Мюррей Лейнстер - The Fifth-Dimension Tube

"I'm glad, Tommy," she said slowly, "that if—if anything happens, it will be the—the two of us. Funny, isn't it?"

Tommy kissed the twisted little smile from her face.

"And now that that's over," he observed, ashamed of his own emotion, "let's go!"

They went. Tommy watched the sun and kept approximately a straight line. They traveled three miles, and the jungle broke abruptly. Before them was a spongy surface neither solid earth or marsh. It shelved gently down to a vast and steaming morass upon which the dull–red sun shone hotly. It was vast, that marsh, and a steaming haze hung over it, and it seemed to reach to the world's end. But vaguely, through the attenuating upper layers of the steamy haze, they saw the outlines of a city beyond: tall towers and soaring spires, buildings of a grace and perfection of outline unknown upon the Earth. And faint golden flashes came from the walls and pinnacles of that city. They were reflections of this planet's monster sun, upon walls and roofs of plated gold.

"The Golden City," said Tommy heavily. He looked at the horrible marsh between. His heart sank.

And then there was a sudden screaming ululation nearby. A half–naked man was running out of sight. Two others danced and capered and yelled in insane glee, pointing at Tommy and at Evelyn. The running man's outcry was echoed from far away. Then it was taken up and repeated here and there in the jungle.

"They saw our tracks near the Tube," snapped Tommy bitterly. "Oh, what a fool I am! Now they'll ring us in."

He seized Evelyn's hand and began to run. There was a little rise in the ground a hundred yards away, with a clump of leafy ferns to shade it. They reached it as other half–naked, wholly mad human forms burst out of the jungle to yell and caper and make derisive and horrible gestures at the fugitives.

"Here we fight," said Tommy grimly. "The ground's open, anyhow. We fight here, and very probably we die here. But first…."

He knelt down and drew the finest of fine beads upon a bearded man who carried a glittering truncheonlike club which, by the way it was carried, was more than merely a bludgeon. He pulled the trigger for a single shot.

The bullet struck the capering Ragged Man fairly in the chest. And it exploded.

Twice, within the next two hours, the Ragged Men mustered the courage to charge. They came racing across the semi–solid ooze like the madmen they were. Their yells and shouts were maniacal howls of blood–lust or worse. And twice Tommy broke their rush with a savage ruthlessness. The sub–machine–gun's first magazine was nearly empty. It was an unhandy weapon for single–shot work but it was loaded with explosive shells. The second rush he stopped with an automatic pistol. There were half–naked bodies partly buried in the ooze all the way from the jungle's edge to within ten yards of the hillock on which he and Evelyn had taken refuge.

It was hot there, terribly hot. The air was stifling. It fairly reeked of moisture and the smells from the swamp behind them were sickening. Tommy began to transfer the shells from the spare bent magazine to the one he had carried with the gun.

"We've a couple of reasons to be thankful," he observed. "One is that there's a bit of shade overhead. The other is that we had the big magazines for this gun. We still have nearly ninety shells, besides the ones for the pistols."

Evelyn said soberly:

"We're going to be killed, don't you think, Tommy?"

Tommy frowned.

"I'm rather afraid we are," he said irritably. "Confound it, and I'd thought of such excellent arguments to use in the City back yonder! Smithers said the Death Mist was two miles across, to–day, and still growing. The people in the city are still pouring the stuff down through Jacaro's Tube."

Evelyn smiled faintly. She touched his hand.

"Trying to keep me from worrying? Tommy…." She hesitated until he growled a question. "Please—remember that when Daddy and I were in the jungle before, we saw what these Ragged Men do to prisoners they take. I just want you to promise that—well, you won't wait too long, in hopes of somehow saving me."

Tommy stared at her. Then he decisively reached forward and put his hand over her mouth.

"Keep quiet," he said gently. "They shan't capture you. I promise that. Now keep quiet."

There was only silence for a long time. Now and again a hidden figure screamed in rage at them. Now and again some flapping thing sped toward the jungle's edge. Once a naked arm thrust one of the golden truncheons from behind its cover, pointing at a flying thing a few yards overhead. The flying thing suddenly toppled, turning over and over before it crashed to the ground. There were howls of glee.

"They seem mad," said Tommy meditatively, "and they act like lunatics, but I've got a hunch of some sort about them. But what?"

Sunlight gleamed on something golden beyond the jungle's edge. Naked figures went running to the spot. An exultant tumult arose.

"Now they try another trick," Tommy observed dispassionately. "I remember that at the Tube they had pushed something on wheels…."

The sub–machine gun was unhandy for accurate single shots, and no pistol can be used to effect at long ranges. To conserve ammunition, Tommy had been shooting only at relatively close targets, allowing the Ragged Men immunity at over two hundred yards. But now he flung over the continuous–fire stud. He watched grimly.

The foliage at the edge of the jungle parted. A crude wagon appeared. Its axles were lesser tree–trunks. Its wheels were clumsy and crude beyond belief. But mounted upon it there was a queer mass of golden metal which looked strangely beautiful and strangely deadly.

"That's the thing," said Tommy dispassionately, "which made the flare of light last night. It blew up the Tube. And Von Holtz told me—hm—his friends, in the City…."

He sighted carefully. The wagon and its contents were surrounded by a leaping, capering mob. They shook their fists in an insane hatred.

A storm of bullets burst upon them. Tommy was traversing the little gun with the trigger pressed down. His lips were set tightly. And suddenly it seemed as if the solid earth burst asunder! There had been an instant in which the bullet–bursts were visible. They tore and shattered the howling mob of Ragged Men. But then they struck the golden weapon. A sheet of blue–white flame leaped skyward and round about. A blast of blistering, horrible heat smote upon the beleaguered pair. The moisture of the ooze between them and the jungle flashed into steam. A section of the jungle itself, a hundred yards across, shriveled and died.

Steam shot upward in a monstrous cloud—miles high, it seemed. Then, almost instantly, there was nothing left of the Ragged Men about the golden weapon, or of the weapon itself, but an unbearable blue–white light which poured away and trickled here and there and seemed to grow in volume as it flamed.

From the rest of the jungle a howl arose. It was a howl of such loss, and of such unspeakable rage, that the hair at the back of Tommy's neck lifted, as a dog's hackles lift at sight of an enemy.

"Keep your head down, Evelyn," said Tommy composedly. "I have an idea that the burning stuff gives off a lot of ultra–violet. Von Holtz was badly burned, you remember."

Naked figures flashed forward from the jungle beyond the burned area. Tommy shot them down grimly. He discarded the sub–machine gun with its explosive shells for the automatics. Some of his targets were only wounded. Those wounded men dragged themselves forward, screaming their rage. Tommy felt sickened, as if he were shooting down madmen. A voice roared a rage–thickened order from the jungle. The assault slackened.