“It’s him!” The tone was made metallic by echoing and reechoing in the bends of the Tube, but it was Smithers. “We’re comin’, Mr. Reames.”
“Is—is Daddy there?” called Evelyn eagerly. “Daddy!”
“Coming,” said a grim voice.
The clattering grew nearer. A goggled, gas-masked head appeared, and a body followed it out of the Tube, laden with a multitude of burdens. A second climbed still more heavily after the first. The brightly-colored citizens of the Golden City reached quietly to the weapons at their waists. A third voice came up the Tube, distant and nearly unintelligible. It roared a question.
Smithers ripped off his gas mask and said distinctly:
“Sure we’re through. Go ahead. An’ go to hell!”
Then there was a thunderous detonation somewhere down in the Tube’s depths. The visible part of it jerked spasmodically and cracked across. A wisp of brownish smoke puffed out of it, and the stinging reek of high explosive tainted the air. Then Evelyn was clinging close to her father, and he was patting her comfortingly, and Smithers was pumping both of Tommy’s hands, his normal calmness torn from him for once. But after a bare moment he had gripped himself again. He unloaded an impressive number of parcels from about his person. Then he regarded the citizens of the Golden City with an impersonal, estimating gaze, ignoring twenty weapons trained upon him.
“Those damn fools back on Earth,” he observed impassively, “decided the professor an’ me was better off of it. So they let us come through the Tube before they blew it up. We brought the explosive bullets, Mr. Reames. I hope we brought enough.”
And Tommy grinned elatedly as Denham turned to crush his hands in his own.