e forest, her white
body gleaming through the largest tears, they seemed to go mad. And
Tommy's eyes, glazing, saw the look on Denham's face as he realized
that Evelyn had not fled, but had followed him in his desperate and
wholly hopeless effort.

Then the swarming mass of Ragged Men surged over the two of them.
Buried them under reaching, hating, lusting fiends who fought even
among themselves to be first to seize them.

Then there was only madness, and Denham was bound beside the man of
the Golden City, and Evelyn was the center of a fighting group which
was suddenly flung aside by the bearded giant, and the encampment of
the Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow Tommy knew with a terrible
clarity that a man of the Golden City to torture was bliss
unimaginable to these half-mad enemies of that city. But a woman--

He turned from the instrument, three-quarters out of his head. He
literally did not see Von Holtz gazing furtively in the doorway. His
eyes were fixed and staring. It seemed that his brain would burst.

Then he heard his own voice saying with an altogether unbelievable
steadiness:

"Smithers! They've got Evelyn. Get the sub-machine gun."

* * * * *

Smithers cried out hoarsely. His face was not quite human, for an
instant. But Tommy was bringing the work bench on which he had
installed his magnetic catapult, close over by the dimensoscope.

"This cannot work," he said in the same incredible calmness. "Not
possibly. It should not work. It will not work. But it has to work!"

He was clamping the catapult to a piece of heavy timber.

"Put the gun so it shoots into the first magnet," he said steadily.
"The magnet-windings shouldn't stand the current we've got to put into
them. They've got to."

Smithers' fingers were trembling and unsteady. Tommy helped him, not
looking through the dimensoscope at all.

"Start the dynamo," he said evenly--and marveled foolishly at the
voice that did not seem to belong to him at all, talking so steadily
and so quietly. "Give me all the juice you've got. We'll cut out this
rheostat."

He was tightening a vise which would hold the deadly little weapon in
place while Smithers got the crude-oil engine going and accelerated it
recklessly to its highest speed. Tommy flung the switch. Rubber
insulation steamed and stank. He pulled the trigger of the little gun
for a single shot. The bullet flew into the first hollow magnet, just
as he had be