ng panels in the wall.

For two days of the Fifth-Dimension world Jacaro and his gunmen lay
quiet. During two nights they made infinitely cautious reconnaissance.
The second night it was necessary to kill two men who sighted the tiny
exploring party. But the killing was done with silenced automatics,
and there was no alarm. The third night they lay still, fearing an
ambush. The fourth night Jacaro struck.

* * * * *

He and his men fled back to their Tube with plunder and precious gems.
Their loot was vast even beyond their hopes, though they had killed
other men in gathering it. The Golden City was rich beyond belief. The
very crust of the Fifth-Dimension world seemed to be composed of other
substances than those of Earth. The common metals of Earth were rare
or even unknown. The rarer metals of Earth were the commonplace ones
in the Golden City. Even the roofs seemed plated with gold, but
Jacaro's gunmen saw not one particle of iron save in a ring they took
from a dead man's finger. There, an acid-etched plate of steel was set
as if to be used for a signet.

Von Holtz had accompanied the raiders perforce on every journey.
Jeweled bearings for motors; objects of commonest use, made of gold
beat thin for lightness; huge ingots of silver for industry; once a
queer-shaped spool of platinum wire that it took two men to
carry--these things made up the loot they scurried back to their
rathole with. Five raids they made, and twenty men they shot down
before they came upon disaster. On the sixth raid an outcry rose and
an ambush fell upon them.

Flashes of incredibly vivid actinic flame leaped from queer engines
that opened upon them. Curious small truncheonlike weapons spat
paralyzing electric shocks upon them. The twelve gangsters fought with
the desperation of cornered rats, with notched and explosive bullets
and with streams of lead from tommy-guns.

* * * * *

A chance bullet blew something up. One of the flame weapons flew to
bits, spouting what seemed to be liquid thermit upon friend and foe
alike. The way of the gangsters back to their Tube was barred. The
route they knew was a chaos of scorched bodies and melting metal. The
thermit flowed in all directions, seeming to grow in volume as it
flamed. Jacaro and his gangsters fled. They broke through the shaken
remnants of the ambush. The six of them who survived the fighting
found a man somnolently dri