I put the low-powered instrument over it; Brett adjusted the light. The
stone was smoothly polished. But now, under the glass, upon a shaggy
mass of uneven rock surface I saw the vehicle visually as large as it
had been originally. But it was dwindling progressively faster. Soon
it lay tilted sidewise upon a slope of the rock; smaller--a tiny speck
clinging there.
"Can you still see it?" Brett murmured.
"Yes--no--now it is gone." The rock seemed empty. Somewhere down
in there the little mechanism lay dwindling. Forever it would grow
smaller. Dwindling into an infinity of smallness; but always to be with
things of its size--and things yet smaller. . . .
As I turned from the glass, I became aware that Martt and Frannie were
not in the room. Dr. Gryce and Brett, absorbed in the test, quite
evidently had not noticed them leave. There had been two other models
on the table--there was now but one.
Then from the garden outside the house a cry reached us. A shout--a cry
of fear--terror. Martt's voice.
"Father! Brett! Help us! Help! Quick!"
* * * * *
We rushed from the room.
Crowning wonder, yet horrible! A surge of fear swept me. In the garden
quite near the house stood the other model. Small no longer. It had
grown--_was growing_--until already it was as large as the house
itself. Around it the flowers, shrubs, even a tree had been pushed
and trampled by its expanding bulk. It stood gleaming white in the
sunlight, motionless save for that steady, increasingly rapid growth.
Its windows and doors loomed large dark rectangles; its balcony was
broad as a corridor; its cone tower was already reared higher than the
nearest trees.
"Father! Help!"
At the doorway of the vehicle, standing just outside it, were the
terror-stricken Martt and Frannie. They were holding the end of a long
metallic pole which projected into the doorway. Struggling with its
weight, striving to throw the switch inside.
We reached them. The expanding bulk of the gleaming side of the
vehicle had pushed them back into a thicket of shrubbery. Near them a
tree, uprooted as though it were a straw sticking upright in sand, was
pushed aside and fell with a crash.
Martt and Frannie were livid with terror; breathless, almost exhausted
with their futile efforts.
Martt panted, "We can't--lift the pole! It's--too heavy--too large
inside."
Within the huge doorway, by the sunlight streaming through the windows,
I could see the interior half of the pole, bloated by growth, huge,
heavy.