d to the messenger. Now he asked a grim question of
Tommy.

"They may be my friends, or your enemies," said Tommy briefly. "Mass
thermit-throwers and let me find out!"

* * * * *

It was the only possible thing to do. Tommy and Evelyn went with the
Council, in a body, in a huge wheeled vehicle that raced across the
city. Lingering groups still searched the sky above them, now
blessedly empty again. But the Council's vehicle dived down and down
to ground level, where the rumble of machines was loud indeed, and
then turned into a tunnel which went down still farther. There was
feverish activity ahead, where it stopped, and a golden
thermit-thrower came into sight upon a dull-colored truck.

Questions. Feverish replies. The white-bearded man touched Tommy on
the shoulder, regarding him with a peculiarly noncommittal gaze, and
pointed to a doorway that someone was just opening. The door swung
wide. There was a confusion of prismatically-colored mist within it,
and Tommy noticed that tanks upon tanks were massed outside the metal
wall of that compartment, and seemingly had been pouring something
into the room.

The mist drew back from the door. Saffron-red lighting panels appeared
dimly, then grew distinct. There were small, collapsed bundles of fur
upon the floor of the storeroom being exposed to view. They were,
probably, the equivalent of rats. And then the last remnant of mist
vanished with a curiously wraithlike abruptness, and the end of
Jacaro's Tube came into view.

Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging to his sleeve. There were clanking
noises audible in this room even above the dull rumble of the city's
machines. The noises came from the Tube's mouth. It was four feet and
more across, and it projected at a crazy angle out of a previously
solid wall.

"Hello!" shouted Tommy. "Down the Tube!"

* * * * *

The clattering noise stopped, then continued at a faster rate.

"The gas is cut off!" shouted Tommy again. "Who's there?"

A voice gasped from the Tube's depths:

"It's him!" The tone was made metallic by echoing and reechoing in the
bends of the Tube, but it was Smithers. "We're comin', Mr. Reames."

"Is--is Daddy there?" called Evelyn eagerly. "Daddy!"

"Coming," said a grim voice.

The clattering grew nearer. A goggled, gas-masked head appeared, and a
body followed it out of the Tube, laden with a multitude of burdens. A
second climbed sti