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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.
The barrel and supports were made out of a single piece of thin brass tubing, 2-7/16 inch internal diameter and 5-5/8 inch long. The marking out was accomplished with the help of a strip of paper exactly as wide as the length of the tube, and as long as the tube's circumference.
Tommy advanced, Evelyn clinging to his sleeve. There were clanking noises audible in this room even above the dull rumble of the city's machines. The noises came from the Tube's mouth. It was four feet and more across, and it projected at a crazy angle out of a previously solid wall. "Hello!" shouted Tommy. "Down the Tube!" The clattering noise stopped, then continued at a faster rate.
He set up a vacuum-valve arrangement in the base of a large glass jar. He put that jar in the boat's air lock, bled the air to emptiness, and flashed the tube's quaint elements. He brought it back and went out of overdrive while he hooked the entire new assembly into the drive-circuit, with cut-outs and switches to be operated from the yacht's instrument board. Finished, he examined the stars.
But at the moment Professor Denham stared at the Tube concernedly, his daughter Evelyn shivered from pure excitement as she looked at it, and a red-headed man named Smithers looked impassively from the Tube to Tommy Reames and back again. He'd done most of the mechanical work on the Tube's parts, and he was as anxious as the rest. But nobody thought of the world outside the laboratory.
I'm afraid the Tube's blown up, Evelyn." She caught her breath, looking mutely up at him. "Here's a pistol," he said briefly, "and shells. There's no use our going to the Tube to-night. It would be dangerous. We'll do our investigating at dawn." He found a crevice where tree-fern trunks grew close together and closed in three sides of a sort of roofless cave.
It was not dangerous, in any case, and he watched, and listened, and presently he slipped from the mouth of the Tube and by the glow of a flashlight stripped foliage from nearby growths and piled it about the Tube's mouth. And then, because the purpose of the Tube was not adventure but science, he went back down into the laboratory.
Enough compressed air is turned into the tube to force the torpedo out, after which the torpedo goes on its deadly journey propelled by its own motor. The presence of the air thus turned into the tube at the instant of firing keeps out the water until the tube's forward port is once more closed. Then the rear port of the tube, inside the submarine boat, may be opened whenever it is desired.
The tube burst, noiselessly but quite spectacularly. And the mirror itself shuddered shook, as the tube's gases escaped. Now he was in bright sunlight again, quickly closing his eyes as the sun itself looked full into his vision, and slowly passed to be following by Earth, to be followed by a blank stretch of starry space, and here again was Hot Rod.
"The gas is cut off!" shouted Tommy again. "Who's there?" A voice gasped from the Tube's depths: "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.
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