ll more heavily after the first. The brightly-colored
citizens of the Golden City reached quietly to the weapons at their
waists. A third voice came up the Tube, distant and nearly
unintelligible. It roared a question.

Smithers ripped off his gas mask and said distinctly:

"Sure we're through. Go ahead. An' go to hell!"

Then there was a thunderous detonation somewhere down in the Tube's
depths. The visible part of it jerked spasmodically and cracked
across. A wisp of brownish smoke puffed out of it, and the stinging
reek of high explosive tainted the air. Then Evelyn was clinging close
to her father, and he was patting her comfortingly, and Smithers was
pumping both of Tommy's hands, his normal calmness torn from him for
once. But after a bare moment he had gripped himself again. He
unloaded an impressive number of parcels from about his person. Then
he regarded the citizens of the Golden City with an impersonal,
estimating gaze, ignoring twenty weapons trained upon him.

"Those damn fools back on Earth," he observed impassively, "decided
the professor an' me was better off of it. So they let us come through
the Tube before they blew it up. We brought the explosive bullets, Mr.
Reames. I hope we brought enough."

And Tommy grinned elatedly as Denham turned to crush his hands in his
own.

CHAPTER VIII

"_Those Devils Have Got Evelyn!_"

That night the three of them talked, on a high terrace with most of
the Golden City spread out below them. Over their heads, lights of
many colors moved and shifted slowly in the sky. There were a myriad
glowing specks of saffron-red about the ways of the city, and the air
was full of fragrant odors. The breath of the jungle reached them even
a thousand feet above ground. And the dull, persistent roar of the
machines reached them too. There were five people on the terrace:
Tommy, Denham, Smithers, Aten and the white-bearded old Keeper of
Foodstuffs. He looked on as the Earthmen talked.

"We're marooned," Tommy was saying crisply, "and for the time being
we've got to throw in with these people. I believe they came from
Earth originally. Four, five thousand years ago, perhaps. Their tale
is of a cave they sealed up behind them. It might have been a
primitive Tube, if such a thing can be imagined."

Denham filled his pipe and lighted it meditatively.

"Half the American Indian tribes," he observed drily, "had legends of
coming originally from an underworld. I wonder i