_The Doomed Realm_
To Alan the first few moments that followed the escape of the drug
were the most horrible of his life. The discovery struck old Dr. Kent,
Glora and Alan into a numb, blank confusion. They stood transfixed,
staring with cold terror. The fly was scurrying along the floor close
against the wall Already it was as large as Alan's hand. It ran into
the corner, hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its
wings were droning with an audible hum. It reared itself on its hairy
legs, lifted and sailed across the room.
As though drawn by a magnet Alan turned to watch it. It landed on the
wall. Alan was aware of Dr. Kent rushing with trembling steps to a
shelf where bottles stood. Glora was stricken into immobility, the
blood draining from her face.
The fly flew again. It passed directly over Alan. Its body, with a
membrane sac of eggs, was now as large as his head; its wide-spread
transparent wings were beating with a reverberating drone.
Alan flung a bottle which was on the table beside him. It missed,
crashed against the ceiling, came down with splintering glass and
spilling liquid. Fumes spread chokingly over the room.
The fly landed again on the floor. Larger now! Expanding with a
horribly rapid growth. Glora flung something--a little wooden rack
with a few empty test-tubes in it. The rack struck the monstrous fly,
but did not hurt it. The fly stood with hairy legs braced under its
bulging body. Its multiple-lensed eyes were staring at the humans. And
with its size must have come a sense of power, for it seemed to Alan
that the monstrous insect had an abnormal alertness as it stood
measuring its adversaries, gathering itself to attack them.
Only a few seconds had passed. Confused thoughts swept Alan. This fly
with its growth would soon fill this room. Burst it; burst upward
through a wrecked palace; soar out, and by the power of its size
alone, devastate this world.
He heard himself shouting. "Father, get back! It's too large! I've got
to kill it!"
* * * * *
Launch himself upon it? Wrestle with it in a hand to hand combat? Alan
edged around the center table. He was bathed in cold sweat. This thing
so horrible! It was too large! Half the length of his own body, now.
In a moment it might be twice that! He was aware of Glora pulling at
him; and his father rushing past him with a bottle of liquid, and
shouting:
"Alan! Run! You and this girl, get out of here! The other room--"
Then Alan saw the things upon the floor! His foot crushed one with a
slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous,
risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden,
gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses
of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with
streamers of ooze hanging upon it, and a black-ink fluid squirting;
others were rods of red jelly-pulp, already as large as lead pencils,
quivering, twitching. Germs of disease, these ghastly things,
enlarging from the invisibility of a drop of water!
The fly landed with a thud on the center table. The fumes of the
shattered bottle of chemicals were choking Alan. He flung himself
toward the monster fly, but Glora held him.
"No! Escape! The other room!"
Dr. Kent was stamping the things upon the floor; pouring acids upon
them. Some eluded him. The air in the room was unbreathable....
They reached the bedroom. The laboratory was a hideous chaos. They
were aware of its outer door opening, disclosing the figure of Polter
who, undoubtedly, had been attracted by the noise. He shouted a
startled oath. Alan heard it above the beating wings of the monster
fly. Things lurched at the opened door; Polter banged it upon them and
rushed away, shouting the alarm through the palace.
Dr. Kent was stammering, "Not the enlarging drug! Glora, child, the
other! Hurry!"
Alan helped Glora with the opalescent vial. Things were lurching
toward this room from the laboratory. Alan with averted face, choked
by the incoming fumes, slammed the door upon the gruesome turmoil.
They took the diminishing drug. The bedroom expanded. The hideous
sounds from the laboratory, and the whole palace now ringing with a
wild alarm, then faded into the blessed remoteness of distance above
them....
* * * * *
"I think it is this way, Alan. Off there--a doorway from my bedroom.
Polter always kept it locked, but it leads into a corridor. We must
get out of here. A crack under the door--is that it, off there?" Dr.
Kent pointed into the gloomy blur of distance. "We are horribly
small--it's so far to run--and I've lost my sense of direction."
The drug had ceased its action. The wooden floor of the room had
expanded to a spread of cellular surface, ridged with broken,
tube-like tunnels; pits and jagged cave-mouths. A knot-hole yawned
like a crater a hundred feet away.
"We are too small," Glora protested hurriedly. "The door is where you
say, Dr. Kent, but miles away."
With the other drug, the room contracted. The floor-surface shrank and
smoothed a little. The door was distinguishable--a square panel
several hundred feet in width and towering into the upper haze. The
black line of the crack was visible along its bottom.
They ran to it. The top of the crack was ten feet above their heads.
They ran under, across the wide intervening darkness toward a glow of
light. Then they came from under the door into a corridor--and shrank
against a cliff-wall as with a rush of wind and pounding tread the
blurred shapes of a man's huge feet and legs rushed passed. The upper
air was filled with rumbling shouts.
"We must chance it!" exclaimed Dr. Kent. "Too dangerous, so small!
Larger--and if they see us, fight our way out!"
In the turmoil of the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast
aside all restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose
they took of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed.
They rushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was
in their path. Already they were larger than the Polter people.
* * * * *
They squeezed out of a shrinking doorway. The dwindling island was a
turmoil. Little figures were plunging from the palace. At the edge of
the water, Alan, Glora and Dr. Kent stood for an instant looking
behind them. The palace was rocking! Its roof heaved upward then
smashed and fell aside with the clatter of tumbling masonry. The
monstrous fly, its hideous face mashed and oozing, reared itself up
and, with broken, torn wings tried to soar away. But it could not. It
slipped back. The drone and buzz of its fright sounded over the chaos
of noise. Other things came lurching and twitching upward; slithering
out....
The expanding body of the fly was pushing the palace walls outward. In
a moment they collapsed and it emerged....
To Alan and his companions the scene was all shrinking into a
miniature chaos of horror at their shoe-tops. A diminuendo of screams
mingled down there. Overhead were the stars, shining peacefully
remote. Nearby lay a rapidly narrowing channel of shining water. A
tiny city was across it. Lights were moving. The panic had spread from
the island to Orena. Beyond the tiny city, a range of mountains
showed; a cliff, gleaming in the starlight; tunnel mouths.
Suddenly against the stars off there, Alan saw the enlarging figure of
Polter, his hunched shape unmistakable. He was facing the other way.
He lunged and scrambled into a yawning black hole in the mountains.
Polter was escaping! None of these people except himself had the
drugs. He was escaping with the golden cage, out of this doomed atomic
world to our Earth above.
Glora murmured, "There is our way out. Your way. And that is Polter
going. I think he did not see us. So much is growing gigantic here."
She clung to Alan. "Dear one--"
Dr. Kent muttered, "We will wait a moment--wade across--or leap over,
and follow him out. Babs with him--dear God I hope so! This doomed
realm!"
* * * * *
Alan held Glora close. And suddenly he was laughing--a madness, half
hysteria. "Why, this, all this--why look, Glora, it's funny! This
little world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! There's our
giant sailboat!"
Down near their feet the inch-long sailboat stood at its dock. Tiny
human figures were rushing for it; others, floundering in the water,
were trying to climb upon it. Dr. Kent had stepped from the shore a
foot or two, and tiny, lashing white rollers rocked the boat, almost
engulfing it.
Alan's laugh rang out, "God! It's funny, isn't it? All those little
creatures, so excited!"
"Steady, lad!" Dr. Kent touched him. "Don't let yourself laugh! A
moment now, then we'll wade across. Polter won't have much start on
us. We mustn't get too close to him in size, but try and attack him
unawares. We have got to get Babs away from him."
The narrowing passage rose hardly to their knees. They stepped ashore,
well to one side of the toy city. Their growth had almost stopped. But
suddenly Alan realized that Glora was diminishing! She had taken the
other drug.
"Glora!"
"I must go back, Alan. This is my world, doomed perhaps, but I cannot
forsake it now. I must give the enlarging drug to my father. And
others who can rise and fight these monsters."
"Glora!"
Dr. Kent said hurriedly, "She's right, Alan. There is a chance they
can save their city. For her to leave them would be dastardly."
She cried, "You go on up, Alan. You have enough of the drugs. Leave
me, dear one--I am going back!"
"No!" he protested. "You must not! Or if you do, I'll come with you!"
She clung to him. He felt her body diminishing within his encircling
arms. His love for her swept him--this girl who had cajoled Polter, or
tricked him, stolen several of the little vials from him heaven knows
how, and followed him up to the other world. This girl whom Alan now
knew he loved, was leaving him. Forever?
* * * * *
As he stood there, with the miniature landscape at his feet in the wan
starlight, the panic-stricken tiny city, the island with its monsters
rising to overwhelm this microscopic world--it seemed to Alan then
that if he let her go it was the end for him of all life's promised
happiness.
"Alan, lad, come." His father was pulling at him. So horrible a
choice! Alan thought that I was back on that island. But Babs, a
prisoner in the golden cage, was with Polter, plunging upward in size.
And his father was beside him, pleading.
"Alan--come--I can't get out alone. Nor save Babs. And the maddened
Polter, with the power of this drug, can conquer and enslave our Earth
as he has enslaved Orena--just one little city of one tiny golden
atom! Believe me, lad, your duty lies above."
Glora's head was now down at Alan's waist. He stooped and kissed her
white forehead; his fingers, just for an instant, smoothed her glossy
hair.
"Good-by, Glora."
"Dear one, good-by."
She plunged away, and her tread as she dwindled mashed the forest
behind the city. Alan and his father ran for the cliff. They were too
large to squeeze into the little hole. But in a moment they made
themselves smaller. They climbed as they dwindled; checked the drug
action and rushed into the tunnel-mouth.
Alan stopped just for an instant to gaze out over the starlit scene.
It was almost the same viewpoint from which he had his first sight of
Glora's world only an hour or two before. The distant island beyond
the city showed plainly with the shining water around it. The
vegetation there was growing! And there were dark, horribly formless
blobs lurching outward and rising with monstrous bulk against the
background of the stars!
"Alan! Come, lad!"
With a prayer for Glora trembling on his lips, Alan plunged into the
dim phosphorescent gloom of the tunnel.