He Who Shrank: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Henry Hasse

  Bob shook his head. “I think not. Else why aren’t some of them on the streets now?”

  “Maybe afraid if they emerge they—they’ll fall victim to this.”

  “Then why aren’t you and I and Rac affected? No, I’m afraid that argument won’t hold water, Vee. To get at this systematically, we can only be sure of one thing: the source of this must be local. We can discount that the Earth passed through the tail of a comet or some other gaseous matter, because we had a grandstand seat in the Terra and we know that no such thing occurred. Besides, we saw it start at a point right about here, and then quickly spread. That brings us right up against a blank wall. All I can think of is to explore this old planet from stem to stern.”

  “Bob! Do you suppose they had a war? Thinks were comparatively peaceful when we left, but a lot can happen in four years.”

  “Hmm. It’s a possibility, at that. If so, all I can say is whoever thought of this sure had the ace card up his sleeve!”

  “We must explore first, of course,” Vee said dully. “There must be somebody . . . Bob, if there isn’t, I simply couldn’t bear to stay here.” She suddenly brightened. “We can always go back to Mars and Rac’s people. I was just getting to like it there.”

  “Liar,” Bob replied. “Besides, that’s just what we can’t do. You forget we’re low on fuel now, and only Dr. Broxted knew the formula.”

  “He may have left it around.”

  “Not Dr. Broxted. Besides, we’ve been away so long trying for Mars instead of the moon, he probably thought the fuel was a failure.”

  As they walked along they noticed all the clocks had stopped at midnight; the hands were like single forefingers pointing mutely upward, as if calling the fatal minute to their attention.

  “And we were wondering how we were going to escape the welcoming crowds!” Bob said. “I even had Rac rehearsing a little speech of greeting to the people of Earth. Ironic, isn’t it?” He stopped suddenly, noticing they were in front of a pretentious cafe. He gazed ever so wistfully in.

  “Do you know, Vee, I’d made up my mind that one of the first things I wanted when I got home was a decent meal! “

  Vee brightened. “You get the most marvelous ideas! It’s what I need to cheer me up.”

  “Besides,” Bob added, “I can think better with a warm meal in me.”

  Rac stayed close to them as they entered. He still gazed around at this strange world where everything and everyone was so still. But now Rac was pondering. He knew that this motionless silence wasn’t the usual “sleep period” on this alien world, such as his two friends had to undergo regularly. No, this wasn’t like that, nor was this anything like the world they had described to him in such glowing terms. This was different—and wrong! Rac had observed how perturbed his two friends were. He had a very sincere feeling for them, and appreciation of all the things they had shown and taught him.

  From the very depths of his heart he wished he could help them now.

  They had started to seat themselves at the nearest table when they both thought of something at the very same moment.

  “We’ll have to help ourselves; we can’t order!”

  They both laughed, the first heart-felt laugh since they had landed, and it seemed to break the tension that gripped them. The scene in the room—patrons at the tables, waiters hovering about, a floor show in progress—now seemed like some bizarre marionette show halted in the middle of an act. They proceeded toward the kitchen, but Vee suddenly stopped. A waiter had just been in the act of emerging from there, bearing a tray of steaming food.

  Vee stared and exclaimed, “Bob! This stuff should be cold!”

  “What? Of course it should be, by now.”

  “But it isn’t! Look—it’s still steaming hot!”

  It was true. But before they could marvel long over this miracle, Bob had discovered another. The door behind the waiter, being on swinging hinges, should have swung shut, but it had not! It remained ajar, precisely in keeping with the rest of the motionless phenomena.

  And now Rac, who had been wandering around the tables, set up his “Rac-c-c” sound denoting that he too had discovered something of more than passing interest.

  Rac was staring, fascinated, at a beautifully spiraled, but very quiescent pattern of blue smoke curled up from a cigarette in the fingers of a gentleman at one of the tables. They watched the still glowing end of that cigarette with a sort of fascinated horror. But it crept no nearer to the fingers that held it! Rac was delighted that he had shown them something of probable importance.

  “Do you know,” Bob said with a sigh, “this sort of thing would soon drive me batty if it weren’t rather funny. But I’m beginning to form a theory which, if true, makes it not so funny any more.” He fanned the air violently, and the tobacco smoke drifted and thinned.

  “What is your theory?” Vee asked.

  “It’s—well, just fantastic enough to fit all this,” Bob replied enigmatically. “But I don’t want to spill it until I’m sure. Let’s have that steak or whatever it is you want.”

  “It seems price is no object,” Vee said, “so the best is none too good.” She stared around at the tables. “See that roast duck over there ? That for me!" She pointed to a table where a pompous gentleman had been about to begin the appetizing repast.

  They soon were demolishing the duck dinner. Rac would touch nothing but three or four kinds of fruit that Vee brought him from the kitchen. The main provender of Rac’s people had been a sort of sickly grayish fruit which they prepared in various ways; but evidently Rac thought the Earth fruit much tastier. He viewed the duck, however, rather dubiously. He may have recognized it as a sort of far distant Earthian cousin of his!

  They were in much better spirits, and Rac was almost jubilant as they went out into the streets again to observe a city halted in its stride.

  Rac at last felt equal to testing his stubby wings. He would take ten or twelve long-legged running steps, then soar fifty feet into the air. Because of the denser atmosphere this was more height than he had ever been able to attain on Mars. But the stronger gravity would not allow his wings to sustain him for more than a few seconds, and he’d come gliding back down at them.

  He would skip along beside them for awhile, quaintly pronouncing words on shop windows, on the theatre billings—proud of his ability, even if he didn’t know what half the words meant. Then, suddenly tiring of his oral prowess, Rac would run swiftly ahead and soar upward again.

  Once they stopped at a drinking fountain, and after persistent attempts water gushed forth, to Rac’s amazement. It all seemed very wasteful to him, almost sacrilegious. Water was a scarce commodity in the barren caverns of Mars, something to be hoarded and treasured.

  Once, stopping before a little coffee shop, they saw a startling tableau at the counter. A man stood there. In his hand was a gun, pointed straight at the girl behind the counter. The girl’s mouth was open, as if she had screamed or was just about to. Vee tried the door and it was unlocked. She entered. She gingerly took the gun from the man’s hand, then placed it firmly in the girl’s fingers so that it pointed straight at him!

  “What was that for?” Bob asked in amazement.

  Vee smiled sweetly. “Maybe for the same reason you moved that pedestrian back there. Who knows?”

  Bob shook his head sadly. “I’m going to watch the papers for this tomorrow—if there ever is a tomorrow!”

  At last they gazed out upon the most breathtaking spectacle they had yet seen, but one that was very appropriate to this new motionless world. As far as the eye could see, the ocean lay before them like a huge, flat mirror of greenish glass, unbelievably vast and placid! To the very horizon it stretched in absolute quiescence, not the tiniest ripple disturbing the surface. Words were unnecessary as they stood in awe before this expansive miracle which no person had ever seen before. The very placidity of the vast water seemed to grip them so they hardly dared move.

  But not so
with Rac. To him that great green expanse was simply another natural part of this alien world. He had taken another of his short soaring flights and was hovering fifty feet above the water. Now he began to glide swiftly down, straight for the smooth green surface. They shouted at him, but it was too late. A yard from the surface he balanced himself on his stubby wings and alighted with a little splash.

  Rac sank from sight and came up sputtering, a very surprised Martian indeed. With instinctive strokes of his wings he made his way to where Bob, laughing, could help him out. Rac was more frightened than hurt, more astonished than frightened. Never had he dreamed that smooth expanse could be water. It was more water than he had ever dreamed existed! He simply stood there dripping and looked to the horizon, enraptured.

  That ocean spelled doom to their waning hope; it was the final proof they needed that the condition encompassed the globe. Now it was nearing dusk, and they began to realize that for the first time in history the metropolis was going to pass a night shrouded in utter darkness.

  “Let’s return to the Terra,” Vee said a little anxiously. “I don’t think I could stand it here tonight. It’s like some city of living dead!”

  They found the same car they’d driven into the city and headed back out to the Terra. Bob left the car in the middle of the highway again, and carefully placed the driver in the front seat the way he had found him. They were silent, thoughtful, as they walked the rest of the way. Even Rac now was more quiet and a little scared. The moon peered palely through the lucent yellowness of the night like a poor frightened ghost of the moon they had formerly known.

  CHAPTER III

  “Bid Time Return”

  “Maybe we’d better try the radio again,” Vee said as they entered the spaceship.

  “Smart girl. We should have done that long ago.”

  For several hours they sent out messages, calls of frantic query on all wave lengths. But it was futile. The receptor remained dead. Bob gave up in despair.

  “Well,” he said at last, “it looks as if the world is ours—but I don’t know what we’re going to do with all the people! Talk of your Alexanders and Caesars—those boys were pikers compared to us; our private estate extends for 25,000 miles and meets itself.”

  He went into the rear compartment of the ship and rolled out their small plane, which they’d used for scouting on Mars. “There’s only one more thing to do,” he said. “I’m going to play my hunch.”

  Soon they were flying back over the darkened city, Bob at the controls. He flew high above all traffic levels to avoid collision with numerous planes that still hovered. But all below was a sameness, dark and silent.

  “What are you looking for?” Vee called.

  Bob shook his head. “I don’t know. A light. Anything!”

  They found it minutes later. They had criss-crossed the city. Rac’s sharp eyes spotted something first, far to the right. He pointed excitedly. Far below them they saw a tiny bright parabola flash across the sky. It was followed by two more. Signal rocket flares! It meant that someone, after all, was down there!

  Quickly Bob headed the plane for the spot. He zoomed and raced the motors as a signal, and the tiny flaming arcs continued. They seemed far away, out over Long Island somewhere.

  As they came nearer, Bob called, “I know who it is now! Dr. Broxted! We should have known it!”

  Vee nodded. Far below a little square of light loomed against the darkness. A minute later their plane was slanting down toward it. They recognized the huge white house and wide lawn, now ablaze with lights, the only light in all the surrounding darkness. They set the plane down, and a small, tense figure of a man came running toward them.

  As they stepped out he stopped abruptly, stared, then rushed forward and grasped their hands. “Bob Stevens! And Vee! Good heavens, I thought— Where’ve you been all this time?”

  “Merely to Mars, Doctor,” Bob replied. “Your fuel was quite a success! But didn’t you hear on the radio that we’d been sighted?"

  Broxted shook his head. “No—I’ve been too busy. I did hear your motors tonight and sent up my signals. But I didn’t dream it was you. I haven’t been into the city yet, I—I didn’t want—”

  “I don’t blame you,” Bob said. “It’s not pleasant. But here, let me introduce you to a very good friend of ours.” He drew Rac forth into the light. “Doctor Broxted, meet Rac.”

  But Rac was very silent again, as he always was when things happened too fast for him.

  Broxted stared at the birdlike creature in amazement. “Wh-what’s that?” he stammered.

  “You mean who, Doctor, not what. Rac’s a Martian. We’ve been on Mars nearly four years, and I must admit we expected a better welcome home than this. What’s it all about? I can see how Vee and I escaped this thing, being in space, but I don’t see how you—”

  “I don’t myself, Bob. It was only pure luck; I can tell you that. But—do you mean you can’t guess what’s happened?”

  “I can do more than guess. It begins to look as if my theory—”

  “Bob Stevens!” Vee exclaimed furiously. “You’ve been ranting about a theory as if—as if it were exclusive property or something. Well, I’ve got one of my own, and I’ll bet it’s as good as yours!”

  “Okay,” Bob grinned. “Spill!”

  “All right, smarty, I will.” She turned to Broxted. “Doctor, you’ve been working on that time-experiment thing again. I thought you had given it up.”

  “That’s right, Vee. But I had a new principle this time,” Broxted began eagerly, “a different line of—”

  “See!” she exclaimed to Bob.

  “Yes, Vee, you’re positively brilliant.”

  “Come on. I’ll show you.” Broxted eagerly led the way to the house. “But I must admit, I seem to have bungled things. Rather badly, I’m afraid.”

  “That,” Bob said, “is only putting it mildly.”

  Broxted waved a defiant finger. “But my principle was correct, is still correct! Something just happened; I can’t quite figure it out yet myself. You shall see for yourselves.”

  “And your time theory—it’s the same as before?”.

  “Yes, just as I explained to you four years ago. Except for the device itself. Oh yes, I finally built it. I proceeded along entirely unprecedented lines, with a series of rotors of my own design connected in such sequence as to set up a definite stress in the time field.”

  “Well, isn’t there any way you can—undo this terrible thing that you’ve done?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Broxted replied with a strange bitterness, opening the laboratory door. “Here we are.”

  They entered. They stared around. The room seemed extraordinarily bare; at least there was nothing which might even remotely have been a time device.

  “But what is it?” Bob exclaimed. “I don’t see a thing!”

  “Don’t you?” Broxted said, and that same strange bitterness was in his voice. “Well, it’s right there in front of you.”

  At these words Bob looked up sharply. A terrible thought had occurred to him. Broxted’s brain had become unbalanced by the sudden world calamity.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Broxted went on, “but I assure you I’m not mad. The time device is right there. Just take a few steps forward, but carefully!”

  Bob walked slowly forward, hand outstretched. Then he touched something. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. It didn’t seem to be a substance at all, but a force, smooth, cold, impenetrable—and invisible! He passed his hand along it for a few feet. It seemed curved.

  “Roughly it’s about eight feet in diameter,” Broxted explained. “And just inside that invisible barrier is my time device.”

  “You mean—you can’t get in there?”

  “My dear boy, what do you suppose I’ve been doing here for the past many hours? I assure you most positively that I can’t get in there!”

  Vee stepped for
ward and felt along the barrier of force. “What about dynamite?” she said.

  Broxted shook his head patiently. “I tried blasting; the explosion is only hurled outward. I’ve made every test I can think of, including acids. Nothing seems to affect that barrier. It’s pure static force. My only solution is to build a duplicate time device, but it’ll take months. What I hope to do then—and it’s only a forlorn chance—is to use the second time device to go forward in time and release the first one.”

  “Then you mean to say,” Bob exclaimed, “that beyond that barrier—”

  “Is the future—yes. My time device reached into the future, but, I believe, only for a fraction of a second! I’d set my experiment for exactly midnight last night. I stepped into the machine, and precisely on the second of midnight I released the power. There was a lurch, then a vast surge. Fortunately I was hurled backward as the machine slipped under me. I was dazed for several minutes. When I came to, everything was just as you see it now. That time surge had hurtled outward, almost with the speed of light, to envelop the whole world. I discovered that minutes later.

  “As for the barrier—well, my only explanation is this: you’ve heard it said that time is only an infinite number of ‘nows,’ each impinging delicately, intangibly upon the next. This impenetrable force is the barrier between our ‘now’ and the next one existing an infinitesimal fraction of a second beyond us! Ironic, isn’t it? There sits my time device only a fraction in the future, and we can’t reach it!”

  Bob was vociferously skeptical. “That,” he exclaimed, “sounds screwy! Time is only an abstract conception, not something that—well, that can be tampered with!”

  “You’re right on one point, at least,” Broxted agreed bitterly. “It’s certainly not to be tampered with. I’ve learned that now, maybe too late. But look at it this way: we’ve been accustomed to regard time as we would some perpetual motion machine; it goes on forever. But throw a wrench into the perpetual motion machine and what happens? It instantly stops. Well, in effect, that’s what I’ve done with my time device; I’ve instantly and completely jammed the time-flow between the infinitesimal ‘nows.’ How else can you account for that motionless world out there? It’s motionless because it’s timeless.”