Part 1

The GIANT WORLD

By RAY CUMMINGS

NOTE--This: serial, while complete in itself, is a sequel to _Explorers Into Infinity_, which narrated the previous adventures of Brett and Martt on the distant world. The story appeared in WEIRD TALES for last April, May and June.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales January, February, March 1928.]

CONTENTS

1 THE SUMMONS 2 STOLEN INTO SMALLNESS 3 THE THING IN THE FOG 4 THE WILD NIGHT RIDE 5 CLIMBING INTO LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE 6 THE BLOOD-RED DAY 7 THE FIGHT ON THE PARAPET 8 YOUTH!

_CHAPTER 1_

THE SUMMONS

I was startled. Yet I think that I subconsciously I was prepared for it; expecting it. The little cylinder flipped out of its tube and dropped on my desk before me. My name was on it, glowing with tiny luminous letters: _Frank Elgon, Interplanetary Mails, Division 4, Great-New York_. It looked just like any other Departmental message cylinder. But instinctively I knew it was not; and my heart was beating fast as I clicked it open.

Relayed through Code Headquarters. I saw that on the small rolled tape inside. And saw the signature, Dr. Gryce. It should not have been startling, but my fingers were trembling as I unrolled the tape and hooked it into the automatic decoder. And I stood gripping my chair as the line of English letters pricked themselves on the blank white sheet at which I was staring:

"Frank--I can not bear it any longer. We must go--we must find Brett at any cost. Will you stand by us? Come at once. Hurry.

DR. GRYCE."

My mind leaped back. I sat at my desk staring blankly, while in the office around me all the bustling activity of the accursed Interplanetary Mails faded before the surging visions of my memory. It was four years since that other momentous day when Dr. Gryce had sent for me. And I had gone to him; and listened amazed at his weird, fantastic theories. Our sun, planets, and stars--all the vastness of the star-filled heavens, he had told me then--were but the infinite smallness of a greater world. All this that we call our Celestial Universe was no more than an atom--of the giant world encompassing it.

Fantasy! Yet it had proved sober, tragic fact. Tragic, because Dr. Gryce's older son, Brett, had gone out there to that giant world. Gone, and never returned. Nor been heard from; four years now, while old Dr. Gryce at the end of his life waited despairingly.

I had known always that the time would come when Dr. Gryce would wait no longer. He would send for me--friend of Brett--and friend of his other two children, Martt and Francine. For a year every cylinder that had dropped on my desk had made my heart leap that it might contain this summons which now lay before me.

"_I can not bear it any longer. Will you stand by us?_" So simple an appeal! But I knew the turgid torrent of heartache--the final desperation of an old man's suffering--which prompted it.

Young Grante at the desk next to mine was sorting his pile of official communications newly arrived by the Venus mail. I turned to him.

"I'm going away," I told him. In spite of myself--an unfortunate mannerism when I am perturbed--my voice sounded gruff, ill-tempered. "There is no time to argue--will you please notify Official 4 that my--my post is vacant."

He raised his eyebrows. "Vacant?"

"Yes. I'm going away." I was on my feet. Outwardly calm, but within me was a seething emotion. Going away! Out there into the immensity of the Unknown, where my friend Brett had gone, not to return. Young Grante could not guess. He was thinking Great-London perhaps--or the Asiatic province. Or perchance, Venus, or Mars.

I laughed harshly. "Don't question me, Grante. Just tell them--my post is vacant."

I left the room with his amazed stare following me. In the corridor, through a window I caught a glimpse of the tenth pedestrian level; its crowd of people moving upon the diverse activities of their tiny lives. Already I felt apart from them. Frank Elgon, Division 4. Presently, to such of them as knew me, I would be no more than a memory. "That young, rather quarrelsome Elgon, who walked out of his office in a temper, and vanished." They would say that, and then forget me.

I laughed again. But the thought brought a pang of regret, and a shudder.

In ten minutes I was within a pneumatic cylinder, speeding underground to the Southern Pennsylvania area, to the home of Dr. Gryce.

II

Martt and Frannie met me at the outer gateway. Their manner held a singular gravity. I had expected them to be excited, of course. But their grave, somber smiles of greeting, their instinctively hushed voices, seemed unnatural. This was no reckless, devil-may-care spirit of high adventure which I had anticipated the twins of Dr. Gryce would display. Sober drama. Their involuntary glances at the white house nestling against the hillside carried a foreboding.

Drama, but it seemed almost to be tragedy. My heart sank. There was something very wrong here with the Gryces; something more imminent than the fact of Brett's absence over four years.

But I said nothing. Dear little Frannie gave me her two hands. They were cold.

Martt said, "Thank you for coming, Frank. Father is--waiting for you." His voice, usually flaunting, mocking at everything with the reckless spirit of youth, chilled me with its queerly broken tone.

We crossed the flowering gardens to the white house standing so peaceful in the afternoon sunlight. Martt led the way. The twins were twenty-one years old now. Alike physically, and in temperament. Both smaller than average height; slim and delicate of mold; blue-eyed, and fair of hair. They were always laughing; carefree--the spirit of irresponsible youth. But not today. I regarded Martt, trudging ahead of me--debonair, jaunty of figure in his tight black silk trousers and loose white shirt, bare-headed, his crisp, curly hair tousled by the wind. But there was a slump to his shoulders, a heaviness to his tread. And little Frannie behind him: girlishly beautiful, with her tossing golden curls, her familiar house costume of gray blouse and widely flaring knee-length trousers. But there was upon her a preternatural solemnity; a maturity of aspect indefinable.

At the doorway Martt turned and fixed me with his somber, blue-eyed gaze. And spoke with the same queer hush to his voice.

"Father is upstairs, Frank. He is--dying. He wants very much to live until you arrive."

Upon the pillows in the darkened room lay Dr. Gryce's head with its shaggy, snow-white hair, the mound of the sheet betraying his pitifully wasted body.

Martt said softly, very gently, "Frank is here, Father. You see he came in time--plenty of time."

But the head, with face to the wall, did not move; no stirring marked the fragile body lying there.

Martt gave a cry; with Frannie he rushed to the bedside. It was all too evident. In a moment Martt stood up, leaned silently against the bedpost, a hand before his eyes as though dazed. And Frannie knelt at the bed and sobbed.

We expect death all our lives, yet the instinct of life within us never ceases to feel a shock, and a revulsion. For a long time these children of Dr. Gryce did not move or speak. Then Frannie leaped to her feet. Her face was tear-stained; but her sobs were suddenly checked, and her eyes were blazing.

"Martt! His last wish--the very last thing he said--was that we go out ourselves and find Brett. He said it--he said Brett might need us--his dying wish. And I'm going, and so are you. We've got to, Martt! And we want Frank with us. Oh, Frank, you'll go with us, won't you? Out there--to join Brett?"

III

The burial was passed. We had not spoken of our enterprise, but it had never left my thoughts. This boy and girl so newly come to maturity--but I was twenty-nine. Upon me would fall the main responsibility.

We sat at last in Dr. Gryce's study--the three of us alone--to discuss our task. With the first poignancy of their shock and sorrow already dulled by time, upon the faces of Martt and Frannie was stamped grimly their simple purpose.

"But, Martt," I said, "Brett's vehicle was very intricate. It traveled in Space--but in Time as well. And grew gigantic in size. Your father's genius built it. But we have no such genius to build another----"

"You forget," he interrupted. "Think back, Frank. That day you came here. And we showed you the models of the vehicle. There were four of them----"

Then I remembered. Dr. Gryce had shown me four small models. One he had sent back into Time. A flash, like a dissipating puff of vapor it was gone into the Past; still here in Space above the taboret on which it was standing, but vanished with centuries of Time to hide it from my sight.

Another of the models, with Time unchanged, Dr. Gryce had sent into Infinite Smallness. I remembered watching it dwindling; a speck, a pinhead, then invisible even to the microscope.

Two of the models were left. Martt and Frannie, but seventeen years old then, had taken one into the garden. Had started it growing in size. I recalled our frantic efforts to check its growth, lest it demolish the house. This was the one in which Martt and Brett had gone to the giant world and in which Brett had returned alone to that distant part of our universe.

One model had remained. I had never thought of it since. Martt was saying, ". . . and we still have that last model. Father kept it very carefully." Martt's smile was wistful with the memory. "I think he--Father--had a premonition that he would not live to carry out his purpose. . . . The model is here."

He opened a locked steel box. Again I gazed silently at that small cube of milk-white metal--a cube the length of my forearm, with its tiny tower on top, its glasslike balcony, its windows and its doors.

"It's all complete," said Martt. "And I know how to operate it."

Frannie said with a touch of breathlessness, "For a month past, Father has been gathering the necessary instruments. And the supplies--you see he--he really thought he was going to live----"

"We're all ready," Martt added. "We will increase this model to normal size. Load it with our supplies. We can start tomorrow, Frank."

IV

Five million light-years from Earth! Who of finite human mind can conceive such unfathomable distance! Yet, as I crouched on the floor of the vehicle gazing down at the radiance emerging from the black void which was our first sight of the Inner Surface, the distance had seemed no more than gigantic. We were, in size, many million times our Earthly stature. The tiny Earth, from our larger viewpoint, was a little orange spinning above us in the void--a mere one-twentieth light-year away.

Martt, for all his youth, had proved competent. He had made the trip once before with Brett; he handled the vehicle carefully, and with skill. He said now, as we three crouched by the floor window, "We'll soon be down to the atmosphere, Frank. I'm checking our fall--we want no errors----"

We were reversed in Time--holding very nearly at a single instant, so that on the Inner Surface the time now was the same as it had been when we left the Earth.

We argued the point; Martt said, "I think when we land--we should choose the point in Time about four years beyond Brett's landing. So that it will be four years to us--and also to him. Don't you?"

We decided upon that, so that we would reach the Inner Surface and find Brett had been there four years. It seemed to strike a greater normality. Find Brett! Would we find him? I wondered, as I knew Martt and Frannie were wondering. But in our plans we always took it for granted.

The radiance beneath us grew brighter. And at last we entered the upper strata of atmosphere, falling gently downward. It was a fair, beautiful land, as Brett and Martt had said. A sylvan landscape, with an air of quiet peace upon it. A broad vista of land and water; patches of human habitation--houses, villages; a city.

Martt was at the telescope. "Pretty good, Frank! I've hit it--I see the city--off there, isn't it? And the crescent lake."

He changed our direction slightly. As we dropped, the broad crescent lake lay beneath us. Trees bordered its banks; and to the right was the city of low-roofed, crescent-shaped buildings banked with flowers. And beyond the city a rolling country of gently undulating hills, with a jagged mountain range up near the horizon.

From this height it was a visibly concave surface. And it was gray and colorless, for we were passing abnormally through its Time. Then Martt threw off the Time-switch; we took the normal Time-rate of the realm. And in size we were also normal.

At a height of perhaps a thousand feet Martt held us poised above the city. "They'll see us now," he said. "If--if Brett is down there he'll recognize us. I'll land in the grove where we landed before. We'll give Brett time to get there to meet us."

With the Time-switch off, color and movement had sprung into the scene. The forests were a somber growth of dull, orange-colored vegetation. The water was a shimmering purple; and above us was a purple sky, with faint clouds, and dim stars up there--stars which seemed very small and very close.

The white houses gleamed and glowed in the starlight. Yet it seemed not night; nor day either. A queerly shimmering twilight. Shadowless, as though everything were vaguely phosphorescent.

In the broad city streets there was movement. Vehicles; people. And the people now were gathered in groups, staring up at us.

We landed in the little clearing at the edge of the lake near the city. And now at the last, Frannie gave voice to the fear which was within us all. "Oh Frank, do you think Brett will be here?"

There were human figures in the near-by thickets. I saw them through the windows, but we were too busy with the landing to look closely. The vehicle came to rest. Martt and I flung open the door. The vegetation was thick near by; we stepped from the vehicle onto a soft, mossy sward, and stood in a timid group, with tumultuously beating hearts.

"Martt! Frannie! Frank!" It was his voice! Brett was here! And we saw him step from a thicket. His familiar voice; his familiar figure, but so fantastically garbed that it brought to me a wild desire to laugh, for I was half hysterical with the relief of seeing him.

Frannie cried, "Brett! My brother! You're all right, Brett, aren't you? I'm glad you're all right."

Under stress, how inarticulate are we humans! I said awkwardly, "How are you, Brett? We thought we'd come and see you."

He took Frannie in his arms. And wrung Martt's hand, and mine, while his strange companions stood in the background among the trees, watching us.

"Of course I'm all right," he declared. "And terrifically happy." A shadow crossed his face; his glance went to the vehicle's doorway. "Father didn't come with you?"

Then Martt showed a wisdom far beyond his years. This was no time to bring sorrow to Brett. Martt said smoothly, "Father is better than he has ever been, Brett. We'll tell you--later."

"Good! That's fine!" Brett's face was radiant. "You're just in time, you three. I'm to be married tonight."

But even then as I wrung his hand again, and congratulated him, I had a premonition that it was not to be.

_CHAPTER 2_

STOLEN INTO SMALLNESS

"Life is pleasant here," said Brett. "Pleasant, and indolent. It does not make for progress, but it is happiness--and I'm beginning to wonder if that is not best, after all."

We were sitting in an arcaded passage on the roof of the home where Brett lived. Crescent archways opened to the roof, where stood banks of vivid flowers, with a vista of the city beyond. The building seemed of baked earth, rough like adobe, and of dull orange color. It was a two-storied, crescent-shaped structure, set upon a wide street-corner near the edge of the city. The home of Leela's father. I had never forgotten Leela--the girl Brett and Martt had rescued from the giant on their first visit here. Brett had fallen in love with her. It was she whom tonight he was to marry. And this was her father's home--Greedo, the old musician.

"I have lived here with them six months," Brett said.

Martt exclaimed, "Six months! Why Brett, you have been gone four years!"

We had miscalculated the Time-change of the vehicle. Our purpose had been to strike this realm of the Inner Surface at a point in Time which to Brett would be four years. But now we found it six months only.

Brett smiled. "I'm glad you didn't postpone your arrival. You've no idea how pleased I am to have you--tonight of all nights."

We had not yet seen Leela, or her father. Brett said that Leela would be up presently to greet us. The city was excited over our coming. A crowd was gathered in the street before the house; Brett had made them a brief speech; Frannie, Martt and I had stood at the parapet and waved to them.

Then Brett had spoken of a younger sister of Leela's. Her name was Zelea--they called her Zee.

Martt sat up at this. "Where was she when we were here before?"

"Away," said Brett. "She was too young to meet a man then. Only now has she come to be sixteen. You'll like her, Martt. I want you to like her."

"I will," said Martt enthusiastically, "if she's anything like Leela."

"You were telling us about the life here," I suggested. "We always called this land the Inner Surface----"

"Yes," he agreed. "It is concave, like the inner shell of some great, hollow globe. Within the space it encloses----" He gestured to where, through the arcade, a segment of purple, star-filled sky was visible. "All that which we of Earth called the Celestial Universe is enclosed by this concave shell. You would think that this must be a gigantic region----" He smiled again. "It is not. Compared to our present enormous size, I imagine the circumference of this Inner Surface is not unduly great. I don't know. These people have not explored very far. They are not wanderers--they are too indolent, too contented, to wander."

He paused to drink from a shallow receptacle which stood before us, and offered Martt and me what appeared to be arrant cylinders to smoke.

"I have learned a little of the language. Proper names are impossible to translate. But the meaning of their word for this land, I call in English. Romantica. The romantic land. It is, I fancy, about five hundred miles square. Beyond it lie forests and mountains. No one here has ever penetrated them. There are wild beasts, birds, insect life--and fish and reptiles in the water. But they are not dangerous--not aggressive. It is not because of them that these people avoid exploration. It is--just indolence."

"I don't wonder," I said. "This is very peaceful here--I have no desire to do anything in particular." From the city streets a drone of activity floated up to us; but it was almost somnolent.

"It's always like this," said Brett. "Almost no change of seasons--the light always the same. There is no disease here--or very little. Food--grains, and what we would call vegetables, grow abundantly in this rich soil. The trees give milk--even the bark and pulp of them are edible. Life is easy. There is nothing to struggle against.

"Through generations, it has made the people kindly. There is little crime. No struggle for land, or food or clothing. Crimes involving sex----" He gestured. "Wherever humans exist there will be crimes of that origin. But our women here are very sensible, and when a woman does what is right--well, you know, don't you, that most deeds of violence into which men plunge over women have a woman's wrong actions at the bottom of them? There is little of that here, for the women take care that there shall not be.

"So they call their country Romantica. They are not a scientific people. They do not struggle for advancement. Art has taken the place of science. Painting. Sculpture. Music. They have developed music very far. It has a soul here. It speaks--it sings--it seems a living entity. It is--what music ought to be, but seldom is--the pure voice of love, of romance. . . . I was telling you about our country. Most of its population live in villages, and in individual dwellings strewn about the hills. There are but two large cities. This one--the largest--they call Crescent. Or at least their word for it suggests the shape of the lake. The other city is about fifty miles from here"--he gestured again--"off there where you see the line of mountains. They call it Reaf. It's a quaint city. Built largely over the water--rivers there--hot, subterranean rivers which rush underground--under the mountains. They go--who knows where? No one has ever been down them. The mountains are honeycombed with caves, tunnels, passages leading within, and up. Always up. But into them no one has ever penetrated. Legends tell fabulous tales of a great world up there. The giants, we think----"

When Brett and Martt had first come here, giants had appeared. Dwindling giants--strange, savage beings of half-human aspect. They had appeared--no one knew from where. Growing smaller until they were normal size to this realm. Not many had been seen. Some had kept on dwindling; they had grown so small, when attacked, that they had become invisible. At the thought, I moved my foot involuntarily with a shudder of uneasiness. Here on the floor beside me now, men like beasts might be lurking, so small I could not see them. Yet in a moment they might grow to a stature greater than my own. . . .

Men like beasts! . . . And I remembered that, with size gigantic, they had destroyed the third city of Romantica.

Upon Brett's face lay a cloud of apprehension. "We have never heard from them since. It is thought--I think myself--that they came from the subterranean rivers, or through the underground passages of the mountains. I conceive this concave surface upon which we're living to be the inner surface of a shell. It may not be very thick--there at Reaf. Above it--beyond it--up or down are mere comparative terms--beyond it must lie some vastly greater outside world. This whole realm is doubtless within an atom of that greater world. It would be a convex surface up there--with a sky and stars beyond. . . .