While Tommy inspected the Tube anxiously, a certain chief of police in
a small town upstate was telling feverishly over the telephone of a
posse having killed a monster lizard by torchlight, having discovered
it in the act of devouring a cow. The lizard was eight feet high,
walked on its hind legs, and had a collar of solid gold about its
neck. And jewel importers, in New York, were in anxious conference
about a flood of untraced jewels upon the market. Their origin was
unknown. The Fifth-Dimension Tube ultimately affected all of those
affairs, and the Death Mist as well. And--though it was not considered
dangerous then--everybody remembers the Death Mist now.
But at the moment Professor Denham stared at the Tube concernedly, his
daughter Evelyn shivered from pure excitement as she looked at it, and
a red-headed man named Smithers looked impassively from the Tube to
Tommy Reames and back again. He'd done most of the mechanical work on
the Tube's parts, and he was as anxious as the rest. But nobody
thought of the world outside the laboratory.
Professor Denham moved suddenly. He was nearest to the open end of the
Tube. He sniffed curiously and seemed to listen. Within seconds the
others became aware of a new smell in the laboratory. It seemed to
come from the Tube itself, and it was a warm, damp smell that could
only be imagined as coming from a jungle in the tropics. There were
the rich odors of feverishly growing things; the heavy fragrance of
unknown tropic blossoms, and a background of some curious blend of
scents and smells which was alien and luring, and exotic. The whole
was like the smell of another planet of the jungles of a strange world
which men had never trod. And then, definitely coming out of the Tube,
there was a hollow, booming noise.
* * * * *
It had been echoed and re-echoed amid the twistings of the Tube, but
only an animal could have made it. It grew louder, a monstrous roar.
Then yells sounded suddenly above it--human yells, wild yells, insane,
half-gibbering yells of hysterical excitement and blood lust. The
beast-thing bellowed and an ululating chorus of joyous screams arose.
The laboratory reverberated with the thunderous noise. Then there was
the sound of crashing and of paddings, and abruptly the noise was
diminishing as if its source were moving farther away. The beast-thing
roared and bellowed as if in agony, and the yelling noise seemed to
show that men were following close upon its flanks.
Those in the laboratory seemed to awaken as if from a bad dream.
Denham was kneeling before the mouth of the Tube, an automatic rifle
in his hands. Tommy Reames stood grimly before Evelyn. He'd snatched
up a pair of automatic pistols. Smithers clutched a spanner and
watched the mouth of the Tube with a strained attention. Evelyn stood
shivering behind Tommy.
Tommy said with a hint of grim humor:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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