a touch of the trigger
a monstrous cloud of steam poured out. It was six feet from the gun
muzzle before it condensed enough to be visible. Then a huge white
cloud developed; but the metal pellets went on with deadly force. Half
an inch in diameter, they carried seven hundred yards at extreme
elevation. Point-blank range was seventy-five yards. They would kill
at three hundred, and stun or disable beyond that. At a hundred yards
they would tear through a man's body.

Tommy was promised a hundred of the weapons, with their boilers, in
two days. He selected their emplacements. He directed that a disabling
device be inserted, so if rushed they could not be turned against
their owners. He inspected the gas masks being turned out by the
women, who in this emergency worked like the men. Though helpless
before machinery, it seemed, they could contrive a fabric device like
a gas mask.

The second day the work went on more desperately still. But Smithers'
work in releasing men was telling. There were fifteen hundred
governors, or reducing valves, or autocratic cut-outs in operation
now. And fifteen hundred men were released from the machines, which
had to be kept going to keep the city alive. With that many men,
intelligent mechanics all, Tommy and Smithers worked wonders. Smithers
drove them mercilessly, using profanity and mechanical drawings
instead of speech. Denham withdrew twenty men and labored on top of
one of the towers. Toward sunset of the second day, vast clouds of
steam bellied out from it at odd, irregular intervals. Nothing else
manifested itself. Those irregular belchings of steam continued until
dark, but Tommy paid no attention to them. He was driving the gunners
of the machine guns to practice. He was planning patrols, devising a
reserve, mounting thermit-throwers, and arranging for the delivery of
the promised ransom at the specified city gate. So far, there was no
sign of anything unusual in Rahn. Messengers from Yugna saw the
captive women regularly, once every three hours. The last to leave had
reported them being loaded into great ground vehicles under a
defending escort, to travel through the dark jungle roads to Yugna. A
vast concourse of empty vehicles was trailing into the jungle after
them, to bring back the food which would keep Rahn from starving, for
a while. It all seemed wholly regular.

* * * * *

At dawn, the remaining ships of the air fleet of Rahn were so