eyes narrowed. They looked suddenly deadly.

  "That's my business," said Jacaro briefly. "You know who I am. And Iwant that trick y'did. I got my own reasons. I'll pay for it. Plenty.You know I got plenty to pay, too. Or else--"

  "What?"

  "Something'll happen to you," said Jacaro briefly. "I ain't sayin''what. But it's damn likely you'll tell what I want to know before it'sfinished. Name your price and be damn quick!"

  Tommy took his hand out of his pocket. He had a gun in it.

  "The only possible answer to that," he said suavely, "is to tell youto go to hell. Get out! But Von Holtz stays here. He'd better!"

  CHAPTER IV

  Within half an hour after Jacaro's leaving, Smithers was in thevillage, laying in a stock of supplies and sending telegrams thatTommy had written out for transmission. Tommy sat facing an ashen VonHoltz and told him pleasantly what would be done to him if he failedto make the metallic ammonium needed to repair the big solenoid. In anhour, Smithers was back, reporting that Jacaro was also sendingtelegrams but that he, Smithers, had stood over the telegraph operatoruntil his own messages were transmitted. He brought back weapons,too--highly illegal things to have in New York State, where a citizenis only law-abiding when defenseless. And then four days of hectic,sleepless labor began.

  On the first day one of Tommy's friends drove in in answer to atelegram. It was Peter Dalzell, with men in uniform apparentlyfestooned about his car. He announced that a placard warning passersbyof smallpox within, had been added to the decorative signs upon thegate, and stared incredulously at the interior of the big brick barn.Tommy grinned at him and gave him plans and specifications of a lightsteel globe in which two men might be transported into the fifthdimension by a suitably operating device. Tommy had sat up all nightdrawing those plans. He told Dalzell just enough of what he was upagainst to enlist Dalzell's enthusiastic cooperation withoutpermitting him to doubt Tommy's sanity. Dalzell had known Tommy as anamateur tennis player, but not as a scientist.

  He marveled, refused to believe his eyes when he looked through thedimensoscope, and agreed that the whole thing had to be kept secret orthe rescue expedition would be prevented from starting by theincarceration of both Tommy and Smithers in comfortable insaneasylums. He feigned to admire Von Holtz, deathly white and nearlyfrantic with a corroding rage, and complimented Tommy on his taste forillegality. He even asked Von Holtz if he wanted to leave, and VonHoltz snarled insults at him. Von Holtz was beginning to work at themanufacture of metallic ammonium.

  * * * * *

  It was an electrolytic process, of course. Ordinarily,when--say--ammonium chloride is broken down by an electric current,ammonium is deposited at the cathode and instantly becomes a gas whichdissolves in the water or bubbles up to the surface. With a mercurycathode, it is dissolved and becomes a metallic amalgam, which alsobreaks down into gas with much bubbling of the mercury. But Denham hadworked out a way of delaying the breaking-down, which left him with acuriously white, spongy mass of metal which could be carefully melteddown and cast, but not under any circumstances violently struck orstrained.

  Von Holtz was working at that. On the second day he delivered,snarling, a small ingot of the white metal. He was imprisoned in thelean-to-shed in which the electrolysis went on. But Tommy had morethan a suspicion that he was in communication with Jacaro.

  "Of course," he said drily to Smithers, who had expressed his doubts."Jacaro had somebody sneak up and talk to him through the walls, ormaybe through a bored hole. While there's a hope of finding out whathe wants to know through Von Holtz, Jacaro won't try anything. Notanything rough, anyhow. We mustn't be bumped off while what we aredoing is in our heads alone. We're safe enough--for a while."

  Smithers grumbled.

  "We need that ammonium," said Tommy, "and I don't know how to make it.I bluffed that I could, and in time I might, but it would need timeand meanwhile Denham needs us. Dalzell is going to send a plane overtoday, with word of when we can expect our own globe. We'll try tohave the big catapult ready when it comes. And the plane will dropsome extra supplies. I've ordered a sub-machine gun. Handy when we getover there in the tree-fern forests. Right now, though, we need to bewatching...." />
  Because they were taking turns looking through the dimensoscope. Forsigns of Denham and Evelyn. And Tommy was finding himself thinkingwholly unscientific thoughts about Evelyn, since a pretty girl indifficulties is of all possible things the one most likely to make aman romantic.

  * * * * *

  In the four days of their hardest working, he saw her three times. Theglobe was wrecked and ruined. Its glass was broken out and itsinterior ripped apart. It had been pillaged so exhaustively that therewas no hope that whatever device had been included in its design, forits return, remained even repairably intact. That device had notworked, to be sure, but Tommy puzzled sometimes over the fact that hehad seen no mechanical device of any sort in the plunder that had beenbrought out to be demolished. But he did not think of those thingswhen he saw Evelyn.

  The Ragged Men's encampment was gone, but she and her father lingeredfurtively, still near the pillaged globe. The first day Tommy saw her,she was still blooming and alert. The second day she was paler. Herclothing was ripped and torn, as if by thorns. Denham had a great rawwound upon his forehead, and his coat was gone and half his shirt wasin ribbons. Before Tommy's eyes they killed a nameless small animalwith the trunchionlike weapon Evelyn carried. And Denham carted ittriumphantly off into the shelter of the tree-fern forest. But toTommy that shelter began to appear extremely dubious.

  That same afternoon some of the Ragged Men came suspiciously to theglobe and inspected it, and then vented a gibbering rage upon it withblows and curses. They seemed half-mad, these men. But then, all theRagged Men seemed a shade less than sane. Their hatred for the GoldenCity seemed the dominant emotion of their existence.

  And when they had gone, Tommy saw Denham peering cautiously frombehind a screening mass of fern. And Denham looked sick at heart. Hiseyes lifted suddenly to the heavens, and he stared off into thedistance again, and then he regarded the heavens again with anexpression that was at once of the utmost wistfulness and theuttermost of despair.

  * * * * *

  Tommy swung the dimensoscope about and searched the skies of thatother world. He saw the flying machine, and it was a swallow-wingeddevice that moved swiftly, and now soared and swooped in abrupt shortcircles almost overhead. Tommy could see its pilot, leaning out togaze downward. He was no more than a hundred feet up, almost at theheight of the tree-fern tops. And the pilot was moving too swiftly forTommy to be able to focus accurately upon his face, but he could seehim as a man, an indubitable man in no fashion distinguishable fromthe other men of this earth. He was scrutinizing the globe as well ashe could without alighting.

  He soared upward, suddenly, and his plane dwindled as it went towardthe Golden City.

  And then, inevitably, Tommy searched for the four Ragged Men who hadinspected the globe a little while since. He saw them, caperinghorribly behind a screening of verdure. They did not shake theirclenched fists at the flying machine. Instead, they seemed filled witha ghastly mirth. And suddenly they began to run frantically for thefar distance, as if bearing news of infinite importance.

  And when he looked back at Denham, it seemed to Tommy that he wrunghis hands before he disappeared.

  * * * * *

  But that was the second day of the work upon our own world, and justbefore sunset there was a droning in the earthly sky above thelaboratory, and Tommy ran out, and somebody shot at him from a patchof woodland a quarter of a mile away from the brick building. Isolatedas Denham's place was, the shot would go unnoticed. The bullet passedwithin a few feet of Tommy, but he paid no attention. It was one ofJacaro's watchers, no doubt, but Jacaro did not want Tommy killed. SoTommy waited until the plane swooped low--almost to the level of thelaboratory roof--and a thickly padded package thudded to the ground.He picked it up and darted back into the laboratory as other bulletscame from the patch of woodland.

  "Funny," he said dryly to Smithers, inside the laboratory again; "theydon't dare kill me--yet--and Von Holtz doesn't dare leave or refuse todo what I tell him to do; and yet they expect to lick us."

  Smithers growled. Tommy was unpacking the wrapped package. A grim,blued-steel thing came out of much padding. Boxes tumbled after it.

  "Sub-machine gun," said Tommy, "and ammunition. Jacaro and his littlepals will try to get in here when they think we've got the bigsolenoid ready for use. They'll try to get it before we can use it.This will attend to them."

  "An' get us in jail," said Smithers calmly, "for forty-'leven years."

  "No," said Tommy, and grinned. "We'll be in the fifth dimension. Ourjob is to fling through the catapult all the stuff we'll need to makeanother catapult to fling us back again."

  "It can't be done," said Smithers flatly.

  "Maybe not," agreed Tommy, "especially since we ruin all our springsand one gymbal ring every time we use the thing. But I've got an idea.I'll want five coils with hollow iron cores, and the whole worksshaped like this, with two holes bored so...."

  * * * * *

  He sketched. He had been working on the idea for several days, and thesketch was ready in his mind to be transferred to paper.

  "What you goin' to do?"

  "Something crazy," said Tommy. "A mirror isn't the only thing thatchanges angles to right ones."

  "You're the doctor," said the imperturbable Smithers.

  He set to work. He puzzled Tommy sometimes, Smithers did. So far hehadn't asked how much his pay was going to be. He'd workedunintermittantly. He had displayed a colossal, a tremendous calmness.But no man could work as hard as Smithers did without some powerfuldriving-force. It was on the fourth day that Tommy learned what itwas.

  The five coils had been made, and Tommy was assembling them with anextraordinary painstaking care behind a screen, to hide what he wasdoing. He'd discovered a peep-hole bored through the brick wall fromthe lean-to where Von Holtz worked. He was no longer locked in there.Tommy abandoned the pretense of imprisonment after finding anautomatic pistol and a duplicate key to the lock in Von Holtz'spossession. He'd had neither when he was theoretically locked up, andTommy laughed.

  "It's a farce, Von Holtz," he said dryly, "this pretending you'll runaway. You're here spying now, for Jacaro. Of course. And you don'tdare harm either of us until you find out from me what you can't workout for yourself, and know I have done. How much is Jacaro going topay you for the secret of the catapult, Von Holtz?"

  Von Holtz snarled. Smithers moved toward him, his hands closing andunclosing. Von Holtz went gray with terror.

  "Talk!" said Smithers.

  "A--a million dollars," said Von Holtz, cringing away from the brawnyred-headed man.

  "It would be interesting to know what use it would be to him," saidTommy dryly. "But to earn that million you have to learn what we know.And to learn that, you have to help us do it again, on the scale wewant. You won't run away. So I shan't bother to lock you up hereafter.Jacaro's men come and talk to you at night, don't they?"

  * * * * *

  Von Holtz cringed again. It was an admission.

  "I don't want to have to kill any of them," said Tommy pleasantly,"and we'll all be classed as mad if this thing gets out. So you go andtalk to them in the lane when you want to, Von Holtz. But if any ofthem come near the laboratory, Smithers and I will kill them, and ifSmithers is hurt I'll kill you; and I don't imagine Jacaro wants that,because he expects you to build another catapult for him. But I warnyou, if I find another gun on you I'll thrash you."

  Von Holtz's pallor changed subtly from the pallor of fear to the awfullividness of rage.

  "You--Gott! You dare threaten--" He choked upon his own fury.

  "I do," said Tommy. "And I'll carry out the threat."

  Smithers moved forward once more.

  "Mr. Von Holtz," he said in a very terrible steadiness, "I aim to killyou some time. I ain't done it yet because Mr. Reames says he needsyou a while. But I know you got Miss Evelyn mar
ooned off in themfern-woods on purpose! And--God knows she wouldn't ever look at me,but--I aim to kill you some time!"

  His eyes were flames. His hands closed and unclosed horribly. VonHoltz gaped at him, shocked out of his fury into fear again. He wentunsteadily back to his lean-to. And Smithers went back to thedimensoscope. It was his turn to watch that other world for signs ofDenham and Evelyn, and for any sign of danger to them.

  * * * * *

  Tommy adjusted the screen before the bench on which he was working, soVon Holtz could not see his task, and went back to work. It was arather intricate task he had undertaken, and before the events of thepast few days he would have said it was insane. But now he was takingit quite casually.

  Presently he said:

  "Smithers."

  Smithers did not look away from the brass tube.

  "Yeah?"

  "You're thinking more about Miss Denham than her father."

  Smithers did not reply for a moment. Then he said:

  "Well? What if I am?"

  "I am, too," said Tommy quietly. "I've never spoken to her, and Idaresay she's never even heard of me, and she certainly has never seenme, but--"

  Smithers said with a vast calmness:

  "She'll never look at me, Mr. Reames. I know it. She talks to me, an'laughs with me, but she's never sure-'nough looked at me. An' shenever will. But I got the right to love her."

  Tommy nodded very gravely.

  "Yes. You have. So have I. And so, when that globe comes, we both getinto it with what arms and ammunition we can pack in, and go where sheis, to help her. I intended to have you work the switch and send meoff. But you can come, too."

  Smithers was silent. But he took his eyes from the dimensoscopeeye-piece and regarded Tommy soberly. Then he nodded and turned back.And it was a compact between the two men that they should serveEvelyn, without any rivalry at all.

  * * * * *

  Tommy went on with his work. The essential defect in the catapultDenham had designed was the fact that it practically had to be rebuiltafter each use. And, moreover, the metallic ammonium was so fugitive asubstance that it was hard to keep. Once it had been strained byworking, it gradually adverted to a gaseous state and was lost. Andwhile he still tried to keep the little catapult in a condition foruse, he was at no time sure that he could send a pair of automaticsand ammunition through in a steel box at any moment that Denham cameclose enough to notice a burning smoke-fuse attached.

  But he was working on another form of catapult entirely, now. In thiscase he was using hollow magnets placed at known angles to each other.And they were so designed that each one tended to adjust its ownhollow bore at right angles to the preceding one, and each one wouldtake any moving, magnetic object and swing it through four successiveright angles into the fifth dimension.

  He fitted the first magnet on twin rods of malleable copper, whichalso would carry the current which energized the coil. He threaded thesecond upon the same twin supports. When the current was passedthrough the two of them, the magnetic field itself twisted themagnets, bending the copper supports and placing the magnets in theirproper relative positions. A third magnet on the same pair of rods,and a repetition of the experiment, proved the accuracy of the idea.And since this device, like the dimensoscope, required only aforty-five degree angle to our known dimensions, instead of a rightangle as the other catapult did, Tommy was able to work with ordinaryand durable materials. He fitted on the last two coils and turned onthe current for his final experiment. And as he watched, the twinthree-eighths-inch rods twisted and writhed in the grip of theintangible magnetic force. They bent, and quivered, and twisted....And suddenly there seemed to be a sort of inaudible _snap_, and one ofthe magnets hurt the eyes that looked at it, and only the edge of thelast of the series was visible.

  * * * * *

  Tommy drew in his breath sharply. "Now we try it," he said tensely. "Iwas trying to work this as the mirrors of the dimensoscope werefitted. Let's see."

  He took a long piece of soft-iron wire and fed it into the hollow ofthe first magnet. He saw it come out and bend stiffly to enter thehollow of the second. It required force to thrust it through. It wentstill more stiffly into the third magnet. It required nearly all hisstrength to thrust it on, and on.... The end of it vanished. He pushedtwo feet or more of it beyond the last place where it was visible. Itwent into the magnet that hurt one's eyes. After that it could not beseen.

  Tommy's voice was strained.

  "Swing the dimensoscope, Smithers," he ordered. "See if you can seethe wire. The end of it should be in the other world."

  It seemed an age, an aeon, that Smithers searched. Then:

  "Move it," he said.

  Tommy obeyed.

  "It's there," said Smithers evenly. "Two or three feet of it."

  * * * * *

  Tommy drew a deep, swift breath of relief.

  "All right!" he said crisply. "Now we can fling anything we needthrough there, when our globe arrives. We can built up a dump ofsupplies, all sent through just before we slide through in the globe."

  "Yeah," said Smithers. "Uh--Mr. Reames. There's a bunch of Ragged Menin sight, hauling something heavy behind them. I don't know what it'sall about."

  Tommy went to the brass tube and stared through it. The tree-fernforest, drawing away in the distance. The vast and steaming morass.The glittering city, far, far in the distance.

  And then a mob of the Ragged Men, hauling at some heavy thing. Theywere a long way off. Some of them came capering on ahead, and Tommyswung the dimensoscope about to see Denham and Evelyn dart for coverand vanish amid the tree-ferns. Denham was as ragged as the RaggedMen, by now, and Evelyn's case was little better.

  Frightened for them, Tommy swung the instrument about again. But theyhad not been seen. The leaders who ran gleefully on ahead were merelyin haste. And they were followed more slowly by burly men and leanones, whole men and limping men, who hauled frantically on long ropesof hide, dragging some heavy thing behind them. Tommy saw it onlyindistinctly as the filthy, nearly naked bodies moved. But it was anintricate device of a golden-colored metal, and it rested upon thecrudest of possible carts. The wheels were sections of tree trunks,pierced for wooden axles. The cart itself was made of the mostroughly-hewed of timbers. And there were fifty or more of the RaggedMen who dragged it.

  The men in advance now attacked the underbrush at the edge of theforest. They worked with a maniacal energy, clearing away the longfern-fronds while they capered and danced and babbled excitedly.

  * * * * *

  Irrelevantly, Tommy thought of escaped galley slaves. Just suchhard-bitten, vice-ridden men as these, and filled with just such amad, gibbering hatred of the free men they had escaped from. Certainlythese men had been civilized once. As the golden-metal device camenearer, its intricacy was the more apparent. No savages could utilizea device like this one. And there was a queer deadliness in the verygrace of its outlines. It was a weapon of some sort, but whose natureTommy could not even guess.

  And then he caught the gleam of metal also in the fern-forest. On theground. In glimpses and in fragments of glimpses between the swarmingnaked bodies of the Ragged Men, he pieced together a wholly incredibleimpression. There was a roadway skirting the edge of the forest. Itwas not wide; not more than fifteen feet at most. But it was a solidroad-bed of metal! The dull silver-white of aluminum gleamed from theground. Two or more inches thick and fifteen feet wide, there was aseamless ribbon of aluminum that vanished behind the tree-ferns oneither side.

  The intricate device of golden metal was set up, now, and a shaggy,savage-seeming man mounted beside it grinning. He manipulated itslevers and wheels with an expert's assurance. And Tommy saw repairsupon it. Crude repairs, with crude materials, but expertly done. Doneby the Ragged Men, past doubt, and so demolishing any idea that theycame of a savage race.

 
; "Watch here, Smithers," said Tommy grimly.

  * * * * *

  He sat to work upon the little catapult after Denham's design. His ownhad seemed to work, but the other was more sure. This would be anambush the Ragged Men were preparing, and of course they would bepreparing it for men of the Golden City. The plane had sightedDenham's steel globe. It had hovered overhead, and carried news ofwhat it had seen to the Golden City. And here was a roadway that musthave been made by the folk of the Golden City at some time or another.Its existence explained why Denham remained nearby. He had been hopingthat some vehicle would travel along its length, containing civilizedpeople to whom he could signal and ultimately explain his plight. And,being near the steel globe, his narrative would have its proofs athand.

  And now it was clear that the Ragged Men expected some ground-vehicle,too. They were preparing for it. They were setting a splendid ambush,with a highly-treasured weapon they ordinarily kept hidden. Theirtriumphant hatred could apply to nothing else than an expectation ofinflicting injury on men of the Golden City.

  So Tommy worked swiftly upon the catapult. A new little ring ofmetallic ammonium was ready, and so were the necessary springs. TheRagged Men would lay their ambush. The men of the Golden City mightenter it. They might. But the aviator who had spotted the globe wouldhave seen the shredded contents of the sphere about. He would haveknown the Ragged Men had found it. And the men who came in aground-vehicle from the Golden City should be expecting just such anambush as was being laid.

  There would be a fight, and Tommy, somehow, had no doubt that the menof the Golden City would win. And when they had cleared the field hewould fling a smoking missile through the catapult. The victors shouldsee it and should examine it. And though writing would serve littlepurpose, they should at least recognize it as written communication ina language other than their own. And mathematical diagrams wouldcertainly be lucid, and proof of a civilized man sending the missile,and photographs....

  * * * * *

  The catapult was ready, and Tommy prepared his message-carryingprojectile. He found snapshots and included them. He tore out aphotograph of Evelyn and her father, which had been framed above awork bench in the laboratory. He labored, racking his brain for ameans of conveying the information that the globe was of any otherworld.... And suddenly he had an idea. A cord attached to his missilewould lead to nothingness from either world, yet one end would be inthat other world, and the other end in this. A wire would be better.Tugs upon it would convey the idea of living beings nearby butinvisible. The photograph would identify Denham and his daughter asassociated with the phenomenon and competent to explain it....

  Tommy worked frantically to get the thing ready. He almost prayed thatthe men of the Golden City would be victors, would find his littlemissile when the fray was over, and would try to comprehend it....

  All he could do was try.

  Then Smithers said, from the dimensoscope:

  "They're all set, Mr. Reames. Y'better look."

  Tommy stared through the eye-piece. Strangely, the golden weapon hadvanished. All seemed to be exactly as before. The cleared-awayunderbrush was replaced. Nothing was in any way changed from thenormal in that space upon a mad world. But there was a tiny movementand Tommy saw a Ragged Man. He was lying prone upon the earth. Heseemed either to hear or see something, because his lips moved as hespoke to another invisible man beside him, and his expression ofmalevolent joy was horrible.

  Tommy swung the tube about. Nothing.... But suddenly he sawswiftly-moving winkings of sunlight from the edge of the tree-fernforest. Something was moving in there, moving with lightning swiftnessalong the fifteen-foot roadway of solid aluminum. It drew nearer, andmore near....

  * * * * *

  The carefully camouflaged ambuscade was fully focussed and Tommy waswatching tensely when the thing happened.

  He saw glitterings through the tree-fronds come to a smoothlydecelerated stop. There was a pause; and suddenly the underbrush fellflat. As if a single hand had smitten it, it wavered, drooped, and layprone. The golden weapon was exposed, with its brawny and horriblygrinning attendant. For one-half a split second Tommy saw the wheeledthing in which half a dozen men of the Golden City were riding. It wasgraceful and stream-lined and glittering. There was a platform onwhich the steel sphere would have been mounted for carrying away.

  But then there was a sudden intolerable light as the men of the GoldenCity reached swiftly for peculiar weapons beside them. The light camefrom the crudely mounted weapon of the Ragged Men, and it was anunbearable actinic glare. For half a second, perhaps, it persisted,and died away to a red flame which leaped upward and was not.

  Then the vehicle from the Golden City was a smoking, twisted ruin.Four of the six men in it were blasted, blackened crisps. Anotherstaggered to his feet, struggled to reach a weapon and could not liftit, and twitched a dagger from his belt and fell forward; and Tommycould see that his suicide was deliberate.

  The last man, alone, was comparatively unharmed by the blast of light.He swept a pistol-like contrivance into sight. It bore swiftly uponthe now surging, yelling horde of Ragged Men. And one--two--three ofthem seemed to scream convulsively before they were trampled under bythe rest.

  But suddenly there were a myriad little specks of red all over thebody of the man at bay. The pistol-like thing dropped from his graspas his whole hand became encrimsoned. And then he was buried beneaththe hating, blood-lusting mob of the forest men.

  CHAPTER V

  An hour later, Tommy took his eyes away from the dimensoscopeeye-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 ofhalf-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solelysurviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Menguarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselvesunspeakably by small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful butnot weakening. And they capered and howled with glee when the boundman writhed.

  The prisoner was a brave man, though. Helpless as he was, he presentlyflung back his head and set his teeth. Sweat stood out in greatdroplets upon his body and upon his forehead. And he stilled hiswrithings, and looked at his captors with a grim and desperatedefiance.

  The guards made gestures which were all too clear, all too luridlydescriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man ofthe Golden City was ashen and hopeless and utterly despairing--and yetdefiant.

  Smithers took Tommy's place at the eye-piece of the instrument. Hisnostrils quivered at what he saw. The vehicle from the Golden City wasbeing plundered, of course. Weapons from the dead men were beingsquabbled over, even fought over. And the Ragged Men fought as madlyamong themselves as if in combat with their enemies. The big goldenweapon on its cart was already being dragged away to its formerhiding-place. And somehow, it was clear that those who dragged it awayexpected and demanded that the solitary prisoner not be killed untiltheir return.

  It was that prisoner, in the agony which was only the beginning of hisdeath, who made Smithers' teeth set tightly.

  * * * * *

  "I don't see the Professor or Miss Evelyn," said Smithers in a vastcalmness. "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 whathappened 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 MissEvelyn--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, eve
n!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.... MissEvelyn's urging him to try to do something.... He's looking at thesky.... It'll be a long time before it's dark.... He's gone back outof sight...."

  "If we had some dynamite!" said Tommy desperately, "we could take achance on blowing ourselves to bits and try to fling it through andinto the middle of those devils...."

  * * * * *

  He was pacing up and down the laboratory, harrowed by the fate of thatgray-faced man who awaited death by torture; filled with a wild terrorthat Evelyn and her father would try to rescue him and be caught toshare his fate; racked by his utter impotence to do more thanwatch....

  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 ofthe prisoner so that he would be helpless when released from the staketo which he was bound. And if ever human beings looked like devils outof hell, it was at that moment. The method of breaking the bones wasexcruciating. The prisoner screamed. The Ragged Men rolled upon theground in their maniacal mirth.

  And then a man dropped, heaving convulsively, and then another, andstill another.... The grim, gaunt figure of Denham came out of thetree-fern forest, the queer small golden-metal trunchion in his hand.A fourth man dropped before the Ragged Men quite realized what hadhappened. The fourth man himself was armed--and a flashing slenderbody came plunging from the forest and Evelyn flung herself upon thestill-heaving body and plucked away that weapon.

  * * * * *

  Tommy groaned, in the laboratory in another world. He could not lookaway, and yet it seemed that the heart would be torn from his body bythat sight. Because the Ragged Men had turned upon Denham with aconcentrated ferocity, somehow knowing instantly that he was morenearly akin to the men of the Golden City than to them. But at sightof Evelyn, her garments rent by the thorns of the forest, her whitebody gleaming through the largest tears, they seemed to go mad. AndTommy's eyes, glazing, saw the look on Denham's face as he realizedthat Evelyn had not fled, but had followed him in his desperate andwholly hopeless effort.

  Then the swarming mass of Ragged Men surged over the two of them.Buried them under reaching, hating, lusting fiends who fought evenamong themselves to be first to seize them.

  Then there was only madness, and Denham was bound beside the man ofthe Golden City, and Evelyn was the center of a fighting group whichwas suddenly flung aside by the bearded giant, and the encampment ofthe Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow Tommy knew with a terribleclarity that a man of the Golden City to torture was blissunimaginable to these half-mad enemies of that city. But a woman--

  He turned from the instrument, three-quarters out of his head. Heliterally did not see Von Holtz gazing furtively in the doorway. Hiseyes were fixed and staring. It seemed that his brain would burst.

  Then he heard his own voice saying with an altogether unbelievablesteadiness:

  "Smithers! They've got Evelyn. Get the sub-machine gun."

  * * * * *

  Smithers cried out hoarsely. His face was not quite human, for aninstant. But Tommy was bringing the work bench on which he hadinstalled his magnetic catapult, close over by the dimensoscope.

  "This cannot work," he said in the same incredible calmness. "Notpossibly. 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 intothem. They've got to."

  Smithers' fingers were trembling and unsteady. Tommy helped him, notlooking through the dimensoscope at all.

  "Start the dynamo," he said evenly--and marveled foolishly at thevoice that did not seem to belong to him at all, talking so steadilyand so quietly. "Give me all the juice you've got. We'll cut out thisrheostat."

  He was tightening a vise which would hold the deadly little weapon inplace while Smithers got the crude-oil engine going and accelerated itrecklessly to its highest speed. Tommy flung the switch. Rubberinsulation steamed and stank. He pulled the trigger of the little gunfor a single shot. The bullet flew into the first hollow magnet, justas he had beforehand thrust an iron wire. It vanished. The series ofmagnets seemed unharmed.

  * * * * *

  With a peculiar, dreamlike steadiness, Tommy put his hand where anundeflected bullet would go through it. He pressed the trigger again.He felt a tiny breeze upon his hand. But the bullet had been unable toelude the compound-wound magnets, each of which now had quite fourtimes 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 ofshots through it. Keep the switch off except when you're actuallyfiring, so--God willing--the coils don't burn out. Fire!"

  He was gazing through the dimensoscope. Evelyn was strugglinghelplessly while two Ragged Men held her arms, grinning as only devilscould have grinned, and others squabbled and watched with a fascinatedattention some cryptic process which could only be the drawing oflots....

  Tommy saw, and paid no attention. The machine-gun beside him raspedsuddenly. He saw a tree-fern frond shudder. He saw a gaping, irregularhole where a fresh frond was uncurling. Tommy put out his hand to thegun.

  "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 thebullets struck in that other world. The little steel-jacketed missileswere deflected by the terribly overstrained magnets of the catapult,but their energy was not destroyed. It was merely altered indirection. Fired within the laboratory upon our own and normal world,the bullets came out into the world of tree-ferns and monstrousthings. They came out, as it happened, sideways instead of pointfirst, which was due to some queer effect of dimension change upon anobject moving at high velocity. Because of that, they ricocheted muchmore readily, and where they struck they made a much more ghastlywound. But the first two bursts caused no effect at all. They were noteven noticed by the Ragged Men. The noise of the little gun wasthunderous and snarling in the laboratory, but in the world of thefifth 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 grimintensity he traversed the gun as it roared.

  And it was butchery. Three Ragged Men were cut literally to bitsbefore the storm of bullets began to do real damage. The squabblinggroup, casting lots for Evelyn, had a swathe of dead men in its midstbefore snarls begun had been completed.

  "Again," said Tommy coldly. "Again, Smithers, again!"

  * * * * *

  And again the little gun roared. The burly bearded man clutched at histhroat--and it was a gory horror. A Thing began to run insanely. Itdid not even look human any longer. It stumbled over the leader of theRagged Men and died as he had done. The bullets came tumbling overthemselves erratically. They swooped and curved and dispersedthemselves crazily. Spinning as they were, at right angles to theirline of flight, their trajectories were incalculable and their impactswere grisly.

  The little gun fired ten several bursts, aimed in a desperatecold-bloodedness, before the smell of burnt rubber became suddenlyoverpowering and the rasping sound of an electric arc broke throughthe 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 staggerin
g toward her father. She'll turn him loose. Thatprisoner's dead, though. Didn't mean to shoot him, but those bulletsflew wild."

  He gave Smithers the eye-piece. Sweat was rolling down his forehead ingreat drops. His hands were trembling uncontrollably.

  He paced shakenly up and down the laboratory, trying to shut out ofhis own sight the things he had seen when the bullets of his ownaiming literally splashed into the living flesh of men. He had seenRagged Men disemboweled by those spinning, knifelike projectiles. Hehad turned a part of the mad world of that other dimension into ashambles, and he did not regret it because he had saved Evelyn, but hewanted 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'tbeen killed...."

  * * * * *

  He was looking at the magnetic catapult, burned out and useless. Hiseyes swung suddenly to the other one. Just a little while since he hadmade ready a missile to be thrown through into the other world bythat. It contained snapshots, and diagrams, and it was an attempt tocommunicate with the men of the Golden City without any knowledge oftheir language.

  "But--I can communicate with Denham!"

  He began to write feverishly. If he had looked out of the laboratorywindow, he would have seen Von Holtz running like a deer, waving hisarms jerkily, and--when out of earshot of the laboratory--shoutingloudly. And Von Holtz was carrying a small black box which Tommy wouldhave identified instantly as a motion picture camera, built foramateurs but capable of taking pictures indoors and with asurprisingly small amount of light. And if Tommy had listened, hemight possibly have heard the beginnings of those shoutings to menhidden 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 securedthe information that was wanted, or until an assault in force upon thelaboratory 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 toSmithers at the dimensoscope:

  "Denham'll be looking around to see what killed those men. When hedoes, we want to be ready to shoot a smoke-bomb through to him, with amessage 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 haddone, and that another globe was being built so that he and Smitherscould come with supplies and arms to help....

  "He's lookin'' around now, Mr. Reames," said Smithers quietly. "He'spicked up a ricocheted bullet an' is staring at it."

  * * * * *

  The crude-oil engine was running at a thunderous rate. Tommy fastenedhis note in the little missile he had made ready. He placed it underthe solenoid of the catapult after Denham's design, with the springsand rings of metallic ammonium. He turned to Smithers.

  "I'll watch for him," said Tommy unsteadily. "You know, watch for theright 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 thebullets of his aiming had done. But he saw Denham almost at once. AndDenham was scratched and bruised and looked very far indeed from theideal of a professor of theoretic physics, with hardly more than a fewshreds 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 upweapons to show Evelyn excitedly what it was that he had found. Aspent and battered bullet, but indubitably a bullet from the world ofhis own ken. He began to stare about him, hopeful yet incredulous.

  Tommy took his eye from the dimensoscope just long enough to light thefuse of the smoke-bomb.

  "Here it goes, Smithers!"

  He flung the switch. The missile with its thickly smoking fuse leapedupward as the concentric rings flickered and whirled bewilderingly.The missile hurt the eyes that watched it. It vanished. The solenoiddropped to the floor from the broken small contrivance.

  Then Tommy's heart stood still as he gazed through the eye-pieceagain. He could see nothing but an opaque milkiness. But it driftedaway, and he realised that it was smoke. More, Denham was staring atit. More yet, he was moving cautiously towards its source, one of thestrange golden weapons held ready....

  Denham was investigating.

  * * * * *

  The generator at the back of the laboratory slowed down. Smithers wasobeying orders. Tommy hung close by the vision instrument, his handsmoving vaguely and helplessly, as one makes gestures without volitionwhen anxious for someone else to duplicate the movements for which hesets the example.

  He saw Denham, very near, inspecting the smoking thing on the groundsuspiciously. The smoke-fuse ceased to burn. Denham stared. After anage-long delay, he picked up the missile Tommy had prepared. And Tommysaw that there was a cord attached to it. He had fastened that cordwhen 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 toEvelyn. He hobbled excitedly to her, babbling....

  Tommy watched, and his heart pounded suddenly as Evelyn turned andsmiled in the direction in which she knew the dimensoscope must be. Ahuge butterfly, its wings a full yard across, fluttered past her head.Denham talked excitedly to her. A clumsy batlike thing swooped byoverhead. Its shadow blanketed her face for an instant. A runninganimal, small and long, ran swiftly in full view from one side of thedimensoscope's field of vision to the other. Then a snake, curiouslyhorned, 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 tosearch for a charred stick where the Ragged Men had built a fire somedays now past. A fleeing furry thing sped across his feet, running....

  * * * * *

  Denham looked up. And Evelyn was staring now. She was staring in thedirection of the Golden City. And now what was almost a wave ofanimals, all wild and all fleeing, swept across the field of vision ofthe dimensoscope. There were gazelles, it seemed--slender-limbed,graceful animals, at any rate--and there were tiny hoofed things whichmight have been eohippi, and then a monstrous armadillo clanked andrattled past....

  Tommy swung the dimensoscope. He gasped. All the animal world was inflight. The insects had taken to wing. Flying creatures were soaringupward and streaking through the clear blue sky, and all in the onedirection. And then out of the morass came monstrous shapes;misshapen, unbelievable reptilian shapes, which fled bellowingthunderously for the tree-fern forest. They were gigantic, thosethings from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out ofnightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what mighthave been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And therewere long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vastpalpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, andlong tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the ghastly things fledbellowing....

  And the cause of the mad panic was a slowly moving white curtain ofmist. It was flowing over the marsh, moving with apparentdeliberation, but, as Tommy saw, actually very swiftly. It shimmeredand quivered and moved onward steadily. Its upper surface gleamed withelusive prismatic colors. It had blotted out the horizon and theGolden City, and it came onward....

  * * * * *

  Denham made frantic, despairing gestures toward the dimensoscope. Thething was coming too fast. There was no time to write. Denham heldhigh the cord that trailed from the message-bearing missile. Hegesticulated frantically, and raced to the gutted steel globe andheaved mightily upon it and swung it about so that Tommy saw a greatsteel ring set in its side, which had been hidden before. He made moregestures, urgently, and motioned Evelyn inside.

  Tommy struck at his forehead.

  "It's poison gas," he mutter
ed. "Revenge for the smashed-upvehicle.... They knew it by an automatic radio signal, maybe. This istheir way of wiping out the Ragged Men.... Poison gas.... It'll killDenham and Evelyn.... He wants me to do something...."

  He drew back, staring, straining every nerve to think.... And somehowhis eyes were drawn to the back of the laboratory and he saw Smithersteetering on his feet, with his hands clasped queerly to his body, anda strange man standing in the door of the laboratory with an automaticpistol in his hand. The automatic had a silencer on it, and itsclicking had been drowned out, anyhow, by the roaring of the crude-oilengine.

  The man was small and dark and natty. His lips were drawn back in apeculiar mirthless grin as Smithers teetered stupidly back and forthand then fell....

  The explosion of Tommy's own revolver astounded him as much as it didJacaro's gunman. He did not ever remember drawing it or aiming. Thenatty little gunman was blotted out by a spouting mass of whitesmoke--and suddenly Tommy knew what it was that Denham wanted him todo.

  * * * * *

  There was rope in a loose and untidy coil beneath a work bench. Tommysprang to it in a queer, nightmarish activity. He knew what washappening, of course. Von Holtz had seen the magnetic catapult atwork. That couldn't be destroyed or its workings hidden like the ringcatapult 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 theseizure of the instrument Jacaro wanted.

  It was necessary to defend the laboratory. But Tommy could not sparethe time. That white mist was moving upon Evelyn and her father, inthat other world. It was death, as the terror of the wild thingsdemonstrated. They had to be helped....

  He knotted the rope to the end of the cord that vanished curiouslysomewhere among the useless mass of rings. He tugged at the cord--andit was tugged in return. Denham, in another world, had felt his signaland 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 ropepast its vanishing point. The knot ceased to exist and the rope creptonward--and suddenly moved more and more swiftly to a place whereabruptly it was not. For the length of half an inch, the rope hurt theeyes that looked at it. Beyond that it was not possible to see it atall.

  Tommy leaped up. He plunged ahead of two separate spurts of shots fromtwo 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 adrum, there, and a clutch attached the drum to the engine.

  He stopped and seized the repeating shotgun Smithers had brought ashis own weapon against Jacaro's gangsters. He sent four loads ofbuckshot 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 washere an entry-way to another world--perhaps another universe.

  A bullet nicked his ribs. He picked up the gun and fired it nearly atrandom. He saw Smithers moving feebly, and Tommy had a vast compassionfor Smithers, but-- He shuddered suddenly. Something had struck him aheavy blow in the shoulder. And something else battered at his leg.There was no sound that could be heard above the thunder of thecrude-oil motor, but Tommy, was queerly aware of buzzing things flyingabout him, and of something very warm flowing down his body and downhis leg. And he felt very dizzy and weak and extremely tired.... Hecould not see clearly, either.

  But he had to wait until Denham had the chain fast to the globe. Thatwas the way he had intended to come back, of course. The ring was inthe globe, and this chain was in the laboratory to haul the globe backfrom wherever it had been sent. And Von Holtz had disconnected itbefore sending away the globe with Denham in it. If the chain remainedunbroken, of course it could be hauled in, as it would turn allnecessary angles and force the globe to follow those angles, whateverthey 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 stoppedmoving to a place where it ceased to exist, so that he could throw aclutch and bring Denham and his daughter back from the place where VonHoltz had marooned them when he wanted to steal Denham's secret. Tommywanted to explain that. But the floor struck him in the face, andsomething said to him:

  "They've shot you."

  * * * * *

  But it did not seem to matter, somehow, and he lay very still until hefelt himself strangling, and he was breathing in strong ammonia whichmade his eyes smart and his tired lungs gasp.

  Then he saw flames, and heard a motor car roaring away from close bythe laboratory.

  "They've stolen the catapult and set fire to the place," he remembereddizzily, "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 waitingfor the white mist to reach them, and Denham jerking desperately onthe 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 isimpossible to say where Tommy's strength came from, when somehow hecrawled to the clutch lever, with the engine roaring steadily abovehim, and got one hand on the lever, and edged himself up, and up, andup, until he could swing his whole weight on that lever. That instantof dangling hurt excruciatingly, too, and Tommy saw only that the drumbegan to revolve swiftly, winding the chain upon it, before his gripgave way.

  And the chain came winding in and in from nowhere, and the talllaboratory filled more and more thickly with smoke, and lurid flamesappeared somewhere, and a rushing sound began to be audible as thefire roared upward to the inflammable roof, and the engine ranthunderously....

  * * * * *

  Then, suddenly, there was a shape in the middle of the laboratoryfloor. A huge globular shape which it hurt the eyes to look upon. Itbecame visible out of nowhere as if evoked by magic amid the flames ofhell. But it came, and was solid and substantial, and it slid alongthe floor upon small wheels until it wound up with a crash against thewinding drum, and the chain shrieked as it tightened unbearably--andthe 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 outto each other and started for the door. But the girl stumbled overTommy and called, choking, to her father. Groping toward her, he foundSmithers. And then Tommy smiled drowsily to himself as soft armstugged bravely at him, and a slender, glorious figure staggered withhim to fresh air.

  "It's Von Holtz," snapped Denham, and coughed as he fought his way tothe open. "I'll blast him to hell with these things we broughtback...."

  * * * * *

  That was the last thing Tommy knew until he woke up in bed with afeeling 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 andfully clothed. That was the strangeness about him. Tommy had beenwatching him for many days as his clothing swiftly deteriorated andhis beard grew.

  "You are, too, I see," he said weakly. "I'm damned glad." Then he feltfoolish, and querulous, and as if he should make some apology, andinstead said, "But five dimensions does seem extreme. Three is enoughfor ordinary use, and four is luxurious. Five seems to be going a bittoo far."

  Denham blinked, and then grinned suddenly. Tommy had admired the manwho 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 on
e of theweapons Tommy had seen in that other world, one of the golden-coloredtruncheons. "I brought this back. The same metal they built that wagonof 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 gettingthere. Von Holtz enlisted him."

  "How did you know--" began Tommy weakly.

  "Smithers," said Denham. "We dragged both of you out before the labwent-up in smoke. He's going to be all right, too. Evelyn's nursingboth 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 savedus, and you just about killed yourself doing it. Smithers saw youswing that clutch lever with three bullets in your body. And you're ascientist, too. You're my partner, Reames, in what we do in the fifthdimension."

  * * * * *

  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 forthe gold in that. And we've got to get there, Reames, because Jacarowill 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 Citywould be worth knowing. No, we're partners. Sooner or later, you'llknow how I feel about what you've done. I'm going to bring Evelyn inhere now."

  He vanished. An instant later Tommy heard a voice--a girl's voice. Hisheart began to pound. Denham came back into the room and with him wasEvelyn. She smiled warmly upon Tommy, though as his eyes fell blanklyupon 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 intothe eyes of the girl he had never before spoken to, but for whom hehad risked his life, and whom he knew he would love forever. Therewere a thousand things crowding to his lips for utterance. He hadwatched Evelyn, and he loved her--

  "H-how do you do?" said Tommy, lamely. "I'm--awfully glad to meetyou."

  But before he was well he learned to talk more sensibly.

 

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