Ever Smaller

by Albert Bleunard

  “But you’ve understood my thinking admirably, my dear Camaret,” the doctor interjected, seeing an opportunity to make fun of his comrade’s naivety. “I’m saying to myself that it’s necessary to make people 100,000 times smaller, then desiccate them…”

  “And you’re going to ask your good friend the dentist to volunteer for the experiment,” Camaret put in.

  “Yes.”

  “He accepts with alacrity, but on one condition…”

  He did not have time to finish; at that moment he fell to the round, incapable of movement.

  Paradou and Soleihas hastened to help their companion and lift him to his feet, but he was like an inert mass and could not stand upright. They called out to him, asking him what was wrong, but the dentist made no reply.

  Their anxiety reached its peak. What could have caused the accident? Was Camaret asphyxiating for lack of air or because of a leak that had revealed itself in his suit? But no—that supposition was inadmissible; they were connected together by the rubber tubing, and they would have stopped breathing along with their companion.

  Suddenly, just as they were beginning to despair, the dentist uttered a faint groan and stirred slightly.

  “He’s not dead!” cried the doctor.

  “What’s the matter with you?” demanded Soleihas.

  Camaret was unable to reply for a few minutes. Soleihas and Paradou tried to reanimate him by all possible means, but the help they could offer was rather ineffectual in his present condition.

  Finally, the stricken man was able to articulate a few words, and was heard to murmur: “I received an electric shock…I’m paralyzed.”

  On hearing these words, his two companions both looked at the dentist’s lamp. It was shining as brightly as before. The shock was thus not due to any accident that had occurred within the electrical apparatus. They were still reduced to the most various conjectures regarding the veritable cause of the adventure experienced by Camaret when a further incident finally revealed that cause.

  Soleihas had moved a little to the right when he felt a sudden shock in his lower back and all his limbs.

  “There it is!” he cried. “I’ve just been electrocuted in my turn!”

  “Look,” said the doctor, advancing toward him and pointing to a sort of moving bush. There’s the cause of the electric shocks. You and Camaret have unwittingly touched a colony of infusoria capable of giving violent shocks, like electric eels.”

  “Impossible!” exclaimed the dentist, who had now recovered his senses. “There are infusoria, then, that are electric machines?”

  “Certainly,” Paradou replied. “Electricity is much more widespread in animal life than is generally supposed. In explorations made in the remote depths of the sea, animals have been found that are equipped with special organs permitting them illuminate themselves by means of electric light.”

  “Like us, then,” said the dentist, “these animals also have incandescent lamps of their heads. I pity poor Edison, who had the naivety to believe that he was the inventor of incandescent lamps. For thousands of years, fish and crustacean have been lighting the ocean depths with their lamps.”

  “Yes, my dear Camaret,” the doctor replied, “but that observation should not prevent the illustrious American from being proud of the invention of his lamp. Humans are often imitating nature when they make discoveries. Edison, in spite of his inventive genius, has not yet attained the perfection of nature in producing electricity, which makes use of special organs that are still a secret to scientists. Look at the animals that nearly struck you down at close range. Can you find anything more beautiful and more curious?”

  They had before their eyes an admirable colony of living beings, resembling a bed of giant tulips, swaying gracefully on their slender stems. Like flowers, these vorticella and stentors were shining in the most vivid colors. Their calices, as if sculpted by an artist, were equipped with numerous cilia that were waving in every direction. Some resembled elongated conical vases.

  “And it was these pretty creatures, more similar to flowers than animals, that gave us such violent electric shocks?” asked the dentist.

  “No,” Soleihas replied. “The authors of the shocks are these little parasites attached to the flanks of the vorticella and stentors.” As he spoke, the optician used I finger to point out the long tubes, agitating in all directions, elongating and shortening at the animal’s whim. These tubes were suckers, designed first to strike little animals with thunderbolts as they passed by, and then to devour them.

  “A balloon!” Camaret suddenly exclaimed. “There’s a balloon!”

  “A balloon? Where?” demanded the doctor.

  “To the left,” the dentist replied. “Hold on—I can see two now…three…four…it’s an army of balloons! Word of honor, the infusoria have found the means to steer balloons, and there’s a balloon train passing in front of us.”

  “It’s a colony of flagellifera,”{6 said Soleihas. “I recognize a phacus. Look at the top of the balloons. What do you see?”

  “A long stem, thin and flexible,” Camaret replied.

  “That’s exactly it,” added the optician. “That stem is the flagellum, the characteristic organ of the flagellifera.”

  “As the tail is the characteristic organ of rats,” sniggered the dentist, who had little veneration of natural history.

  The phacus had exactly the same shape as a balloon deprived of its gondola and rigging. A membranous ruffed collar, admirable in its elegance, was displayed on the upper surface, surrounding the base of the flagellum. The delicate grace of the creature, which is classed among the animals although its true place is among the flowers, is indescribable.

  “Can one touch?” asked the dentist, anxiously. “Is that creature another electric machine?”

  “No,” said Paradou.

  Reassured, Camaret put his hand on the body of the phacus. “But it’s hard!” he exclaimed. “One might think that it’s made of stone.”

  “Indeed,” said Soleihas. “Some flagellifera have a soft envelope, but they’re often covered with a solid carapace.” The optician pointed at a distant mass, and added: “Look, I think I can see something interesting over there.”

  They continued to move forward prudently. In the midst of that nature, so strange and novel for humans, it was necessary to expect some potentially serious event at any moment.

  The mass indicated by Soleihas was now in equilibrium in the middle of the liquid, drawn along gently by a slight current.

  “Is it another flagelliferoid?” asked Camaret.

  “No,” the doctor replied, “it’s an amoeba—one of the simplest infusoria in terms of organization.”

  The amoeba—for that is indeed what it was—varied gradually in form. To begin with—which is to say, when the three voyagers arrived—its body was star-shaped, projecting unequal arms in all directions. Now it was taking on the appearance of a sphere.

  “Oh, that’s too much!” exclaimed the dentist, utterly amazed by the spectacle. “Amoebas don’t have forms of their own, then?”

  “No,” the optician told him, “they don’t have one. Only monera are more imperfect than amoebas. That’s a stroke of luck—here are some monera passing close by now. These animals, which form the primary echelon of animal life, are entirely composed of an exceedingly gelatinous substance devoid of organization.”{7

  The amoebas passed by slowly. They were coming from all directions and their numbers were alarming.

  “Have these animals been known for a long time?” asked the dentist.

  “No,” the doctor replied. “The first moneron was observed in 1864 by Haeckel, in sea-water at Villefranche, near Nice. Some time afterwards, Greef, of Marburg,{8 identified other species in fresh water. If Huxley can be believed, the simplest form of living matter is found in sea-water, in the form of a network of gelatinous material, but chemists…”

  “Help! Help!” shouted Soleihas, abruptly interrupting the doctor.

&
nbsp; “What’s wrong?” his two companions demanded, simultaneously, alarmed by the optician’s cries.

  “I don’t know,” the latter relied, “but I felt myself being lifted up. I’ve lost my footing and I’m floundering in the water.”

  Camaret immediately went toward Soleihas, who, in the course of the preceding conversation, had drawn away to the full extent of his tube. He felt as if he had been caught in a net, though, and lifted off the ground.

  “Hey, Monsieur Paradou!” shouted the dentist, “I’m being lifted up in my turn.”

  “Don’t move,” the doctor shouted to the two prisoners. “You must have been seized by a rhizopod. Content yourselves with playing dead. With our diving-suits we have nothing to fear from those animals.”

  “I don’t agree,” the optician replied. “The substance enveloping us is soft; it seems to me that it would be sufficient for you to pull on the tubes to free us.”

  “It’s easy to try,” said Paradou.

  And the doctor set about tugging with all his might on the two tubes that departed from either side of his head. The gelatinous mass gradually ceded to that pressure. The optician drew nearer to Camaret, and was soon able to grasp his hand—but then, suddenly, the tubes abruptly lost their tension, and the doctor’s voice was heard crying out: “I’m being dragged away in my turn. The animal’s running away. I’ve lost my footing and I can’t pull any longer.”

  This time, the situation had become critical. Soleihas and Camaret, still entangled in the gelatinous mass of the rhizopod, were dragged along by the animal, which was rising up, and, by virtue of the rubber tubes, carried the doctor away with them, although he remained freely suspended in the liquid. A catastrophe seemed imminent. Paradou was also running the risk of colliding with an obstacle. They all remained mute with panic and terror.

  The rhizopod was moving through the interior of the water-drop with a frightful velocity, for at every moment they saw multitudes of infusoria passing in front of them, which disappeared as rapidly as arrows.

  Gradually, the animal’s speed seemed to relent.

  “I’ve recovered my footing,” the doctor suddenly shouted. “Don’t move—let the rhizopod do as it wishes this time.”

  Ten minutes passed in the most absolute immobility: ten minutes of anxiety, which seemed like a century.

  Finally, the viscosity of the adhesive matter seemed to diminish, and Soleihas and Camaret regained more freedom of movement. Then they felt themselves falling gradually, and soon touched the ground. They had been freed from the infusorian’s grip. The three friends threw themselves into one another’s arms, offering mutual congratulations for their deliverance.

  “Our situation was definitely critical,” the doctor observed, “for, like a new kind of Siamese twins, the life of each one of us depends on that of the others.”

  “Indeed,” Soleihas added. “If one of our diving-suits is breached, the water will penetrate everywhere, and the other two will drown.”

  “But what happened to us, exactly?” asked the dentist. “I must confess that I don’t understand the cause of our adventure.”

  “It’s quite simple,” the doctor replied. “The rhizopod, after having absorbed you into its gelatinous mass, tried to digest you. Then, frightened when I tugged on the tubes, it suddenly took flight and dragged all three of us along. Having stopped, it tried again to digest you, but, finding the nourishment too indigestible, judged it best to release you.”

  “So we were in the animal’s stomach, as Jonah was once in a whale’s?” Camaret asked.

  “No,” Paradou replied, “for rhizopods have no stomach. Their mass consists of something like hair, which is infinitely divisible and can take on the most various forms. When an animal of that species encounters prey, it catches it in its sticky hair and digests it. As for the inassimilable parts, they’re expelled.”

  “Fortunately, we were enclosed in the diving-suits,” remarked Soleihas. “Otherwise, we’d have been perfectly assimilable prey, and that would have been the end of us.”

  “How stupid nature is to make such animals!” protested the dentist. “I ask you, what use can rhizopods be on earth?”

  “You’re strangely mistaken,” the doctor replied. “Rhizopods are very tiny but, in compensation, their numbers are prodigious. Limestone, which constitutes the bed of most seas, and makes up the soil of Champagne, Normandy and the major part of the Alps, is formed by the skeletons of foraminfera—which is to say, a particular species of rhizopods living on the ocean bed.”

  By way of response Camaret contented himself with raising his arms into the air.

  “On the other hand,” the doctor continued, “other rhizopods, named radiolarians have siliceous skeletons, and their debris similarly constitutes immense countries. Berlin, the capital of Prussia, is built on a layer of fine sand several hundred meters thick, which is entirely composed of the skeletons of radiolarians. Flint probably has a similar origin.”

  “Then men strike lights with the cadavers of rhizopods!” Camaret exclaimed. “How odd!” And the dentist raised his arms to the heavens again. Suddenly, he uttered a cry of astonishment. “My arms are out of the water!” he exclaimed. “What’s happening?”

  Astonished, the three friends looked up. The surface of the water appeared clearly to them, only a few centimeters away. A few seconds later, their heads emerged from the liquid.

  “It’s just that we’re returning to our normal size,” said Soleihas. “The experiment is over.”

  Indeed, five minutes later, the bell-jar rose up and the three companions found themselves safe and sound in the middle of the old scientist’s laboratory. They had had time to get out of their diving-suits. At their feet, they could see an imperceptible drop of water.”

  “And to think,” said Paradou, “that this is the ocean in the depths of which we contemplated so many marvels.”

  “There!” said the dentist, crushing the drop of water with the toe of his shoe. “I’ve avenged myself on the infusoria that wanted to digest me and kill me with electric shocks.”

  “My brave Camaret,” said the optician, laughing, “you weren’t so brave a little while ago, when the rhizopod lifted you up. It’s necessary to be more generous with one’s enemies, and not abuse one’s strength like that.”

  “Everyone has his turn,” replied the terrible dentist, rolling his eyes ferociously.

  VIII. The Rose-Bush

  “What are we going to do today?”

  “Today, gentlemen, you’re going to visit the interior of a rose-bush. You’ll enter via the root and emerge from a leaf or a flower, as you choose.”

  Such was the conversation that could be heard in Al-Harik’s laboratory the following morning on the stroke of ten. Our three friends were already clad in their diving-suits, as on the previous day, ready to enter the bell-jar. Again, Thilda was not taking part in the experiment on this occasion.

  The diminution was rapidly completed, without incident, and they saw an enormous mass appear abruptly, like a chain of mountains with its ramifications.

  “There’s our root!” exclaimed the doctor. “It’s a matter of getting inside.”

  “Where?” asked Camaret.

  “Through one of the root-tips, my friend,” Paradou replied. “What you can see projecting from the mountain and take for ramifications are actually rootlets. Al-Harik has take the precaution of placing us next to one of them. Look—the extremity is directly in front of us, scarcely 100 meters away. That’s where it’s necessary to attack the root to penetrate its tip.”

  “All well and good, doctor,” said the dentist, “but how tall is the rose-bush?”

  “I saw it yesterday evening,” Paradou replied. “It’s about half a meter.”

  “Very well—what’s your diminution?”

  “Al-Harik told us that he was going to reduce us to a ten-millionth of our usual size.”

  “Fine. Multiply half a meter by ten million—what does that give?”

&
nbsp; “What are you getting at?” asked the doctor, visibly irritated by Camaret’s questions.

  “Do the calculation anyway,” replied the terrible dentist.

  “That makes five million meters.”

  “Yes—5000 kilometers, or 1200 leagues. And you think, doctor, that we can travel 1200 leagues in two hours?”

  “Go into the root without fear, my dear Camaret,” Paradou replied. “I swear to you that in two hours, you’ll be in the topmost leaf.”

  “By what means of locomotion?”

  “Just go—you’ll soon see.”

  While he marched with his companions toward the extremity of the rootlet, the dentist’s reflections were scarcely reassuring. He wondered whether Paradou might have been afflicted by madness, and whether he and Soleihas might suddenly have gone mad. Was he not the victim of a dream? Was not everything that he could see and hear the product of a hallucination?

  He pinched himself and was able to convince himself that he was really awake. But then, if he was about to penetrate the interior of a rose-bush, reduced to a ten-millionth of his size, was he not going to his death? Lost in the middle of such a frightful mass, would he ever see the light of day again? It seemed to him that Al-Harik was imprudent to abandon him thus, along with his friends, at the hazard of circumstances.

  They had arrived in front of a sort of rounded hill that extended into the distance toward the horizon, the flanks of which were pierced by numerous cavities. They decided to carry out a reconnaissance inside one of these grottoes, hoping to find a passage there that would take them into the interior of the rot.

  The grotto was only a few meters deep; its walls were smooth and no fissure permitted a further access. Several other cavities were visited in succession, but with no more result.

  Soleihas then proposed that they clear a passage in the ligneous mass with an axe. They set to work immediately. The wood came away in large chunks, but the further they dug, the more difficult the work became, because the wood became harder. It was soon necessary to renounce that new mode of penetration.