The Fifth-Dimension Tube Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  _The Death Mist_

  Tommy Reames saw the red sun rise while he was on guard at the mouthof the Tube. The tree-ferns above him came into view as vague grayoutlines. The many-colored stars grew pale. And presently a bit ofcrimson light peeped through the jungle somewhere. It moved along thehorizon and very slowly grew higher. For a moment, Tommy saw the huge,dull-red ball that was the sun of this alien planet. Queer mosses tookform and color in the daylight, displaying colors never seen on Earth.He saw flying things dart among the tree-fern fronds, and some werescaled and some were not, but none of them were feathered.

  Then a tiny buzzing noise. The telephone that now rested below the lipof the Tube was being used from the laboratory.

  "Smithers will relieve you," said Denham's voice in the receiver."Come on down. We're not the only people experimenting with the FifthDimension. Jacaro's been working, and all hell's loose!"

  Tommy slid down the Tube in an instant. The four right-angled turnsmade him sick and dizzy again, but he came out with his jaw setgrimly. There was good reason for Tommy's interest in Jacaro. Besidessides three bullet wounds, Tommy owed Jacaro something for stealingthe first model Tube.

  He emerged in the laboratory on his hands and knees as the size of theTube made necessary. Smithers smiled placidly at him and crawled in totake his place.

  "What the devil happened?" demanded Tommy.

  Denham was bitter. He held a newspaper before him. Evelyn had broughtcoffee and the morning paper to the laboratory. She seemed ratherpale.

  "Jacaro's gotten through too!" snapped Denham. "He's gotten in a packof trouble. And he's loosed the devil on Earth. Here--look!" He jabbedhis finger at one headline. "And here--and here!" He thrust at others."Here's proof."

  The first headline read: "KING JACARO FORFEITS BOND." Smaller headingsbeneath it read: "Racketeer Missing for Income Tax Trial. $200,000Bail Forfeited." The second headline was in smaller type: "MonsterLizard Killed! Giant Meat Eater Brought Down by Rifleman. Akin toAncient Dinosaurs, Say Scientists."

  * * * * *

  "Jacaro's missing," said Denham harshly. "This article says he'svanished, and with him a dozen of his most prominent gunmen. You knowhe had a model catapult to duplicate--the one he got from you. VonHoltz could arrange the construction of a big Tube for him. And heknew about the Golden City. Look!"

  His finger, trembling, tapped on the flashlight picture of the giantlizard of which the story told. And it was a giant. A rope had uphelda colossal, leering, reptilian head while men with rifles posedself-consciously beside the dead creature. It was as big as a horse,and at first glance its kinship to the extinct dinosaurs of Earth wasplain. Huge teeth in sharklike rows. A long, trailing tail. But therewas a collar about the beast-thing's neck.

  "It had killed and was devouring a cow when they shot it," said Denhambitterly. "There've been reports of these creatures for days--so thenews story says. They weren't printed because nobody believed them.But there are a couple of people missing. A searching party washunting for them. They found this!"

  Tommy Reames stared at the picture. His face went grimmer still. Hethought of sounds he had heard beyond the Tube, not long since.

  "There's no question where they came from. The Fifth Dimension. But ifJacaro brought them back, he's a fool."

  "Jacaro's missing," said Denham savagely. "Don't you understand? Hecould get through to the Golden City. These beast-things are proofsomebody did. And these things came down the Tube that somebodytravelled through. Jacaro wouldn't send them, but somebody did.They've got collars around their necks! Who sent them? And why?"

  * * * * *

  Tommy's eyes narrowed.

  "If civilized men found the mouth of a Tube, it would seem like themouth of an artificial tunnel or a cave--"

  "And if annoying vermin, like Jacaro's gunmen"--Denham's voice wasbrittle--"had come out of it, why, intelligent men might sendsomething living and deadly down it, as men on Earth will send ferretsdown a rat-hole! To wipe out the breed! That's what's happened!Jacaro's gone through and attacked the Golden City. They've found hisTube. And they've sent these things down...."

  "If _we_ found rats coming from a rat-hole," said Tommy very quietly,"and ferrets went down and didn't come up, we'd gas them."

  "And so," Denham told him, "so would the Golden City."

  He pointed to a boxed double paragraph news story under leadedtwenty-point headline: "Poisonous Fog Kills Wild Life."

  The story was not alarming. It said merely that state game wardens hadfound numerous dead game animals in a thinly-settled district nearColtsville, N.Y., and on investigation had found a bank of mist, allof half a mile across, which seemed to have caused the trouble. Statechemists and biologists were investigating the phenomenon. Curiously,the bank of mist seemed not to dissipate in a normal fashion. Samplesof the fog were being analyzed. It was probably akin to the Belgianfogs which on several occasions had caused much loss of life. The mistwas especially interesting because in sunlight it displayed prismaticcolorings. State troopers were warning the inhabitants of theneighborhood.

  "The gassing's started," said Denham savagely. "I know a gas thatshows rainbow colors. The Golden City uses it. So we've got to findJacaro's Tube and seal it, or only God knows what will come out of itnext. I'm going off, Tommy. You and Smithers guard our Tube. Blow itup, if necessary. It's dangerous. I'll get some authority in Albany,and we'll find Jacaro's Tube and blast it shut."

  Tommy nodded, his eyes keen and thoughtful. Denham hurried out.

  * * * * *

  Minutes later, only, they heard the roar of a car motor going down thelong lane away from the laboratory. Evelyn tried to smile at Tommy.

  "It seems terrible, dangerous."

  Tommy considered and shrugged.

  "This news is old," he observed. "This paper was printed last night. Ithink I'll make a couple of long-distance calls. If the Golden City'shad trouble with Jacaro, it's going to make things bad for us."

  He swept his eyes about and frowningly loaded a light rifle. He put itconvenient to Evelyn's hand and made for the dwelling-house and thetelephone. It was odd that as he emerged into the open air, thefamiliar smells of Earth struck his nostrils as strange andunaccustomed. The laboratory was redolent of the tree-fern forest intowhich the Tube extended. And Smithers was watching amid those dank,incredible carboniferous-period growths now.

  Tommy put through calls, seeing all his and Denham's plans for apeaceful exploration party and amicable contact with the civilizationof that other planet, utterly shattered by presumed outrages byJacaro. He made call after call, and his demands for information grewmore urgent as he got closer to the source of trouble. His cause forworry was verified long before he had finished. Even as he made thefirst call, New York newspapers had crowded a second-grade murder offtheir front pages to make room for the white mist upstate.

  * * * * *

  The early-morning editions had termed it a "poisonous fog." Thebreakfast editions spoke of it as a "poison fog." But it grew andmoved and by the time Tommy had a clear line to get actual informationabout it, a tabloid had christened it the "Death Mist" and there werethree chartered planes circling about it for the benefit of theirnewspapers. State troopers were being reinforced. At ten o'clock itwas necessary to post extra traffic police to take care of the carsheaded upstate to look at the mystery. At eleven it began to move!Sluggishly, to be sure, and rather raggedly, but it undoubtedly moved,and as undoubtedly it moved independently of the wind.

  It was at twelve-thirty that the first casualty occurred. Before thattime, the police had frantically demanded that the flood of sightseersbe stopped. The Death Mist covered a square mile or more. It clung tothe ground, nowhere more than fifty or sixty feet high, and glitteredwith all the colors of the rainbow. It moved with a velocity ofanywhere from ten to twenty miles an hour. In its path were a myriadsmall tra
gedies--nesting birds stiff and still, and rabbits and othersmall furry bodies contorted in queer agonized postures. But untiltwelve-thirty no human beings were known to be its victims.

  Then, though, it was moving blindly across the wind with a thintrailing edge behind it and a rolling billow of descending mist as itsforefront. It rolled up to and across a concrete highway, watched byperspiring motor cops who had performed miracles in clearing a pathfor it among the horde of sightseeing cars. It swept on into aspindling pine wood. Behind it lay a thinning sheet of vapor--thickwhite mist which seemed to rise and move more swiftly to overtake themain body. It lay across the highway in a sheet which was ten feetdeep, then thinned to six, to three....

  * * * * *

  The mist was no more than a foot thick, when a party of motoristsessayed to drive through it as through a sheet of water. They dodged aswearing motorcycle cop and, yelling hilariously, plunged forward. Ithappened that they had not more than a hundred yards to go, so thewhole thing was plainly seen.

  The car was ten yards across the sheet of mist before the effect ofits motion was apparent. Then the mist, torn by the car-eddy, swirledmadly in their wake. The motorists yelled delightedly. There is apicture extant, taken at just this moment. It shows the driver with afoolish grin on his face, clutching the wheel and very obviouslystepping on the accelerator. A pandemonium of triumphant, hilariousshouting--and then a very sudden silence.

  The car roared on. The road curved slightly. The car did not. It wentoff the road, turned over, and its engine shrieked itself intosilence. The Death Mist went on, draining from the roadway to followthe tall, prismatically-colored cloud. It moved swiftly and blindly.To the circling planes above it, it seemed like a blind thingimagining itself confined, and searching for the edges of its prison.It gave an uncanny impression of being directed by intelligence. Butthe Death Mist, itself, was not alive.

  Neither were the occupants of the motor car.

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

  "Smithers called," she said uneasily. "He says something's movingabout--" The buzzer of the telephone was humming stridently. Tommyanswered quickly.

  "Just want you handy," said Smithers' calm voice. "I might have toduck. 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, gasmasks. He handed one to Evelyn. Smithers had one already. Then Tommywaited, grimly ready by the Tube-mouth.

  * * * * *

  The warm, scent-laden breeze blew upon him. Straining his ears, hecould hear the sound of tree-fern fronds clashing in the wind. Heheard the louder sounds made by Smithers, stirring ever so slightly inthe Tube. And then he caught a vague, distant uproar. It would havebeen faint and confused at best but the Tube was partly blocked bySmithers' body, and there were the multiple bends further tocomplicate the echoes. It was no more than a formless tumult throughwhich faint yells came occasionally. It drew nearer and nearer. Tommyheard Smithers stir suddenly, almost as if he had jumped. Then therewere scrapings which could only mean one thing: Smithers was climbingout 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. Therewas a sudden crackling sound and a voice screamed:

  "_Gott!_"

  The hair rose at the back of Tommy's neck. Then there came thedeafening report of an automatic pistol roaring itself empty above theend 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 screamsarose. Men fled. Something came crashing to the mouth of the Tube.Smithers' voice again, with purring note in it: "Get down there. I'llhold 'em off." Then single deliberately spaced shots, while somethingcame stumbling, fumbling, squirming down through the Tube, so fillingit 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 stoodwith his weapons very ready indeed, and a scratched, bleeding,exhausted, panting, terror-stricken human being in the tatteredcostume of Earth crawled from the Tube and groveled on the floorbefore him.

  Evelyn gave a little exclamation, partly of disgust and partly ofhorror. Because this man, who had had come from the world of the FifthDimension, was wholly familiar. He was tall, and he was lean,emaciated now; he wept sobbingly behind thick-lensed spectacles, andhis lips were far too full and red. His name was Von Holtz; he hadonce been laboratory assistant to Professor Denham, and he hadbetrayed Evelyn and her father to the most ghastly of possible fatesfor a bribe offered him by Jacaro. Now he groveled. He was horrible tolook at. Where he was not scratched and torn his flesh was reddened asif by fire. He was exhausted, and trembling with an awful terror, andhe gasped out abject, placatory ejaculations and suddenly collapsedinto a sobbing mass on the floor.

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

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

  "Not till I've questioned him," said Tommy savagely. "He and Jacarohave started hell to popping, with that Tube design they stole fromme. 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 RaggedMen to work on!"