CHAPTER X

_The White Flag_

Father and I had of necessity changed our whole mode of life when we undertook the watching of the rock fragment. We gave up our Westchester residence, to live the year around at King's Cove. Father moved his laboratory from Westchester; I relinquished my flying job.

The house at King's Cove, unheated, was not suitable for winter conditions. We installed a heating plant. We cleared out one of the small bedrooms. Barred its windows and its door, so that it had all the aspect of a cell.

The windows we sealed, not to be opened. A new door was hung, closely fitting so that there was not the smallest crack. Into the ceiling we cut a small ventilator to keep the air of the room fresh.

There was one small chair. In the center of the room there was a flat, six-foot-square slab of granite. It was raised above the floor on a sturdy pedestal. In its center lay the precious chunk of rock, with a dome-light over it--the white electric glare shining strongly down.

The microscope hung in a bracket; and there was another bracket--a rack of bottles and atomizers. Gruesome to contemplate using them! Bottles of acids and poisons; atomizers to spray poison liquids! These tiny humans which might appear would be treated like deadly insects, at once to be exterminated.

We had three guards employed. Between them, they covered the entire twenty-four hours. They sat armed with automatics. At ten-minute intervals they searched the fragment of rock with the microscope. An electric bell-switch was close at hand, so that in an instant father and I could be summoned.

Yet for all this neither father nor I could for a moment relax. Alternating with our hopeless moods that Drake and Dianne were gone forever was the feeling that Togaro might at any moment attack us. Within the atom thousands perhaps of his followers were preparing to conquer the earth.

It was nerve-racking business. Father was breaking down under the heart-rending strain of it. I knew he could not possibly go on for another year, living under such conditions.

There was never a moment when he and I both dared leave the house at once.

He was asleep this momentous night in mid-May. I had sent the guard out for a ten-minute relaxation. I saw the figure appear. I stood shaking, peering down into the small microscope. The magnified chunk of rock showed jagged and broken. Upon the upper lip of the crater-like hole the tiny figure was visible. A man, blood-stained and battered, with a waving white flag in his hand.

I turned from the microscope. I could just make him out with the naked eye--a pin-point of white movement.

I rang the bell for father. I stood trembling. Confused by the shock of this actuality which for so long we had been contemplating. A whirl of confused thoughts plunged at me. Was it Drake?

No! It did not seem to look like Drake.

A friend? An enemy? Should I kill it? What was I waiting for?

I became aware that I had seized an atomizer. A puff of it and a torrent of deadly spray would kill that tiny figure; and kill, doubtless, any others which might be there, too small yet for me to see.

I held my hand. A friend? A white flag--of truce?

The figure was expanding. Without the microscope now I could see it clearly in the brilliant white light.

Dare I let it get larger? I shouted: "Wait! You--stop!"

Father burst into the room. "Frank!"

And behind him the burly figure of the returning guard. Both were panting from running and from excitement.

"Frank?"

"Something here! Father, look! Man--with a white flag. See? See him wave it?"

Father seized the microscope. He was trembling so that at first he could hardly hold it. I clutched the poison spray; the guard stood behind us, alert with an automatic, and his gaze roved the room.

Father murmured: "Not Drake? Is it not Drake?"

"No."

"Oh--No, no, you're right--it is not Drake." The disappointment in his voice! "Not Drake--a man, a stranger."

I pulled at father. "You can see him now without the microscope."

The guard--a fellow named Foley, as near without nerves as a man could be--stammered:

"You--you going to kill it--him?"

"Yes! No! No, Frank!" Father clutched at me. "Look, he's climbing down."

The figure of the man was a quarter of an inch high now. He started climbing down the two or three inch jagged side of the chunk of rock. He slipped, slid; and then fell and landed upon the polished surface of the granite slab. He lay motionless.

"He killed himself, Frank!"

"No--look, he's up again!"

He was standing by the rock which towered like a cliff beside him. He was in a moment half an inch high. The white flag was a piece of white fabric. He had thrust it in his belt; he drew it out again and waved it wildly at us.

I said: "He's afraid we'll kill him." I put the spray back on the overhead shelf. "Think he can hear us, father? Understand us?"

"Yes. Maybe. Try it, Frank. Don't let him get too large. Tell him to stop. You see anybody else?"

Foley said: "I'll take a look." He applied his eye to the microscope.

"Don't shout, Frank. Slow, distinct. He'll hear you better that way."

I said: "Don't--get--much--larger! We'll kill you."

"Suppose he doesn't speak our language," father began.

Foley said: "Nobody else. He--this one--he's all smashed up. Bloody. You can see his feet; he's got 'em bound with rags."

The figure seemed to understand me. I could see the tiny face looking up. He seemed to be shouting at me. I turned to Foley.

"Wait, Foley. Quiet."

In the silence, as I bent down, the small words came clear:

"Don't--kill me! Friend--friend--from Drake."

From Drake! The word thrilled us. We stood breathless, watching the figure on the granite slab. An inch high now. A young man. Bruised and bleeding as though from arduous, desperate traveling.

His brief suit of knitted fabric was torn, dirty and blood-stained. His head was bare, showing his close-cut blond hair. His feet were wrapped into shapeless bundles with cloth seemingly torn from his garments. He stood wavering. He put the white flag into a belt at his waist--a belt which we could see now held many compartments.

Two inches high. He walked away from the chunk of rock. The light overhead appeared to dazzle him; he flung an arm before his face. But it seemed also that in the far distance he had seen the void which was the edge of the granite slab. He shrank back; then he looked up.

"Don't hurt me!"

His accent reminded me of Ahlma. Or Togaro! the thought came to me: was this a trap? This fellow with his white flag, was he from Togaro, masquerading here as a friend of Drake's?

Then triumph swept me. Here was the drug! This fellow had it!

Father was plucking at me as I bent intent over the growing figure.

"Frank, do we dare let him get large?"

The man was three or four inches high now. I put my face down close to him. It startled him so that he jumped backward and fell. But he picked himself up at once.

I said: "Can you hear me clearly?"

"Yes. Are you--is it you that are Frank Ferrule?"

"Yes," I said. "You stop getting larger. Stop, you understand? Then we'll talk. Are you alone?"

"Yes." He fumbled at his belt; then his hand went to his mouth. In a moment his size was unchanging. "Alone." He added, his tiny voice sounding clearly:

"Yes, here all alone. They wait for me in there--a portion of the trip in there, they are waiting with the flying car."

Father was whispering to me triumphantly:

"He's got the drug! With that, Frank, we can do anything. But we've got to let him grow to our size. Don't you understand--let him grow large and expand the drug with him!"

I had not thought of that. If this fellow were an enemy and it ended by our having to kill him, the drug he carried would be of no use to us. I stared down at his tiny figure, no longer than my finger. To a comparative giant like myself, of what use his infinitesimal quantity of the drug! We would have to let him grow large.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"I am called Alt. I am sent to you from Drake. Trust me--do not kill me. I have a message for you."

Father said, "If you are from Drake--did he write to us? Send something to prove who you are?"

"No. That I mean--yes, he gave me a paper, but I have lost it. The journey was hard--"

Suspicion rose in me. But friend or enemy, we wanted his drug. I flashed father and Foley a warning glance. It would not be dangerous to let this fellow reach our own size--provided we were alert to keep him from getting any larger than us. I said.

"You're hurt. We'll dress your wounds.

"You can get larger--but be sure to stop when you are the size of me, or we will kill you."

He was docile enough. He said, "Very well, then I will do that."

He sat down on the rock slab and we watched him with a tense silence. In a moment he was a foot long; then twice that. His growing body pushed against the rock fragment. "Move!" I said sharply, "stand up--I'll lift you to the floor."

I ran my fingers over him; he seemed unarmed. I lifted him and set him on the floor at our feet. Foley moved the light to shine upon him; and stood with weapon ready.

Father cautioned grimly, "You obey us--no trickery."

He stood quietly eying us. High as my waist; then my shoulder. I said, "Enough! That's large enough."

I whispered to Foley; and when the figure ceased enlarging Foley pounced upon him.

"Give me that belt! The drug--give it up, damn you!"

He made no move to resist us. He stood meek--a slim young man now about my own height; and about my own age. He was pale and tired, in miserable plight, covered with cuts and bruises.

I seized his belt, stripped it from him. An affair of metal and fabric, with compartments in which were metal vials of the drug. Possession of it brought me a wild sense of power. Helpless no longer!

Foley backed the fellow to a corner of the room. "Stand there till they say what to do with you."

We were not afraid of him now. "Easy, Foley--don't hurt him!" I added, "Now you can tell us what you came for."

He said with a rush, "You do not trust me, but I speak truth. Drake--he is your brother?--he, with the Princess Dianne and the Lady Ahlma are in the flying car. Waiting. And they sent me out alone to you. I had a paper from Drake--I have lost it--"

"Why didn't Drake come?" I demanded.

"He stays to protect the princess. The men of Togaro are everywhere--in every size."

He almost convinced me, with the swift, apprehensive look he flung about the room.

Father said, "What was Drake's message? Don't you know?"

"Yes, I know. He wants--weapons. Our world in there is threatened--disaster--destruction of all our little world. Our people--following Togaro--have gone mad. Too gigantic for our little world to hold them! And yes, they threaten your earth too--but that you control safely out here in this room. Drake would have me tell you the invasion is coming. You must be watchful to kill them as they come out--and Drake wants weapons, to threaten them so that they may not go completely mad and wreck our little world."

Weapons? My suspicions leaped anew. Did this fellow think he could come here and we would give him weapons?

Father demanded, "What sort of weapons?"

"Not many--just two or three, for Drake to use to convince our people of his power. A knife-blade of steel--to bring death swift and silent. And he said, what you call automatics--two or three of them."

"Give you those and let you go in?" I retorted sarcastically.

His pale blue eyes opened wide. "Drake said you--his brother Frank, he said--would come with me. He wants you--I am to guide you to where he waits."

My heart leaped. Guide me in! Why, of course! From the moment I knew I had the drug, there had been in the back of my mind the knowledge that I was going in to Drake. I had not thought of a guide. Necessary, of course, if I were to locate where Drake was waiting. And here was the guide.

Father stammered, "No! I can't--can't let you do that, Frank. This fellow--a lying impostor perhaps, to lure you in there."

Would I go? Dare I risk it? I heard myself saying calmly, grimly,

"All right. I'll go in with you."