“And now that that’s over,” he observed, ashamed of his own emotion, “let’s go!”
They went. Tommy watched the sun and kept approximately a straight line. They traveled three miles, and the jungle broke abruptly. Before them was a spongy surface neither solid earth or marsh. It shelved gently down to a vast and steaming morass upon which the dull-red sun shone hotly. It was vast, that marsh, and a steaming haze hung over it, and it seemed to reach to the world’s end. But vaguely, through the attenuating upper layers of the steamy haze, they saw the outlines of a city beyond: tall towers and soaring spires, buildings of a grace and perfection of outline unknown upon the Earth. And faint golden flashes came from the walls and pinnacles of that city. They were reflections of this planet’s monster sun, upon walls and roofs of plated gold.
“The Golden City,” said Tommy heavily. He looked at the horrible marsh between. His heart sank.
And then there was a sudden screaming ululation nearby. A half-naked man was running out of sight. Two others danced and capered and yelled in insane glee, pointing at Tommy and at Evelyn. The running man’s outcry was echoed from far away. Then it was taken up and repeated here and there in the jungle.
“They saw our tracks near the Tube,” snapped Tommy bitterly. “Oh, what a fool I am! Now they’ll ring us in.”
He seized Evelyn’s hand and began to run. There was a little rise in the ground a hundred yards away, with a clump of leafy ferns to shade it. They reached it as other half-naked, wholly mad human forms burst out of the jungle to yell and caper and make derisive and horrible gestures at the fugitives.
“Here we fight,” said Tommy grimly. “The ground’s open, anyhow. We fight here, and very probably we die here. But first….”
He knelt down and drew the finest of fine beads upon a bearded man who carried a glittering truncheonlike club which, by the way it was carried, was more than merely a bludgeon. He pulled the trigger for a single shot.
The bullet struck the capering Ragged Man fairly in the chest. And it exploded.