CHAPTER I_The princess of the atom

The Princess of the Atom

By Ray Cummings

AVON PUBLISHING CORP.

119 W. 57th St.

New York 19, N. Y.

_Published by arrangement with the Author_

THE PRINCESS OF THE ATOM

_AVON REPRINT EDITION_

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

To my son, Hal, and to Russ, my son-in-law--both

chemists--this story is appropriately

and affectionately dedicated.

* * * * *

Her Love Destroyed One World and Threatened Another!

Giants appeared off the coast of New England on the day beautiful

Dianne returned from oblivion. That mysterious beauty had disappeared

from the home of her guardian, Dr. Ferrule, and had been sought in

vain. But with her return, she brought terror to two worlds and an

astounding adventure to the two young men who loved her.

In this breathtaking excursion into atomic mysteries, you will be

enchanted by the unearthly beauty and peril of Dianne, princess of

a world too small to be seen. You will be thrilled by the startling

journey Frank Ferrule makes into infinite smallness to save an

unsuspecting planet. You will be astonished at the terrific fight of

Drake Ferrule against the lustful Togaro, the man who would rule the

universe.

Here is a masterpiece of science-fiction by a dean of fantasy, Ray

Cummings. Unavailable for many years, this unforgettable story of

atomic warfare and invasion from an alien world is the first of the new

series of AVON FANTASY NOVELS, selected by Donald A. Wollheim, editor

of the famous AVON FANTASY READER, and specially designed for the

growing public that has discovered the new thrill of Science-Fiction.

* * * * *

_Table of Contents_

The Coming of the Giants

The Mysterious Visitor

The Signal Fire

The Strange Island

Princess of the Atom

The Chase into Smallness

The Flight in the Cellular Caverns

Death of the Giants

Tiny Fragment of Rock

The White Flag

Giant in Ambush

The Meeting

The Stowaway

The Locked Door

Togaro at Bay

Frank's Plan

The Tiny Prowler

The Escape of Togaro

Night of Turmoil

In the Blood Light of Dawn

Riding the Giant

"Vengeance of Togaro!"

Doomed Little Planet!

The End of a World

In the Campfire Light

The Black and White Flags

The Fight on the Rock Summit

The Return to Earth

The Theft of the Rock

The World at Bay

Togaro Strikes

The Fugitives

The Combat of Titans

Princess of the Cottage

"_Beautiful with a grace beyond the reach of art._"

_Prologue_

I was seventeen years old before I had any idea that there was a

mystery in my family. My name is Frank Ferrule. My mother died when I

was still a child. There was my father; my older brother, Drake; and my

younger sister, Dianne. We had always seemed to me an average little

family group, except for Dianne's beauty. That, in truth, was abnormal

enough. And upon that, I was to learn, the mystery hinged--tragedy it

was for Dianne, striking all unheralded like a bolt from a cloudless

sky.

Our life, up to that August when the sudden, inexplicable tragedy came,

was perfectly prosaic, uneventful, so that I can find little of it to

record here that would be of interest. Father was a consulting chemist.

My brother Drake, six years older than I, grew up to be a stalwart

blond giant of a fellow--a full six feet two--with a lazy, rollicking

good-nature like a huge dog conscious of his own strength. Father often

said that; and called me a terrier. I was always small and slender,

with dark hair, and by nature excitable.

There was nothing unusual, nothing of particular interest about Drake

and me. But Dianne's beauty would have fascinated the world. I can

remember that she had always been beautiful. In the advertisements of

fashion magazines there are drawings of children--ideally beautiful

little girls. Dianne, as a child, was like that, a blue-eyed

flaxen-haired doll.

But soon she began to develop character. At sixteen the doll look was

wholly gone. Her face bore the stamp of her individuality; but it

remained as exquisite, as colorful as a cameo, or like a pastel, so

delicately flawless of feature, so perfect of natural coloring that

the effect was startling. I have heard people say, meeting her, that

she seemed unreal. And certainly, everywhere she went, she attracted

unusual attention.

This tragedy came--the mystery began--one August when Dianne was

sixteen, I seventeen, and Drake twenty-three. We were at our summer

home on the coast of Maine. Father was of a temperament which demanded

a quiet life. I think, too, that with such a girl as Dianne, he found

seclusion an added advantage.

She could so easily have been spoiled; but she was not. A gentle

little thing, sweet in the old-fashioned storied style, with all the

sophistication of her age passing her by untouched. Mischievous she had

always been since childhood, and she was human enough to be thrilled by

the frequent offers of motion-picture tryouts and the like.

Such offers inevitably came. We were not hermits. We spent our winters

in New York City. Quietly, but we had many friends and the fame of

Dianne's beauty spread.

But father kept her unspoiled, and apart from it all.

We often had friends at our summer home; but it chanced that this

particular August there was no one but our family there. I recall the

fateful morning of the fourteenth. There was nothing to mark it from

any other morning--warm and cloudless, with a fresh breeze that rippled

the water of the cove and set the whitecaps running outside.

Father announced that he would be all day at a chemical experiment and

not to disturb him. Drake, Dianne and I decided that we would take the

dory and row out to Bird's Nest Island; fish a little; have a swim and

a campfire lunch. We started soon after breakfast. It was not a long

pull, for the island was only some two miles offshore. We found the sea

outside smooth running, but brisk. The wide bow of the dory lifted and

slapped as we headed into the whitecaps.

Bird's Nest Island had, to my mind, always spelled romance. It was a

tiny, rocky peak alone in the sea, an irregularly round island only

a few hundred acres in extent. The fifty-foot peak was almost in

its center. Gulls often hung around that little naked crag pointing

skyward. A rocky, but gently sloping beach encircled all the island.

There were trees and underbrush; and, queerly enough, a spring of fresh

water.

It was an uninhabited island, with all the romance of Robinson Crusoe

hanging over it. From the rock peak one could stand and see all the

circular island shore and the sea in every direction. As children we

had come here with the grown-ups. We had placed a cairn upon the summit

and erected a signal flag, then, ignoring the obvious shore of the

Maine coast, had built a signal fire and prayed that its smoke might be

seen by some passing ship which would come and rescue us.

We were too old for such fancies now, but the romance clung. We put on

our swimming suits, this August morning, and swam from the lee beach.

There is only one incident of significance for me to record.

Drake was swimming far out with lusty strokes. Dianne and I not so

skillful or daring in the water, were in the shallows of the beach. I

recall that I leaped at her and ducked her. She came up gasping, but

laughing, and made a rush at me. We mingled in a fight, tumbling each

other into the water.

I had always been Dianne's favorite. We were nearer an age, and Drake,

when in his 'teens, had looked down upon us as mere children. We

wrestled now in the water; and I remember that I found myself clinging

to Dianne's hair, up by her forehead.

"Frank, stop that! Let me go!"

The frightened vehemence of her tone made me loose her at once.

"What's the matter?"

"You hurt me."

"Shucks."

A girl growing up with two older brothers gets used to rough treatment.

It was not like Dianne to call quits.

"You did hurt me."

"Did I? Sorry, Dianne. Come on, let's swim then. Look where Drake is."

The incident left me puzzled. Dianne had done that before. She did not

like her hair touched. It grew down at the center of her forehead in a

queer little peak, and she wore it parted far to one side.

Children are not curious about such things, but I was old enough now to

wonder why Dianne was annoyed when her hair there was touched.

Drake came ashore, and he and I wandered off to dress. Then we called

to Dianne. We had left her only a couple of hundred feet away.

I called, "Oh Dianne, hurry it up. You going to take all day?"

She did not answer. We called again. Drake said, "She's spoofing us.

Hiding."

We ran back to where we had left her. The little pile of her clothes

lay there untouched.

"Dianne!" Our shouts echoed over the island, but there was no answer.

"Find her in two minutes," said Drake. He shouted, "Watch out, Dianne,

we're coming! I'll run around the beach first, Frank. You climb up to

the rock--see everything from there--"

I went up to the peak, where I could see all the beach. Our dory was

undisturbed, and I could see no sign of a boat leaving the island, or

anywhere near it. I saw Drake sprinting around the beach, then plunging

off among the trees. I could see his figure occasionally. He called up,

"See her, Frank?"

"No!"

Fear struck us then. We searched, at first laughingly, then with stark

horror overwhelming us. The little island was all too easy to search.

There were no caves, no cliff over which she could have fallen. We had

seen all the beach and the near-by water within a few moments after her

disappearance. Surely there had not been time for her to swim out and

be drowned. She was a fair swimmer, and cautious for all her youth. And

even if she had gone back in the water and got into distress, we were

so close we could have heard at once any call she made.

But she was gone. Vanished. No boat had landed that could have taken

her. That was impossible without our seeing it over that reach of empty

sea.

I recall our frantic search. Then at last Drake and I alone frantically

rowed back home to tell father. It was like a dream of horror. Father's

white, solemn face. He never once reproached Drake or me. He telephoned

the village. Then came another trip to the island in a launch with

grave-faced men.

But Dianne was never found. We brought back her clothes that lay

untouched there by the underbrush at the beach. I could not look at

them, but went into my bedroom and lay on the bed and sobbed. It was

the first tragedy that life had brought me.

Night had fallen when Drake came to me. He leaned over me

sympathetically.

"Take it easy, kid." His own face was white and drawn; he loved Dianne

as much as I did, but he was older, more stoical. "Father wants to see

us, Frank. Get hold of yourself." His arm went around my shoulder and I

huddled against him, "Take it easy--wash your face and come on down."

It was about Dianne--father had something to tell us. We faced him in

the living room. He closed its doors.

"Sit down, lads."

It may have been in Drake's thoughts, certainly it was in mine, that

now father was about to blame us. I had felt, those hours sobbing on

the bed, that somehow I was to blame. That incident in the water when

I had annoyed Dianne about her hair--wild thoughts swept me that I had

annoyed her and she had committed suicide. I had already told father

about it; told him in the launch. He had listened and waved it away.

He sat facing us now, a slender, solemn man of fifty, with iron-gray

hair, and thin, studious face. His eyes behind his big horn-rimmed

spectacles seemed unnaturally bright, but gentle.

He said, "Don't look at me like that, lads--I've no intention of

reproaching you."

And then he told us, in a burst, without preface, what we had never

suspected.

"You were about two years old, Frank--and you, Drake, about eight. It

was the year before your mother died. She and I went to Bird's Nest

Island, leaving you children at home."

This same island!

"A summer day," he said, "just about like this. We went for a

picnic--just as you did today. It was fifteen years ago. We were

wandering about the little island--your mother and I. We heard a

wailing cry, an infant's. In a thicket we found a little girl baby.

Unharmed. An infant, about a year old, who evidently had been asleep

and now had awakened and was crying. There was no boat in sight about

this island. We concluded that some one had been there, abandoned the

baby and departed. We took the baby home. No one ever came to claim

her. It was Dianne."

Dianne not our blood sister? A foundling! It struck us amazed.

Father went on gently, "We thought it best, your mother and I, not to

tell you children. It would not have been fair to Dianne. There would

come a time when you should know, of course--perhaps I should have told

you before this--and I don't know, perhaps it was wrong of me to let

you go back to that island. But I suppose that's foolish!"

His voice drifted away with his thoughts. Nothing occurred to Drake

and me to say; we sat dumbly staring at each other.

Father rose presently and unlocked a drawer of his desk. "I brought

this down to show you. There was nothing about the infant to give a

clew to its identity. Just the baby lying there, clad in a single

garment. This."

He held out a tiny infant robe. Long-sleeved, and with a tiny hood.

Strange-looking thing! Even as a lad of seventeen I was at once aware

of its strangeness. A gossamer fabric like nothing I had ever seen

before. A fabric golden as though its threads were pale spun gold.

Or as though it might have been woven of fairy threads of golden

hair--like Dianne's.

"Just that robe," he said sadly. "What sort of material it is, no one

can say." He took it from us gently and replaced it in the drawer. "And

there was one other thing. You, Frank, spoke of Dianne being sensitive

about the hair at her forehead. That little peak where the hair grew

low, you remember? There was a scar on her forehead. Not exactly a

scar--a queer crescent patch of skin. It seemed not white, but almost

like the sheen of silver. It looked--well, something like a crescent

moon. We hated publicity, your mother and I. We kept the finding of the

baby reasonably quiet. We had a medical specialist examine the child. A

normal girl baby, promising extreme beauty of body and feature. But the

crescent-moon scar was an enigma--the doctor had never seen or heard of

anything like it.

"So we called the baby Dianne. Your mother named her that. The

crescent, there on her forehead, was really very beautiful when one got

used to it. But too unusual. Too--mysterious. And so we trained her

hair to cover it up; and I--I taught her--well, perhaps I taught her to

be ashamed of it. Or at least, never to mention it to any one--and so

she was sensitive about it as though it were a secret blemish to her

beauty."

I need not detail that evening with father. But there was one thing he

said that I never forgot. He said it half to himself, "Dianne was so

abnormally beautiful, and that strange golden dress and the crescent

silver scar--I have wondered so many times, all these years, wondered

if she were just exactly human like the rest of us." He was sorry at

once that he had said it, and he would never explain.

This day that we lost Dianne was five years before the coming of the

giants.

CHAPTER I

_The Coming of the Giants_

The first of the giants was reported by a small steamship out of

Halifax, bound for Portland. The ship had rounded Cape Sable, Nova

Scotia, during the night of March 20th. The sea was stormy; the night

overcast with almost a gale from the north. The ship's lookout saw what

at first looked like a huge dark rock looming out of the ocean where no

rock should have been. It was well inshore from the ship; and though it

was only a few miles away, it was not seen clearly.

The ship continued on her course. An hour later, the full moon broke

through a rift in the clouds, painting the sullen sea with silver.

To the north, where the southern headlands of the land were barely

visible, a giant human figure was seen standing in the ocean. Every

one on the ship saw it clearly. Incredible as the vision of a fabled

sea monster, yet there it was, unmistakable, frightening--it threw the

ship's company into a panic of terror.

The thing seemed human. The giant figure of a man. He stood waist-deep

in the ocean with the waves beating against his naked chest. How deep

the water was, the master of the ship could not say. Ten fathoms

perhaps, in the shallows where the giant stood--sixty feet; and his

torso towered another sixty above the surface. He stood watching the

ship. Then, as it passed, he followed it; wading slowly along to keep

abreast of it as doubtless he had been doing for an hour past. In the

moonlight, details were plain. A bullet-headed giant. Some said that

they could see his features--human of cast, but brutish.

The figure kept its distance, regarding the ship, but making no effort

to approach. The vessel turned in a moment off its course, and fled

south. The moon was presently obscured. They saw no more of the giant.

This steamship carried wireless. But the master could see no rational

way of sending such a wild report. But when hours later, the vessel

docked in Portland, the tale was given out.

In these days of skeptical enlightened civilization one cannot claim

to have seen a sea serpent and expect anything but laughter. And this

was even more incredible. The ship's commander, within a few hours,

even doubted the evidence of his own senses. But from the sailors the

tale leaked out. And a whole ship's company cannot be insane, or all

similarly drunk at once.

The newspapers caught at it, and spread it jocularly until the

officials of the freight line cursed their captain and all the crew of

the ship for arousing such ridicule.

But still there was some corroboration. From a village near Cape Sable

came the report that a giant man had been seen wading in the ocean,

seen by a few people during a brief period of moonlight, and then was

gone.

Where the figure came from, or where it went, none could say. It was

seen just this one night. The tale went around the world and caused a

smile, and in a few days was forgotten.

That was the first of the giants.

I was at this time a pilot in the International Mail Service, flying

a local plane from Boston up the coast to St. John, daytimes. Up one

day with several stops along the route; and back the next day; and

then a day off duty. Drake had become father's assistant. They had a

laboratory in New York City, and were living now in our Westchester

home. Our home on the Maine shore was closed for the winter.

Once a week I went to New York to be with father and Drake. I got there

the day the giant was reported. It was of particular interest to me,

since it was not far from my flying route.

Father said, "You keep your eyes open, Frank. And look here, if you see

anything--don't report it at once. Telephone me."

He was so solemn that I laughed. And Drake was solemn, too.

I demanded, "I say, you two--you don't believe this fool thing, do you?"

"Perhaps," said Drake.

I think that even then they had some vague idea of what it might mean.

I thought the yarn was absurd; still less could I have imagined our own

connection with it. Never once did I link it with Dianne. It was nearly

five years now since that day she had vanished.

I made my next northward flight with no sign of a giant. Nor did I see

anything unusual upon the return. In a few days more, like the rest of

the world, I had lost interest.

Then one day near the end of March when I was off duty in Boston,

another giant was reported. It had been seen the preceding night.

A giant man--fifty feet tall, or three hundred, according to the

differing, confused versions. The figure had appeared in the ocean,

possibly near the mouth of the Penobscot River in northern Maine.

Several coast villages and several ships reported seeing the figure,

wading north a mile offshore. It was reported almost all the way to the

Bay of Fundy. And then it vanished.

This was too obvious for disbelief. No damage had been done. The thing

apparently had encountered no ships; it had nowhere come ashore. But

the sea was calm this night; the waves of the wading figure had rolled

in and pounded the coast to give tangible evidence that the thing was

no vision.

The world was more than interested this time. There were near-panics

in Boston that day--an exodus of people leaving the city by rail and

by airplanes. Several of the local ships from New York to Boston

canceled their sailings. People began leaving Cape Cod. There was

disorganization, almost a flight from all the cities and villages up

the coast.

This was far different from some understood danger. A hurricane, a

volcano, an earthquake--people will often face them with a stoicism

amounting to foolhardiness, rather than abandon their homes. But

this was the unknown, the supernatural. A gruesome horror. Within a

day military law was declared all up the Maine coast. Troops were

patrolling the area, and the people were being urged to leave.

My chief sent for me at field headquarters. My mate was there; and the

two alternate pilots of the route.

"We've discontinued temporarily," he told us. He turned to me as the

senior pilot. "Ferrule, the government wants this area patrolled by

plane at night. Boston to the New Brunswick border, to connect with

Canadian patrol planes. You and Jones want to tackle it?"

We did, of course. We were dispatched that same night--one of six or

eight planes flying independently of one another. We left Boston about

ten that evening, I and my relief pilot, Bob Jones; and we carried a

newly installed code radio with a fellow named Green to operate it.

It is a run of about three hundred miles from Boston, up the crescent

curve of coast to the Canadian border. Our orders were to fly at about

a thousand feet of altitude, keeping a mile or so offshore. If we saw

one of these giants we were to follow it, keep it in sight, and try

to determine where it went. We were to report at once by radio. A

battleship had already been ordered north; it was to remain in Cape

Cod waters, waiting further developments.

The night was calm and starlit. An hour passed. Then two hours. We saw

nothing unusual. We were up around the Penobscot now.

Jones, at my elbow, murmured, "One was seen here, Frank. That last

one--"

A plane came by, flying south. Another patrol doubtless. We felt that

no giant could be ahead of us or this other plane would have seen him;

stopped and stayed with him.

The flattened moon came up out of the sea to the east. It was golden at

first, laying a broad golden path on the water.

We passed over the many islands. We saw a ship or two--and occasionally

a plane.

And then we saw the giant! The actual sight of him, even fortified by

what I expected, was a shock of horror.

Jones murmured, "Good God!" He gripped my arm impulsively, but I shook

him off.

"Don't do that, you fool!"

"Look at him, Frank!" Bob cried then.

He was no more than a mile or so ahead. He stood at the entrance to a

cove. A rocky headland perhaps a hundred feet high was beside him; and

he stood with a hand resting against it as though to steady himself.

The ocean surface lapped at his knees.

To the right, a mile or so offshore, was the tiny dark blob of an

island. Bird's Nest Island! I realized it suddenly. And this was our

cove. Our summer home was set in the trees only a few hundred yards

back from where the giant was standing.

Green's radio was sending the news. He hunched down, intent at his

work. Jones was shaking beside me.

"Lower, Frank! Get down near him!"

We spiraled down. The moonlight was on him, a hundred-foot figure of a

man, naked from the waist up. He had pale hair, close cut, on a round

head.

"Frank, look at the people!"

A group of tiny black figures was on the cliff, standing in fascinated

horror. The giant had not moved; and then with a swift step and a

flip of his arm he reached back over the cliff. The tiny figures were

scattered. In a patch of moonlit rock two of them lay dead.

We passed only a few hundred feet above the giant. He looked up as

though confused or annoyed at the sound of our motors.

Green cautioned me: "Not too close, Frank! If he ever reached--"

That giant hand could have knocked us down into the sea as though we

had been a tiny humming insect.

We circled, zoomed up a trifle, and came back. The news had spread.

There were two other planes here with us now. A confusion was on shore.

We could see, far back, figures and vehicles moving in the moonlight.

And lights. And far out to sea, there were the lights of a ship.

We passed again over the giant. Another plane arrived. Four of us,

buzzing like insects over the monstrous figure. It turned suddenly and

began wading out to sea.

Jones cried: "Look! He's smaller! By George, he is smaller!"

The figure did seem less gigantic. Or perhaps it was the deeper water

around him. Then suddenly he sank prone and was swimming. The sea was

lashed white with his strokes. Swimming for Bird's Nest Island? It

seemed so.

"Lower, Frank! Take us down!"

"Not too close," cautioned Green, for fear he'd stand up again suddenly.

We swept under another plane. The swimming giant flung up an arm; a

surge of the water mounted like a geyser in the moonlight. His flashing

arms and the black blob of his head were visible. He was halfway to the

island. Was he still smaller now?

Then suddenly he dived. The ocean closed over him. The waves he had

made rolled away. The surface was calm, unbroken. We waited. Minutes.

He did not come up.

The other planes with us swept back and forth, dangerously close to

the surface at times. But the giant was gone. We waited half an hour.

We crossed over Bird's Nest Island several times. Its tiny rocky peak

stood naked in the brilliant moonlight; its trees and shrubbery were

deep green; its beach shone clear with the moonlight on it and the calm

sea rolling up.

No sign of the giant. And then we were ordered to return to Boston. We

turned south.

We were an hour on our southern flight when Green picked up our call. A

message for me.

"Your father, Ferrule--he's sent word through headquarters. We're

ordered to land at Bennett Field, New York, so you can go to

your father and your brother Drake at once." He added: "The exact

message--personal, you'll probably understand it--your father says tell

you to come at once. He has heard from Dianne."