by Ed Earl Repp
He blinked, then, and his gaze scanned the auditorium within the lecture hall into which he himself had been transported. It was similar to the larger chamber, but everything in it appeared to be in reverse.
The audience in this inner auditorium was below him, instead of above. Whatever sort of platform he was on appeared to be at the top of a pyramid that rose from the floor inside in tiers. This second ceiling was a half dome that arched down from ten feet above his head to the rear of the inner hall. And everything within the second chamber was tinted a delicate blue, opaque, yet with a suggestion of depth to it.
Amazement shot through Horne’s features as he stared down at the inside audience of at least a hundred persons, who returned his gaze with the same startled expression. They were of both sexes, the men wearing short, vestlike coats over collarless shirts, and very full trousers which ended above their ankles. The women were dressed in brilliant tunics over white, long skirts. All of them wore thin metal bands about their foreheads.
It came to Horne then that he had been carried somehow to another country. It seemed both possible and logical. His mind leaped at the conjecture that he had been brought here after his injury in the laboratory, that these men and women were specialists who were trying to repair the damage done.
Yes, that must be it. For Gary Horne knew he had just been through an experience out of which he ought not to have emerged alive.
He had been lecturing here in the California Institute of Technology. Then had come the climax of his address—an actual experiment in which an atom would be smashed and its internal secrets revealed on the electron-magnifying screen which was the crowning point of his scientific career.
His gray eyes sparkling with his inner excitement, Gary Horne had stepped up to the intricate, almost menacing mechanism which he had devised, thrown the switch—and six million volts had smashed through a thorium atom.
And then Horne had begun to glow with a green luminosity! Horrible and unearthly he had glowed, while the hall full of scientists sat transfixed, until a final flash of violet brilliance coursed through his body—and then Gary Horne disappeared entirely….
He rubbed his eyes now and studied the strangely different men and women in his new inner world.
Their arms and legs were noticeably longer than that of any other human being he had ever seen. The arms were perhaps six inches longer, the legs proportionately attenuated. Now, as Horne looked at them, he could see other differences. Thinner features, glossier hair, more slender bodies. Suddenly a fear gripped him. Who were these people? And—where was he?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, a voice said:
“We have brought you here, man of the Seventh Plane, for retribution. We are those you sought to destroy.”
Horne shot a startled look around him. Though he was certain the voice had come to him from his very side, yet there was no one nearer than the watchers below, who were at least forty feet from him! He forced down his amazement and replied:
“I—I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
He seemed to hear laughter from the audience below. Certainly he saw their faces relax in smiles. Out of the crowd a young woman stepped. An older man, tall, dark, severe joined her. The girl’s voice, the same one he had heard before, rang again in his mind.
“Your petty divisions do not concern us, O man. To us, you are Gary Horne—of the Seventh Plane.”
“Seventh Plane!” Horne repeated in surprise. His mind was a confused, bewildered hodgepodge of conjecture. What ungodly mystery did all this cloak?
Suspiciously he glanced about him. He noticed that the small, square platform on which he stood was littered with what appeared to be electrical apparatus. There were gigantic vacuum tubes, glittering silver coils, bars of some transparent green stuff that looked more like metal than glass. But even at a glance he could see that things were in disorder. From several bits of equipment smoke arose slowly. Some of the tubes were shattered.
Now he looked back to the girl. Tensely he started toward her down the long stretch of bluish steps. He realized he was lighter, for some reason. He had a little difficulty controlling his stride, for there seemed to be springs in his shoes. When he had come quite close to the girl, he stopped and stared intently at her features.
* * *
She was quite beautiful. Only the long arms and legs differentiated her from any other lovely girl he had ever known. Her face was smooth and healthfully colored, but showed no trace of cosmetics on the glowing cheeks and red lips. Her eyes were of deep sapphire that glowed with an inner fire of alertness. Her nose was thin and finely chiseled. She wore a lustrous gold tunic fastened around her waist by a wide belt of transparent red links. The skirt that fell in graceful folds to her small feet was white, like the skirts worn by all the women in the assemblage. But through her own skirt ran tiny threads of gold that caused it to shimmer brilliantly when the light struck it at a certain angle. Horne gazed at the girl with wonder and admiration. She smiled.
“Is it possible, Gary Horne,” she asked slowly, “that you do not know where you are?”
“I confess,” Horne replied positively, “that I have no more idea of where I am than I have of how you can understand and speak my language.”
The girl started to answer, but before her words came to the young scientist, the man at her side broke in rudely,
“Your Majesty, is it necessary that we talk with this creature? But an hour ago he attempted to plunge our universe to its doom. Hardly a year ago he destroyed the constellation Gira, slaughtering its teeming millions at a stroke. Need we say more to him than—death!”
Horne started as the word grated on his senses. He took swift inventory of the speaker. The man was tall and cadaverous, with a spindly chest and thin neck. His face was swarthy, his hair black, his eyes sharp as acid. Beneath a long nose his lips were thin and bloodless.
Abruptly, Horne blurted, “I don’t know what you people are or why you seem to regard me as a criminal. I don’t even know what kind of place this is supposed to be. But I do know there is no such constellation as ‘Gira,’ which I am accused of having destroyed. And as for trying to demolish the universe—you forget that it would annihilate me as well as you!”
A swift, puzzled look passed between the man and the girl. Horne heard a murmur from the large body of watchers who sat forward, tensely listening to them. Then, as he waited for a reply, a bright beam of sunlight glanced through the window into the domed room. He squinted as its rays struck full in his face. But somehow it did not seem as bright as usual. In the next moment he sprang to the window and peered out.
He staggered back as though he had been struck a physical blow. For this was not the sun he was looking at. This was some strange solar body, small and red instead of gigantic and yellow.
Horne whirled to face the assembly. “In God’s name,” he cried, “where am I?”
The girl said clearly then, “You are on one of the worlds you have sought to destroy. You are on the planet Thoria, of the Fifth Plane. In your own language, Gary Horne, you are on an atom-world!”
Chapter II
The Crystal
For a long moment the words seemed to have no particular meaning for the young physicist. Atom-world—there was no such thing! There was the solar system and the universe, and there were thousands of other universes even larger than his own. But atom universes!
Finally Gary Horne asked hoarsely, “Tell me—what’s happened to bring me here? Who are you people, and—and—”
The cadaverous leader beside the girl crossed his thin arms.
“I am Jaro, Workmaster of Thoria; the woman—our Queen. Your own bloodthirstiness brought you here. When, one year ago, you sent out your cowardly rays into our universe, you utterly destroyed the constellation Gira. It is known for certain, that many of the planets revolving about the seven suns of the constellation were inhabited. How many millions of souls you blasted out of existence when you exploded those planet
s will never be known.
“We resolved at that time that the crime should not go unpunished. From that time until this, we have labored to find a means of destroying your own universe. But that has not been possible as yet. Still, we were able to send out a feeble ray of our own, which fused with yours and caused your downfall. The force exerted by our combined efforts was sufficient to transfer you from your own Seventh Plane to ours—the Fifth.”
“These ‘Planes’ you speak of,” Horne frowned. “What are they?”
“The Fifth Plane,” the other said, “is that five stages removed from the ultimate in micro-finity. In other words, between our universes there are two stages. There is Thoria, our planet, and there is our atom-universe—which is the Sixth Plane. Your own planet, whatever it may be, is the Seventh Plane; your universe the Eighth. Five stages below us is the point beyond which matter ceases to exist.”
Horne was silent, trying to grasp the fact that he had been shrunk in a fraction of a second to atomic size. It was impossible—and yet it had happened. He himself was now no more than an infinitesimal speck on the surface of one of the invisible atoms he had been trying to shatter in his laboratory for so many months. He was alive and breathing, yet he was small enough to walk on one of the electrons revolving about the nucleus of a thorium atom.
The thought staggered Horne. It had been considered impossible before for a man to grasp the size of an atom, other than mathematically. A grim smile touched his lips as he thought how much more difficult it was to realize that he, Gary Horne, was approximately one-billionth the size of an electron!
Suddenly another thought came to him. Earnestly he tried to reassure his listeners.
“Had I known it was lives I was toying with, instead of ultra-microscopic bits of matter, I should never have attempted my experiments. Why, to me it was just as though I should take a bit of dust from this very floor and try to shatter it!”
He spread his hands and smiled. The explanation, he felt, was an apt one.
A gasp went up from the assemblage. The dark-faced leader glowered at the girl.
“Thala,” he said crisply, “have we need of more proof than this? By his own lips you have had admission that he is capable of blasting the Fourth and Third Planes into elemental micro-finity!”
Thala looked surprised, and then angry. “Enough!” she said. “Take him to the crystal!”
Horne stepped forward and argued, “If I’ve made a slip, I apologize. I was merely trying to impress on you—”
He stopped then. Any further talk was obviously futile. Especially since, he realized abruptly, their speech had been by mental impulses. Not a lip had moved even once!
* * *
Four men closed in on him then. Suddenly one of them made a quick movement and tried to encircle him with his long arms. In the next moment the scientist exploded into action.
His right hand, powered by sturdy shoulder muscles, ripped up into the guard’s face, hurling him to the floor. Gary Horne pivoted and swung a vicious roundhouse left into another man’s chest. The breath left the second guard’s body in a gasp as he sagged to his knees. Now the husky young physicist shot through the opening he had cleared and headed for the door.
Jaro, the evil-visaged Workmaster, sprang into his path and attempted to drag him down. Horne employed a very efficient Earthly boring ruse as he closed with the man. His left hand pulled back low, as though to drive into his groin. Jaro flinched and dropped his hands over his stomach to protect himself. In a flash Horne’s knotted right hand smashed into the other’s jaw and flung him out of the way.
The large audience of men and women rose up with angry shouts and scrambled to intercept him, their thin faces distorted with rage. Long arms reached out to hold him, but his legs, accustomed to a stronger gravitational pull, catapulted him past. He reached the door and sprang through.
Horne’s chest heaved with his exertions as he swept his eyes over the scene before him. He was on a balcony over a deep canyon. The crevasse looked a mile deep to him. On all sides, cylindrical structures, faintly colored, sprang into the air for hundreds of feet. He had a glimpse of a futuristic-looking city, spanned with slender bridges and paved with tinted highways, clustering the banks of the canyon, and then he saw the bridge off to his left. Instinctively he ran toward it.
It was only about ten feet wide. Gary Horne could see it spanned the quarter-mile wide canyon in a graceful, curving arch, to disappear into a building on the other side. Hastily he sprang up its sloping runway. He could hear feet pounding close behind him, and suddenly a series of popping sounds. About him the air seemed to be exploding with angry bursts that tossed him from side to side.
It was difficult to keep his footing as the explosions came closer and threw him this way and that. Suddenly his feet were knocked neatly from under him. He sprawled on his back and skidded across the slippery runway. Too late he saw his danger.
He had a brief glimpse of the edge of the bridge as it approached altogether too fast, and then his body struck a guardrail support and he was toppling over the side into the crevasse! His eyes distended with terror as he found himself hurtling toward the far-off canyon floor. The air commenced to whistle past his ears in a screaming crescendo.
Suddenly Horne jerked to a stop. His whole body ached from the jarring impact of striking a solid floor. He was dimly conscious, as a spinning void closed in on him, of lying on a slab of glass over empty space. Then consciousness left him.
* * *
A stabbing headache brought Gary Horne awake once more. He sat up feebly and looked about. He was lying on a cold floor in a small, circular room with light coming in from all sides through glass walls. Glancing out into the scene beyond the room, he knew he must be at the top of some building. He could make out the tops of one or two structures, but nothing more. Slowly he got to his feet and looked about him.
A gleaming shaft was the nearest thing to furniture in the room. It rose, a black, fluted column, out of the floor and ended just short of the flat glass ceiling. Horne supposed it was an elevator shaft, for he saw no stairs. The walls were round and smooth and perfectly transparent, the floor of black glass. But there was not a chair or a bed or any other bit of furniture in the whole cell.
Painfully he made his way to the wall and stared down. He saw now that he had been brought to the very top of the building. This, then, must be the Thorian equivalent of a dungeon.
All Horne’s fears dropped from him at the sight he had barely glimpsed before, on the bridge. He had never seen anything so magnificent, so beautiful, so completely unearthly as the sight that met his startled gaze.
The Thorian city lay at least a half mile below him. Through the very center of the cylindrical, columnlike buildings ran a wide canyon that was as majestic as the dream of a master architect. On its banks were clustered the hundred-odd shining structures that composed the city.
From his view high above them, they appeared to Horne as large as dollars at their flat tops, and as small as dimes at their bases. Many of them clung to the very brink of the chasm.
Across the canyon itself stretched numerous thin, arching bridges. Some of them sprang from halfway up buildings to cross into other structures. The streets appeared like twisting ribbons of various colors. Color appeared to be the order of the day in this little electron-world. Every building was shaded from some deep tone at its base to a pastel shade at the very crown. The entire effect was one of sheer loveliness.
Faintly visible from Horne’s lofty vantage point were the teeming thousands that came and went on the streets far below. It came home to Gary Horne with force, as he gazed down into the city, that it was a terrible thing he had done. With one deafening crash of electricity he had often scattered these microscopic civilizations through the infinite depths of space. He had slaughtered on an atomic scale billions of men as important in their own lives as he was in his!
With a bitter sigh the young scientist turned to look about his little circular
apartment. A gasp parted his lips as he realized he was no longer alone. The elevator door was ajar, and in the rectangular entrance stood Thala, Queen of Thoria.
“I have been listening to you, Gary Horne,” she smiled, all trace of animosity erased from her countenance. “Your words please me.”
“Listening!” Horne began. Then he realized that what she had been hearing was his thoughts. It gave him an unpleasant, uncanny feeling. Nor did it put him any more at ease to realize he was “hearing” only the thoughts she wanted him to hear.
“Your words please me,” Thala had said.
* * *
Horne started from his reverie, smiled a little bleakly.
“How can that be, O Queen”—that was the proper form of address, he knew—“when only a short while ago I was ordered here for ‘saying’ things that your people detested?”
“The thoughts in the Council Room were many,” Thala replied. “Perhaps I became confused and sentenced you unfairly. At any rate, I am convinced by the things you have just said that you did not intend to destroy Gira.”
“Please believe me, I didn’t!” Horne said earnestly. “If I had had the slightest suspicion of what I was doing, nothing in the world could have made me do it.”
A troubled frown crossed Thala’s smooth forehead. She looked away. Horne’s eyes appraised her interestedly as she gazed through the transparent wall over the far-off atomic horizon.
Though she appeared to be not more than twenty-three or twenty-four, there was a grave, serene quality of loveliness in her face unusual in so young a woman. Her dark blue eyes were deep and thoughtful, and yet sparkling and alive. Her rich lips were molded in firm lines. And there was a forceful set to her round little chin.
Gary Horne found himself wanting to kiss her, suddenly, without knowing why.