erced the place where he had been.
He was racing for the crude-oil engine. There was a chain wound upon a
drum, there, and a clutch attached the drum to the engine.

He stopped and seized the repeating shotgun Smithers had brought as
his own weapon against Jacaro's gangsters. He sent four loads of
buckshot at the windows of the laboratory. A man yelled.

And Tommy had dropped the gun to knot the rope to the chain,
desperately, fiercely, in a terrible haste.

* * * * *

The chain began to pay out to that peculiar vanishing point which was
here an entry-way to another world--perhaps another universe.

A bullet nicked his ribs. He picked up the gun and fired it nearly at
random. He saw Smithers moving feebly, and Tommy had a vast compassion
for Smithers, but-- He shuddered suddenly. Something had struck him a
heavy blow in the shoulder. And something else battered at his leg.
There was no sound that could be heard above the thunder of the
crude-oil motor, but Tommy, was queerly aware of buzzing things flying
about him, and of something very warm flowing down his body and down
his leg. And he felt very dizzy and weak and extremely tired.... He
could not see clearly, either.

But he had to wait until Denham had the chain fast to the globe. That
was the way he had intended to come back, of course. The ring was in
the globe, and this chain was in the laboratory to haul the globe back
from wherever it had been sent. And Von Holtz had disconnected it
before sending away the globe with Denham in it. If the chain remained
unbroken, of course it could be hauled in, as it would turn all
necessary angles and force the globe to follow those angles, whatever
they might be....

Tommy was on his hands and knees, and men were saying savagely:

"Where's that thing, hey? Where's th' thing Jacaro wants?"

He wanted to tell them that they should say if the chain had stopped
moving to a place where it ceased to exist, so that he could throw a
clutch and bring Denham and his daughter back from the place where Von
Holtz had marooned them when he wanted to steal Denham's secret. Tommy
wanted to explain that. But the floor struck him in the face, and
something said to him:

"They've shot you."

* * * * *

But it did not seem to matter, somehow, and he lay very still until he
felt himself strangling, and he was breathing in strong ammonia which
made his eyes smart and his