Part 3

They tasted the drug several times. Lea would not let him move more than a few steps each time down the small declivity. Then they came to where the ground now seemed fairly level. It slowly shifted and crawled under their feet as they dwindled. And suddenly, as they walked slowly forward, Carter was aware that the ground wasn't rocky under them now. It was softer, with little scrunching ridges and lumps which he could feel through the battered soles of his shoes.

"There is the lake," Lea said presently. Her hand flung out with a gesture. He stared to one side with a new awe. Twenty or thirty feet away he had noticed a little patch of yellow sheen on the ground. But it was hundreds of feet away now--a pool of shimmering water with a path of glowing starlight upon its rippled surface. Behind it there seemed to be wooded hills ... tiny trees....

* * * * *

Quite suddenly--so suddenly indeed that the thing momentarily made Carter's head reel--his viewpoint changed. As though his eyes were thousands of feet in the air, he felt himself dizzily staring down at a little town of streets and buildings that clustered along the nearer lakeshore. He saw himself as he actually was, a monstrous Titan, standing here with his head reared thousands of feet into the sky and Lea's world shimmering peacefully in the starlight almost at his feet!

The ground under them was still expanding from the last small dose of the drug. The shining lake and the little city were growing larger, seeming to rise up; but they were also visually receding.

"We sure better start walking forward," Carter suggested. "It'll be an awfully long walk if we don't make speed before we get much smaller."

She agreed, and they hastened their pace. The ground crunched audibly now under their tread. Presently Carter could hear that it was a very queer crunch--a swishing, crackling of tiny sounds. Puzzled, he suddenly stopped and bent down. Under his feet a tiny forest was spread--strange-shaped, gray-blue trees, none of them more than an inch or two in height. Beneath his tread they were mangled--tiny furred twigs mashed and strewn, and some of them thrust by his weight into the soft ground.

Slowly the forest rose up, closed over their heads. Dark glades were here now. The soft air was perfumed by the flowers. The phosphorescence of the ground, more apparent in this arboreal dimness, streamed up to meet the effulgence of starlight which filtered down from overhead.

It was a peaceful, glowing forest of strange twilight. And suddenly Carter was aware of the stirring of bird-life in the trees; the sound of insect life under foot. New realms of infinitesimal smallness!

"Taroh evidently hasn't started anything while you were gone," he said. "Everything looks okay here. No need to worry over Taroh now, Lea. Not with us here, with the drugs. Your world is in no danger now."

No danger? Within the city gates close ahead a sudden shrill cry rose up and floated out over the glowing forest. A cry of startled wonderment; of fear. Then others took it up--a chorus of terror within the little city. Along the top of the city wall the figures of the sentries, etched against the sky, were running.

"Why, what the devil--" Carter murmured.

Lea, in a panic, was gripping him. "Oh, George, look--off there by the lake!"

Far off beyond the crescent tip of the starlit lake a giant figure loomed! The starlight painted a huge man's head and shoulders--bullet head of close-clipped hair.

"Taroh!" Lea gasped.

Monstrous enlarging giant! He stood for a moment, head and shoulders above the forest trees, peering down at the lake and the little city. And then he came striding forward!

* * * * *

"Lea, dear--" Carter was clutching her by the shoulders. "Lea, you run on into the city. Find your father--you stay with him, Lea."

"Oh, George--what is it you do? The enlarging drug--"

Hastily he dumped the pellets into his palm. The white ones this time. How many should he take? He swallowed two; replaced the others.

"George--" He felt her gripping him as his senses reeled.

"George--" She gasped it in terror as she saw him towering beside her.

"It's all right--I'll take care of Taroh. Run, Lea! Run--"

Her little face was down at his waist. For a second she stared up; terrified--and wistful.

"You will--come back, George?"

"Yes. I'll come back--" He gave her a gentle shove; he stood staring as he saw her dwindling figure dart between the dwindling trees. Then he turned and ran back. Soon he was threading the narrowing spaces between the trees which were hardly as high as his head....

Where was Taroh now? In the swooping, shrinking scene, for a minute or two Carter had wildly run away from the city. He was stooping now, trying to keep below the dwindling tree-tops. Momentarily he did not see his adversary. But off in the distance there was the crackling of breaking twigs. It sounded like brush-fire. Abruptly it occurred to Carter that he did not dare delay any longer. Taroh, gigantic, in a moment might be demolishing the city. He stopped his advance; waited a moment and stood erect. The trees were well below his knees now. A hundred feet or so away was a patch of shimmering water like a great pool. He could see the spread of little city beside it, the tallest of its buildings not so high as his waist.

Off to the left was Taroh. Carter's heart leaped with triumph. Taroh seemed now not much more than a head taller than himself--massive chest and shoulders garbed in a leather garment, with knee breeches of leather beneath. A stalwart, heavy-set fellow. To Carter's viewpoint he was some seven feet tall. But he seemed shrinking a trifle. Carter was overtaking him in size!

Taroh saw him now! The starlight showed a look of amazement that for a second spread on his evil, heavy-featured face. Then he whirled from the edge of the pool; and as Carter darted backward to lure him away from the city, like a bull Taroh came charging, lunging, crashing through the tiny trees. He was far enough from the city now--Carter gauged it, and then suddenly turned, faced his adversary and then leaped for him.

The impact of their bodies knocked Carter backward. He fell, with his huge antagonist on top of him. It was the weight of a powerful, thick-set three-hundred-pound man nearly a foot taller than himself. He felt big arms around him; saw Taroh's face, contorted with rage. Locked together, they rolled, mangling the tiny forest. Then, despite Carter's agility, he felt himself pinned, with his adversary sprawled on top of him. A slowly shrinking adversary? To the panting, lunging, wildly twisting Carter it seemed so. But it was a negligible shrinkage now. He felt Taroh's powerful hands at his throat. Over him the bullet head was etched against the starlit sky. Then the evil face pressed down, leering, triumphant, with muttering floating words, and hot panting breath.

Carter's senses were whirling. The strangling fingers at his throat had shut off his breathing. His head began to roar. Wildly he fought to get loose, but could not.... The end for George Carter ... Lea--poor little Lea--this would be the end for her and her people also ... all doomed....

* * * * *

In those terrifying, strangling seconds, dimly Carter was aware of the shrinking ground pulling in under his threshing body. The crushed forest was like thick mangled fern-clumps. Was this water here? One of his flailing arms went down into a little puddle beside him. His hand struck a rock in the water. Instinctively, with fading senses, he gripped it; heaved it up, dripping; tried to crash it on Taroh's head, which was close above him. He heard his adversary grunt. It was a glancing blow; but Carter was aware of the strangling fingers momentarily loosening at his throat. He gulped in the blessed air; and with clearing head, despairingly he lunged, broke loose and heaved Taroh off.

Abruptly the crouching Taroh's hand went to his mouth. He was taking more of the enlarging drug! Carter tried to do the same. But he had no time; with a roar, again his adversary sprang at him. They clinched; staggered, but both kept on their feet. And within Carter's arms now he could feel the bulk of Taroh expanding! A rapid expansion. Soon he would be ten feet tall.... You couldn't win a rough and tumble like this against a giant ten feet tall.... Was this a rocky wall here beside them?... It seemed that Carter dimly could see looming rocks. Despairingly he was trying to break loose from Taroh, get away long enough to take more of the drug. But his triumphant antagonist was holding him as they staggered on their feet. Taroh was content to clinch. His massive body was horribly huge now--so huge that Carter's face was pressed against the chest of the leather jerkin.

It was now or never. Despairingly Carter knew it. In another minute he would be a puny child in the grip of this monstrous growing giant. He could see now that there was a towering rock wall here beside them. Carter's failing hand struck it. Would some of the rocks be loose? The dwindling wall pressed forward against him like a thing alive. His despairing fingers roved it. A loose chunk of rock--he found one. It was too large to grip. Then, in a moment, it had shrunk so that his fingers encircled one of its jagged ends. Desperately he tugged; tore it loose. It was a chunk of metallic rock as big as his head. With all the power he could muster, he crashed it sidewise against Taroh's huge temple. It was a direct blow, this time. Carter seemed to hear the gruesome cracking skull. He felt the huge arms around him loosen, drop away. For a second Taroh seemed to stand balanced, with buckling knees. A dead man on his feet. Then he fell, lay sprawled on his back with the inch-high forest trees crushed beneath him.

And one of his outstretched dead arms struck across a rill of shimmering water--a river that backed up against the Titan arm, then turned aside and went roaring off through the mangled forest!...

* * * * *

At the city gates the running Lea had paused. She could hear that the city was in a wild turmoil of terror; shouting, running guards; people awakening in the middle of the time of sleep; appearing in windows or on rooftops; shouting at each other, or running out into the streets, gathering in milling, terrified groups. All staring at the monstrous fighting giants that loomed above the distant forest trees beyond the end of the lake.

And at the city gate, unnoticed by the gathering crowd, little Lea stood alone, gazing. Only she of everyone, knew the meaning of that weird combat. Which of the distant struggling giants was George? At first she could not tell. And then she saw him....

Combat of Titans. Waist high above the forest trees and steadily looming higher, they stood swaying out there by the end of the lake. Then presently they fell, with a cataclysmic distant roar as they crashed down. She saw a huge arm go down into the lake. George's arm! Her heart seemed stuck in her throat as breathlessly she stared. Was George winning? His hand, with a dripping boulder as big as her father's castle perhaps, came heaving from the lake. The distant dripping water was a monstrous opalescent cascade in the starlight. Then a great wave from it came surging down the lake. It beat with a roar against the city embankment; some of it rolled up into the streets, so that the terrified people there rushed screamingly back.

The giant figures were on their feet again. She could not see them clearly. They were so far away now--just blurred monstrous shapes looming into the sky. Fighting men, each of them bigger than all the city of Helos. Then presently they were fading shadows, big as all the sky, blurring with it. The roaring sound of them was only a monstrous fading whisper. And then they were gone.

Was the battle over? Who had won?... To each of us, himself is the center of the Universe.... The white-faced, trembling little Lea stood at the city gate staring at the empty luminous distance. And because she was a woman, she wanted George to have won--for herself, as well as for the fate of her people....

* * * * *

In the lamplit Carter living room, George sat with his father and Alice. He was in his bathing suit; ragged, dirty and blood-smeared. He had told them now of his weird experience; how he had killed Taroh; and then, still getting large, had come on and emerged again into his normal Earth-world....

"You've still got some of the drugs?" Professor Carter said finally. "Good Lord, George--a trip like that, you could have been killed a hundred times. You accomplished your purpose--I'm glad of that. Taroh is dead. No use trying to connect that world with this one any further. It's against nature. And those drugs--the most diabolic things that exist in the world today. I'll demonstrate them to our scientists--then we'll have them destroyed."

Did the blind little Alice perhaps feel differently? Her sensitive fingers caressed the stubble of beard on George's blood-smeared face. "In the morning you'll tell me all about Lea?" she murmured. "I--I really loved her, George."

"Yes--yes, of course I will," he agreed. He avoided his father's demand for the drugs. "In the morning, Dad," he said. "Don't worry--I'll be careful of them. You and Alice better get to bed now. For me, I want a bath and shave. And a lot of sleep. I'm about all in."

He kissed his father affectionately. His caress as he embraced his blind little sister lingered for just a moment.

"Good night, Alice dear."

"Good night, George."

There was no one to see young George Carter as, later that night, he furtively tiptoed downstairs. Quietly he left the house, went down to the little rock garden where the moonlight gleamed on the old sundial and its metal pointer. And he did not come back....

That was more than a year ago. They found his scrawled little note: "Don't worry over me--I'll return shortly."

But so far, he has not. The sundial is in the Carter living room now; the room is closed off and never used. If you go to the small New England village, perhaps Professor Carter would let you see the sundial. A microscope has been erected over it. A light always shines on the old metal pointer.

Professor Carter is somewhat a grouchy, dogmatic old fellow. You might not like him. But despite that, there is never a day passes that for hours he does not sit at the microscope, peering downward so futilely little of the way, straining his eyes, hoping and praying that his son will return.

And often, too, the blind little Alice sits there, listening, waiting for the tiny voice which will tell her that her brother has emerged. She is sure he will come; it would not be like him to go and never return at all. She wishes, too, that he would bring Lea back with him....

If you should go to see the Carters, go at night. Gaze up at the immensity of the distant stars, the faintest nebulæ over the house. They are thousands, millions, trillions of light-years away--distances beyond conception of the human mind. Then go in and stand by the sundial in the Carters' little living room. You'll see, quite plainly, the tiny abrasion on the narrow top edge of the triangular sundial pointer. Lea's world, infinitely distant, beyond the reach of any microscope, is there--her world with its own remote heavens, and its own myriad tiny atoms--and each of them holding still other infinitudes of smallness.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Girl from Infinite Smallness, by Ray Cummings