The astounded Polter was taken wholly by surprise. He had no idea that
anyone was following him. He thought he was alone with tiny Babs in this
rock-strewn metal desert. What he saw as he scrambled to his feet were
four insect-size humans, two of them at a distance, and two within reach
of him, and all of them scampering in different directions. The ground
was littered with crags and boulders; it was ridged and pitted,
pock-marked, with tiny crater-holes and caves. The four scuttling
figures almost instantly had disappeared from his sight.
I did not see where Babs went. I turned from the black vial of Polter's
enlarging drug, and with the huge pellet under my arm I ran leaping over
the rough ground and flung myself into a gully. I lay prone, flattened
against a rock. In the murky distance of a pseudo-sky overhead, the
monstrous head and shoulders of Polter were visible. I could see down to
just below his waist. The empty cage with its door flapping open hung
against his shirt-front. He had stooped to try and recover Babs. And
instinctively his hands went to his belt to seize his enlarging drug.
They were fumbling there now. He hauled out an opalescent vial of the
diminishing element. But his black vial was gone. His annoyance turned
into fear as he searched for it in the other compartments of his belt. I
had thought that he had more than one black vial, but now it seemed not.
His huge face was swept with the panic of terror. He glanced wildly
around him.
Through the open end of my gully I saw in the distance, miles away, the
enlarging figure of Alan rising up. Then it ducked in back of a distant
rising peak. Polter undoubtedly saw it. He was fumbling with his
opalescent vial. In his confused panic he made the mistake of taking the
diminishing drug and instantly seemed to regret it. His curse rumbled
above me. His glance went down to the rocks at his feet, and there he
saw his black vial lying with its stopper out. His body already was
beginning to dwindle. He stooped, seized the vial, and took the
enlarging drug. The shock of it mode him stagger; momentarily he
disappeared from my line of vision but I could hear his panting breath
and the unsteady pound of his footsteps.
I still held that huge round ball of the drug. I seized a loose stone
and frantically knocked off a chunk-heaven knows how much. I shoved it
into my mouth, chewed and hastily swallowed it. And with the lurching,
swaying, shrinking gully closing in upon me, I ran to get out of its
distant end.
I was heading toward where Alan and his father were hiding. I came from
the gully into the open, just as the walls closed behind me. The whole
scene was a dizzying, blurred sway of contracting movement. I saw that I
was in a circular valley now some five miles in diameter, with its
jagged enclosing walls rising sheerly perpendicular out of sight in the
haze overhead.
Polter had staggered backward. I saw him a mile or so away. His back at
that instant was turned to me. He was now no more than three or four
times my own height. He scrambled against the valley cliff wall as
though trying to find a foothold to climb up it. He went a little way,
but fell back.
Near me, Alan and old Dr. Kent suddenly appeared. I was larger than
they. Alan gasped with surprise.
"You, George! You got Babs--"
"Yes--Babs is around somewhere! Stay down here! Don't lose her in size!
Stay small! Search and--"
"But, George--"
"I'll tackle Polter. I've taken--God, I don't know how much I've taken
of the drug!"
They were shrinking down by my boot tops. Alan shouted suddenly,
"There's Babs! Thank God, she's all right."
She was so small that I couldn't see her, or even hear her, though she
must have been calling to them. Alan again screamed up at me with his
little voice:
"She's here, George! You--go on and get Polter! I can't overtake
you--haven't enough of the drug!" His tiny voice was fading away. "Go
and get him, George! This time--get him--"
I swung with a staggering step around to face the open valley. It had by
now shrunk to nearly half a mile in width. Its smooth walls rose some
two or three thousand feet to an upper circular horizon with murky
distance overhead. Polter stood across from me. He had tried to climb
out but could not. He saw me and came lurching. We were a quarter of a
mile from each other. I ran forward through a shifting scene of
shrinking rock walls and crawling, contracting ground. Quarter of a
mile? It seemed hardly more than a score of running strides before
Polter loomed close ahead of me. He was still nearly twice my size. I
stooped, seized a loose boulder, and flung it. I missed his face, but,
as his hand went up carrying a bare knife, by fortunate chance, the
stone struck his wrist. The knife dropped to the rocks. He stooped to
recover it, but I was upon him. As I felt his huge arms go about me,
half lifting me, my foot struck the knife. But in an instant it was
swept down into smallness beneath us as we expanded above it.
Both of us now were unarmed in this combat of size. I was an immature
youth in Polter's first grip upon me. I heard his panting words, grimly
triumphant:
"This--George Randolph, I haf been--waiting for so many years! The
hunchback--takes his revenge--now--"
He lifted me. His great arms were unbelievably powerful, but I could
feel them dwindling. I was enlarging faster. Just a few moments--if I
could last a few moments.... My feet were off the ground, my chest
pressed close against the little cage between us. He had a hand shoving
back my head; his fingers sought my throat. I wound my legs around him,
and then he tried to throw me down and fall upon me. But he had twisted
and my back was against the cliff. The rocks were shoving at us,
insistently pushing with almost a living movement. Polter staggered with
me. His grip on my throat tightened, shutting off my breath. My senses
whirled. His grim sardonic face over me became blurred. I tore futilely
at my throat to break his choking grip. All the world was a roaring
chaos to my fading senses. Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his
expression. His fingers involuntarily loosened. I got a breath of
blessed air, gasping, and my sight cleared.
Walls were closing around us! We were in a pit barely ten feet wide,
with the top a few feet above Polter's head. The nearer wall shoved us
again. Our bodies almost filled the shrinking pit! Polter lurched and
cast me off. I half fell, striking my shoulder against the opposite
wall, and I saw Polter leap at the dwindling brink and scramble out.
I was nearly wedged. As I rose, the top of the pit only reached my
waist. Polter had fallen on the upper ground, and was on hands and
knees. Instead of standing up, he lurched at me trying to shove me back.
But I was out; I clutched at him. We were almost of a size now. We
rolled on the ground, locked together; rolled to the brink of the pit
and over it, as it shrank to a little round hole unnoticed beneath our
threshing bodies!
* * * * *
At the side of the circular valley Alan and Dr. Kent crouched with the
smaller figure of Babs between them. They saw Polter and me as two
swaying gigantic forms locked in a death struggle, towering against the
sky. Tremendous expanded bodies! They saw us come to grips; saw the
great hunched Polter bend me backward, choking me.
Our bodies lurched. Our huge legs with a single step brought us to the
center of the valley. It was a shrinking valley to Alan, Babs and Dr.
Kent, for they too, were enlarging. But the fighting giant figures were
growing faster. In only a moment their shoulders were up there in the
sky, pressing against the narrowing cliff walls.
Alan gasped, "But George will be crushed! Look at him!"
Horror swept them as they crouched, watching. The enormous pillars of
Polter's legs towered straight up from near at hand. Alan was aware of
himself screaming:
"George, get out! You're too large! Too large for in here!"
As though his microscopic voice could reach me--my head a hundred feet
above him. But he screamed it again. This was all in a few horrible
moments, though it seemed to the three watchers an eternity. Alan was
helpless to aid me; they had taken all of the enlarging drug they had.
Then they saw Polter cast me off. I lurched and struck, with my
shoulders wedged against the cliff directly over where they crouched.
The overhead sky was darkened as Polter scrambled upward.
Alan was still screaming futilely.
Babs huddled with white horrified face, staring. Then I went out after
Polter. My disappearing legs were great dark blurs in the sky. Alan saw
the valley now contracted to a thousand feet of width, with its cliffs
equally as high. Then everything was smaller.... The sky overhead went
dark again from cliff to cliff as a segment of rolling bodies
momentarily spanned the opening.
Presently Alan realized that the valley had narrowed to a pit. He stood
up. "Hurry! Now we can go after them. Up there!"
The opening above was empty. Polter and I were fighting some distance
away....
Dr. Kent was soon large enough to scramble out of the pit. Alan handed
the little Babs up to him and followed. Alan saw that they were now in a
long gully, blind at one end with a five hundred foot perpendicular
cliff. Against the wall, the Titanic form of Polter stood at bay. And I
was confronting him. The summit of the cliff was lower than our waists.
Triumph swept Alan; he saw that I was the larger! As Polter bored into
me my backward step crossed the full width of the gully. Alan shouted:
"Down! Babs--Father!"
They had barely time to flatten themselves in a narrow crevice between
upstanding rocks before my foot crashed down. For an instant the sole of
my foot formed a flat black ceiling as it spanned the rocks. Then it
lifted and was gone with a blurred swoop. They saw the white blur of my
hand come down and snatch a tremendous boulder, raising it with a great
sweep of movement into the sky. They saw me crash it against Polter; but
it only struck his shoulder. He roared with anger. The whole sky was
roaring and rumbling with our shouts and our panting breathing, and the
ground was clattering, pounding with our giant tread. Huge loose
boulders were tumbled in an avalanche everywhere.
Again it seemed to Alan that our lurching, heedlessly surging bodies
must be crushed within these contracting walls. Only our locked,
intertwined legs were visible; our bodies were lost in the sky. Then it
seemed to Alan that I had heaved Polter upward. And followed him. We
disappeared. There was a distant overhead rumble, and the murky sky,
with vague patches of far-distant illumination in it, became empty of
movement....
The walls presently were again closing upon Alan and his companions.
They ran out of the open end of the shrinking little gully and came to a
new upward vista....
* * * * *
I found myself a full head and shoulders taller than Polter. And he was
tiring, panting heavily. His face was cut and bleeding from the blows of
my fist. The rock I heaved struck his shoulder. He roared, head down,
and bored into me. He was heavier than I. His weight flung me back. My
foot slid on the loose stones of the gully floor. I did not know that
Babs, Alan and their father were huddled under those stones!
My back struck the opposite wall. Polter's upflung knee caught me in the
stomach, all but knocking the breath out of me. He was desperate,
oblivious to the closing walls. And as he flung his arms with a grip
about my neck, hanging, trying to bear down, I saw in his blazing dark
eyes what seemed the light of suicide. I think that then, with a sudden
frenzied madness he realized that he was beaten, and tried to pull us to
the ground and let the walls crush us.
I summoned all my remaining strength and heaved us forward. I broke his
hold. His body was jammed back against a lowering wall. Its top seemed
almost at our knees. I shoved frantically. He fell backward and I jumped
after him.
We were on a great rocky plateau. But it was shrinking, crawling into
itself. Spots of light were in the murk overhead: there seemed a
distant circular horizon of emptiness around us.
Polter was lying in a heap. But it was trickery, for as I incautiously
bent over him his hand crashed a rock against my head. I reeled, with
all the world turning black, but didn't fall. There was a terrible
instant when my senses were going, but I fought to hold them. Blood from
a wound on my forehead was streaming in my eyes. I was staggering. Then
I realized that I was grimly tossing my head, shaking the blood away;
and little by little my sight came back.
Polter was on his feet, rushing me. His fist came with an upward swing
at my chin, but I ducked.
And suddenly, fighting up there in the open, my mind envisioned how
gigantic we were! This was a great upland plateau, rounded with miles of
distance and shadowy dimly radiant abyss beyond its circular horizon.
And I was a thousand feet or more tall! A Titan, looming here in the
sky!
My fist quite unexpectedly caught Polter's jaw. His simultaneous swing
went wild, as I leapt backward from it. He staggered, and his arms
dropped to his sides. I was crouched forward, guarded, watching him
while I gasped for breath. There was the briefest of instant when an
expression of vague surprise swept his face. But I had not knocked him
out.
It was death overtaking him. His heart was yielding, overtaxed from the
strain; and I think that there, at the last, he realized it. The blood
drained suddenly from his face and lips, leaving them livid. I saw fear,
then a wild horror in his eyes. He stood swaying. Then his knees gave
way and he toppled. He fell from his height in the air where I stood
gazing at him--fell forward on his face, his Titanic length spread all
across the top of this rocky landscape!
For a moment I did not move. My head was reeling, my ears roaring.
Blood streamed into my eyes. I wiped it away with a torn sleeve and
stood panting, gazing at the glowing distance around me.
I was a Titan, standing there. The body of Polter was shrinking at my
feet. The circular abyss of emptiness came nearer as this rocky eminence
contracted.
Suddenly my attention went to the sky overhead. Vague distant lights
were there. Then a broad flat blur seemed spread over me. Light
everywhere was growing. Beyond the nearby brink of the abyss was a white
reflected radiance from beneath. Abruptly I realized there was a level,
flat white plain running far off there in the distance.
Overhead a radiance contracted into a spot of light. A shape in the sky
moved! I heard a faraway rumble--a human voice!
The body of Polter lay at my feet. It was hardly the length of my
forearm. I stood, a Titan.
And then, with a shock of realization, I saw how tiny I was! This was
the broken top of that fragment of golden quartz the size of a walnut! I
was standing there, under the lens of the giant microscope in Polter's
dome-room laboratory, with half a dozen astounded Quebec police
officials peering down at me!