Ever Smaller

by Albert Bleunard

  Surprise! Three luminous holes appeared in the depths of the corridor.

  “We’re saved!” cried Soleihas, perceiving the light. “Here’s the edge of the leaf.”

  “Come on, Camaret,” said the doctor. “Hit it with the pickaxe and let’s get out of this prison.”

  Two seconds later, a large rip had been made, and he voyagers quit the vessel that had almost served as their tomb.

  “But we’re not yet out of the leaf!” Soleihas exclaimed. “We’re in a cave.”

  “It’s illuminated, at any rate,” the doctor replied, “and we’re no longer under water, but in the open air. Come on, let’s take off our diving-suits and breathe freely. It’s high time, for we were beginning to suffocate inside them.”

  They got out of the diving-suits and tried to take account of the place where they had ended up. Yes, they really were at the back of an immense cave. The light was coming through a small opening at the opposite end.

  “Where can we be?” the optician asked.

  “Probably in an air-pocket,” the doctor replied. “That opening we can see over there must be a stoma.”

  “A stomach?” asked Camaret, who had misheard.

  “A stoma,” the doctor repeated. “That’s what the openings are called through which air penetrates the interior of leaves through the epidermis.”

  They set about examining the grotto carefully. It was very irregular in form, with numerous cavities and rounded projections. This structure was due to the fact that its walls were actually formed by the cells of the leaf.

  Was it the effect of the overexcitement that they had previously experienced or the lack of air in the diving-suits? At any rate, the faces of the voyagers were very vividly colored while they made a tour of the grotto. Their eyes had taken on an extraordinary gleam. They felt blood rising to their heads and they were beginning to feel dizzy.

  They did not pay any great heed to these unhealthy symptoms for, far from being inconvenienced, they felt, on the contrary, a very agreeable sense of well-being. They were breathing in with a kind of voluptuousness, the fresh and keen air intoxicating them, especially after the shortage of oxygen in their diving-suits.

  “You’re as red as a lobster, Doctor,” said the optician, finally. “Are you ill?”

  The doctor burst out laughing, but the laughter was nervous and prolonged. “And you!” he exclaimed, when he was able to speak. “It’s a pity you can’t see yourself in a mirror—you’d see that you’re redder than I am.”

  “Ha ha ha! What funny faces you have!” Camaret shouted in his turn, at the top of his voice, writhing with laughter.

  And all three of them were seized by a violent fit of insane, hysterical laughter. The cave’s echoes reverberated endlessly with the sound of their voices. It was a deafening noise, like a distant roll of thunder. Instead of stopping, they laughed even louder, as if intoxicated by their own racket. Soon, the laughter was succeeded by howling, like the bellowing of ferocious beasts. No, never had such a din been produced inside a leaf, that temple of calm and silence.

  Soleihas experienced a momentary glimmer of reason, and understood that a great danger was threatening them. He urged his companions to reach the opening of the cave as quickly as possible. Fortunately, they understood, and, staggering like drunken men, they headed for the daylight. Another few steps and they would have been outside the grotto, when Camaret suddenly stopped and said: “I don’t want o go any further. I want to stay here. It’s very nice here!”

  “Me too,” said the doctor, who had lost his reason.

  “Quickly, quickly—get out!” Soleihas commanded.

  “Shut up, you animal!” howled the dentist. At the same time, he hurled the helmet of his diving-suit at the optician. The latter jumped to one side and was able to avoid being hit by the projectile. His eyes bulging out of their sockets, Camaret seized his pickaxe furiously, and was getting ready to strike his friend when the doctor hurled himself upon him and grabbed his arms. Losing his balance, however, he fell upon the dentist and they both fell heavily to the ground.

  They were dead drunk!

  Soleihas raced forward in a few bounds toward the opening of the cave. He was just in time; he felt his strength draining away. Another few seconds, and he would have fallen down himself next to his companions.

  The air outside had an effect on the optician that was almost instantaneous. His drunkenness ceased abruptly, and he understood the extent of the danger.

  “We’ve been poisoned by oxygen!” he exclaimed. “If I leave them, they’ll die.”

  Soleihas immediately ran back to his companions. They had not moved and had lost consciousness. He seized the doctor and dragged him outside; then, retracing his steps, he did the same for the dentist.

  Everyone was safe! The optician made sure that the two unconscious men were still breathing. Nothing needed to be done to help them. The remedy was quite simple; it was sufficient to let them breathe ordinary air.

  Indeed, ten minutes later, Paradou and Camaret woke up, as if emerging from a long sleep. They rubbed their eyes and propped themselves up on their elbows.

  “Where am I?” asked the doctor.

  “We’re all safe!” said Soleihas, overflowing with joy.

  Paradou put his hand to his forehead, in the posture of a man trying to recover his memory. “We were in the cave,” he said, in a faint voice.

  “Yes, my dear friend,” the optician replied, “and we’ve been poisoned by oxygen.”

  “By oxygen!” the doctor exclaimed. “But that was inevitable—idiot that I am! I didn’t think of it. Where’s Camaret?”

  “Here I am,” the dentist replied, faintly, from behind Paradou.

  The doctor was right. He should have foreseen that effect of the oxygen that had almost claimed three victims. Carbon dioxide, decomposed by the chlorophyll, releases pure oxygen, which accumulates in the air-pockets of the leaves. Now, pure oxygen is a veritable poison. It produces drunkenness, and then death, in a very short time. Paradou and his two companions had just been subjected to exactly those terrible effects.

  The drunkenness produced by the gas is only temporary. Thus, after a very short time, everyone had returned to their normal state. They laughed a great deal on recalling the previous singular events, but it was cheerful laugher this time, not convulsive as before. Camaret was ashamed of what he had done, and thought he ought to ask Soleihas’s pardon, but the latter replied that a man as drunk as he had been at that moment could not be held responsible for his actions. A good handshake sealed the reconciliation of the victims of oxygen poisoning.

  What should they do on the leaf while waiting for Al-Harik to return them to their normal state? Infinite space extended around them. For want of anything better, the decided to take a stroll on the leaf.

  “What about our diving suits?” asked the doctor. “We’ve left them in the cave.”

  “Let them stay there,” Soleihas replied. “We’ll find them again under the bell-jar.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, “there’s no need to expose ourselves to further poisoning.”

  They set off. A few paces further on, they encountered a second opening, identical to that of the first grotto.

  “It’s another stoma,” said the optician.

  “Halt!” cried Camaret, who had taken the lead.

  “What is it?” asked the doctor.

  “We’re at the edge of the leaf,” he dentist replied. “What a gulf, my friends!”

  Indeed, hazard had brought the three voyagers to the edge of the rose-leaf. The doctor and the optician joined Camaret. They approached cautiously and plunged their gaze into the depths of the vertiginous precipice hat opened beneath them. An immeasurable distance away, they perceived an ocean of verdure. It was obviously the other leaves of the rose-bush or the garden lawn.

  “Let’s step back,” the doctor said to his companions. “Vertigo might seize us and precipitate us into the void.”

  They took
a few steps backwards.

  Suddenly, a terrible wind began to blow, and the ground trembled. The three men, violently thrown to the ground, rolled over the surface of the leaf.

  Three terrible screams resounded simultaneously. Camaret, having reached the edge of the abyss, had just fallen into the void. Paradou, more fortunate, had had time to cling on to a sturdy projection on the leaf. As for the optician, he had rolled into the depths of a stoma.

  The doctor, not seeing anyone, thought at first that Soleihas had gone the same way as the dentist. He called out, but no one answered. Finally, after a few minutes, he saw the optician’s head sticking out of the opening into which he had fallen.

  “Is that you, Soleihas?” he asked. “Where are you?”

  “In a stoma,” the optician relied. “Where’s Camaret?”

  “Fallen off the leaf.”

  “The poor fellow!” cried Soleihas. “He’s doomed! Poor Camaret!”

  They both fell silent, terrified by the horrible catastrophe. Finally, the wind was gradually easing.

  “Come and join me in my hole, Doctor,” the optician shouted.

  “Why?”

  “To get under cover, for if the tempest begins again…”

  “No need,” Paradou interjected. “It won’t start again, because we’re under the bell-jar.”

  “So the wind was…”

  “What! You haven’t guessed? The wind was caused by our being transported to the bell-jar, like the other times…”

  “We ought to have expected it, then. Are you sure that Camaret was swept off the leaf?”

  “Yes—I saw the poor fellow fall with my own eyes,” the doctor replied.

  “He’s dead now, then,” said Soleihas, “or soon will be. I pray that he’s already dead.”

  “Why?” asked he doctor, astonished by the strange words.

  “One of two things must be the case,” Soleihas replied. “Either he’s been killed falling to Earth from a height I can’t estimate, so immense is it, or, miraculously, he’s still alive. If he’s alive, he’s now outside the rose-bush, lost in Al-Harik’s lawn. Well, in that case, he’s condemned to send the rest of his life at a ten-millionth of his usual size. It’s now impossible to restore him to his normal dimensions.”

  “That’s horrible!” exclaimed the doctor. “Horrible!”

  During this conversation, however, they gradually regained their normal state. Leaning over the edge of the leaf, the doctor and the optician were able to track the process of enlargement by means of the changes overtaking the landscape. The leaves of the rose-bush, too distant at first to be seen distinctly, became increasingly clear.

  Soleihas suddenly uttered a cry of joy. Surprise! He had just spotted the dentist.

  “Doctor! Doctor!” he cried. “Camaret is found. There he is!” And he pointed with his finger at a black dot moving on a leaf about 200 meters beneath them.

  Paradou leaned over and looked in the direction indicated by his companion. “Yes!” he cried, in his turn. “That’s definitely Camaret. He’s on a leaf, like us.”

  A few minutes later they could distinctly hear the voice of their comrade, whom they had believed to be lost, and whom they had found again, miraculously alive.

  “Hello, my friends!” shouted the dentist. “How are you? Personally, I’m very well.”

  “We’re fine too, thanks,” the doctor replied, laughing at this singular kind of reunion and mutual congratulation, after having escaped such terrible danger. “What happened to you?”

  “Oh, next to nothing—a mere bagatelle,” Camaret replied. “I flew away like a grin of dust and fell on to a leaf, very softly, without sustaining the slightest injury.”

  At the same moment, Paradou and Soleihas heard a strident noise behind them. They turned round.

  How amazed they were! They saw an enormous blister that had formed on the surface of the leaf burst loudly, and emerge therefrom…guess what? The diving-suits, pickaxes and, in brief, everything that the voyagers had abandoned inside the grotto.

  The enlargement accelerated rapidly. The doctor and his companion might have attained the approximate dimensions of a large fly when the leaf supporting them folded under its burden, inclined steeply and precipitated them into space, along with the diving-suits and pickaxes.

  As they fell they encountered the leaf on which Camaret was located, making that one bend over too and dragging the dentist with them into the void.

  There was a frightful racket under the bell-jar. The three men’s cries of distress were combined with the clatter of the equipment, and—an extraordinary thing—strident laughter was audible, like a distant rumble of thunder. The three men could not hear the laughter, however, so stunned were they by the speed of their fall.

  For a moment, it seemed as if they might be dead, but they soon recovered consciousness.

  The doctor, who was the first to get up, ran to lend assistance to his companions. Soleihas was already on his feet. As for the dentist, who had been hit on the back by a diving-suit, he was moaning as if all his bones were broken. Fortunately, he was more scared than hurt. He was helped to his feet, and was the first to laugh at his latest misadventure.

  “That was an eventful excursion!” he exclaimed. “It’s high time it ended. If our ascension in the rose-bush was extraordinary, admit that our descent was no less so.”

  Paradou looked up. The rose-bush had the approximate dimensions of a gigantic oak tree. Two minutes later, it was reduced to its ordinary size. At the same moment, the bell-jar was raised and Al-Harik came to lend them a hand.

  The doctor was the last out. Before leaving the bell-jar, he wanted to collect the rose-leaf that had been the theater of such extraordinary events. He wanted to conserve it piously as a souvenir and an irrefutable witness of his memorable experiences—but although he searched hard, he could not find it in the midst of the other leaves. It ought to have had a sign that rendered it easily recognizable among them all—the rip by means of which the diving-suits had come through the epidermis—but no trace of that rip remained. Finally, losing patience, he rejoined his companions.

  IX. A Catastrophe

  The day after the one on which that unforgettable excursion inside a rose-bush had taken place, an even more extraordinary experiment was to take place. Al-Harik proposed to take the three friends into the interior of a sugar-lump. Reduced to dimensions so tiny that the imagination can no longer conceive of them, they were to voyage through the atoms of matter, witnessing the laws of the chemical combination of those atoms and discovering the ultimate secrets of nature.

  Al-Harik had invited the three illustrious members of the Hyperpsychical Society of Perpignan to breakfast, desirous of giving them the necessary explanations before undertaking such a dangerous experiment.

  The breakfast was very lively. They naturally talked about the experiments they had carried out together, of the future reserved for the old scientist’s stupefying discovery, and its inestimable advantages from the viewpoint of the new elements that it would furnish for investigations in the physical and natural sciences. Al-Harik gave his guests the necessary instructions for the success of the experiment that they were about to attempt in a few minutes’ time. At first, they were reluctant to believe what they were being told.

  “But we obviously attained the ultimate degree of smallness that a living being can have in the rose-bush,” said Paradou. “Life is impossible beyond that. After all, there’s a limit to the dimensions of living beings.”

  “Well, you’re mistaken, my dear doctor,” Al-Harik replied. “I ought to tell you here about one of the most extraordinary episodes in my research. In the beginning, I thought like you and did no hope ever to be able to render a human smaller than a cell. Continuing my exploits in the diminution of matter regardless, however, in spite of that reasoning, imagine my amazement and joy when I succeeded in bestowing on a human the smallness of an atom.”

  “An atom!” cried Soleihas, leaping out of his cha
ir. “That’s impossible! It’s absurd…it’s madness!”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve heard those negations,” Al-Harik went on, with a thin smile, and without manifesting the slightest emotion. “I myself, when I acquired the certainty of being able to render a human as small as an atom, put my head in my hands and wondered whether I might not have gone mad. Oh, gentlemen, a scientist sometimes has to have a very well-tempered brain to resist the emotion of his discoveries! I wept and laughed at the same time, uttering frightful cries. At that unexpected noise, people came running and my wife was alerted. She made every effort to calm me down.” The old man looked at Thilda, who had just come in with the coffee, and said: “Isn’t that true?”

  “I don’t know what you said,” the young woman relied.

  “I was telling these gentlemen how you found me laughing and crying like a madman they day I transformed my gardener Pierre into an atom.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Thilda replied, in the one of someone replying affirmatively without conviction, out of pure politeness.

  The three friends were doubtless thinking privately that Al-Harik had ended up overstepping the bonds of truth, intoxicated by the tale of his inconceivable experiments—but they did not show it, desirous above all of attempting another adventure, which, if it were realized, would initiate them into the great mysteries of nature.

  The coffee having been taken, they took a turn round the garden to get some fresh air and facilitate digestion. Paradou noticed that Al-Harik was very red in the face. He made that observation to him, and asked whether he did not think it preferable to postpone the experiment until the following day.

  “Not at all,” said the scientist. “I don’t feel ill.”

  They headed for the house and climbed the stairs leading to the laboratory.

  The master of the house addressed himself to his wife. “Will you come up in a few minutes, Thilda—I need you.”

  “Yes, my friend,” she replied.