"Glora--that was horrible!"
We stood, again in normal size, with the wrecked dome-laboratory around
us. The dome had a great jagged hole halfway up one of its sides,
through which the snow was falling. The broken bodies strewn around were
gruesome.
Alan repeated, "Horrible, Glora. The power of this drug is diabolical."
Glora had grown large after us and had given us the companion drug. I
need not detail the strange sensations of our dwindling. We were so soon
to experience them again!
We had searched, when still large, all of Polter's grounds. Some of his
men undoubtedly escaped, made off into the blizzard. How many, we never
knew. None of them ever made themselves known again.
We were ready to start into the atom. The fragment of golden quartz
still lay under the microscope on the white square of stone slab. We had
hurried with our last preparations. The room was chilling. We were all
inadequately dressed for such cold.
I left a note scribbled on a square of paper by the microscope. With
daylight Polter's wrecked place would be discovered and the police would
surely come.
_Guard this piece of golden quartz. Take it at once, very carefully, to
the Royal Canadian Scientific Society. Have it watched day and night. We
will return._
I signed it George Randolph. And as I did so, the extra ordinary aspect
of these events swept me anew. Here in Polter's weird place I had been
living in some strange fantastic realm. But this was the Province of
Quebec, in civilized Canada. These were the Quebec authorities I was
addressing.
I flung the thoughts away. "Ready, Glora?"
"Yes."
Then doubts assailed me. None of Polter's men had gotten large enough to
fight us. Evidently he did not trust them with the drug. We could well
believe that, for the thing misused, was diabolical beyond human
conception. A single giant, a criminal, a madman, by the power of giant
size alone, could menace and destroy beyond belief. The drug lost, or
carelessly handled, could get loose. Animals, insects eating it, could
roam the Earth, gigantic monsters. Vegetation nourished with the drug,
might in a day overrun a big city, burying it with jungle growth!
How terrible a thing, if the realm of smallness were suddenly to emerge,
consume this awe inspiring drug! Monsters of the sea, marine organisms,
could expand until even the ocean was too small for them. Microbes of
disease, feeding upon it--
Alan was prodding me. "We're ready, George."
"Okay, let's go."
This was not the largeness we were facing now, but smallness. I thought
of Babs, down there with Polter, beyond the vanishing point in the realm
of infinitely small. They had been gone an hour at least. Every moment
lost now was adding to Babs' danger.
Glora sat with us on the platform. Strange little creature! She was
wholly calm now; methodical with her last directions. There had been no
time for her to tell us anything about herself. Alan had asked her why
she had come here and how she had gotten the drugs. She waved him away.
"On the way down. Plenty of time then."
"How long will it take us?" Alan demanded.
"Not too long if we are careful with managing the trip. About ten
hours."
And now we were ready to start. She told us calmly:
"I will give you each your share of the drugs, but then you take only as
I tell you."
She produced from her robe several small vials a few inches long. They
were tightly stoppered. The feel of them was cool and sleek; they seemed
to be made of some strange, polished metal. Some of them were tinted
black while the others glowed opalescent. She gave each of us one vial
of each kind.
"The light ones are for diminishing," she said. "We take them very
carefully, one small pellet only at first."
Alan was opening one of his, but she checked him.
"Wait! The drug evaporates very quickly. I have more to say. First we
sit here together. Then you follow me to the white slab. We climb upon
the little rock."
She laid her hands on my arms. Her blue eyes regarded us earnestly. Her
manner was naive; childlike. But I could not mistake her intelligence or
the force of character stamped on her face for all its dainty, ethereal
beauty.
"Alan--" She smiled at him, and tossed back a straying lock of her hair
which was annoying her. "You pay attention, Alan. You are very young,
reckless. You listen. We must not be separated. You understand that,
both of you? We will be always in that little piece of rock. But there
will be miles of distance. And to be lost in size--"
What a strange journey upon which we were now starting! Lost in size?
"You understand me? Lost in size. If that happens, we might never find
each other. And if we come upon the Doctor Polter and the girl he holds
captive--if we can overtake them--"
"We must!" I exclaimed. "And we must get started."
She showed us which pellet to select. They were of several sizes, I
found. And as she afterward told us, the larger ones were not only
larger but of an intensified strength. We took the smallest. It was
barely a thousandth part of the strength of the largest. In unison we
placed the pellets on our tongues, and hastily swallowed.
The first sensations were as before. And, familiar now, they caused no
more than a fleeting discomfort. But I think I could never get used to
the outward strangeness!
The room in a moment was expanding. I could feel the platform floor
crawling outward beneath me, so that I had to hitch and change my
position as it pulled. We were seated together, Alan and I on each side
of Glora. My fingers were on her arm. It did not change size, but it
slowly drew away with a space opening between us. Overhead, the dome
roof, the great jagged hole there, was receding, lifting, moving upward
and away.
Glora pulled us to our feet. "We had better start now. The distance
grows very far, so quickly."
We had been sitting within five feet of the stone slab with its four
inch high railing around it. A chair was by the microscope eyepiece. As
we stood swaying I saw that the chair was huge, and its seat level with
my head. The great barrel-cylinder of the microscope slanted sixty feet
upward. The dome roof was a distant spread three hundred feet up in the
dimness. The dome-room was a vast arena now.
Alan and I must have hesitated, confused by the expanding scene--a slow,
steady movement everywhere. Everything was drawing away from us. Even as
we stood together, the creeping platform floor was separating us.
A moment passed. Glora was urging us on vehemently:
"Come! You must not stand there!"
We started walking. The railing around the slab was knee-high. The slab
itself was a broad, square surface. The fragment of golden quartz lay in
its center. It was now a jagged lump nearly a foot in diameter.
The platform seemed to shift as we walked; the railing hardly came
closer as we advanced toward it. Then suddenly I realized that it was
receding. Thirty feet away? No, now it was more than that--a great,
thick rope, waist-high, with a huge spread of white surface behind it.
"Faster!" urged Glora. We ran, and reached the railing. It was higher
than our heads. We ran under it, and cut out upon the white slab--a
level surface, larger now than the whole dome-room had been.
Glora, like a fawn, ran in advance of us, her robe flying in the wind.
She turned to look back.
"Faster! Faster, or it will be too hard a climb!"
Ahead lay a golden mound of rock. It was widening; raising its top
steadily higher. Beyond it and over it was a vast dim distance. We
reached the rock, breathless, winded. It was a jagged mound like a great
fifty-foot butte. We plunged upon it and began climbing.
The ascent was steep; precipitous in places. There were little gullies,
which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed as if we would never
reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had
ceased its action. The yellow, rocky ground was no longer expanding.
We came to the summit and stood to get back our breath. Alan and I gazed
with awe upon the top of a rocky hill. Little buttes and strewn boulders
lay everywhere. It was all naked rock, ridged and pitted, and everywhere
yellow-tinged.
Overhead was distance. I could not call it a sky. A blur was
there--something almost but not quite distinguishable. Then I thought
that I could make out a more solid blur which might be the lower lens of
the microscope above us. And there were blurred, very distant spots of
light, like huge suns masked by a haze, and I knew that they were the
hooded lights of the laboratory room.
Before us, over the brink of a five hundred-foot drop, a great
glistening plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it
ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our hilltop level a
horizontal streak marked the rope railing of the slab.
"Well," said Alan. "We're here." He gazed behind us, back across the
rocky summit which seemed several hundred feet across to its opposite
brink. He was smiling, but the smile faded. "Now what, Glora? Another
pellet?"
"No. Not yet. There is a place where we go down. It is marked in my
mind."
I had a sudden ominous sense that we three were not alone up here.
Glora led us back from the cliff. As we picked our way among the naked
crags, it seemed behind each of them an enemy might be lurking.
"Glora, do you know if any of Dr. Polter's men might have the drug? I
mean, do they come in and out of here?"
She shook her head. "I think not. He lets no one have the drug. He
trusts not anyone. I stole it. I will tell you later. Much I have to
tell you before we arrive."
Alan made a sudden, sidewise leap, and dashed around a rock. He came
back to us, smiling ruefully.
"Gets on your nerves, all of this. I had the same idea you had, George.
Might be someone around here. But I guess not." He took Glora's hand and
they walked in advance of me. "We haven't thanked you yet, Glora," he
added.
"Not needed. I came for help from your world. I followed the Dr. Polter
when he came outward. He has made my world and my people, his slaves. I
came for help. And because I have helped you, needs no thanks."
"But we do thank you, Glora." Alan turned his flushed, earnest face back
to me. I thought I had never seen him so handsome, with his boyish,
rugged features and shock of tousled brown hair. The grimness of
adventure was upon him, but in his eyes there was something else. It was
not for me to see it. That was for Glora; and I think that even then its
presence and its meaning did not escape her.
We reached a little gully near the center of the hilltop. It was some
twenty feet deep.
Glora paused. "We descend here."
The gully was an unmistakable landmark--open at one end, forty feet
long, with the other end terminating in a blind wall which now loomed
above us.
"A pit is here--a hole. I cannot tell just how large it will look when
we are in this size."
We found it and stood over it--a foot-wide circular hole extending
downward. Alan knelt and shoved his hand and arm into it, but Glora
sprang at him.
"Don't do that!"
"Why not? How deep is it?"
She retorted sharply, "The Doctor Polter is ahead of us. How far away in
size, who knows? Do you want to crush him, and crush that young girl
with him?"
Alan's jaw dropped. "Good Lord!"
We stood with the little pit before us, and another of the pellets
ready.
"Now!" said Glora.
Again we took the drug, a somewhat larger pellet this time. The familiar
sensations began. Everywhere the rocks were creeping with a slow
inexorable movement, the landscape expanding around us. The gully walls
drew back and upward. In a moment they were cliff walls and we were in a
broad valley.
We had been standing close together. We had not moved, except to shift
our feet as the expanding ground drew them apart. I became aware that
Alan and Glora were a distance from me. Glora called:
"Come, George! We're going down--quickly now."
We ran to the pit. It had expanded to a great round hole some six feet
wide and equally as deep. Glora let herself down, peered anxiously
beneath her, and dropped. Alan and I followed. We jammed the pit; but as
we stood there, the walls were receding and lifting.
I had remarked Glora's downward glance, and shuddered. Suppose, in some
slightly smaller size, Babs had been among these rocks!
The pit widened steadily. The movement was far swifter now. We stood
presently in a great circular valley. It seemed fully a mile in
diameter, with huge encircling walls like a crater rim towering
thousands of feet into the air. We ran along the base of one expanding
wall, following Glora.
I noticed now that overhead the turgid murk had turned into the blue of
distance. A sky. It was faintly sky-blue, and seemed hazy, almost as
though clouds were forming. It had been cold when we started. The
exertion had kept us fairly comfortable; But now I realized that it was
far warmer. This was different air, more humid, and I thought the smell
of moist earth was in it. Rocks and boulders were strewn here on the
floor of this giant valley, and I saw occasional pools of water. There
had been rain recently!
The realization came with a shock of surprise. This was a new world! A
faint, luminous twilight was around us. And then I noticed that the
light was not altogether coming from overhead. It seemed inherent to the
rocks themselves. They glowed, very faintly luminous, as though
phosphorescent.
We were now well embarked upon this strange journey. We seldom spoke.
Glora was intent upon guiding us. She was trying to make the best
possible speed. I realized that it was a case of judgment, as well as
physical haste. We had dropped into that six-foot pit. Had we waited a
few moments longer, the depth would have been a hundred feet, two
hundred, a thousand! It would have involved hours of arduous descent--if
we had lingered until we were a trifle smaller!
We took other pellets. We traveled perhaps an hour more. There were many
instances of Glora's skill. We squeezed into a gully and waited until it
widened; we leapt over expanding caverns; we slid down a smooth
yellowish slide of rocks, and saw it behind and over us, rising to
become a great spreading ramp extending upward into the blue of the sky.
Now, up there, little sailing white clouds were visible. And down where
we stood it was deep twilight, queerly silvery with the dim light from
the luminous rocks, as though some hidden moon were shining.
Strange, new world! I suddenly envisaged the full strangeness of it.
Around me were spreading miles of barren, naked landscape. I gazed off
to where, across the rugged plateau we were traversing, there was a
range of hills. Behind and above them were mountains; serrated tiers;
higher and more distant. An infinite spread of landscape! And, as we
dwindled, still other vast reaches opened before us. I gazed overhead.
Was it--compared to my stature now--a thousand miles, perhaps even a
million miles up to where we had been two or three hours ago? I thought
so.
Then suddenly I caught the other viewpoint. This was all only an inch of
golden quartz--if one were large enough to see it that way!
Alan had been trying to memorize the main topographical features of our
route. It was not as difficult as it seemed at first. We were always far
larger than normal in comparison to our environment, and the main
distinguishing characteristics of the landscape were obvious--the blind
gully, with the round pit, for instance, or the ramp slide.
We had been traveling some three or four hours when Glora suggested a
rest. We were at the edge of a broad canyon. The wall towered several
hundred feet above us; but a few moments before, we had jumped down it
with a single leap!
The last pellet we had taken had ceased its action. We sat down to rest.
It was a wild, mountainous scene around us, deep with luminous gloom. We
could barely see across the canyon to its distant cliff wall. The wall
beside us had been smooth, but now it was broken and ridged. There were
ravines in it, and dark holes resembling cave-mouths. One was near us.
Alan gazed at it apprehensively.
"I say, Glora, I don't like sitting here."
I had been telling her all we knew of Polter. She listened quietly,
seldom interrupting me. Then she said:
"I understand. I tell you now about Polter as I have seen him."
She talked for five or ten minutes. I listened, amazed, awed by what she
said.
But Alan's insistence interrupted her. "Come on, let's get out of here.
That tunnel-mouth, or cave, or whatever it is--"
"But we go in there," she protested. "A little tunnel. That is our way
to travel. We are not far from my city now."
Perhaps Alan felt what once was called a hunch, a premonition, the
presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we
realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The
tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred
feet away. It was a ten-foot, yawning hole in the cliff. Perhaps Alan
sensed a movement in there. As I turned to look at it a great, hairy
human arm came out of the opening! Then a shoulder! A head!
The giant figure of a man came squeezing through the hole on his hands
and knees! He gathered himself, and as he stood erect, I saw that he was
growing in size! Already he was twenty feet tall compared to us--a
thick-set fellow, dressed in leather garments, his legs and arms heavily
matted with black hair. He stood swaying, gazing around him. I stared up
at his round bullet head, his villainous face.
He saw us! Stupid amazement struck him, then comprehension.
He let out a roar and came at us!