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. "Smithers called," she said uneasily. "He says something's moving about--" The buzzer of the telephone was humming stridently. Tommy answered quickly. "Just want you handy," said Smithers' calm voice. "I might have to duck. 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, gas masks. He handed one to Evelyn. Smithers had one already. Then Tommy waited, grimly ready by the Tube-mouth. * * * * * 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 Smithers' 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 Smithers' body was removed. The yells were sharp and savage and half mad. There was a sudden crackling sound and a voice screamed: "_Gott!_" The hair rose at the back of Tommy's neck. Then there came the deafening report of an automatic pistol roaring itself empty above the end 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 screams arose. Men fled. Something came crashing to the mouth of the Tube. Smithers' voice again, with purring note in it: "Get down there. I'll hold 'em off." Then single deliberately spaced shots, while something came stumbling, fumbling, squirming down through the Tube, so filling it that Smithers' shooting was muted. * * * * *