Kurt Rolf nodded grimly and took the Scarab from Kerny’s hand, replacing it, for the moment, in its felt-lined box.
The two men removed their cumbersome space suits, which they had worn as a now evidently futile guard against the danger of the menace. They could breathe here in the sealed turret, since all rooms aboard space craft have individual air purifiers. One never knows what chamber may need to serve as a refuge for the survivors of an accident of the void. Likewise, each room is provided with bottled water and a supply of concentrated rations.
Rolf inspected the Scarab, started its minute atomic motor. Kerny disposed of MacDowd’s body by locking it in the torpedo compartment, which adjoined, and formed a unit with, the turret. Next he collected the materials and articles necessary for the coming task, and placed them on a portion of the floor which his companion indicated. In the midst of this outlay the scientist set his tiny, mechanical proxy.
Then he crouched down before the robot control and began to manipulate its keyboard. The Scarab went to work.
PAXTONIA, the jagged, baneful fragment of an ancient and mighty world, tumbled around on its axis. Night and day succeeded each other, each built of tense, dragging hours. A race was in progress, a race between Rolf, constructing an ultra-micro-robot, and whatever it was, that, if given time, must surely find its way into the turret room, with fatal results to its human occupants and failure on their part to solve Paxtonia’s ghastly riddle.
One night, Kerny, peering sternward from the turret windows, noticed a new and weird manifestation of that riddle: several glowing, phosphorescent dots on the visible curve of the space ship’s hull. Those dots marked the positions of tiny, deepening holes in the metal. The unknown was drilling fresh passages into the craft, as doubtless it was puncturing bulkheads within, and working, out of sight somewhere, on the surface of the turret itself. But Kerny was still unable to act against the mystery which smallness concealed. He could not bring his proton pistol to bear against the luminous dots, through the massive walls of the turret; and he dared not venture forth yet, not only because of the danger of his own life, but because, during his exit, death might enter the refuge, destroying his and Rolf’s last chance of penetrating the enigma which threatened all commerce in this region of space. He could only shake his big fists, curse vengefully, and help Rolf whenever he was able.
On the turret floor, during the endless hours, a metal beetle toiled busily, plying tools which were almost too small to see with the unaided eye—tools many of which it had fabricated itself from bits of steel floss and foil, and minute flakes of hard diamond, with the aid of the little atomic furnace that sputtered beside it.
And in the television screen of the robot control, the operations were enlarged, until those tools seemed to be of a size which men would use for fine work. The turret room itself had the aspect of a tremendous, cliff-walled cavern.
Rolf alone was qualified to handle the robot control during most of the job; but while he slept, Kerny guided the little Scarab, polishing new parts, winding coils, and doing other less intricate, though necessary, things.
GRADUALLY, the Scarab of super-smallness was taking form. Viewed directly, it was only a glinting speck, like a little shred of steel among a mass of filings; but examined in the television screen, it was a minute though intricate thing, somewhat like the mechanism that was building it, though, because of the need for haste, it had been simplified.
It had no arms or legs, but it was provided with gravity screens, a rocket-propulsion unit and deflector-fins to guide it in its flight. It had eyes and a minute microphone which could pick up sounds finer and more faint than any a larger device could detect. Within its flattened, oval form were its radio receiver and transmitter, and the instruments necessary to interpret properly the commanding impulses that came to it through the medium of the ether.
At last the new Scarab was completed and made ready for action. But would it work as it should? And would it be effective in combating the Paxtonian mystery? Or had the two men who were responsible for its creation been following a false lead in their theory that in microscopic things lay the only means of approach to the grim problems they were trying to solve?
Dr. Kurt Rolf adjusted his robot control to receive and transmit the delicate radio impulses on which the effective guidance of the ultra-micro-robot depended. He did not need to use the radio of the larger Scarab as a relay, for the new robot, in spite of its extreme smallness, was still not so tiny as to be beyond the direct range of the control.
Next, he and Kerny put on their space suits once more; for presently, if all went as they had planned, there would be no air around them. Now Rolf proceeded to manipulate the keys of the guiding apparatus, just as he had done while directing the movements of the larger Scarab.
Ejecting a minute thread of white flame from its rocket, the little metal miracle leaped from the floor and circled the walls of the turret.
In the television screen, what seemed a great, murky void was visible. In it even the dust motes of the air seemed as huge and jagged as masses of broken stone.
“You’ve done it, Doc!” Al Kerny said in tired though mighty enthusiasm. “Now maybe we'll be able to fight!” His face was haggard with the strain of tension; it looked almost brutal.
“Perhaps,” was Rolf's weary, laconic response. “It is best that we do not open the door to give our super Scarab exit. It would be safer to make a hole in the door.”
Kerny turned the focusing boss of his proton pistol until the flame it would throw was reduced to a concentrated stream of energy no thicker than a pencil. This he directed at the door from close range. Under the hammering of myriad, focused protons, the metal melted swiftly. In a minute there was a hole, the caliber of the beam, through the portal. With an expiring whisper, audible even through oxygen helmets, the atmosphere in the turret rushed from the opening; for in the passage without, and in the conning tower beyond, all the air had long since escaped, leaking through the punctures made, by the hidden enemy, in the ship’s hull.
Now Kerny broadened and decreased the force of the flame; but he still kept it directed at the hole to form a sure guard against the entrance of the baneful unknown. Only for a moment was Kerny’s pistol inactive. That was when Rolf guided the super Scarab through the boring that had been made for it. Now, out of sight, it was flying close to that surface of the door which faced the passage.
THE rapt attention of both men was now on the television screen. In it, through the eyes of their tiny servant, they could see the tremendous expanse of the door, and the colossal void of the passage leading to the conning tower. The great rocks that were dust motes, sucked from the war turret along with the air, were settling rapidly, for the atmosphere that had supported them had been much thinned by expansion, and now it was being thinned further by leakage through the punctured hull. Soon it would be gone entirely. No sound could be picked up by the super Scarab’s microphone or transmitted by the diaphragm of the robot control, for the air was already too thin to carry vibrations.
But with the swift disappearance of the dust motes, vision improved. There was nothing strange in the vicinity of the door, but in the vast, clear distance of the passage, close to the gigantic globe of a ceiling illuminator, was a swirling swarm of specks which did not settle! Paxtonia was beginning to give up its grim secret!
Rolf sent the super Scarab hurtling cautiously nearer to the swarm. Details sharpened, as, with fascinated attention, the men watched. In the screen they saw scores of black spheres, smaller than the vanished dust particles. But they looked like space ships! Space ships employing a principle of flight different from that known to Earthmen!
It was still startling to think of craft of such smallness as being possible. But both Kerny and Rolf knew that there was no scientific fact to deny either the possibility of the existence of such craft, or the existence of their still more minute makers.
And if they were space ships, many riddles were easy to explain. Smallnes
s imposes no limit on speed, at least in a vacuum, while in air, if given time to accelerate, and if powered by motive devices of a strength in proportion to that of the vessel sent out from Earth, the attainment, by these hypothetical space craft, of a velocity surpassing that of a bullet, should not be difficult. Such speed would enable these ships to hurl themselves right through the metal of a man’s vacuum armor and into his flesh beneath. This idea is, at first, rather hard to believe; but the strength of materials, in proportion to size, increases as size is diminished. A small object can be dropped from an enormous height without injury, while a large object of similar construction and materials, would be, under the same conditions, completely smashed. The same rules apply to living creatures.
Perhaps, then, MacDowd and the others had been killed by tiny space ships which had penetrated their armor and flesh, injecting into the latter a microscopic but effective portion of virulent poison. If this was the case, doubtless the craft had retreated back through flesh and armor in the way they had come, leaving no trace of themselves for man’s microscopes to discover.
Perhaps the glowing specks which Rolf and Kerny had seen on the flanks of their own vessel were only the visible manifestations of microscopic heat tools, mounted on invisibly tiny space craft, and being applied to burn through metal. The explosions of the commercial ships from Earth, when they had approached Paxtonia, could be explained by the penetration of some of these super Lilliputian space vessels into their interiors, and the application of a tiny spark to the sensitive, old-type fuel in their fuel tanks. Yes, with a tangible basis for a theory, answers to several questions were not difficult to find now.
RUMINATIONS of this sort must have flashed through the minds of both Kerny and Rolf. But their most intense thoughts necessarily concerned the practical considerations of the immediate present. The time had come to clash with the enemy!
“They have retreated from the door!” Rolf shouted into his ether phone. “You can open it now, if you act quickly! A foot to the right of the first illuminator globe in the corridor is where the swarm of spheres is amassed!”
Kerny jerked the portal open, and directed his proton pistol with swift and vengeful accuracy. Blue, deadly flame shot from the weapon, blanketing the space which Dr. Rolf had indicated.
Al Kerny saw no evidence that his act had produced any effect; but he heard the scientist’s triumphant shout: “Success! Small things may be tough, but the spheres can’t withstand the blast of swift and ultimately small protons! The heat, generated in their substance, has melted them! Now I shall look for more swarms of spheres, and tell you where to find them! We must clear the corridor and get back to the conning tower!”
For several seconds there was a pause, while Kerny watched the super Scarab waver and circle ahead of him. Tiny though it was, its position was always plain because of the spark of incandescence ejected from its rocket.
Presently, Rolf shouted again: “Above the Scarab—perhaps eighteen inches! Blast quickly before there is time to attack and destroy our robot!”
Al obeyed, and another group of tiny, deadly spheres was wiped out.
So it went. The scientist gave directions through his ether phone, and Kerny responded with wolfish and gleeful efficiency. There was still grave danger; but Kerny was not blind and helpless any more, when faced by the menace in miniature. He and his companion possessed a little guide that could meet that menace on an even basis.
Thus, at last, the corridor was cleared, and Al moved on to the conning tower. Here, death must have passed him by only the narrowest of margins; for one of the hordes of spheres, swirling to attain what was probably meant to be a death-inflicting velocity, passed within a yard of him before he could destroy it. But presently, for the moment at least, the conning tower was clear of enemies.
“Make a dash for it now, Doc!” Kerny shouted into his ether phone.
Momentarily, the super Scarab came to rest among banked levers and instruments, while Rolf, bearing the robot control, reached the conning tower as quickly as he could. Once inside, he slammed the metal door behind him. Then he set the robot control down on the floor, and began again to hammer its keys.
The super Scarab took off once more, to parallel the walls in its flight, seeking the tiny holes which the enemy had drilled in the ship’s hull. There were several of these here in the conning tower. Kerny welded all but one of them shut with his proton pistol.
This remaining hole, viewed in the television screen, looked like a big tunnel. Now, under Rolf’s guidance, the super Scarab darted through it, and out over the Paxtonian plain. Ahead of it, revealed in the screen, were several retreating spheres.
“We will follow them with our ship,” Rolf announced. “We must keep close to our robot, or else the distance will be too great for contact with it. The radio waves it emits are very faint.”
Pilot Al Kerny leaped to the ship’s controls. Levers moved in his grasp. There was a heavy vibration of rockets as the craft cleared the ground.
THE TINY FLAME of the Scarab was difficult to see in the bright sunshine; but Kerny, peering through the windows, managed to locate it. After that he kept his gaze fixed on it with grim purpose.
Over the wreckage of vast machines and buildings, the ship flew. Bas-reliefs of slender, attenuated bodies with great bulging eyes, carved on crumbling walls, glided by beneath.
“Proceed,” Rolf assured his companion. “We are on the right track. The super Scarab is still behind the retreating spheres.”
Al Kerny saw the speck of flame that was his guide dart down toward what was apparently an immense boulder. Then it disappeared, seeming to vanish into the mass of the huge lump of stone. Automatically, not knowing what else to do, Kerny worked the helm levers, causing the ship to begin the arc of a circle above the great rock.
He looked back toward Rolf, crouching beside the robot control. But in the television screen, action was depicted which caught and held Kerny’s gaze as though it possessed hypnotic power. So like was the aspect of everything to the parts of an environment which a man would consider of normal dimensions, that it took Kerny a moment to realize that what he beheld was the magnification of minute miniatures.
The micro-robot from which the view was broadcast, was traversing what appeared to be a wide tunnel, illumined dimly. Before Rolf’s creation, the spheres were retreating more slowly now; and from the floor of the passage queer, rod-like weapons, mounted like cannons, were being discharged against the intruder with faint white spurts of flame. But strangest of all, these weapons were manned by slender gray monsters, identical in every detail to the monsters depicted in bas-relief on the walls of the ancient Paxtonian domes!
The firing from the rod weapons was feeble and scattered; so Rolf guided the super Scarab on along the tunnel. But presently its way was barred by an airlock of some transparent material. The spheres, retreating ahead, had passed through the lock, but now its doors were closed. Nevertheless, through its clear substance, a cavern was visible beyond it—a cavern illumined by what must have been artificial sunshine. There were lakes and forests and hills and growing crops on the cavern floor; and there was what seemed a great, crystal city, in which millions of monsters, like those of the bas-reliefs, were swarming.
Now the ground batteries in the tunnel began a more active barrage. Rolf was forced to cause the micro-robot to retreat. Presently it emerged above the barren landscape of Paxtonia.
THE SCIENTIST was pounding control keys less furiously now. “I think I understand it all at last,” he said. “The spheres are really space ships, manned by Paxtonians as small, almost, as microbes. They were the cause of all our troubles.”
“But they are miniatures of the ancients, who were countless times their size!” Kerny burst out. “Why should that be?”
Rolf shrugged. “Simple,” he breathed. “Simple and marvelous. It is a solution to the problem of shortages, which probably has seldom been thought of. When the world of which Paxtonia was a part broke up, a
ges ago, a number of its inhabitants survived here. They built the stone domes, in which water and air could be sealed. But existence was—how shall I say?—very cramped. There could be no expansion of population because of the limited supplies of air and water that had been salvaged from the wreckage of the broken world. Race extinction was doubtless in sight. But it so happens that a small organism needs less air and water than a large organism. In consequence, the Paxtonians decided to grow smaller.
“In a limited way we understand the means they must have used. Growth, in man, is controlled to some extent by gland secretions. Heredity also has its part to play in determining an individual’s size. By a process of selecting only the smallest individuals of the race for parenthood, the Paxtonians might have reached their present minuteness after long ages of time. But doubtless they found a quicker way with the aid of gland control.
“Utilizing much the same methods, they reduced animals and plants in proportion. And now they are a people which must number many millions of individuals, living complex, civilized, and comfortable lives inside the sealed caverns which they have excavated in a great rock. No wonder their refuge wasn’t found before this!”
Al Kerny looked a trifle dazed. “Well,” he said, “that ends the Paxtonian mystery, doesn’t it? There’s nothing left to do but knock over that damned ant hill and wipe out every bug inside it! The torpedo projector in the war turret is made for that kind of work!”
Kerny glanced toward the door, his gray eyes glinting with the light of vengeance. Then, suddenly, most of the grimness of him softened.
“We know how to fight them now,” he said irrelevantly. “They aren’t dangerous any more, if we’re careful.” He paused, and then went on: "They were probably scared; that’s why they blew up those commercial ships and killed the boys. In their position, we’d have done the same, if we had the nerve. Besides, they’ve already paid the price in blood. Maybe, when they find out that Earthmen aren’t such bad eggs, they’ll make friends. Earth ought to be able to learn a lot from them. Say, Doc, let’s just scram and leave the little devils alone! There probably are a few of their spheres still somewhere on the ship; but with the super Scarab to watch, we’ll be fairly safe.”
Then and Now: Another Collection of Science Fiction Page 16