“Quiet, Mike’s coming out of it.” That was Morely. A deep groan came from the man on the floor. He winked his eyes against the light, closing them quickly again as if it made him dizzy. But he opened them directly, and tried to sit up. Trent said not a word as he permitted the man to get his bearings. Now the woman was moaning, making mumbling sounds under her breath.
Morely helped Mike to sit up, feeling his pulse as he did so. The man became aware of those administering to him, tried to get to his feet. “Take your time, Mike, it’s all right,” put in Trent.
It was some time before the pair were fully cognizant of their surroundings, however. Trent and Morely had gotten Mary to a couch against a far wall, and left her there to recover by herself; then they were helping Mike to orientate himself once more. But gradually it was coming back to him. He wanted to speak, and, after the men had insisted upon him seating himself in the chair Morely had quitted earlier, he began to talk, first in disjointed sentences, then more rationally, and they heard his story as he relived his experiences of the past ten minutes or so.
In the middle of the telling he suddenly drew in his breath sharply. “The spider—you saved Mary and me from, sir?” That part seemed vague to him.
“We’ll tell you about that later,” observed Trent. “Tell us all you remember from the beginning while it’s still alive in your mind. Do you recall everything?”
“Everything, sir. It’s all clear now. Now I understand all I could not comprehend . . . down there . . .”
“You know what happened to you? How it happened?”
“Why yes, sir It was Mary, begging your pardon for her, sir. She’s had a touch of neuritis, though I told her she wasn’t to use your sun-ray light for it. Well, I was late in watering the flowers, and I came in to see her sitting under your new-ray lamp, shrinking . . .”
“Yes, what did you do when you saw her under the ray?”
“I knew immediately that she had switched lamps, sir. I dropped my cans and made a dash for her, only I must have tripped and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the middle of a red plain . . .”
“A red plain?” The professor stared at the floor, his face bright. “You mean one of those tiles there?”
“Yes, sir, I was in the middle of one of those red tiles and it looked like a vast plain, all rough and hilly and when I stood up, a could see the blue plains beyond the cracks. Then I saw a great leaning pillar. Good Heavens, sir, that must have been a leg of this very chair in which I’m sitting,” and he went on to describe the appearance of the “pillar.”
From this point Mike told the whole story, his discovery of the transparent spheres in the first coulee, his fight with the fly, the strange stream of water, the appearance of the caterpillar, et cetera. The others heard him through to the end, and now Mike insisted on rising and placing the chair as it was when Morely found it. They located the exact spot where the chair leg had stood, when the body of the dead fly was found unmolested where it had fallen, and there was still a tiny trickle of water in the “canyon” where he had found his “lake.”
“That’s one of the things I could not understand, sir, the queer action of the water. I seemed to know it was water, and yet it acted so strangely . . .” and he explained about the surface skin of the sphere and the “river.”
Trent explained to him the law of capillary attraction, together with the law of expansive forces. The body of water, which Mike discovered in the cement between the tiles, lay on an absorbent substance, therefore, the edges had appeared conclave, although had It been an non-absorbent substance, it would have appeared just the opposite. The surface tension of the “skin” was due to the molecular forces in liquids, that tend to bring about cohesion of all parts.
“And those spheres that grabbed me up and then exploded?”
“Water droplets, nothing less. You’d just finished mopping the floor, you know, and those droplets had not yet evaporated. When they did evaporate into vapor, the expansion force produced your ‘terrific explosion.’ ”
“Then, there were those falling particles in the air. At first they were troublesome, but beyond the chair-leg, the fall was lessened, until I reached the top of the mount—er flower-box.”
“They were dust-motes, Mike. You can appreciate the fact that our air is filled with dust particles. We see them more readily when falling through a beam of sunlight, but we know they are falling continually because of the manner in which they collect on surface, our bodies, furniture, et cetera. Under the microscope, these dust motes appear to consist of organic, mineral and metallic particles. That you did not find so many beyond your ‘pillar’, was because you were under the chair seat, which partially protected you!”
Continuing to trace his pilgrimage across the tiles, Mike found the spot where he had begun to mount the side of the flower-box, which he had taken for a mountain-cliff. By using the magnifying glass, they could find the cracks and crevices that had been his footholds, the bit of lichen, that had taken root in the moss where he had dined on microscopic berries. Morely plucked the tiny plant and put it away carefully for later analyses. Next, they found Mike’s ledge and the ant-hill entrance. They even saw an ant on duty at the entrance. Neither man spoke when Mike put out Iris finger and squashed the little beast. It was revenge!
He laughed when he saw the wilderness through which he had wandered. The statue was one of the Japanese statesmen he himself had put in place. And the mirror caused him to chuckle. How it had fooled him! And what idiots he had thought the giants were, who had placed a bridge over the imitation lake! And his trees were the small plants he had set out. Had he but cleared away those tiny weeds yesterday, he would not have had such a struggle through the morass to get to Mary. Shreds of the spider web were found scarcely two inches from Mirror Lake. How far it had been to the poor, flea-high man that he had been!
Morely was most interested in the events in the anthill. He told Mike what the tiny creatures were to whom he owed his life. It was Trent, however, who brought up a point in Mike’s story that seemed most puzzling. “It seems strange, Mike,” he observed, “that you appeared to have no cognizance of the fact that you had been so reduced in size. You speak of your adventures as if you imagined you had been transplanted to some strange land with only the hazard, unreal remembrances of your true life. Surely that crack on your head wasn’t enough to . . .”
“Wait, Dune, I think I could explain that better,” put in Morely. “It’s this way. By rather elaborate algebraic calculations, Cuvier and Eugene Dubois, the learned physiologist, celebrated for discovering the Pithecanthropus of Java, when he was in the Colonial service there, afterwards Professor in the University of Amsterdam, have established the fact that the specific brain-weight of a species of animal cannot fall below a certain proportion in relation to the weight of the body, if the normal intelligence of the species is to be maintained! Among the monkeys, which are the most intelligent group of anthropoid mammals, the individual cannot be smaller than an ouistit, which has a brain one twenty-fourth the weight of his total body-weight of ten and one-half ounces. Imagine this monkey one-third the size and you find that he will need a brain one-sixteenth of his body to enjoy the same degree of intelligence. On the other hand, less intelligent animals, like certain insectivora, have a weight of barely one-tenth of an ounce and a brain one-fortieth their weight, which is sufficient for their slight mental activity. By the same calculation, it is shown that a man to possess average intelligence, can not weigh less than thirty-three and a half pounds.’ ”[2]
“Now in Mike’s case, his reduction in size meant a relative loss of brain-activity, thereby giving him just enough intelligence to safeguard him in the new world he found himself in, and of consequence memory and constructive, rational thinking were practically beyond him. He could name things he saw, because they were so thoroughly impressed upon his brain, but when he tried to use his thinking processes, they simply rebelled. He was more animal than man, unable to hold to abstra
ct thought-process long enough to comprehend things clearly. He was motivated to climb the ‘mountain’ because reason told him there he would find food, water and shelter. He was, however, enough man to hold to his original purpose once it developed in his dulled brain. There was also the sub-conscious desire for his own kind; as he has already told you, this thought reoccurred at intervals. That was the reason he could not visualize Mary or remember her clearly until he actually came into physical contact with her.”
“Ah, but Mary remembered Mike. She called him!”
“Mary recalled Mike’s name because he was the only protector she knew, and she used his name as a child, frightened in the dark or hurt accidentally, voices a call for its mother, its protector.”
There was more said before the two scientists realized that Mike was in no condition to sit talking. His cuts and bruises needed immediate attention. Then Mary awoke from a nap she had taken, herself once more, puzzled by her untidy appearance. The men came to her side and when she saw her husband’s condition, her face went white. “Then . . . it really happened! I didn’t dream about the jungle and—the spider?”
Piecemeal they got her story out of her, how she had awakened in a topsy-turvy world where sticks and boulders larger than her head fell instead of rain. She had not moved from the spot where she first found herself for some time, too frightened to move, she was. Then hunger drove her searching for food. She found some berries to eat, but she was disturbed by a fly. The fly paid her no heed but she went running wildly over a ragged country, dodging through the dust motes, stumbling over every irregularity of the soil, a grain was hill-high to her then. She had come to “Mike’s lake,” “but she climbed the bridge and found a large building (a tiny summerhouse on top of the miniature bridge) which she took for some sort of a temple. There was already an inhabitant there, a green aphid, and she fled, running and tumbling down the bridge. She had gone on to the jungle Mike had found, only she discovered a way where the weeds were not so thick and then she had stumbled into the spider’s web. The spider anaesthetized her with its sting and, when she came to, she was wrapped around and around by the heavy cords of spider-silk. She had called for help from the only source she knew, Mike, and when she thought she could not keep up her courage any longer, he came to her. She had shrieked when she saw Doctor Morley’s pincers descending upon her from the heavens.
She admitted this had not been the first time she had used the professor’s “sun-lamp” for her neuritis. Mike had mentioned the professor’s new ray, but he had failed to say it was operated as the sun-ray was operated. She was duly contrite over her offense and began to assure Trent she would never make use of his laboratory again, but the professor waived aside her apologies.
“You’ve done me a greater favor than you know, Mary. I would never have dared use a human being under the ray. I knew how it would react upon organic matter, and I was content to experiment with mice, et cetera. You’ve done science a great turn today at the expense of your own nerves, and I shall see that you get a sun-ray lamp for your own use.”
That was not all that Professor Trent did for Mike and Mary. He put a substantial sum of money in the bank in their name, and sent the pair on what he called a second honeymoon to Niagara. The results of the ten-minute sojourn in microscopia was written up in scientific journals and was consequently pounced upon by a tabloid editor, who played with the story for several weeks to the great enjoyment of the public, so that for a long while after Mike was known as the Man-who-Fought-a-Fly. Mike, however, went on as if nothing had happened, though the affair left its mark upon him. In the first place, he discovered that he was an inch taller than his normal height, and he had what amounted to a fanatical antipathy toward flies, ants and dragon-flies!
THE END
[1] Spiders like the ants anaesthetize their victims against the time when they need them for food.
[2] Quoted from fourth chapter of UNSUSPECTED MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE TO BE UNFOLDED IF OUR EYES, NOSE AND BRAIN WERE IMPROVED by Professor Rene Thevenin appearing in the Sun-! day American Weekly, December 22, 1929.
Gulliver, 3000 A.D.
l Much speculation has been carried on by scientists on the probable nature of life on worlds whose physical conditions are greatly different from those on earth.
As yet, however, scientists are not agreed on many particulars. For example, some scientists state that life on Jupiter would have to be on a much larger and more robust scale, because of the great storms that must sweep that gigantic planet. Other men believe that the great gravitational force on Jupiter would kill off any creatures not supple enough to be fitted for it.
Miss Stone has expressed in this entertaining and realistic story her own views. Whatever you think of them, you must agree that her Jovians are people that might exist, not incredible monstrosities concocted hastily out of an author’s brain.
l “Calling Patrol-ship 354, calling Patrol-ship 354!”
I awoke with a start from a day-dream, a dream in which I had graduated from the ranks of the two-man Jovian Patrol to the captaincy of a ten-man Patrol, scouting among the moons of Jupiter, and Saturn, downing pirates; driving home to refractory miners and mill hands the fact that the police of the Outer-Planets’ Union are not to be trifled with. The metallic voice of the transmitter, however, quickly brought me back to the reality of the moment with its harsh: “Calling Patrol-ship 354”
Flipping the lever that closed the circuit I answered. “Patrol-ship 354, Dennis Martin, reporting.”
Came the command: “Proceed immediately to rescue of Willa March aboard abductor’s ten-man flyer, last seen falling into Jupiter’s atmosphere, one minute southeast by east, Great Red Spot. Patrols 355 and 356 on way to give assistance. Take abductors alive or dead, but do nothing to injure Miss March. That’s all.”
“That’s all, is it. That’s all!” broke in Jimmy Small, my co-pilot. Up to the time of the broadcast he had been lying upon his bunk, apparently sleeping. “Just a mere jaunt to Jupiter; capture kidnappers dead or alive without injury to Miss March. A neat order all tied and sealed in pink ribbon. That’s all. Yah!”
I was already setting our new course as I grinned at Jim whose surname belied his great size. Six feet six he stood, a big hulk of a man. Dark-haired and swarthy, he was always surly, always contemptuous, always complaining; not the best sort of a companion for a thirty-day shift in the silence of space, cooped up in a two-by-four ship where one lived, ate, slept and did duty in the not too big cabin, without so much as a single partition to give one privacy now and then.
Small was none too popular in the corps. There had been any number of complaints laid against him. A shirker, a trouble-maker, it was only through an uncle, who was some high mogul back on the mother planet, that Small hadn’t been fired from the Patrol long ago. As a last resort they had wished him on me, because, for some unearthed reason, I had the title of the easiest-going hombre in the Patrol! Well, what if I am? A man can grin easier than he can frown; the face is built for smiling. (Try it yourself and see!)
Now I was laughing at Small. “You’ve been complaining long ’nough ’bout the dreariness of this beat. Your prayers’ve been answered, Jim, old boy.”
“Yah! Answered, and how! For months we’ve done nothing but circle ’round and warn smarty-alec navigators from getting too close to old-man Jupiter; then they drop something like this in our laps. Proceed to the rescue of Miss March. Has anyone ever landed on Jupiter and lived to tell the tale? And who in Lord Harry is Miss March, anyway?”
“Well, I admit this ain’t the kind of assignment I’d like to get every day, but it’s orders. As for Miss March, she’s the daughter of the new Administrator of Io. Reports been coming in all hours about her kidnapping. You’d’ve heard if you’d keep ’wake long enough to know you’re alive. It’s a wonder I hear any reports coming in with you snoring my ear off . . .”
“You don’t say! Well, listen, fella, you do plenty of snorting when you’re off watch. Da
mn, the man who designed this baby-coach bedroom, parlor and workshop in one. Don’t know why I stick in this blankety-blank outfit anyway. Who’s the guys that did the dirty work?”
“The ones that built this ship?”
“Naw, the pirates that picked off this March doll?”
“That’s what the whole Fed.’d[1] like to know. They took her outta bed under the noses of the palace guards, and carted her off in a ten-man. It’s believed there’s only two of them, maybe three . . .”
“But why Jupiter of all places? Maybe it’s only a stall, a dummy. I’ve no stomach for going down there, I can tell you. They say it’s molten under that steam, Denny.”
l “I guess they navigated too close, and got dragged down. But you know that’s all wet, twentieth-century stuff about Jupiter’s being molten. Corlis Breeley contends the planet’s as solid as the inner planets or Saturn; and what you call steam is clouds, like those of Venus, and . . .”
“Yah! And what ’bout those three expeditions what went in to prove it? They went in just about where this March gal and her buddies dived. Ain’t one of ’em been heard from since, and my best pal, Jerry Treat, was one of ’em, too!” As he spoke Small had come forward to stare through the forward porthole into that swirl of thick vaporish clouds that billowed sluggishly beneath us. His too close-together eyes bulged slightly, then he shot a narrow glance at me. “Denny! You’re not going in there, are you?” he demanded suddenly, and I saw that the blood was drained from his face.
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