Ray Cummings

“ He was nearer the door now, and just beyond it he caught a glimpse of the white flesh of Aura's ankle as she stood beside the house. The man put a hand on the Very Young Man's throat. The Very Young Man caught it by the wrist, but he could feel the growing pressure of its fingers cutting off his breath. He tried to pull the hand back, but could not; he tried to twist his body free, but the weight of his foe held him tightly against the floor. A great roaring filled his ears; the hallway began fading from his sight. With a last despairing breath, he gave a choking cry: "Aura! Aura!" ”

“ The Very Young Man felt the girl's eyes fixed almost constantly upon him—a calm gaze that held in it a great curiosity and wonderment. He steered steadily onward towards Orlog. There was, for the moment, nothing to discuss concerning their adventure, and he wondered what he should say to this girl who stared at him so frankly. Then he met her eyes, and again she smiled with that perfect sense of comradeship he had so seldom felt with women of his own race. ”

“ A cry from Aura interrupted him.
"My brother, see, they come," she exclaimed.
Before them, out of several of the smaller passageways, a crowd of little figures was pouring. There were no shouts; there was seemingly no confusion; just a steady, flowing stream of human forms, emptying from the tunnels into the amphitheater and spreading out over its open surface.
The fugitives stared a moment in horror. "Good God! they've got us," the Doctor muttered, breaking the tenseness of the silence. ”

“ Walking along this silent hallway, listening to the echoes of his own footsteps on its stone floor, the Very Young Man found himself oppressed by a feeling of impending danger. He looked back over his shoulder—once he stood quite still and listened. But he heard nothing; the house was quite silent, and smiling at his own fear he went on again.
Selecting the food they needed for the trip took him but a moment. He left the storeroom, his arms loaded, and started back toward the garden door. ”

“ At our feet lay the city, just awakening into life. Beyond, over the rolling meadows and fields, wound the road that led out to the battle-front, and coming back over it now, we could see an endless line of vehicles. These, as they passed through the street beneath our window, I found were loaded with soldiers, wounded and dying. I shuddered at the sight of one cart in particular, and Lylda pressed close to me, pleading with her eyes for my help for her stricken people. ”

“ It is not because they want Targo's rule that they oppose us. It was, but it is so no longer. It is because they have been made to fear these drugs we have. For now, in Orlog, they are shouting death to all the giants. Forgotten are all their cries for land—the things that Targo promised, and we in Arite would not give. It is death to all the giants they are shouting now: death to you, to me, to us all, because we have these drugs."
"Did they attack you?" asked the Big Business Man.
"Many things they threw," Lylda answered. "But I was so big," she smiled a little sad, twisted smile. ”

“ It is impossible. How can you conceive the edge of space? Something must be beyond—something or nothing, and even that would be more space, wouldn't it?"
"Gosh," said the Very Young Man, and lighted another cigarette.
The Chemist resumed, smiling a little. "Now, if it seems probable that there is no limit to the immensity of space, why should we make its smallness finite? How can you say that the atom cannot be divided? As a matter of fact, it already has been. The most powerful microscope will show you realms of smallness to which you can penetrate no other way. ”

“ The girl looked around her curiously. The valley of the scratch appeared to them now hardly more than a quarter of a mile in width. Aura stared upwards between its narrow walls to where, several thousand feet above, a narrow strip of gray-blue sky was visible.
"That sky—is that the sky of your world?" she exclaimed. "How pretty it is!"
The Very Young Man laughed.
"No, Aura, that's not our sky. It's only the space in the room above the ring. When we get the size we are going to be finally, our heads will be right up in there. ”

“ It is the only way—I now think—that may be there comes no harm to our people. It is that we want to do, if we can." She spoke eagerly, and without waiting for them to answer, went swiftly on.
"This drug that you have brought, I shall take it. And I shall get big. Oh, not so very big, but big enough to be the height of a man it may be ten times. Then shall I talk to the people—I, Lylda—woman of the Master, and then shall I tell them that this power, this magic, is for good, not for evil, if only they will give up Targo and all who are with him."
"I will take it with you," said the Chemist. ”

“ Aura joined her sister and Loto. The Chemist after a moment stood apart from the others thinking deeply. He had said little during all the events of the afternoon and evening. Now he reached the inevitable decision that events had forced upon him. His face was very serious as he called his companions around him.
"We must decide at once," he began, looking from one to the other, "what we are to do. Our situation here has become intolerable—desperate. I agree with you," his glance rested on the Big Business Man an instant; "by staying here we can only do harm to these misguided people." ”

“ All I had seen before showed the gentle kindliness of a people whose life seemed far removed from the struggle for existence to which our race is subjected. I had come gradually to feel that this new world, at least, had attained the golden age of security, and that fear, hate, and wrongdoing had long since passed away, or had never been born. ”

“ As though at a signal, a thousand little voices took it up, and with a great rush the crowd swept forward.
In the first moment of surprise and indecision the group of fugitives stood motionless. As the wave of little, struggling human forms closed in around them, the Very Young Man came to himself with a start. He looked down. They were black around him now, swaying back and forth about his legs. Most of them were men, armed with the short, broad-bladed swords, or with smaller knives. Some brandished other improvised weapons; still others held rocks in their hands. ”

“ That has nothing to do with the speed of your progress through life."
"Ah, but I think it has," cried the Chemist. "You forget that we none of us have all of the one thing to the exclusion of the other. Time seems short; it seems long, and in the end it all averages up, and makes our rate of progress what it is. Now if any of us were to go through life in a calm, deliberate way, making time seem as long as possible, he would live more years, as we measure them, than if he rushed headlong through the days, accomplishing always as much as possible. ”

“ Far in the distance, at the edge of the lake, and beside a dim smudge he knew to be the houses of Arite, the Very Young Man saw the giant figure of a man, huge as himself, towering up against the background of sky. ”

“ A smaller crowd was pounding violently upon a side door of the building. Several people ran shouting down the street, spreading the excitement through the city.
The Chemist and his companions stood in the doorway of the balcony an instant, silently regarding this ominous scene. The Chemist was just about to step forward, when, upon another balcony, nearer the corner of the building a woman appeared. She stepped close to the edge of the parapet and raised her arms commandingly.
It was Lylda. She had laid aside her court robe and stood now in her glistening silver tunic. ”

“ In another minute it was the size of a large horse-fly, struggling to release its wings from the Chemist's grasp. A minute more and it was the size of a beetle. No one spoke. The Banker moistened his lips, drained his glass hurriedly and moved slightly farther away. Still the insect grew; now it was the size of a small chicken, the multiple lens of its eyes presenting a most terrifying aspect, while its ferocious droning reverberated through the room. Then suddenly the Chemist threw it upon the table, covered it with a napkin, and beat it violently with the slipper. ”

“ The Big Business Man doubled up his fists.
"It's fight," he said grimly. "By God! we'll——" but Lylda, with a low cry, flung herself before him.
"No, no," she said passionately. "Not that; it cannot be that now, just at the last——"
Aura laid a hand upon her sister's shoulder.
"Wait, my sister," she said gently. "There is no matter of justice here—for you, a woman—to decide. This is for men to deal with—a matter for men—our men. And what they say to do—that must be done."
She turned to the Chemist and the Very Young Man, who were standing side by side.
"A woman—cannot kill," she said slowly. ”

“ The Chemist's voice came to him from far away. "We are all of us here in a world that only occupies a portion of one little atom of the gold of a wedding-ring. Yet what you see there in that stone——"
The Very Young Man raised his head. Before him stood the microscope, with its fragment of stone gleaming in the blue light of the burning wire. ”

“ Yet, when size changes, time-rate changes; you have only to look at our own universe to discover that."
"How do you mean?" asked the Very Young Man.
"Why, all life on our earth, in a general way, illustrates the fundamental fact that the larger a thing is, the slower its time-progress is. An elephant, for example, lives more years than we humans. Yet how quickly a fly is born, matured, and aged! ”

“ The Very Young Man, as he lay prone, looked upward, and saw the sunlike light above fall swiftly down across the sky and disappear below the horizon, plunging the world about them into the gloom of a semi-twilight. ”