CHAPTER IX
_War!_
A huge ornithopter came heavily out on the landing stage in the cityof Rahn. Its crew took their places. With a creaking and rattlingnoise it rose toward the invading fleet. From its filigree cockpitsides, men waved green branches. A green light wavered from the bigplane that carried the bearded Council man and Denham. That planeswept forward and hovered above the ornithopter. The two flying thingsseemed almost fastened together, so closely did their pilots maintainthat same speed and course. A snaky rope went coiling down into thelower ship's cockpit. A burly figure began to climb it hand over hand.A second figure followed. A third figure, in the drab clothing thatdistinguished Jacaro's men from all others, wrapped the rope abouthimself and was hauled up bodily. And Tommy had seen Jacaro but once,yet he was suddenly grimly convinced that this was Jacaro himself.
The two planes swept apart. The ornithopter descended toward thelanding stage of Rahn. The freight plane swept toward the ship thatcarried Tommy. Again the snaky rope coiled down. And Tommy swung upthe fifteen feet that alone separated the two soaring planes, andlooked into the hard, amused eyes of Jacaro where he sat between twoother emissaries of Rahn. One of them was half naked and savage, withthe light of madness in his eyes. A Ragged Man. The other was lean anddesperate, despite the colored tunic of a civilized man that he wore.
* * * * *
"Hello," said Jacaro blandly. "We come up to talk things over."
Tommy gave him the briefest of nods. He looked at Denham--who wasdeathly white and grim--and the bearded Councilor.
"I' been givin' 'em the dope," said Jacaro easily. "We got the whiphand now. We got gas masks, we got guns just the same as you have, an'we got the women."
"You haven't ammunition," said Tommy evenly, "or damned little. Yourmen brought down one ship, and stopped. If you had enough shells wouldyou have stopped there?"
Jacaro grinned.
"You got arithmetic, Reames," he conceded. "That's so. But--I'm sayin'it again--we got the women. Your girl, for one! Now, how aboutthrowin' in with me, you an' the professor?"
"No," said Tommy.
"In a coupla months, Rahn'll be runnin' this planet," said Jacaroblandly, "and I'm runnin' Rahn! I didn't know how easy the racket'dbe, or I'd 've let Yugna alone. I'd 've come here first. Now get it!Rahn runnin' the planet, with a couple guys runnin' Rahn an' passin'down through a Tube any little thing we want, like a few million bucksin solid gold. An' Rahn an' the other cities for kinda country homesfor us an' our friends. All the women we want, good liquor, an' aswell time!"
"Talk sense," said Tommy, without even contempt in his tone.
* * * * *
Jacaro snarled.
"No sense actin' too big!" But the snarl encouraged Tommy, because itproved Jacaro less confidant than he tried to seem. His next change oftone proved it. "Aw, hell!" he said placatingly. "This is what I'mfigurin' on. These guys ain't used to fighting, but they got thestuff. They got gases that are hell-roarin'. They got ships can beatany we got back home. Figure out the racket. A couple big Tubes,that'll let a ship--maybe folded--go through. A fleet of 'em floatin'over N'York, loaded with gas--that white stuff y' can steer wherevery' want it. Figure the shake-down. We could pull a hundred millionfrom Chicago! We c'd take over the whole United States! Try that on y'piano! Me, King Jacaro, King of America!" His dark eyes flashed. "I'llgive y' Canada or Mexico, whichever y' want. Name y' price, guy. Acoupla months organizin' here, buildin' a big Tube, then...."
Tommy's expression did not change.
"If it were that easy," he said drily, "you wouldn't be bargaining.I'm not altogether a fool, Jacaro. We want those women back. You wantsomething we've got, and you want it badly. Cut out the oratory andtell me the real price for the return of the women, unharmed."
Jacaro burst into a flood of profanity.
"I'd rather Evelyn died from gas," said Tommy, "than as your filthyRagged Men would kill her. And you know I mean it." He switched to thelanguage of the cities to go on coldly: "If one woman is harmed, Rahndies. We will shoot down every ship that rises from her stages. Wewill spray burning thermit through her streets. We will cover hertowers with gas until her people starve in the gas masks they'vemade!"
The lean man in the tunic of Rahn snarled bitterly: "What matter? Westarve now!"
Tommy turned upon him as Jacaro whirled and cursed him bitterly forthe revealing outburst.
"We will ransom the women with food," said Tommy coldly--and then hiseyes flamed, "and thrash you afterwards for fools!"
* * * * *
He made a gesture to the Keeper of Foodstuffs. It was unconsciously anauthoritative gesture, though the Keeper of Foodstuffs was in thestate of affairs in Yugna the head of the Council. But that old manspoke deliberately. The man from Rahn snarled his reply. And Tommyturned aside as the bargaining went on. He could see Evelyn downbelow, a tiny speck of khaki amid the rainbow-colored robes of theother women. This had been a savage expedition, to rescue or toavenge. It had deteriorated into a bargain. Tommy heard, dully,amounts of unfamiliar weights and measures of foodstuffs he did notrecognize. He heard the time and place of payment named: the gate ofYugna, the third dawn hence. He hardly looked up as at some signal oneof their own ornithopters slid below and the three ambassadors of Rahnprepared to go over the side. But Jacaro snarled out of one corner ofhis mouth.
"These guys are takin' each other's words. Maybe that's all right, butI'm warnin' you, if there's any double-crossin'...."
He was gone. The Keeper of Foodstuffs touched Tommy's shoulder.
"Our flier," he said slowly, "will make sure our women are as yetunharmed. We are to deliver the foods at our own city gate, and afterthe women have been returned. Rahn dares not keep them or harm them.We of Yugna keep our word. Even in Rahn they know it."
"But they won't keep theirs," said Tommy heavily. "Not with a man ofEarth to lead them."
* * * * *
He watched with his heart in his mouth as the ornithopter alightednear the assembled women of Yugna. As the three ambassadors climbedout, he could hear the faint murmur of voices. The men of Yugna, undertruce, called across the landing stage to the women of their own city,and the women replied to them. Then the crew of the one groundedfreighter arrived on the landing stage and the flapping flier roseslowly and rejoined the fleet. Its crew shouted a shamefacedreassurance to the flagship.
"I suppose," said Tommy bitterly, "we'd better go back--if you're surethe women are safe."
"I am sure," said the old man unhappily, "or I had not agreed to payhalf the foodstuffs in Yugna for their return."
He withdrew into a troubled silence as the fleet swept far fromtriumphantly for him. Denham had not spoken at all, though his eyeshad blazed savagely upon the men of Rahn. Now he spoke,dry-throatedly:
"Tommy--Evelyn--"
"She is all right so far," said Tommy bitterly. "She's to be ransomedby foodstuffs, paid at the gates of Yugna. And Jacaro bragged he'srunning Rahn--and they've got gas masks. We'd better be ready fortrouble after the women are returned."
Denham nodded grimly. Tommy reached out and took one of the blacktablets from the man beside him. He began to draw carefully, his eyessavage.
"What's that?"
"There's high-pressure steam in Yugna," said Tommy coldly. "I'mdesigning steam guns. Gravity feed of spherical projectiles. A jet ofsteam instead of gunpowder. They'll be low-velocity, but we can usebig-calibre balls for shock effect, and with long barrels they oughtto serve for a hundred yards or better. Smooth bore, of course."
Denham stirred. His lips were pinched.
"I'll design a gas mask," he said restlessly, "and Smithers and I,between us, will do what we can."
* * * * *
The air fleet went on over the waving tree-fern jungle in an unvaryingmonotony of bitterness. Presently Tommy wearily explained his designto t
he bearded Councilor who, with the quick comprehension ofmechanical design apparently instinctive in these folk, grasped itimmediately. He selected three of the six-man crew and passed Tommy'sdrawings to them. While the jungle flowed beneath the fleet theystudied the sketches, made other drawings, and showed them eagerly toTommy. When the fleet soared down to the scattered landing stages, notonly was the design understood but apparently plans for production hadbeen made. It did not take the men of the Golden City long to respond.
Tommy flung himself savagely into the work he had taken upon himself.It did not occur to him to ask for authority. He knew what had to bedone and he set to work to do it, commanding men and materials as ifthere could be no question of disobedience. As a matter of fact, heyielded impatiently to an order of the Council that he should presenthimself in the Council hall, and, since no questions were asked him,continued his organizing in the very presence of the Council, sendingfor information and giving orders in a low tone while the Councildeliberated. A vote was taken by the voting machine. At its end, hewas solemnly informed that, though not a native of Yugna, he wasentrusted with the command of the defense forces of the city. Hisskill in arms--as evidenced by his defeat of the fleet of Rahn--andhis ability in command--when he met the gas-mask defense of Rahn witha threat of starvation--moved the Council to that action. He acceptedthe command almost abstractedly, and hurried away to pick gunemplacements.
* * * * *
Within four hours after the return of the fleet, the first steam gunwas ready for trial. Smithers appeared, sweat-streaked and vastlycalm, to announce that others could be turned out in quantity.
"These guys have got the stuff," he said steadily. "Instead o' castin'their stuff, they shoot it on a core in a melted spray. They ain't gotsteel, an' copper's scarce, but they got some alloys that are good an'tough. One's part tungsten or I'm crazy."
Tommy nodded.
"Turn out all the guns you can," he said. "I look for fighting."
"Yeah," said Smithers. "Miss Evelyn's still all right?"
"Up to three hours ago," said Tommy grimly. "Every three hours one ofour ships lands in Rahn and reports. We give the Rahnians their stuffat our own city gates. I've warned Jacaro that we've mountedthermit-throwers on our food stores. If he manages to gas us bysurprise, nevertheless our foodstuffs can't be captured. They've gotto turn over Evelyn and cart off their food before they dare to fight,else they'll starve."
"But--uh--there're other cities they could stick up, ain't there?"
"We've warned them," said Tommy curtly. "They've got thermit-throwersmounted on their food supplies, too. And they're desperate enough tokeep Rahn off. They're willing enough to let Yugna do the fighting,but they know what Rahn's winning will mean."
Smithers turned away, then turned back.
"Uh--Mr. Reames," he said heavily, "these fellas've gone near crazyabout governors an' reducing valves an' such. They're inventin' waysto use 'em on machines I don't make head or tail of. We got three-fourhundred men loose from machines already, an' they're turnin' out thesesteam guns as soon as you check up. There'll be more loose by night. Ihad 'em spray some castin's for another Tube, too. Workin' like theydo, an' with the tools they got, they make speed."
Tommy responded impatiently: "There's no steel, no iron for magnets."
"I know," admitted Smithers. "I'm tryin' steam cylindersto--uh--energize the castin's, instead o' coils. It'll be ready bymornin'. I wish you'd look it over, Mr. Reames. If Miss Evelyn getssafe into the city, we could send her down the Tube to Earth until thefightin's over."
"I'll try to see it," said Tommy impatiently. "I'll try!"
* * * * *
He turned back to the set-up steam gun. A flexible pipe from a heavilyinsulated cylinder ran to it. A hopper dropped metallic balls downinto a bored-out barrel, where they were sucked into the blast ofsuperheated steam from the storage cylinder. At a touch of the triggera monstrous cloud of steam poured out. It was six feet from the gunmuzzle before it condensed enough to be visible. Then a huge whitecloud developed; but the metal pellets went on with deadly force. Halfan inch in diameter, they carried seven hundred yards at extremeelevation. Point-blank range was seventy-five yards. They would killat three hundred, and stun or disable beyond that. At a hundred yardsthey would tear through a man's body.
Tommy was promised a hundred of the weapons, with their boilers, intwo days. He selected their emplacements. He directed that a disablingdevice be inserted, so if rushed they could not be turned againsttheir owners. He inspected the gas masks being turned out by thewomen, who in this emergency worked like the men. Though helplessbefore machinery, it seemed, they could contrive a fabric device likea gas mask.
The second day the work went on more desperately still. But Smithers'work in releasing men was telling. There were fifteen hundredgovernors, or reducing valves, or autocratic cut-outs in operationnow. And fifteen hundred men were released from the machines, whichhad to be kept going to keep the city alive. With that many men,intelligent mechanics all, Tommy and Smithers worked wonders. Smithersdrove them mercilessly, using profanity and mechanical drawingsinstead of speech. Denham withdrew twenty men and labored on top ofone of the towers. Toward sunset of the second day, vast clouds ofsteam bellied out from it at odd, irregular intervals. Nothing elsemanifested itself. Those irregular belchings of steam continued untildark, but Tommy paid no attention to them. He was driving the gunnersof the machine guns to practice. He was planning patrols, devising areserve, mounting thermit-throwers, and arranging for the delivery ofthe promised ransom at the specified city gate. So far, there was nosign of anything unusual in Rahn. Messengers from Yugna saw thecaptive women regularly, once every three hours. The last to leave hadreported them being loaded into great ground vehicles under adefending escort, to travel through the dark jungle roads to Yugna. Avast concourse of empty vehicles was trailing into the jungle afterthem, to bring back the food which would keep Rahn from starving, fora while. It all seemed wholly regular.
* * * * *
At dawn, the remaining ships of the air fleet of Rahn were soaringsilently above the jungle about the Golden City. They made no threat.They offered no affront. But they soared, and soared....
A little after dawn, glitterings in the jungle announced the arrivalof the convoy. Messengers, in advance, shouted the news. Men fromYugna went out to inspect. The atmosphere grew tense. The air fleet ofRahn drew closer.
Slowly, a great golden gateway yawned. Four ground vehicles rolledforward, and under escort of the Rahnians entered the city. Half thecaptive women from Yugna were within them. They alighted, weeping forjoy, and were promptly whisked away. Evelyn was not among them. Tommyground his teeth. An explanation came. When one half the promisedransom was paid, the others would be forthcoming.
Tommy gave grim orders. Half the foodstuffs were taken to the citygate--half, no more. At his direction, it was explained gently to theRahnians that the rest of the ransom remained under guard of thethermit-throwers. It would not be exposed to capture until the last ofthe captives were released. There was argument, expostulation. Therest of the women appeared. Aten, at Tommy's express command, piledEvelyn and his own wife into a ground vehicle and came racing madly tothe tower from which Tommy could see all the circuit of the city.
"You're all right?" asked Tommy. At Evelyn's speechless nod, he puthis hand heavily on her shoulder. "I'm glad," he managed to say. "Puton that gas mask. Hell's going to pop in a minute."
He watched, every muscle tense. There was confusion about the citygate. Ground vehicles, loaded with foodstuffs, poured out of the gateand back toward the jungle. Other vehicles with improvisedenlargements to their carrying platforms--making them into huge closedboxes--rolled up to the gate. The loaded vehicles rolled back and backand back, and ever more apparently empty ones crowded about the citygate waiting for admission.
Then there was a sudden flare of intolerable light. A wild
yell arose.Clouds of steam shot up from the ready steam guns. But the circlingair fleet turned as one ship and plunged for the city. The leadersbegan to drop smoking things that turned into monstrous pillars ofprismatically-colored mist. A wave of deadly vapor rolled over theramparts of the city. And then there was a long-continued ululationand the noise of battle. Ragged Men, hidden in the jungle, had swarmedupon the walls with ladders made of jungle reeds. They came over theparapet in a wave of howling madness. And they surged into the city,flinging gas bombs as they came.
CHAPTER X
_The Fight_
The city was pandemonium. Tommy, looking down from his post ofcommand, swore softly under his breath. The Death Mist was harmless tothe defenders of Yugna as a gas, because of their gas masks. But itserved as a screen. It blotted out the waves of attackers so the steamguns could not be aimed save at the shortest of short ranges. Hisprecautions were taking effect, to be sure. Two thirds of theattackers were Ragged Men drawn from about half the surviving cities,and against such a horde Yugna could not have held out at all but forhis preparations. Now the defenders took a heavy toll. Swarms of mencame racing toward the open gate, their truncheons aglow in thesunlight. The ring of Death Mist was contracting as if to strangle thecity, and it left the ramparts bare again. And from more than onepoint upon the battlements the roaring clouds of steam burst outagain. A dozen guns concentrated on the racing men of Rahn, plungingfrom the jungle to enter by the gate. They were racing forward,without order but at top speed, to share in the fighting and loot.Then streams of metal balls tore into them. The front of the irregularcolumn was wiped out utterly. Wide swathes were cut in the rest. Thesurvivors ran wildly forward over a litter of dead and dying men.Electric-charge weapons sent crackling discharges among them. Theircontorted figures reeled and fell or leaped convulsively to lieforever still where they struck. And then the steam guns turned aboutto fire into the rear of the men who had charged past them.
The steam guns had literally blasted away the line of Ragged Men wherethey stood. But the line went on, with great ragged gaps in it, to besure, but still vastly outnumbering the defenders of the city. Hereand there a steam gun was silent, its gun crew dead. And presentlythose that were left were useless, immobile upon the ramparts in therear of the attack.
* * * * *
Down in the ways of the city the fight rose to a riotous clamor. AtTommy's order the women of the city had been concentrated into a fewstrong towers. The machines of the city were left undefended for atime. A few strong patrols of fighting men, strategically placed,flung themselves with irresistible force upon certain bands ofmaddened Ragged Men. But where a combat raged, there the Ragged Menswarmed howling. Their hatred impelled them to suicidal courage and tounspeakable atrocities. From his tower, Tommy saw a man of Yugna,evidently a prisoner. Four Ragged Men surrounded him, literallytearing him to pieces like the maniacs they were. Then he saw dustspurting up in a swift-advancing line, and all four Ragged Mentwitched and collapsed on top of their victim. A steam gun had donethat. A fighting patrol of the men of Yugna swept fiercely down apaved way in one of the Golden City's vehicles. There was the glint ofgold from it. A solid, choked mass of invaders rushed upon it. Withoutslackening speed, without a pause, the vehicle raced ahead.Intolerable flashes of light appeared. A thermit-thrower was mountedon the machine. It drove forward like a flaming meteor, and aselectric-charge weapons flashed upon it men screamed and died. It toreinto a vast cloud of the Death Mist and the unbearable flames of itsweapon could only be seen as illuminations of that deadly vapor.
A part of the city was free of defenders, save the isolated steamgunners left behind upon the walls. Ragged Men, drunk with success,ran through its ways, slashing at the walls, battering at thelight-panels, pounding upon the doorways of the towers. Tommy saw themhacking at the great doorway of a tower. It gave. They rushed within.Almost instantly thereafter the opening spouted them forth again andafter them, leaping upon them, snapping and biting and striking outwith monstrous paws and teeth, were green lizard-things like the onethat had been killed--years back, it seemed--on Earth. A deadly combatbegan instantly. But when the last of the fighting creatures was down,no more than a dozen were left of the three score who had begun thefight.
* * * * *
But this was not the main battle. The main battle was hidden under theDeath-Mist cloud, concentrated in a vast thick mass in the very centerof the city. Tommy watched that grimly. Perhaps eight thousand men hadassailed the city. Certainly two thousand of them were represented bythe still or twitching forms in queer attitudes here and there, insingle dots or groups. There were seven hundred corpses before thecity gate alone, where the steam guns had mowed down a reinforcingcolumn. And there were others scattered all about. The defenders hadlost heavily enough, but Tommy's defense behind the line of theramparts was soundly concentrated in strong points, equipped withsteam guns and mostly armed with thermit-throwers as well. From thecenter of the city there came only a vast, unorganized tumult ofbattle and death.
Then a huge winged thing came soaring down past Tommy's tower. Itlanded with a crash on the roofs below, spilling its men like ants.Tommy strained his eyes. There was a billowing outburst of steam fromthe tower where Denham had been working the night before. A big flierburst into the weird bright flame of the thermit fluid. It fell,splitting apart as it dropped. Again the billowing steam. Noresult--but beyond the city walls showed a flash of thermit flame.
"Denham!" muttered Tommy. "He's got a steam cannon; he's shootingshells loaded with thermit! They smash when they hit. Good!"
He dispatched a man with orders, but a messenger was panting his wayup as the runner left. He thrust a scribbled bit of paper into Tommy'shand.
"I'm trying to bring down the ship that's controlling the Death Mist. I'll shell those devils in the middle of town as soon as our controls can handle the Mist.
Denham."
Tommy began to snap out his commands. He raced downward toward thestreet. Men seemed to spring up like magic about him. A ship with onewing aflame was tottering in mid-air, and another was dropping like aplummet.
Then Tommy uttered a roar of pure joy. The huge globe of beautiful,deadly vapor was lifting! Its control-ship was shattered, and men ofthe Golden City had found its setting. The Mist rose swiftly in asingle vast globule of varicolored reflections. And the situation inthe center of the city was clear. Two towers were besieged. Densemasses of the invaders crowded about them, battering at them. Steamguns opened from their windows. Thermit-throwers shot out flashes ofdeadly fire.
Tommy led five hundred men in savage assault, cleaving the mass ofinvaders like a wedge. He cut off a hundred men and wiped them out,while a rear guard poured electric charges into the main body of theenemy. More men of Yugna came leaping from a dozen doorways and joinedthem. Tommy found Smithers by his side, powder-stained andsweat-streaked.
* * * * *
"Miss Evelyn's all right?" Smithers asked in a great calm.
"She is," growled Tommy. "On the top floor of a tower, with a hundredmen to guard her."
"You didn't look at the Tube I made," said Smithers impassively; "butI turned on the steam. Looks like it worked. It's ready to go through,anyways. It's the same place the other one was, down in that cellar.I'm tellin' you in case anything happens."
He opened fire with a magazine rifle into the thick of the mob thatassailed the two towers. Tommy left him with fifty men to block ahighway and led his men again into the mass of mingled Ragged Men andRahnians. His followers saw his tactics now. They split off a sectionof the mob and fell upon it ferociously. There were sudden awfulscreams. Thermit flame was rising from two places in the very thick ofthe mob. It burst up from a third, and fourth, and fifth.... Denham,atop his tower, had the range with his steam cannon, and was flingingheavy shells into the attackers of the two central buildings. And thent
here was a roaring of steam and a ground vehicle came to a stop notfifty feet away. A gun crew of Yugnans had shifted their unwieldyweapon and its insulated steam boiler to a freight-carrying vehicle.Now the gunner pulled trigger and traversed his weapon into the thickof the massed invaders, while his companions worked desperately tokeep the hopper full of projectiles.
The invaders melted away. Steam guns in the towers, thermitprojectiles from the cannon far away: now this.... And the concealingcloud of Death Mist was rising still, headed straight up toward thezenith. It looked like a tiny, dwindling pearl.
* * * * *
The assault upon Yugna had been a mad one, a frantic one. But theflight from Yugna was the flight of men trying to escape from hell.Wild panic characterized the fleeing men. They threw aside theirweapons and ran with screams of terror no whit less horrible thantheir howls of triumph had been. And Tommy would have stopped theslaughter, but there was no way to send orders to the rampart gunnersin time. As the fugitives swarmed toward the walls again, the stormsof steam-propelled missiles mowed them down. Even those who scrambleddown to the ground outside and fled sobbing for the jungle werepursued by hails of bullets. Of the eight thousand men who assailedYugna, less than one in five escaped.
Pursuit was still in progress. Here and there, through the city, thesound of isolated combats still went on. Denham came down from histower, looking rather sick as he saw the carnage about him. A strongescort brought Evelyn. Aten was grinning proudly, as though he had inperson defeated the enemy. And as Evelyn shakingly put out her hand totouch Tommy's arm--it was only later that he realized he had beenwounded in half a dozen minor ways--a shadow roared over their heads.The crackle of firearms came from it.
"Jacaro!" snarled Tommy. He leaped instinctively to pursue. But theflying thing was bound for a landing in an open square, the same onewhich not long since had seen the heaviest fighting. It alighted thereand toppled askew on contact. Figures tumbled out of it, in torn andragged garments fashioned in the style of the very best tailors of theEarth's underworld.
Men of Yugna raced to intercept them. Firearms spat and bellowedluridly. In a close-knit, flame-spitting group, the knot of men racedover fallen bodies and hurtled areas where the pavement had cooled tono more than a dull-red heat where a thermit shell had struck. Oneman, two, three men fell under the small-arms fire. The gangsters wentracing on, firing desperately. They dived into a tunnel anddisappeared.
* * * * *
"The Tube!" roared Smithers. "They' goin' for the Tube!"
He plunged forward, and Tommy seized his arm.
"They'll go through your Tube," he said curtly. "It looks like the onethey came through. They'll think it is. Let 'em!"
Smithers tried to tear free.
"But they'll get back to Earth!" he raged. "They'll get off clear!"
The sharp, cracking sound of a gun-cotton explosion came out of thedoorway into which Jacaro and his men had dived. Tommy smiled verygrimly indeed.
"They've gone through," he said drily, "and they've blown up the Tubebehind them. But--I didn't tell you--I took a look at your castings.Your pupils were putting them together, ready for the steam to go in,in place of the coils I used. But--er--Smithers! You'd discarded onepair of castings. They didn't satisfy you. Your pupils forgot that.They hooked them all together."
Smithers gulped.
"Instead of four right-angled bends," said Tommy grimly, "you have sixconnected together. You turned on the steam in a hurry, not noticing.And I don't know how many series of dimensions there are in thisuniverse of ours. We know of two. There may be any number. But Jacaroand his men didn't go back to Earth. God only knows where they landed,or what it's like. Maybe somewhere a million miles in space. Nobodyknows. The main thing is that Earth is safe now. The Death Mist hasfaded out of the picture."
He turned and smiled warmly at Evelyn. He was a rather horrible sightjust then, though he did not know it. He was bloody and burned andwounded. He ignored all matters but success, however.
"I think," he said drily, "we have won the confidence of the GoldenCity, Evelyn, and that there'll be no more talk of gassing Earth. Assoon as the Council meets again, we'll make sure. And then--well, Ithink we can devote a certain amount of time to our personal affairs.You are the first Earth-girl to be kissed in the Fifth Dimension.We'll have to see if you can't distinguish yourself further."
* * * * *
Again the Council hall in the tower of government in the Golden Cityof Yugna. Again the queer benches about the black wood table--thoughtwo of the seats that had been occupied were now empty. Again theguards behind the chairs, and the crowd of watchers--visitors,citizens of Yugna attending the deliberations of the Council. Theaudience was a queer one, this time. There were bandages here andthere. There were men who were wounded, broken, bent and crippled inthe fighting. But a warmly welcoming murmur spread through the hall asTommy came in, himself rather extensively patched. He was wearing thetunic and breeches of the Golden City, because his own clothes werehopelessly beyond repair. The bearded old Councilor gathered the eyesof his fellows. They rose. This Council seated itself as one man.
Quiet, placid formalities. The Keeper of Foodstuffs murmured that theransom paid to Rahn had been recaptured after the fight. The Keeper ofRolls reported with savage satisfaction the number of enemies who hadbeen slain in battle. He added that the loss to Yugna was less thanone man to ten of the enemy. And he added with still greater emphasisthat the shops being fitted with automatic controls had releasednow--it had grown so much--two thousand men from the necessaryday-and-night working force, and further releases were to be expected.The demands of the machines were lessened already beyond the memory ofman. Eyes turned to Tommy. There was an expectant pause for his reply.
* * * * *
"I have been Commander of Defense Forces," he told them slowly, "inthis fighting. I have given you weapons. My two friends have donemore. The machines will need fewer and fewer attendants as the hintsthey have given you are developed by yourselves. And there is somehope that one of my friends may show you, in ultra-sonic vibrations, aweapon against the jungle itself. My own work is finished. But I askagain for friendship for my planet Earth. I ask that no war be made onmy own people. I ask that what benefits you receive from us be passedto the other surviving cities on the same terms. And since there canbe no further fighting on this scale, I give back my commission asCommander of Defense."
There was a little murmur among the men of Yugna, looking on. It roseto a protesting babble, to a shout of denial. The bearded old Keeperof Foodstuffs smiled.
"It is proposed that the appointment as Commander of Defense Forces bepermanent," he said mildly.
He produced the queer black box and touched it in a certain fashion.He passed it to the next man, and the next and next. It went aroundthe table. It passed a second time, but this time each man merelylooked at the top.
"You command the defense forces of Yugna for always," said the beardedold man, gently. "Now give orders that your requests become laws."
* * * * *
Tommy stared blankly. He was suddenly aware of Aten in the background,smiling triumphantly and very happily at him. There was something likea roar of approval from the men of Yugna, assembled.
"Just what," demanded Tommy, "does this mean?"
"For many years," said a hawk-faced man ungraciously, "we have had noCommander of Defense. We have had no wars. But we see it is needful.We have chosen you, with all agreeing. The Commander of Defense"--hesniffed a little, pugnaciously--"has the authority the ancient kingsonce owned."
Tommy leaned back in the curious benchlike chair, his eyes narrow andthoughtful. This would simplify matters. No danger of trouble toEarth. A free hand for Denham and Smithers to help these folk, and forDenham to learn scientific facts--in the sciences they haddeveloped--which would be of inestimable value to Earth
. And it couldbe possible to open a peaceful trade with the nations of Earth withoutany danger of war. And maybe....
He smiled suddenly. It widened almost into a grin.
"All right. I'll settle down here for a while. But--er--just how doesone set about getting married here?"
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