forehand thrust an iron wire. It vanished. The series of
magnets seemed unharmed.

* * * * *

With a peculiar, dreamlike steadiness, Tommy put his hand where an
undeflected bullet would go through it. He pressed the trigger again.
He felt a tiny breeze upon his hand. But the bullet had been unable to
elude the compound-wound magnets, each of which now had quite four
times the designed voltage impressed upon its coils.

Tommy flung off the switch.

"Work the gun," he ordered harshly. "When I say fire, send a burst of
shots through it. Keep the switch off except when you're actually
firing, so--God willing--the coils don't burn out. Fire!"

He was gazing through the dimensoscope. Evelyn was struggling
helplessly while two Ragged Men held her arms, grinning as only devils
could have grinned, and others squabbled and watched with a fascinated
attention some cryptic process which could only be the drawing of
lots....

Tommy saw, and paid no attention. The machine-gun beside him rasped
suddenly. He saw a tree-fern frond shudder. He saw a gaping, irregular
hole where a fresh frond was uncurling. Tommy put out his hand to the
gun.

"Let me move it, bench and all," he said steadily. "Now try it again.
Just a burst."

* * * * *

Again the gun rasped. And the earth was kicked up suddenly where the
bullets struck in that other world. The little steel-jacketed missiles
were deflected by the terribly overstrained magnets of the catapult,
but their energy was not destroyed. It was merely altered in
direction. Fired within the laboratory upon our own and normal world,
the bullets came out into the world of tree-ferns and monstrous
things. They came out, as it happened, sideways instead of point
first, which was due to some queer effect of dimension change upon an
object moving at high velocity. Because of that, they ricocheted much
more readily, and where they struck they made a much more ghastly
wound. But the first two bursts caused no effect at all. They were not
even noticed by the Ragged Men. The noise of the little gun was
thunderous and snarling in the laboratory, but in the world of the
fifth dimension there was no sound at all.

"Like this," said Tommy steadily. "Just like this.... Now fire!"

He had tilted the muzzle upward. And then with a horrible grim
intensity he traversed the gun as it roared.

And it was butchery. Three Ragged Men were cut lit