“Denham’ll be looking around to see what killed those men. When he does, we want to be ready to shoot a smoke-bomb through to him, with a message attached.”
Smithers made a gesture of no especial meaning save that he had heard. And Tommy went on writing swiftly, saying who he was and what he had done, and that another globe was being built so that he and Smithers could come with supplies and arms to help….
“He’s lookin” around now, Mr. Reames,” said Smithers quietly. “He’s picked up a ricocheted bullet an’ is staring at it.”
The crude-oil engine was running at a thunderous rate. Tommy fastened his note in the little missile he had made ready. He placed it under the solenoid of the catapult after Denham’s design, with the springs and rings of metallic ammonium. He turned to Smithers.
“I’ll watch for him,” said Tommy unsteadily. “You know, watch for the right moment to fling it through. Slow up the generator a little. It’ll rack itself to pieces.”
He put his eye to the eye-piece. He winced as he saw again what the bullets of his aiming had done. But he saw Denham almost at once. And Denham was scratched and bruised and looked very far indeed from the ideal of a professor of theoretic physics, with hardly more than a few shreds of clothing left upon him, and a ten-day’s beard upon his face. He limped as he walked. But he had stopped in the task of gathering up weapons to show Evelyn excitedly what it was that he had found. A spent and battered bullet, but indubitably a bullet from the world of his own ken. He began to stare about him, hopeful yet incredulous.
Tommy took his eye from the dimensoscope just long enough to light the fuse of the smoke-bomb.
“Here it goes, Smithers!”
He flung the switch. The missile with its thickly smoking fuse leaped upward as the concentric rings flickered and whirled bewilderingly. The missile hurt the eyes that watched it. It vanished. The solenoid dropped to the floor from the broken small contrivance.