Мюррей Лейнстер: The Fifth-Dimension Tube

Neither were the occupants of the motor car.

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

"Smithers called," she said uneasily. "He says something's moving about—" The buzzer of the telephone was humming stridently. Tommy answered quickly.

"Just want you handy," said Smithers' calm voice. "I might have to duck. Some Ragged Men are chasin' something. Get set, will ya?"

"Ready for anything," Tommy assured him.

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

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

The noise rose abruptly to a roar as the muffling effect of Smithers' body was removed. The yells were sharp and savage and half mad. There was a sudden crackling sound and a voice screamed:

" Gott! "

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

"It's a'right, Mr. Reames. Don't worry."

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

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

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

Smithers emerged from the Tube with a look of unpleasant satisfaction on his face.

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

"Not till I've questioned him," said Tommy savagely. "He and Jacaro have started hell to popping, with that Tube design they stole from me. He's got to stay alive and tell us how to stop it. Von Holtz, talk! And talk quick, or back you go through the Tube for the Ragged Men to work on!"

Tommy watched Smithers drive away. The sun was sinking low toward the west, and the car stirred up a cloud of light–encarmined dust as it sped down the long, narrow lane to the main road. The laboratory had intentionally been built in an isolated spot, but at the moment Tommy would have given a good deal for a few men nearby. Smithers was taking Von Holtz to Albany to add his information to Denham's pleas. Denham had ordered it, when they reached him by phone after hours of effort. Smithers had to go, to guard against Von Holtz's escape, even sick and ill as he was. And Evelyn had refused to go with him.

"If I stay in the laboratory," she insisted fiercely, "you can slip down and I can blow up the Tube after you, if the Ragged Men don't stay away. But by yourself…."

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

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

"You—you'll be careful, Tommy?"

"Nothing else but," said Tommy. He grinned reassuringly. "There's nothing to it, really. Just sitting still, listening. If I pop off some fireworks I'll just have to sit down and watch them run."

He settled his gas mask about his neck and started to enter the Tube. Evelyn touched his arm.

"I'm—frightened, Tommy."

"Shucks!" said Tommy. "Also a couple of tut–tuts." He stood up, put his arms about her, and kissed her until she smiled. "Feel better now?" he asked interestedly.

"Y–yes…."

"Fine!" said Tommy, and grinned again. "When you feel scared again, ring me on the phone and I'll give you another treatment."

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

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

Tommy inspected his surroundings with an infinite care. As the darkness deepened he meditatively taped a flashlight below the barrel of the sub–machine gun. Turned on, it would cast a pitiless light upon his target, and the sights would be silhouetted against the thing to be killed. He hung his grenades in a handy row just inside the mouth of the Tube and set his gas bombs conveniently in place, then settled down to watch.