"Leinster, Murray - The Fifth-Dimension Tube UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

The car was ten yards across the sheet of mist before the effect of its motion was apparent. Then the mist, torn by the car-eddy, swirled madly in their wake. The motorists yelled delightedly. There is a picture extant, taken at just this moment. It shows the driver with a foolish grin on his face, clutching the wheel and very obviously stepping on the accelerator. A pandemonium of triumphant, hilarious shoutingЧ and then a very sudden silence.
The car roared on. The road curved slightly. The car did not. It went off the road, turned over, and its engine shrieked itself into silence. The Death Mist went on, draining from the roadway to follow the tall, prismatically-colored cloud. It moved swiftly and blindly. To the circling planes above it, it seemed like a blind thing imagining itself confined, and searching for the edges of its prison. It gave an uncanny impression of being directed by intelligence. But the 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, he found Evelyn in the act of starting to fetch him.
УSmithers called,Ф she said uneasily. УHe says somethingТs moving aboutЧФ The buzzer of the telephone was humming stridently. Tommy answered quickly.
УJust want you handy,Ф said SmithersТ calm voice. УI might have to duck. Some Ragged Men are chasmТ something. Get set, will ya?Ф
УReady for anything,Ф Tommy assured him.
Then he made it true: rifles handy, a sub-machine gun, gre-
nades, gas masks. He handed one to Evelyn. Smithers had one already. Then Tommy waited, grimly ready by the Tubemouth.

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 SmithersТ 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 SmithersТ body was removed. The yells were sharp and savage and half mad. There was a sudden crackling sound and a voice screamed:
УGott!Ф
The hair rose at the back of TommyТs neck. Then there came the deafening report of an automatic pistol roaring itself empty above the end of the Tube. SmithersТ voice, vastly calm:
УItТs aТright, Mr. Reames. DonТt worry.Ф
A second pistol took up the fusillade. Yells and howls and screams arose. Men fled. Something came crashing to the mouth of the Tube. SmithersТ voice again, with a purring note in it: УGet down there. IТll hold Сem off.Ф Then single, deliberately spaced shots, while something came stumbling, fumbling, squirming down through the Tube, so filling it that SmithersТ 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 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.
УI chased off the Ragged Men with sneeze gas,Ф he observed with a vast calmness. УThey ainТt cominТ back for a while. AnТ I always wanted to break this guyТs neck. I think IТll do it now.Ф
УNot till IТve questioned him,Ф said Tommy savagely. УHe and Jacaro have started hell to popping, with that Tube design they stole from me. HeТs 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!Ф

CHAPTER III
The Tree-Fern Jungle

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 DenhamТs pleas. Denham had ordered it, when they reached him by phone after hours of effort. Smithers had to go, to guard against Von HoltzТs escape, even sick and ill as he was. And Evelyn had refused to go with him.
УIf I stay in the laboratory,Ф she insisted fiercely, Уyou can slip down and I can blow up the Tube after you, if the Ragged Men donТt 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 TubeЧof which only the lizards and the Death Mist were certaintiesЧ 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.
УYouЧyouТll be careful, Tommy?Ф
УNothing else but,Ф said Tommy. He grinned reassuringly.
УThereТs nothing to it, really. Just sitting still, listening. If I pop off some fireworks IТll just have to sit down and watch them run.Ф

HE settled his gas mask about his neck and started to enter the Tube. Evelyn touched his arm.
УIТmЧfrightened, Tommy.Ф
УShucks!Ф said Tommy. УAlso a couple of tut-tuts.Ф He stood up, put his arms about her, and kissed her until she smiled. УFeel better now?Ф he asked interestedly.
УY-yes. . .
УFine!Ф said Tommy, and grinned again. УWhen you feel scared again, ring me on the phone and IТll give you another treatment.Ф
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 came 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 lizardТs 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 flapЧand the thing was a projectile again, darting through a chevaux-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.
It was assuredly necessary. Von HoltzТs story confirmed his own and DenhamТs guesses and made their worst fears seem optimistic. Von Holtz had made a Tube for Jacaro, working from the model of TommyТs own construction. It had been completed nearly a month before. But no jungle odors had seeped through that other Tube on its completion. It opened in a subcellar of a structure in the Golden City itself, the city of towers and soaring spires Denham had glimpsed long months before. By sheer fortune it opened upon a rarely-used storeroom where improbable small animalsЧthe equivalent of ratsЧ played obscenely in the light of ever-glowing panels in the wall.
For two days of the Fifth-Dimension world, Jacaro and his gunmen lay quiet. During two nights they made infinitely cautious reconnaissance. The second night it was necessary to kill two men who sighted the tiny exploring party. But the killing was done with silenced automatics, and there was no alarm. The third night they lay still, fearing an ambush. The fourth night Jacaro struck.
HE and his men fled back to their Tube with plunder and precious gems. Their loot was vast even beyond their hopes, though they had killed other men in gathering it. The Golden City was rich beyond belief. The very crust of the FifthDimension world seemed to be composed of other substances than those of Earth. The common metals of Earth were rare or even unknown. The rarer metals of Earth were the commonplace ones in the Golden City. Even the roofs seemed plated with gold, but JacaroТs gunmen saw not one particle of iron save in a ring they took from a dead manТs finger. There, an acid-etched plate of steel was set as if to be used for a signet.
Von Holtz had accompanied the raiders perforce on every journey. Jeweled bearings for motors; objects of commonest use, made of gold beat thin for lightness; huge ingots of silver for industry; once a queer-shaped spool of platinum wire that it took two men to carryЧthese things made up the loot they scurried back to their rathole with. Five raids they made, and twenty men they shot down before they came upon disaster. On the sixth raid an outcry rose and an ambush fell upon them.
Flashes of incredibly vivid actinic flame leaped from queer engines that opened upon them. Curious small truncheonlike weapons spat paralyzing electric shocks upon them. The twelve gangsters fought with the desperation of cornered rats, with notched and explosive bullets and with streams of lead from tommy-guns.