The Fifth-Dimension Tube Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  _The Fleet from Rahn_

  The approval of the citizens of Yugna was not enthusiastic. It wasdesperate. Their faces were weary. Their lives were warped. They hadbeen fighting since birth against the encroachment of the jungle,which until the days of their grandparents had been no menace at all.But for two generations these people had been foredoomed, and theyknew it. Nearly half the cities of their race were overwhelmed andtheir inhabitants reduced to savage hunters in the victorious jungles.Now the people of Yugna saw a chance to escape from the jungle. Theywere offered rest. Peace. Relaxation from the desperate need to serveinsatiable machines. Sheer desperation impelled them. In theirsituation, the people of Earth would annihilate a solar system forrelief, let alone the inhabitants of a single planet.

  Shouts began to be heard above the uproar in the Councilhall--approving shouts, demands that one be appointed to conduct theoperation which was to give them a new planet on which to live, wheretheir food-plants would thrive in the open, where jungles would nolonger press on them.

  Tommy's face went savage and desperate, itself. He clenched andunclenched his hands, struggling among his meagre supply of words forpromises of help from Earth, which promises would tip the scales forpeace again. He raised his voice in a shout for attention. He wasunheard. The Council hall was in an uproar of desperate approval. Theorator stood flushed and triumphant. The Council members looked fromeye to eye, and slowly the old, white-bearded Keeper of Foodstuffsplaced a golden box upon the table. He touched it in a certainfashion, and handed it to the next man. That second man touched it,and passed it to a third. And that man....

  * * * * *

  A hush fell instantly. Tommy understood. The measure was being decidedby solemn vote. The voting device had reached the fifth man when therewas a frantic clatter of footsteps, a door burst in, and babbling menstood in the opening, white-faced and stammering and overwhelmed, buttrying to make a report.

  Consternation reigned, incredulous, amazed consternation. The beardedold man rose dazedly and strode from the hall with the rest of theCouncil following him. A pause of stunned stupefaction, and thespectators in the hall rushed for other doors.

  "Stick to Aten," snapped Tommy. "Something's broken, and it has to beour way. Let's see what it is."

  He clung alike to Evelyn and to Aten as the air-pilot fought to cleara way. The doors were jammed. It was minutes before they could maketheir way through and plunge up the interminable steps Aten mounted,only to fling himself out to the open air. Then they were upon aflying bridge between two of the towers of the city. All about thecity human figures were massing, staring upward.

  And above the city swirled a swarm of aircraft. Tommy counted three ofthe clumsy ornithopters, high and motelike. There were twenty orthirty of the small, one-man craft. There were a dozen or more two-manplanes. And there were at least forty giant single-wing ships whichlooked as if they had been made for carrying freight. They soared andcircled above the city in soundless confusion. Before each of themglittered something silvery, like glass, which was not a screwpropeller but somehow drew them on.

  The Council was massed two hundred yards away. A single-seater diveddownward, soared and circled noiselessly fifty yards overhead, and itspilot shouted a message. Then he climbed swiftly and rejoined hisfellows. The men about Tommy looked stunned, as if they could notbelieve their ears. Aten seemed stricken beyond the passability ofreaction.

  * * * * *

  "I got part of it," snapped Tommy, to Evelyn's whispered question. "Ithink I know the rest. Aten!" He snapped question after question inhis inadequate phrasing of the city's tongue. Evelyn saw Aten answerdully, then bitterly, and then, as Tommy caught his arm and whisperedsavagely to him, Aten's eyes caught fire. He nodded violently andturned on his heel.

  "Come on!" And Tommy seized Evelyn's arm again.

  They followed closely as Aten wormed his way through the crowd. Theyraced behind him downstairs and through a door into a dusty andunvisited room. It was a museum. Aten pointed grimly.

  Here were the automatic pistols taken from those of Jacaro's men whohad been killed, a nasty sub-machine gun which had been Tommy's, andgrenades--Jacaro's. Tommy checked shell calibres and carried off aninety-shot magazine full of explosive bullets, and a repeating rifle.

  "I can do more accurate work with this than the machine gun," he saidcryptically. "Let's go!"

  It was not until they were racing away from the Council building inone of the two-wheeled vehicles that Evelyn spoke again.

  "I--understand part," she said unsteadily. "Those planes overhead arefrom Rahn. And they're threatening--"

  "Blackmail," said Tommy between clenched teeth. "It sounds like aperfectly normal Earth racket. A fleet from Rahn is over Yugna, loadedwith the Death Mist. Yugna pays food and goods and women or it's wipedout by gas. Further, it surrenders its aircraft to make furthercollections easier. Rahn refuses to die, though it's let in thejungle. It's turned pirate stronghold. Fed and clothed by a few othercities like this one, it should be able to hold out. It's a racket,Evelyn. A stick-up. A hijacking of a civilised city. Sounds likeJacaro."

  * * * * *

  The little vehicle darted madly through empty highways, passing groupsof men staring dazedly upward at the soaring motes overhead. It darteddown this inclined way, up that one. It shot into a building andaround a winding ramp. It stopped with a jerk and Aten was climbingout. He ran through a doorway, Tommy and Evelyn following. Planes ofall sizes, still and lifeless, filled a vast hall. And Aten struggledwith a door mechanism and a monster valve swung wide. Then Tommy threwhis weight with Aten's to roll out the plane he had selected. It was asmall, triangular ship, with seats for three, but it was heavy. Thetwo men moved it with desperate exertion. Aten pointed, panting, toslide-rail and it took them five minutes to get the plane about thatrail and engage a curious contrivance in a slot in the ship'sfuselage.

  "Tommy," said Evelyn, "you're not going to--"

  "Run away? Hardly!" said Tommy. "We're going up. I'm going to fightthe fleet with bullets. They don't have missile-weapons here, and Atenwill know the range of their electric-charge outfits."

  "I'm coming too," said Evelyn desperately.

  Tommy hesitated, then agreed.

  "If we fail they'll gas the city anyway. One way or the other...."

  There was a sudden rumble as Evelyn took her place. The plane shotforward with a swift smooth acceleration. There was no sound of anymotor. There was no movement of the glittering thing at the forepartof the plane. But the ship reached the end of the slide and lifted,and then was in mid-air, fifty feet above the vehicular way, a hundredfeet above the ground.

  * * * * *

  Tommy spoke urgently. Aten nodded. The ship had started to climb. Heleveled it out and darted straight forward. He swung madly to dodge asoaring tower. He swept upward a little to avoid a flying bridge. Theship was travelling with an enormous speed, and the golden walls ofthe city flashed past below them and they sped away across featheryjungle.

  "If we climbed at once," observed Tommy shortly, "they'd think wemeant to fight. They might start their gassing. As it is, we look likewe're running away."

  Evelyn said nothing. For five miles the plane fled as if in panic.Evelyn clung to the filigree side of the cockpit. The city dwindledbehind them. Then Aten climbed steeply. Tommy was looking keenly atthe glittering thing which propelled the ship. It seemed like acrystal gridwork, like angular lace contrived of glass. But a coldblue flame burned in it and Tommy was obscurely reminded of a neontube, though the color was wholly unlike. A blast of air poured backthrough the grid. Somehow, by some development of electro-statics, the"static jet" which is merely a toy in Earth laboratories had becomeusable as a means of propelling aircraft.

  Back they swept toward the Golden City, five thousand feet or morealoft. The ground was partly obscured by the hazy, humid atmosph
ere,but glinting sun-reflections from the city guided them. Soaring thingstook shape before them and grew swiftly nearer. Tommy spoke again,busily loading the automatic rifle with explosive shells.

  Aten swung to follow a vast dark shape in its circular soaring, ahundred feet above it and a hundred yards behind. Wind whistled,rising to a shriek. Tommy fired painstakingly.

  * * * * *

  The other plane zoomed suddenly as a flash of blue flame spoutedbefore it. It dived, then, fluttering and swooping, began to drifthelplessly toward the spires of the city below it.

  "Good!" snapped Tommy. "Another one, Aten."

  Aten made no reply. He flung his ship sidewise and dived steeplybefore a monstrous freight carrier. Tommy fired deliberately as theyswept past. The propelling grid flashed blue flame in a vast, crashingflame. It, too, began to flutter down.

  Tommy did not miss until the fifth time, and Aten turned with agrimace of disappointment. Tommy's second shot burst in a freightcompartment and a man screamed. His voice carried horribly in thesilence of these heights. But Tommy shot again, and, again, and therewas a satisfying blue flash as a fifth big ship went flutteringhelplessly down.

  Aten began to circle for height Tommy refilled the magazine.

  "I'm bringing 'em down," he explained unnecessarily to Evelyn, "bysmashing their propellers. They have to land, and when they landthey're hostages--I hope!"

  Confusion became apparent among the hostile planes. The one Yugna shipwas identified as the source of disaster. Tommy worked his rifle incold fury. He aimed at no man, but the propelling grids were large.For a one-man ship they were five feet in diameter, and for the bigfreight ships, they were circles fifteen feet across. They wereperfect targets, and Aten seemed to grasp the necessary tactics almostinstantly. Dead ahead or from straight astern, Tommy could not miss ashot. The fleet of Rahn went fluttering downward. Fifteen of thebiggest were down, and six of the two-man planes. A sixteenth andseventeenth flashed at their bows and drifted helplessly....

  * * * * *

  Then the one-man ships attacked. Six of them at once. Aten grinned anddived for all of them. One by one, Tommy smashed their crystal gridsand watched them sinking unsteadily toward the towers of the city. Ashis own ship drove over them, little golden flashes licked out.Electric-charge weapons. One flash struck the wingtip of their plane,and flame burst out, but Aten flung the ship into a mad whirl in whichthe blaze was blown out.

  Another freight ship helpless--and another. Then the air fleet of Rahnturned and fled. The ornithopters winged away in heavy, creakingterror. The others dived for speed and flattened out hardly above thetree-fern jungle. They streaked away in ignominious panic. Aten dartedand circled above them and, as Tommy failed to fire, turned and wentracing back toward the city.

  "After the first ones went down," observed Tommy, "they knew that ifthey gassed the city we'd shoot them down into their own gas cloud. Sothey ran away. I hope this gives us a pull."

  The city's towers loomed before them. The lacy bridges swarmed withhuman figures. Somewhere a fight was in progress about a groundedplane from Rahn. Others seemed to have surrendered sullenly onalighting. For the first time Tommy saw the city as a thronging massof humanity, and for the first time he realized how terrible must bethe strain upon the city if with so large a population so few could befree for leisure in normal times.

  The little plane settled down and landed lightly. There were a dozenmen on the landing platform now, and they were herding disarmed menfrom Rahn away from a big ship Tommy had brought down. Tommy lookedcuriously at the prisoners. They seemed freer than the inhabitants ofYugna. Their faces showed no such signs of strain. But they did notseem well-fed, nor did they appear as capable or as resolute.

  "_Cuyal_," said Aten in an explanatory tone, seeing Tommy'sexpression. He put his shoulder to the big ship, to wheel it back intoits shed.

  "You son of a gun," grunted Tommy, "it's all in the day's work to you,fighting an invading fleet!"

  A messenger came panting through the doorway. Tommy grinned.

  "The Council wants us, Evelyn. Now maybe they'll listen."

  * * * * *

  The atmosphere of the resumed Council meeting was, as a matter offact, considerably changed. The white-bearded Keeper of Foodstuffsthanked them with dignity. He invited Tommy to offer advice, since hisservices had proved so useful.

  "Advice?" said Tommy, in the halting, fumbling phrases he had slavedto acquire. "I would put the prisoners from Rahn to work at themachines, releasing citizens." There was a buzz of approval, and headded drily in English: "I'm playing politics, Evelyn." Again in thespeech of Yugna he added: "And I would have the fleet of Yugna soarabove Rahn, not to demand tribute as that city did, but to disable allits aircraft, so that such piracy as to-day may not be tried again!"There was a second buzz of approval. "And third," said Tommyearnestly, "I would communicate with Earth, rather than assassinateit. I would require the science of Earth for the benefit of thisworld, rather than use the science of this world to annihilate that!I--"

  For the second time the Council meeting was interrupted. An armedmessenger came pounding into the room. He reported swiftly. Tommygrasped Evelyn's wrist in what was almost a painful grip.

  "Noises in the Tube!" he told her sharply. "Earth-folk doing somethingin the Tube Jacaro came through. Your father...."

  There was an alert silence in the Council hall. The white-bearded oldman had listened to the messenger. Now he asked a grim question ofTommy.

  "They may be my friends, or your enemies," said Tommy briefly. "Massthermit-throwers and let me find out!"

  * * * * *

  It was the only possible thing to do. Tommy and Evelyn went with theCouncil, in a body, in a huge wheeled vehicle that raced across thecity. Lingering groups still searched the sky above them, nowblessedly empty again. But the Council's vehicle dived down and downto ground level, where the rumble of machines was loud indeed, andthen turned into a tunnel which went down still farther. There wasfeverish activity ahead, where it stopped, and a goldenthermit-thrower came into sight upon a dull-colored truck.

  Questions. Feverish replies. The white-bearded man touched Tommy onthe shoulder, regarding him with a peculiarly noncommittal gaze, andpointed to a doorway that someone was just opening. The door swungwide. There was a confusion of prismatically-colored mist within it,and Tommy noticed that tanks upon tanks were massed outside the metalwall of that compartment, and seemingly had been pouring somethinginto the room.

  The mist drew back from the door. Saffron-red lighting panels appeareddimly, then grew distinct. There were small, collapsed bundles of furupon the floor of the storeroom being exposed to view. They were,probably, the equivalent of rats. And then the last remnant of mistvanished with a curiously wraithlike abruptness, and the end ofJacaro's Tube came into view.

  Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging to his sleeve. There were clankingnoises audible in this room even above the dull rumble of the city'smachines. The noises came from the Tube's mouth. It was four feet andmore across, and it projected at a crazy angle out of a previouslysolid wall.

  "Hello!" shouted Tommy. "Down the Tube!"

  * * * * *

  The clattering noise stopped, then continued at a faster rate.

  "The gas is cut off!" shouted Tommy again. "Who's there?"

  A voice gasped from the Tube's depths:

  "It's him!" The tone was made metallic by echoing and reechoing in thebends of the Tube, but it was Smithers. "We're comin', Mr. Reames."

  "Is--is Daddy there?" called Evelyn eagerly. "Daddy!"

  "Coming," said a grim voice.

  The clattering grew nearer. A goggled, gas-masked head appeared, and abody followed it out of the Tube, laden with a multitude of burdens. Asecond climbed still more heavily after the first. The brightly-coloredcitizens of the Golden City reached quietly to the weapons at t
heirwaists. A third voice came up the Tube, distant and nearlyunintelligible. It roared a question.

  Smithers ripped off his gas mask and said distinctly:

  "Sure we're through. Go ahead. An' go to hell!"

  Then there was a thunderous detonation somewhere down in the Tube'sdepths. The visible part of it jerked spasmodically and crackedacross. A wisp of brownish smoke puffed out of it, and the stingingreek of high explosive tainted the air. Then Evelyn was clinging closeto her father, and he was patting her comfortingly, and Smithers waspumping both of Tommy's hands, his normal calmness torn from him foronce. But after a bare moment he had gripped himself again. Heunloaded an impressive number of parcels from about his person. Thenhe regarded the citizens of the Golden City with an impersonal,estimating gaze, ignoring twenty weapons trained upon him.

  "Those damn fools back on Earth," he observed impassively, "decidedthe professor an' me was better off of it. So they let us come throughthe Tube before they blew it up. We brought the explosive bullets, Mr.Reames. I hope we brought enough."

  And Tommy grinned elatedly as Denham turned to crush his hands in hisown.