CHAPTER V An hour later, Tommy took his eyes away from the dimensoscope eye-piece. He could not bear to look any longer. "Why don't they kill him?" he demanded sickly, filled with a horrible, a monstrous rage. "Oh, why don't they kill him?" He felt maddeningly impotent. In another world entirely, a mob of half-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Men guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves unspeakably by small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful but not weakening. And they capered and howled with glee when the bound man writhed. The prisoner was a brave man, though. Helpless as he was, he presently flung back his head and set his teeth. Sweat stood out in great droplets upon his body and upon his forehead. And he stilled his writhings, and looked at his captors with a grim and desperate defiance. The guards made gestures which were all too clear, all too luridly descriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man of the Golden City was ashen and hopeless and utterly despairing--and yet defiant. Smithers took Tommy's place at the eye-piece of the instrument. His nostrils quivered at what he saw. The vehicle from the Golden City was being plundered, of course. Weapons from the dead men were being squabbled over, even fought over. And the Ragged Men fought as madly among themselves as if in combat with their enemies. The big golden weapon on its cart was already being dragged away to its former hiding-place. And somehow, it was clear that those who dragged it away expected and demanded that the solitary prisoner not be killed until their return. It was that prisoner, in the agony which was only the beginning of his death, who made Smithers' teeth set tightly. * * * * * "I don't see the Professor or Miss Evelyn," said Smithers in a vast calmness. "I hope to Gawd they--don't see this." Tommy swung on his heel, staring and ashen. "They were near," he said stridently. "I saw them! They saw what happened in the ambush! They'll--they'll see that man tortured!" Smithers' hand closed and unclosed. "Maybe the Professor'll have sense enough to take Miss Evelyn--uh--where she--can't hear," he said slowly, his voice level. "I hope so." Tommy flung out his hands desperately. "I want to help that man!" he cried savagely. "I want to do something! I saw what they promised to do to him. I want to--to kill him, even! It would be mercy!" Smithers said, with a queer, stilly shock in his voice: "I see the Professor now. He's got that gun-thing in his hand.... Miss Evelyn's urging him to try to do something.... He's looking at the sky.... It'll be a long time before it's dark.... He's gone back out of sight...." "If we had some dynamite!" said Tommy desperately, "we could take a chance on blowing ourselves to bits and try to fling it through and into the middle of those devils...."