The Pygmy Planet
Page 2
a black ribbon from a hook onone of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of silentlywhirring apparatus.
* * * * *
Eagerly, he unfastened the magnifier. Holding it before his eyes, hebent toward the strange sphere spinning steadily in the air.
"Suffering shades of Caesar!" he ejaculated.
Beneath the lens a world was racing. He could see masses of vividlygreen forest; vast expanses of bare, cracked, ocherous desert; wastesof smooth blue ocean.
Then he was gazing at--a city?
Larry could not be sure that he had seen correctly. It had slippedvery swiftly beneath his lens. But he had a momentary impression oftiny, fantastic buildings, clustered in an elflike city.
A pygmy planet, spinning in the laboratory like a world in the gulf ofspace! What could it mean? Could it be connected with the strange callfrom Agnes, with the blood on the floor, with the strange and ominoussilence that shrouded the deserted room?
"Oh, Larry!" a clear, familiar voice rang suddenly from the door. "Youcame!"
Startled, Larry leaped back from the tiny, whirling globe and turnedto the door. A girl had come silently into the room. It was AgnesSterling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, andher brown eyes were wide with fear! In a white hand, which shook alittle, she carried a small, gold-plated automatic pistol.
She ran nervously across the wide floor to Larry, with relief dawningin her eyes.
"I'm so glad you came!" she gasped, panting with excitement. "Istarted to call you on the phone, but then I was afraid it would killyou if you came! Please be careful! It may come back, any minute!You'd better go away! It just took Dr. Whiting!"
"Wait a minute," Larry put in. "Just one thing at a time. Let's getthis straight. To begin with, what is it that might kill me, and thatgot the doctor?"
"It's terrible!" she gasped, trembling. "A monster! You must go awaybefore it comes back!"
* * * * *
Larry drew a tall stool from beside one of the crowded tables andplaced it beside her.
"Don't get excited," he urged. "I'm sure everything will be allright. Just sit down, and tell me about it. The whole story. Just whatis going on here, and what happened to Dr. Whiting."
He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at him gratefully, andbegan to speak in a rapid voice.
"You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carriedthe doctor back there. And I know it will soon be back for anothervictim--for sacrifice!"
She had pointed across the great room, toward the strange little globewhich hung between the pillars of red and violet light.
"Please go slow!" Larry broke in. "You're too fast for me. Are youtrying to tell me that that spinning ball is really a planet?"
Agnes seemed a little more composed, though she was still flushed andbreathing rapidly. Her small hand still gripped the bright automatic.
"Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He saidit was the great experiment of the century. You see, he was testingevolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched ituntil it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change anddevelopment of life upon it. And the rise and decay of a strangecivilization. Until now its people are strange things, with humanbrains in mechanical bodies, worshiping a rusty machine like a god--"
"Go slow!" Larry pleaded again. "I don't see--Did the doctorbuild--create--that planet himself?"
"Yes. It began with his work on atomic structure. He discovered thatcertain frequencies of the X-ray--so powerful that they are almostakin to the cosmic ray--have the power of altering electronic orbits.Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system, with electronsrevolving about a proton.
"And these rays would cause the electrons to fall into incrediblysmaller orbits, causing vast reduction in the size of the atoms, andin the size of any object which the atoms formed. They would causeanything, living or dead, to shrink to inconceivably microscopicdimensions--or restore it to its former size, depending upon the exactwave-length used.
"And time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects--probablybecause the electrons move faster in their smaller orbits. That iswhat suggested to Dr. Whiting that he would be able to watch theentire life of a planet, in the laboratory. And so, at first, weexperimented merely with solitary specimens or colonies of animals.
"But on the Pygmy Planet, we have watched the life of a world--thewhole panorama of evolution--"
* * * * *
"It seems too wonderful!" Larry muttered. "Could Dr. Whiting actuallydecrease his size and become a dwarf?"
"No trick at all," Agnes assured him. "All you have to do is stand inthe violet beam, to shrink. And move over in the red one, when youwant to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Whiting to the PygmyPlanet."
"Been--" Larry stopped, breathless with astonishment.
"See the little airplane," Agnes said, pointing under the table.
Larry gasped.
Beneath the table stood a toy airplane. The spread of its glistening,perfect wings was hardly three feet. A wonderful, delicate toy,accurate in every detail of propeller, motor and landing gear, ofbrace and rudder and aileron. Then he realized that it was no toy atall, but a faithful miniature of a commercial plane. A complete, tinycopy of one of the latest single-motor, cabin monoplane models.
"It looks like it would fly," he said "a friend of mine his a bigone, just like it! Taught me to fly it, last summer vacation. This isthe very image of it!"
"It will fly!" Agnes assured him, now composed enough to smile at hisamazement. "I have been with the doctor to the Pygmy Planet in it.
"You stand in the violet ray until you're about three inches high,"she explained, "and then get into the plane. Then you fly up and intothe violet ray at the point where it touches the planet, and remainthere while you grow smaller. When you are the right size, all youhave to do is drop to the surface, and land. To come away, you riseinto the red ray and stay in it till you grow to proper size, when youcome down and land."
"You--you've actually done that?" he gasped. "It sounds like a fairystory!"
* * * * *
"Yes, I've done it," she assured him. Then she shudderedapprehensively. "And the things--the machine-monsters, Dr. Whitingcalled them--have learned to do it, too. One of them came down the redray, and attacked him. The doctor had a gun--but what could he doagainst one of those?" She shivered.
"It carried him back up the violet beam. Just a few minutes ago, Istarted to phone you. Then I was afraid you would be hurt--"
"Me, hurt?" Larry burst out. "What about you, here alone?"
"It was my business. Dr. Whiting told me there might be danger, whenhe hired me."
"And now, what can we do?" Larry demanded.
"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'm afraid one of the monsters willbe back after a new victim. We could smash the apparatus, but it istoo wonderful to be destroyed. And besides, Dr. Whiting may haveescaped. He may be alive there, in the deserts!"
"We might fly up, in the little plane," Larry proposed, doubtfully. "Ithink I could pilot it. If you want--"
The girl's body stiffened. Her brown eyes widened with sudden dread,and her small face went pale. She slipped quickly from the stool,drawing in her breath with a sort of gasp. The hand that gripped theautomatic trembled a little.
"What's the matter?" Larry cried.
"I thought--" she gasped, "I think I see something in the ray! Themachine-monster is coming back!"
Her lips tightened. She lifted the little automatic and began to shootinto the pillar of crimson fire beside the tiny, spinning globe.
Larry, watching tensely, saw a curious, bird-like something flutteringabout in the red ray, _swiftly growing larger_!
Deliberately, and pausing to aim carefully for each shot, the girlemptied the little gun at the figure. Her body was rigid, her smallface was firmly set, though she was bre
athing very fast.
* * * * *
A curious numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensationswere the quick hammering of his heart, and a parching dryness in histhroat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, hewas paralyzed with fear.
The glittering thing that fluttered about in the crimson ray was notan easy target. When the gun was empty, it seemed still unharmed. Andits wings had increased to a span of a foot.
"Too late!" Agnes gasped. "Why didn't we do _something_?"
Trembling, horror-stricken, she shrank toward Larry.
He was staring at the thing in the pillar of scarlet light.
It had