Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  She turned her eyes toward where he pointed. Light shafted into the room through the high, arching entrance. Surrounding semi-darkness brought out the phenomenon plainly. Motes were floating in the path of the light. And long, fibrous things, like lint. Only the motes were as large as grains of sand, and the crooked strings of lint were as thick as lead pencils!

  “The air resistance would have to be higher, or the rate of its molecular motion and bombardment would have to be a lot swifter than usual, to support such big particles,” said Perry. “But how can that be? It seems the same old familiar air!” He halted, a startled scowl crinkling his sunbleached eyebrows. “Say!” he drawled at last, mounting incredulity in his tone. “Say!…”

  * * *

  Sensing that he was at the last barrier of the riddle that had begun with his discovery of the great triangular outline in Minnesota hills, he studied the glass walls around him. In the depths of their colored substance, he could see large bubbles, and flaws of exaggerated size. Then his gaze fell on the liquid, globular things that Troubles had kicked. They looked exactly as though it was ordinary water that composed them—as though they were dewdrops—except for their huge dimensions.

  “That’s the funny thing we noticed, but couldn’t quite place,” Lyssa offered. “That dew. That dust in the air. The flaws in glass. Such stuff is all bigger than it should be, Perry. But what does that mean?”

  Perry was thinking as fast and as hard as he could, then, trying to put together all the puzzling pieces of his recent experience. Most significant was the odd, tightening, shrinking sensation, he had felt, after the automatons had tossed him into the vat of liquid.

  “Troubles,” he said very slowly. “I—think—I’ve—got—it! We’ve—been reduced—in—size! We’re Lilliputians, maybe an inch high, now! This cavern isn’t the huge thing it seems to us. Comparatively, it’s a toy cavern. The buildings are toy buildings; though they naturally seem gigantic to us, because we’re so small too. But dew and dust, relying on universal physical laws of nature, remain normally—big!”

  “But, Perry,” she asked in the same awed tone he had used. “Is that possible—that we’ve been shrunken, and still remain alive afterward?”

  “Why not?” he questioned in response. “Everything is practically the same—really—just scaled down.[1] Every cell in our bodies must have been correspondingly shrunken, of course, so that there are as many cells now as in the beginning. Otherwise we wouldn’t be—ourselves. If there weren’t somewhere near the normal number of grey cells in our brains, for instance, we’d lose our reasoning powers.

  “We were thrown into the vat. Energy worked on us, drawing substance away from each living cell—fat, protein, sugar, water—and the cell-walls shrank, and we shrank with them. Our excess body substance was perhaps absorbed by the green fluid, maybe being preserved for a reversal of the process—a return to normal size. Only judging from what happened to our metal buttons and things, the trick doesn’t work out very well for inorganic substances.”

  Perry halted, recalling something significant. “Remember how you fell down those stairs up there, without being hurt at all, Troubles?” he questioned. “That you weren’t hurt is part of the relativity of being small. Take a mouse and drop him from a high place, and his injury doesn’t amount to much. Drop a man from the same height, and he gets all smashed up.”[2]

  Lyssa Arthurs seemed to muse for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I see… Whoever built the fortress must have built this miniature cavern before they reduced their size, since this building is constructed all in one piece, and not of blocks cemented together. And you wouldn’t expect little people to do that very readily. Then they came down through the vat apparatus. But why, Perry? Why did they want to be small? What advantage was there in it? Who were they?”

  * * *

  Overhead, in the arching dome, Perry Wilcox noticed a picture. An ocean washing a jagged shore. It looked just like a modern ocean. Only, in the gorges between the jagged volcanic bluffs, there were bizarre, fernlike trees, such as had existed in the Terrestrial Carboniferous Period.

  “I think,” he said, “these people came from another planet. That ship looks like a space ship.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes, and it was a tough world for a raw bunch of colonists,” Perry went on. “So it was probably easier for them to make a small world of their own. One they thought they could regulate and control. Only—there was something wrong with it. That’s why they’re extinct.”

  “I guess you’re right, Perry,” the girl offered. “They built the fortress. It was their first encampment, within which they could make their preparations. Then, when they were ready to become small, they covered it over to hide it. The automatons were sealed up, with special apparatus to make them active—if there was danger—if some snooper came around. For instance you, Perry. Our being sent down here, was part of the plan too—captives or guests. Only the little people who were supposed to receive us, have disappeared.”

  It was obviously true. The valley of the cavern looked deserted to its farthest, verdure-clad reaches. The buildings, peeping white through the green, were skeletally silent. There was no sound.

  The desolation got on Perry Wilcox’s nerves. The vast futility of the mechanical debacle going on above. A dream that had soured. A science of miracles that had followed a Will-o’-the-Wisp to a dead end. And then Perry thought of something that changed his mood.

  “They must have had a way to control the robots from here, Troubles,” he said. “Everything else is too perfectly arranged for it to be otherwise. They wouldn’t just lock themselves down here, blind to the upper world, would they? There must be a control-room somewhere. And logically it should be in this building, since it’s the most important-appearing one in the place.”

  Chapter V Nemesis from the Tiny

  Perry and Lyssa found what they were searching for at last, after climbing a long, spiral stairs. The chamber was round, and was above the dome of the temple, just beneath the representation of the space ship and the golden statue of that ancient leader. The disk-shaped door was fastened by a great hasp that was disengaged easily.

  Wheels, meters, switches, charts. Never before had Perry Wilcox seen such a staggering array. His heart sank. Could he ever master such a complex arrangement in time to do any good—to stop the robots and that vast, senseless conflict above? He tugged at one wheel. It turned a very little, and a meter needle nearby jumped, showing that the apparatus was still effective. But there the wheel stuck. It was locked by a slight film of corrosion. Though things in this control room were marvelously preserved, considering their titanic age, they had not been protected by a time-defying vacuum.

  Perry’s face went sober and tired. “Even if these are the right controls,” he said, “it would take me a week and a lot of oil and brain work to loosen ’em up and figure ’em out so I could turn off hell up above.”

  Then his gaze centered on a mirror nearby. It was part of a periscope arrangement which evidently communicated with the surface, its upper end cleared of encumbering earth by the robots.

  In the mirror was visible the slope of a hill, bright in afternoon sunshine. A solid array of army tanks were creeping up it laboriously. Behind them, guns blazed. But down upon those attackers was pouring a hail of death—of sharper, more violent explosions—that wiped out two and three of the tanks at a time. Beyond, the plain was being filled with a miasmic fog of death—corrosive gas. Still, the tanks came on, each with its load of brave young men. Wave on wave, to destruction.

  Perry stood watching for several moments. Viewed from the distance, the tanks looked hardly bigger than they would have, had he been normal size. His position was sort of a joke. He was standing where a general from another planet should have stood while directing his guardian robot army. But he was helpless.

  “Kerwin is still at it,” Perry remarked at last, his voice so matter-of-fact that it was startling.

&nbs
p; He was thinking bitterly of many things. Of the way plans were made, hopefully, till they became faith. And then the disillusion of miscarried results—of fact. Like this buried utopia. Its creators had worked for its realization. They had achieved it, but they had vanished. Like himself, and like Rod Murgatroyd. Rod, blinded, but talking with hollow magnificence, of a strange heritage. Path of Progress. The inspiration of a more ancient science to spur mankind on. Oh, it sounded good, but it was all—screwy!

  Wilcox blew up at last. “With Kerwin in control, Rod’s probably already dead—lynched by a mob!” he said. “And here we are, down here, a couple of helpless peewees! I suppose we could go back to normal size—back the same way we came here. There are controls there in the entrance chamber. But what good would that do? We’d still be peewees!”

  But Troubles was of a somewhat different attitude. “Maybe inch-high peewees like us have advantages at that,” she said significantly. “Look, fella.”

  She was pointing to a slender, graceful object that rested in a metal frame over their heads. It was very like an airplane, with short, stubby wings. But instead of propellers it had rocket nozzles. Wheels on its bottom, clung to a helical guide rail that spiraled upward inside a great, vertical tube that must find its way to the surface somewhere. Apparently the tube was the inside of the staff held by the golden colossus above. And the staff penetrated the cavern’s roof.

  “Naturally, being as advanced in science as they were, those old people would keep something to get about with, wouldn’t they?” Troubles questioned, as she climbed up the ladder to the craft’s cabin entrance.

  * * *

  Opening the door was a difficult thing; but Perry bounded up the rungs and was helping her. He was ready to take his chances too, in spite of his talk.

  The door opened under the hammering pressure of his calloused palm. There was space inside for two or three people to lie prone. The controls were not unfamiliar. There was a joystick, and a second lever which must take the place of rudder pedals.

  Perry was wiggling the control. They were stiff but not immovable. With an eye of a practiced airman, he noted what they did to the tail and wing fins. So far, so good. He turned a small valve on the dash. There was a creaky, rhythmic sputter from behind. Evidently there was still fuel in the tanks. In response to the brief rocket thrust, the craft rolled a little way up the spiral guide rail. Then back to norm as Perry returned the throttle to its original position.

  “So what?” he said with a shrug. “Nothing funny about finding this crate here. It’s made of the same kind of evidently almost uncorrodable metals as the instruments here in the control room. So it should last forever. And the old-timers must have longed for the great outdoors sometimes. That’s logical enough. But there isn’t the sign of a weapon—nothing we could use to attack a giant. And Kerwin is a giant, now, in relation to us!”

  “How about bluff?” Troubles questioned, dimples of exasperation showing at the corners of her mouth. “Come on, bonehead. Quit stalling! Haven’t you got any imagination at all?”

  Wilcox grinned at her, startled and admiring. Her attitude gave him a lifting sense of adventure. “Okay!” he drawled. “Funny, though—I used to think you were a friend of Kerwin’s. Of course, you could be trying to pull a fast one yet, I suppose!”

  “And I could knock that pug schnozzle of yours flatter than it is, for that crack!” Troubles returned. “Come on! Let’s see action—if you’re good enough to get any out of this thing!”

  Perry opened the throttle. A little at first, then more and more. Speed was built up. It became a dizzy whirl. Around and around that spiral track, up and up…

  * * *

  Lyman Kerwin sat in his office, topping the great Kerwin Building at Chicago. Glass surrounded him—thick, green-tinted, bulletproof glass. Above him, beyond the metal-ribbed sky-panes of his eyrie, the star blinked. Lyman Kerwin was studying the notes of the speech he was going to deliver in five minutes.

  Thoughts went racing through his fevered brain. Thoughts of satisfaction and triumph. Here he was like a god, far up above the rabble. What did it matter if a lot of them hated him, and mistrusted his motives? They were afraid of what it was out there, not so many hundreds of miles to the northwest. He’d see that they remained frightened, as long as it was necessary.

  They didn’t know what he knew—what the poor fool, Professor Vince, had found out—that the enemy were only machines, awesome in their powers, but incapable of organized thought. Someday, when Vince had learned more for him, and when there’d been enough fighting to give him full control of the country, those robots would doubtless provide him with a means of keeping his power in hand, even of extending it.

  Lyman Kerwin arose from his chair and strode to the paneled cabinet in the corner. He entered the cabinet and snapped on the brilliant lights on either side of him. Facing him was a radio microphone and a pair of lensed, television eyes. He had only to close a switch to make himself visible and audible to the waiting world.

  Above him was a mirror. Kerwin admired himself in it. He knew he wasn’t handsome—in any ordinary way, at least. It would be better, of course, if he were young. But he looked like a master. He looked clever. Yes, he was clever! A genius! And his new, black uniform was slick, becoming the role he must play. There was a badge on the coat lapel. U. S. in black blocked letters, against a red background. And at the center, in a gold star that was like a small, bright halo of glory, his own initials in black—L.K. The badge was his own idea, and the jeweler had wrought skillfully.

  It was almost time for the speech, now. Kerwin turned about to get his notes. He stopped in chagrin. The papers on his desk were burning merrily! How they had become ignited, he couldn’t imagine, since he hadn’t been smoking. It was unnerving. The first wave of fright went through his cowardly soul as he bounded forward to brush the burning papers to the floor, and stamp out the flames.

  He hadn’t seen the tiny, two-inch thing, like a miniature plane in shape and function, that had come down through the ventilator above. While his back was turned, it had darted toward the papers. Its atomic rocket blasts, blue and almost invisible, yet terrifically hot, had touched the litter on the desk. Now the minute intruder clung, inactive, by means of anchoring claws, to the wallward side of an urn of flowers atop a bookcase.

  Kerwin shrugged his hunched, sloping shoulders. “I don’t need the notes,” he thought, trying to reassure himself—trying to drive the nameless, uncanny fear out of his heart.

  He walked to the television cabinet and snapped the switches. It was time to broadcast.

  “My friends,” he began. “Today we have started the big push against the Murgatroyd-Wilcox Horror. It may be that hundreds of thousands of men must die in the battle to hold this terrible enemy in check. But this cannot be helped. I have tried to do my part. I appreciate the great honor that has been bestowed upon me in making me Director of Defense. But for efficiency, I cannot go on in this manner. There is too much bickering among people who are not sincerely fighting for the welfare of humanity. I must have the means to command, and if necessary, silence these individuals. I must have full control of all the nation’s resources. In this emergency, not a moment must be wasted in friction—in lack of cooperation. I have—”

  Kerwin’s small eyes were beginning to shine, but he stopped abruptly.

  * * *

  Very near to him, he heard a tiny voice speaking. Its tones were like the tinkling of minute flakes of glass. It was an impossible voice, and yet a vaguely familiar one. Though it seemed close—almost at his shoulder—still it seemed, too, to be shouted from a great distance:

  “Interesting speech, Kerwin! Well planned! You’ve reached the crucial point in your scheme, huh? All right! Go on! Don’t hesitate!”

  But Lyman Kerwin’s words had broken off. He half turned. Then he remembered his audience—millions of people observing his every move by means of television. He didn’t dare show any fear or disconcertion, now! The rabbl
e must believe in him. But a cold dew of terror was breaking out on his bald pate and skinny cheeks.

  “I have—I think—proved my worth,” he continued, stammering into the microphone. “I must not be hampered by—by the President of the United States, and by—Congress. I—” Kerwin’s voice was becoming a thin squeak.

  “What’s the matter, Kerwin?” came taunting words in those thready, elfin, confident tones. “Got stage fright or something? Don’t act like that! Pull yourself together! People will start laughing at you, first thing you know!”

  “I—” the crooked financier gurgled, struggling to go on with his oratory from where he had left off; but nervousness seemed to have strangled him.

  And the unseen, pixy speaker went on: “Come now, Kerwin!” he was chided. “This won’t do at all! You’re a big man, you know! You’ve sent thousands of youth to their deaths already—just for your own glory. You can’t let everybody know you’ve got a yella streak a yard wide… No, stop! Don’t go turning off those switches! It happens we could kill you in a split second. On the second thought, maybe it’s just as well folks see what goes on here. You wouldn’t want anybody to be misled, would you? There, that’s better! Don’t shiver so much. Don’t turn. Just stay where you are…

  “That’s probably a real good microphone you’ve got there, Kerwin. It’ll probably pick up even my voice, so everybody can hear it. I’m not exactly just the voice of your conscience, you see. Nor am I so easily ignored. By now many men know what you’re up to, Kerwin. They know about those robots—that they’re only mechanical things intended for defense. They’ve learned this fact in the front lines. But you’ve been clever enough to keep them there, where they’d be killed quickly. But we know more about this so-called ‘Murgatroyd-Wilcox Horror’ than you or your scientists do, Kerwin. Because we’ve been—and so to speak still are—on the inside!