CHAPTER XIII

_The Stowaway_

We stood in the shadows of the dark forest, with its gnarled, stunted trees. The red light flamed near by. A dim figure glided up to Drake. He gave an order; the figure hastened away. In a moment, the red light vanished.

Drake spoke hurriedly. He and Dianne and Ahlma were leading Alt and me toward where the red light had been. Drake half whispered:

"We saw you coming--lighted the red signal for Alt. Dangerous to keep it lighted now; Togaro's flyer has been here. His men--they may be near this size--would capture our flyer if they could."

We hardly went a hundred yards. To my questions Drake was impatient. "Presently, Frank. Here, this way."

I saw, in an open space, the dim shape of an interplanetary vehicle. An elongated globe, forty feet long, with its bulging middle half as wide. It lay dark and silent; but I saw that it had elliptical windows and a small doorway which stood open to receive us.

Strange vehicle! As we approached I could see that what I had thought was a dead-black thing of metal was in reality far different. Drake hurried us up a small ladder, into its interior. But I saw that the vehicle's side was not solid.

It seemed rather a myriad woven wires. The thing was a big cage, woven of intricate metal threads like a basket. Rigid, yet resilient.

I learned afterward some of the details of this strange vehicle. Standing inert, as it was now, the outer air circulated freely through it. The wire, of which its hull and all its interior ribs and braces were composed, was drawn from a ductile metal unknown to our world, a metal which contracted or expanded freely under the impulse of an alternation of electronic current. With the current charging it, the hull became a solid electrical surface, with the entire interior an active magnetic field, so that ourselves and all the contents of the vehicle were contracted in size as the hull diminished.

No drugs were needed now. We could use them inside the vehicle merely to change our size in comparison to the vehicle itself.

There were chemical air-renewers, and heaters to keep the interior warm against the cold of interplanetary space.

An interplanetary voyage! I could not at first grasp it. No vast space was here. We were in a dark forest, with a limited mountain valley around us. No stars were overhead; no great astronomical reaches were here. Where could this vehicle go? Into smallness, I knew that. But how? Sail off over these stunted trees? Why, in a moment with any speed at all it could reach the mountain barrier down which Alt and I had just come.

But I knew, as I pondered, that if this flyer remained just where it was, as it diminished in size, sufficient space for any flight would open up around it.

The door was barred behind us. We passed along a low, narrow passage, walking on a metal grid of woven wires. I saw small rooms; ladders leading up and down to other levels. A small room, crowded with strange instruments faintly throbbing as though all this wired bundle of mechanism was impatient to be gone.

We came to a little room with a window in the concave side of the hull; a table of woven wire; and a few wire chairs.

"Sit down," said Drake. "You particularly, Frank--be careful as we start. Your first voyage! The shock is different from the drug. I see you brought the weapons?"

"Yes. Do you want them now, Drake?"

"Keep them. We'll look them over presently. Sit quiet, Frank." He spoke hurriedly, abstractedly. "We must get started at once."

He hastened from the room to give orders for the starting. I had seen some eight or ten men aboard the vehicle. Four were in the instrument control room; Drake went in there.

I sat down, with Dianne beside me. Alt was whispering to Ahlma near by. Dianne murmured:

"Don't talk now--just for a moment."

I sat waiting. This vehicle with its many small rooms; its small passages, gave me again the impression that I was too large for my surroundings. Drake had stooped as he went through the arcade into the adjacent control room.

The dark trees showed motionless outside the window.

Dianne murmured: "Now, Frank."

It was a slow transition. The wire walls of the room turned faintly luminous. They hummed. A dull red glow suffused everything. The wire floor, the ceiling, the chair upon which I was sitting, all glowed red, like wire slowly heating. Red, then yellow, then almost white, with a cast of violet. But my hand on the chair-arm felt it to be cool as before.

I was conscious of a slight shock. A lurch. But it was within my head, for the room did not move. Everything was glowing white. Yet the room remained dim, for the light did not radiate. There was a throbbing; a hissing, whining sound of the surging current.

Then the air of the room turned electrical. It faintly snapped; occasionally in mid-air, a burst of small blue sparks exploded like a bomb. The outlines of the walls and ceiling and the furniture were lit with tiny blue lightnings.

Then I felt the real shock. A swoop of all my senses; a second, in which I thought I was gone, falling, with only the consciousness of Dianne's firm hand holding me.

A moment, then the shock was passed. I steadied, and found that save for a queer lightness and a tingling, I felt no different from before.

Dianne murmured: "That's all, Frank; you're past it."

"Yes. Have we started?"

"Oh, yes."

Drake came back. He eyed me appraisingly, but made no comment. He sat beside us.

"Let's see what weapons you brought. Frank, did you encounter any of Togaro's people? His flyer brought some out. A few. Not many yet. We haven't seen Togaro--we don't know where he is. But his expedition is ready. They don't know that we control the fragment of rock--that they cannot escape from it. They're coming out."

"If they do, father will stop them."

Drake was willing enough to talk now. He said: "Yes, father will stop them. That doesn't worry us. But in the atom--in Dianne's world--did Alt tell you? They've got a single vehicle, like this one, Frank. They keep it hidden. We can't find it--or haven't been able to, yet. Togaro's leaders are winning our people, firing them with desire to conquer the earth."

Dianne said: "When we get there--but, oh, Frank, I'm so glad you've come!" Her hand lay on mine; her fingers had gone cold. This was no regal princess--just an apprehensive, frightened little girl. Glad I had come! The weapons I had brought might be of use in this affair. But myself--what good could I be, trying to cope with a nation in revolt? Yet instinctively she turned to me.

"I'm worried, Frank. These are my people--this is my world at stake. The Togarites are telling our workers that never will they have to work again."

Drake interrupted passionately: "Dianne has told them they can't conquer the earth, that we control things up above! But they don't believe it. So now I'm going to threaten them. A bullet--they'll think that's magic. A knife thrust--and, Frank, we can't use the size-change as a weapon in Dianne's world. We dare not grow too large. You'll understand--you can understand now if you think of it. The Togarites' leaders have the drugs. They lurk everywhere in a size abnormally small. Sometimes they grow gigantic. But they dare not get too large.

"You see, we cannot fight them in largeness upon Dianne's little earth. There is a limit to what is safe. We have avoided such combat, and so have they. But they are more daring now.

"Their main expedition into largeness is about ready. It's all being done secretly--Dianne and her government are powerless to stop it. We think that a multitude of her people are willing to join Togaro's expedition. The leaders have been waiting for Togaro, but he has not come."

I said, "Because he's out in our earth-world and can't get in."

"Yes, doubtless. And now they won't wait any longer. The disaster, in spite of everything Dianne and I have been able to do, is now upon us."

My mind groped with these strange things he was saying. A group of a hundred or more Togarite leaders had for years been in possession of the drugs. They had built themselves an interplanetary size-changing vehicle, like this one in which we were now traveling. They kept it hidden--in some small size, doubtless. Dianne's controlling government would have destroyed it, but they could not find it.

The drugs were kept from the public, of course. But these bandit Togarite leaders had them; and they could not be discovered and confiscated either.

The Togarites wanted, Drake said, about a half million followers. With this multitude they would conquer the earth and populate it with their own race.

"Why?" I demanded. "Why do that?"

My question sounded inane. Drake shrugged. "Why has any conqueror lusted for power? The original Togarite leaders are evil fellows, renegades. Togaro himself tried to conquer Dianne's world, and failed. They want power, riches, plunder. Togaro wants all that. And he wants--Dianne."

I could feel Dianne stir against me. I said nothing, and in a moment Drake went on:

"There are ten million of Dianne's people, upon a little globe which they populate fully. Just the one nation. Perhaps by now the Togarites have their half million followers. They plan to transport them out--up to our world--"

"How?" I demanded. "A single flyer, like this, to transport five hundred thousand people! Why, it would take thousands of trips! Ten or twenty years--"

But as I said it, I understood why that was not so--and comprehended the deadly danger to Dianne's world. I began: "If they make their vehicle large enough to contain half a million people at once--"

I never finished.

Once before, in the room at King's Cove, Ahlma had given a cry to warn us of impending danger. She did that now. She and Alt were sitting near us, listening to our words. Drake had previously taken the automatics from me. We had put them on a vacant chair; one lay on the floor close by my feet.

I heard Ahlma give a startled cry. The automatic on the floor had been lying between Drake and me. I remembered clearly where I had placed it, but it was not there now! I followed Ahlma's glance. The weapon was on the floor, over by the wall. It was moving--sliding soundlessly toward the door of the room. I saw that a small human figure was tugging at it--a man eight or ten inches high As tall as he dared get. The weapon was larger than himself. He was struggling to drag it to the doorway, get it beyond our sight.

Ahlma's cry made us all leap to our feet. And Dianne and Ahlma together recognized the tiny figure.

"Togaro!"

He dropped his burden and scuttled from the room. Dianne gripped me. "Wait, Frank! You're unsteady yet--you'll hurt yourself."

I found the floor swaying under me as I stood up; I had to drop back.

Drake and Alt dashed into the passage. We could hear their cries giving the alarm. Several members of the crew came running. The passages and all the cabins were searched.

Useless! Togaro had taken the diminishing drug. With such a start, he had escaped into smallness beyond pursuit.

Drake and Alt came back. "It was too dark. We could not see where he went at all. No use trying to follow him."

Togaro, a stowaway on board!