"I spects I'd better fro' down some mo' straw fo' a bed fo' my mule Boomerang!" exclaimed Eradicate, as he hastily slid out of the door, and shut it after him. "Rad is nervous," remarked Tom. "He doesn't like this gun. Well, it certainly does great execution." "How does it work'" asked Ned, as he looked at the curious gun. The electric weapon was not unlike an ordinary heavy rifle in appearance save that the barrel was a little longer, and the stock larger in every way. There were also a number of wheels, levers, gears and gages on the stock. "It works by electricity," explained Tom. "That is, the force comes from a powerful current of stored electricity." "Oh, then you have storage batteries in the stock?" "Not exactly. There are no batteries, but the current is a sort of wireless kind. It is stored in a cylinder, just as compressed air or gases are stored, and can be released as I need it." "And when it's all gone, what do you do?" "Make more power by means of a small dynamo." "And does it shoot lead bullets?" "Not at all. There are no bullets used." "Then how does it kill?" "By means of a concentrated charge of electricity which is shot from the barrel with great force. You can't see it, yet it is there. It's just as if you concentrated a charge of electricity of five thousand volts into a small globule the size of a bullet. That flies through space, strikes the object aimed at and--well, we'll see what it does in a minute. Mr. Jackson, just put that steel plate up in front of the scarecrow; will you?" The engineer proceeded to put into place a section of steel armor-plate before the stuffed figure. "You don't mean to say you're going to shoot through that, do you?" asked Ned in surprise. "Surely. The electric bullets will pierce anything. They'll go through a brick wall as easily as the x-rays do. That's one valuable feature of my rifle. You don't have to see the object you aim at. In fact you can fire through a house, and kill something on the other side." "I should think that would be dangerous." "It would be, only I can calculate exactly, by means of an automatic arrangement, just how far the charge of electricity will go. It stops short just at the limit of the range, and is not effective beyond that. Otherwise, if I did not limit it and if I fired at the scarecrow, through the piece of steel, and the bullet hit the figure, it would go on, passing through whatever else was in the way, until its power was lost. I use the term 'bullet,' though as I said, it isn't properly one." "By Jove, Tom, it certainly is a dangerous weapon!" "Yes, the range-limit idea is a new one. That's what I've been working on lately. There are other features of the gun which I'll explain later, particularly the power it has to shoot out luminous bars of light. But now we'll see what it will do to the image."