by Ray Cummings
CHAPTER IX
To Alan the first moments that followed the escape of the drug were themost horrible of his life. The discovery struck old Dr. Kent, Glora andAlan into a numb, blank confusion. They stood transfixed, staring withcold terror at the fly which was scurrying along the floor close to thewall. It was already as large as Alan's hand. It ran into the corner,hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its wings weredroning with an audible hum. It reared itself on its hairy legs, liftedand sailed across the room.
As though drawn by a magnet, Alan turned to watch it. It landed on thewall. Alan was aware of Dr. Kent rushing with trembling steps to a shelfwhere bottles stood. Glora was stricken into immobility, the blooddraining from her face.
The fly flew again. It passed directly over Alan. Its body, with amembrane sac of eggs, was now as large as his head; its widespreadtransparent wings were beating with a reverberating drone.
Alan flung a bottle which was on the table beside him. It missed thefly, crashed against the ceiling, came down with splintering glass andspilling liquid. Fumes spread chokingly over the room.
The fly landed again on the floor. Larger now! Expanding with a horriblyrapid growth. Glora flung something--a little wooden rack with a fewempty test tubes in it. The rack struck the monstrous fly, but did nothurt it. The fly stood with hairy legs braced under its bulging body.Its multiple eyes were staring at the humans. And with its size musthave come a sense of power, for it seemed to Alan that the monstrousinsect was abnormally alert as it stood measuring its adversaries,gathering itself to attack them.
Only a few seconds had passed. Confused thoughts swept Alan. This flywith its growth would soon fill this room. Burst it; burst upwardthrough a wrecked palace; soar out, and by the power of its size alonedevastate this world.
He heard himself shouting, "Father, get back! It's too large! I've _got_to kill it!"
Could he wrestle with it and hope to win? Alan edged around the centertable. He was bathed in cold sweat. This thing was horrifying! The flywas already half the length of his own body. In a moment it might betwice that! He was aware of Glora pulling at him, and his father rushingpast him with a bottle of liquid, shouting:
"Alan! Run! You and the girl, get out of here! Into the other room--"
Then Alan saw the things on the floor! His foot crushed one with aslippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous,risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden,gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses ofpulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers ofooze hanging from it, and squirting a black inky fluid. Others were rodsof red jelly-pulp, already as large as lead pencils, quivering,twitching. Disease germs, these ghastly things, enlarging from theinvisibility of a drop of water!
The fly landed with a thud on the center table. The fumes of theshattered bottle of chemicals were choking Alan. He flung himself towardthe monster fly, but Glora held him.
"No! Escape to the other room!"
Dr. Kent was stamping the things upon the floor; pouring acids uponthem. Some eluded him. The air in the room was unbreathable....
Alan and Glora reached the bedroom. The laboratory was a hideous chaos.They were aware of its outer door opening, disclosing the figure ofPolter who, undoubtedly, had been attracted by the noise. He shouted astartled oath. Alan heard it above the beating wings of the monstrousfly. Things lurched at the opened door; Polter banged it upon them andrushed away, shouting the alarm through the palace.
Dr. Kent was stammering, "Not the enlarging drug, Glora, child, theother! Hurry!"
Alan helped Glora with the opalescent vial. Things were lurching towardthis room, from the laboratory. Alan, with averted face, choked by theincoming fumes, slammed the door upon the gruesome turmoil.
They took the diminishing drug. The bedroom expanded. The hideous soundsfrom the laboratory, and the whole palace now ringing with a wild alarm,soon faded into blessed remoteness of distance....
"I think this is the way, Alan. Off there--a doorway from my bedroom.Polter always kept it locked, but it leads into a corridor. We must getout of here. A crack under the door--is that it, off there?" Dr. Kentpointed into the gloomy blur of distance. "We're horribly small--it's sofar to run--and I've lost my sense of direction."
The drug had ceased its action. The wooden floor of the room hadexpanded to a spread of cellular surface, ridged with broken, tubeliketunnels; pits and jagged cave-mouths. A knothole yawned like a crater ahundred feet away.
"We are too small," Glora protested hurriedly. "The door is where yousay, Dr. Kent, but miles away."
With the other drug, the room contracted. The floor surface shrank andsmoothed a little. The door was distinguishable--a square panel severalhundred feet in width and towering into the upper haze. The black lineof the crack was visible along its bottom.
They ran to it. The top of the crack was ten feet above their heads.They ran under, across the wide intervening darkness toward a glow oflight. Then they came from under the door into a corridor--and shrankagainst a cliff wall as with a rush of wind and pounding tread theblurred shapes of a man's huge feet and legs rushed past. The upper airwas filled with rumbling shouts.
"We must chance it!" exclaimed Dr. Kent. "It's too far in this size. Wemust get larger--and if they see us, we'll fight our way out!"
In the turmoil of the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast asideall restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose theytook of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed. Theyrushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was in theirpath. They were already larger than Polter's people.
They squeezed out of a shrinking doorway. The dwindling island was aturmoil. Little figures were pouring from the palace. At the edge of thewater. Alan, Glora and Dr. Kent stood for an instant looking behindthem. The palace was rocking. Its roof heaved upward and then smashedand fell aside with the clatter of tumbling masonry. The monstrous fly,its hideous face mashed and oozing, reared itself up and, with brokentorn wings, tried to soar away. But it could not. It slipped back. Thedrone and buzz of its fright sounded over the chaos of noise. Otherthings came lurching and twisting upward, slithering out....
The expanding body of the fly was pushing the palace walls outward. In amoment it collapsed and the fly emerged.
To Alan and his companions the scene was all shrinking into a miniaturechaos of horror at their shoe tops. A diminuendo of screams mingled downthere. Overhead were the stars, shining peacefully remote. Nearby lay arapidly narrowing channel of shining water. A tiny city was across it.Lights were moving. The panic had spread from the island to Orena.Beyond the tiny city, was a range of mountains, a cliff, gleaming in thestarlight, and tunnel-mouths.
Suddenly against the stars off there, Alan saw the enlarging figure ofPolter, his hunched shape unmistakable. He was facing the other way. Helunged and scrambled into a yawning black hole in the mountains. Polterwas escaping! None of these people except himself had the drugs. He wasescaping with the golden cage, out of this doomed atomic world to theEarth above.
Glora murmured, "There is our way out. Your way. And that is Poltergoing. I do not think he saw us. So much is growing gigantic here."
Dr. Kent muttered, "We will wait a moment--wade across--or leap over,and follow him out. Babs is with him--dear God I hope so! This is adoomed realm!"
Alan held Glora close. And suddenly he was laughing--a madness, halfhysterical. "Why, this, all this--why look, Glora, it's funny! Thislittle world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! There's our giantsailboat!"
Down near their feet the inch-long sailboat stood at its dock. Tinyhuman figures were rushing for it; others, floundering in the water,were trying to climb upon it. Dr. Kent had stepped a foot or two fromthe shore, and tiny, lashing white rollers rocked the boat, almostengulfing it.
Alan's laugh rang out. "God! It's funny, isn't it? All those littlecreatures so excited!"
"Stead
y, lad!" Dr. Kent touched him. "Don't let yourself laugh! A momentnow, then we'll wade across. Polter won't have much start on us. Wemustn't get too close to him in size, but try and attack him unawares.We've got to get Babs away from him."
The narrowing passage rose hardly to their knees. They stepped ashore,well to one side of the toy city. Their growth had almost stopped. Butsuddenly Alan realized that Glora was diminishing! She had taken theother drug.
"Glora! What are you doing?"
"I must go back, Alan. This is my world, doomed perhaps, but I cannotforsake it now. I must give the enlarging drug to my father. And otherswho can rise and fight these monsters."
"Glora!"
Dr. Kent said hurriedly, "She's right, Alan. There is a chance they cansave their city. For her to leave them would be dastardly."
She cried, "You go on up, Alan. You have enough of the drugs. I am goingback!"
"No," he protested. "You can't! If you do, I'm coming with you!"
She clung to him. He felt her body diminishing within his encirclingarms. His love for her swept him--this girl who had cajoled Polter, ortricked him and stolen several of the vials from him, heavens knows how,and followed him up to the other world. This girl whom Alan had come tolove, was leaving him, perhaps forever.
As he stood there, with the miniature landscape at his feet in the wanstarlight--the panic-stricken tiny city, the island with its monstersrising to overwhelm this tiny world--it seemed to Alan that if he lether go it was the end for him of all life's promised happiness.
"Alan, lad, come." His father was pulling him along. So horrible achoice! Alan thought that I was back on that island. But Babs, aprisoner in the golden cage, was with Polter, plunging upward in size.And his father was beside him, pleading.
"Alan--come--I can't get out alone, or save Babs. And Polter, with thepower of this drug, can conquer and enslave our Earth as he has enslavedOrena--just one little city of one tiny golden atom! Believe me, lad,your duty lies above."
Glora's head was now down at Alan's waist. He stooped and kissed herwhite forehead; his fingers, just for an instant, smoothed her glossyhair.
"Good-bye, Glora."
She plunged away, and her tread as she dwindled mashed the forest behindthe city. Alan and his father ran for the cliff. They were too large tosqueeze into the little hole. But in a moment they made themselvessmaller. They climbed as they dwindled; checked the drug action andrushed into the tunnel-mouth.
Alan stopped just for an instant to gaze out over the starlit scene. Itwas almost the same viewpoint from which he had his first sight ofGlora's world only an hour or two before. The distant island beyond thecity showed plainly with the shining water around it. The vegetationthere was growing! And there were dark, horribly formless blobs lurchingoutward and rising with monstrous bulk against the background of thestars!
"Alan! Come, lad!"
With a prayer for Glora trembling on his lips, Alan plunged into the dimphosphorescent gloom of the tunnel.