Jack Williamson - The Pygmy Planet.pdf - Jack Williamson - margozap

The Pygmy Planet

By Jack Williamson

Down into the infinitely small goes Larry on his mission to the Pygmy Planet.

“NOTHING ever happens to me!" Larry Manahan grumbled under his breath, sitting behind his desk

at the advertising agency which employed his services in return for the consideration of fifty a week. "All

the adventure I know is what I see in the movies, or read about in magazines. What wouldn't I give for a

slice of real life!"

Unconsciously, he tensed the muscles of his six feet of lean, hard body. His crisp, flame-colored hair

seemed to bristle; his blue eyes blazed. He clenched a brown hammer of a fist.

Larry felt himself an energetic, red-blooded square peg, badly afflicted with the urge for adventure,

miserably wedged in a round hole. It is one of the misfortunes of our civilization that a young man who,

for example, might have been an excellent pirate a couple of centuries ago, must be kept chained to a

desk. And that seemed to be Larry's fate.

"Things happen to other people," he muttered. "Why couldn't an adventure come to me?"

He sat, staring wistfully at a picture of a majestic mountain, landscape, soon to be used in the

advertising of a railway company whose publicity was handled by his agency, when the jangle of the

telephone roused him with a start.

"Oh, Larry—" came a breathless, quivering voice.

Then, with a click, the connection was broken.

The voice had been feminine and had carried a familiar ring. Larry tried to place it, as he listened at

the receiver and attempted to get the broken connection restored.

"Your party hung up, and won't answer," the operator informed him.

He replaced the receiver on the hook, still seeking to follow the thin thread of memory given him by

the familiar note in that eager excited voice. If only the girl had spoken a few more words!

THEN it came to him. "Agnes Sterling!" he exclaimed aloud.

Agnes Sterling was a slender, elfish, dark-haired girl—lovely, he had thought her, on the occasions of

their few brief meetings. Larry knew her as the secretary and laboratory assistant of Dr. Travis Whiting, a

retired college professor known for his work on the structure of the atom. Larry had called at the

home-laboratory of the savant, months before, to check certain statistics to be used for advertising

purposes and had met the girl there. Only a few times since had he seen her.

Now she had called him in a voice that fairly trembled with excitement—and, he thought, dread! And

she had been interrupted before she had time to give him any message.

For a few seconds Larry stared at the telephone. Then he rose abruptly to his feet, crammed his hat

on his head, and started for the door.

"The way to find adventure is to go after it," he murmured. "And this is the invitation!"

It was not many minutes later that he sprang out of a taxi at the front of the building in which Dr.

Travis Whiting made his home and maintained a private experimental laboratory. It was a two-story

stucco house, rather out of date, set well back from the sidewalk, with a scrap of lawn and a few

straggling shrubs before it. The door was closed, the windows curtained blankly. The place seemed

deserted and forbidding.

Larry ran up the uneven brick walk to the door and rang the bell. Impatiently, he waited a few

moments. No sound came from within. He felt something ominous, fateful, about the silent mystery that

seemed to shroud the old house. For the first time, it occurred to him that Agnes might be in physical

danger, as a result of some incautious experiment on the part of Dr. Whiting.

INSTINCTIVELY, his hand sought the door knob. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. It

swung open before him. For a moment he stared, hesitating, into the dark hall revealed beyond. Then,

driven by the thought that Agnes might be in danger, he advanced impulsively.

The several doors opening into the hall were closed. The one at the back, he knew, gave admittance

to the laboratory. Impelled by some vague premonition, he hastened toward it down the long hall and

threw it open.

As he stepped inside the room, his foot slipped on a spot of something red. Recovering his balance

with difficulty, he peered about.

Bending down, Larry briefly examined the red spot on which he had slipped. It was a pool of fresh

blood which had not yet darkened. Lying beside it, crimson-splashed, was a revolver. As he picked up

the weapon, he cried out in astonishment.

Something had happened to the gun. The trigger guard was torn from it, and the cylinder crushed as if

in some resistless grasp; the stock was twisted, and the barrel bent almost into a circle. The revolver had

been crumpled by some terrific force—as a soft clay model of it might have been broken by the pressure

of a man's hand.

"Crimson shades of Caesar!" he muttered, and dropped the crushed weapon to the floor again.

His eyes swept the silent laboratory.

It was a huge room, taking up all the rear part of the house, from the first floor to the roof. Gray

daylight streamed through a skylight, twenty feet overhead. The ends of the vast room were cluttered

with electrical and chemical apparatus; but Larry's eye was caught at once by a strange and complex

device, which loomed across from him, in the center of the floor.

TWO pillars of intense light, a ray of crimson flame and another of deeply violet radiance, beat

straight down from a complicated array of enormous, oddly shaped electron tubes, of mirrors and lenses

and prisms, of coils and whirling disks, which reached almost to the roof. Upright, a yard in diameter and

almost a yard apart, the strange columns of light were sharp-edged as two transparent cylinders filled

with liquid light of ruby and of amethyst. Each ray poured down upon a circular platform of glass or

polished crystal.

Hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light was a strange-looking, greenish

globe. A round ball, nearly a yard in diameter, hung between the rays, almost touching them. Its surface

was oddly splotched with darker and lighter areas. It was spinning steadily, at a low rate of speed. Larry

did not see what held it up; it seemed hanging free, several feet above the crystal platforms.

Reluctantly he withdrew his eyes from the mysterious sphere and looked about the room once more.

No, the laboratory was vacant of human occupants. No one was hidden among the benches that were

cluttered with beakers and test tubes and stills, or among the dynamos and transformers in the other end

of the room.

A confusion of questions beat through Larry's brain.

What danger could be haunting this quiet laboratory? Was this the blood of Agnes Sterling or the

scientist who employed her that was now clotting on the floor? What terrific force had crumpled up the

revolver? What had become of Agnes and Dr. Whiting? And of whatever had attacked them? Had

Agnes called him after the attack, or before?

DESPITE himself, his attention was drawn back to the little globe spinning so regularly, floating in the

air between the pillars of red and violet flame. Floating alone, like a little world in space, without a visible

support, it might be held up by magnetic attraction, he thought.

A tiny planet!

His mind quickened at the idea, and he half forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He

stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish areas would be

seas; the green and the brown spaces land. In some parts, the surface appeared mistily

obscured—perhaps, by masses of cloud.

Larry saw an odd-looking lamp, set perhaps ten feet behind the slowly spinning, floating ball,

throwing upon it a bright ray of vividly blue light. Half the strange sphere was brilliantly illuminated by it;

the rest was in comparative darkness. That blue lamp, it came to Larry, lit the sphere as the sun lights the

earth.

"Nonsense!" he muttered. "It's impossible!"

Aroused by the seeming wonder of it, he was drawn nearer the ball. It spun rather slowly, Larry

noted, and each rotation consumed several seconds. He could distinguish green patches that might be

forests, and thin, silvery lines that looked like rivers, and broad, red-brown areas that must be deserts,

and the broad blue stretches that suggested oceans.

"A toy world!" he cried. "A laboratory planet! What an experiment—"

Then his eyes, looking up, caught the glistening, polished lens of a powerful magnifying glass which

hung by a black ribbon from a hook on one of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of

silently whirring apparatus.

EAGERLY, he unfastened the magnifier. Holding it before his eyes, he bent toward the strange

sphere spinning steadily in the air.

"Suffering shades of Caesar!" he ejaculated.

Beneath the lens a world was racing. He could see masses of vividly green forest; vast expanses of

bare, cracked, ocherous desert; wastes of smooth blue ocean.

Then he was gazing at—a city? Larry could not be sure that he had seen correctly. It had slipped

very swiftly beneath his lens. But he had a momentary impression of tiny, fantastic buildings, clustered in

an elflike city.

A pygmy planet, spinning in the laboratory like a world in the gulf of space! What could it mean?

Could it be connected with the strange call from Agnes, with the blood on the floor, with the strange and

ominous silence that shrouded the deserted room?

"Oh, Larry!" a clear, familiar voice rang suddenly from the door. "You came!"

Startled, Larry leaped back from the tiny, whirling globe and turned to the door. A girl had come

silently into the room. It was Agnes Sterling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, and

her brown eyes were wide with fear! In a white hand, which shook a little, she carried a small,

gold-plated automatic pistol.

She ran nervously across the wide floor to Larry, with relief dawning in her eyes.

"I'm so glad you came!" she gasped, panting with excitement. "I started to call you on the phone, but

then I was afraid it would kill you if you came! Please be careful! It may come back, any minute! You'd

better go away! It just took Dr. Whiting!"

"Wait a minute," Larry put in. "Just one thing at a time. Let's get this straight. To begin with, what is it

that might kill me, and that got the doctor?"

"It's terrible !" she gasped, trembling. "A monster! You must go away before it comes back!"

LARRY drew a tall stool from beside one of the crowded tables and placed it beside her. "Don't get

excited," he urged. "I'm sure everything will be all right. Just sit down, and tell me about it. The whole

story. Just what is going on here, and what happened to Dr. Whiting."

He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at him gratefully, and began to speak in a rapid voice.

"You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carried the doctor back there. And I

know it will soon be back for another victim—for sacrifice!"

She had pointed across the great room, toward the strange little globe which hung between the pillars

of red and violet light.

"Please go slow!" Larry broke in. "You're too fast for me. Are you trying to tell me that that spinning

ball is really a planet?"

Agnes seemed a little more composed, though she was still flushed and breathing rapidly. Her small

hand still gripped the bright automatic.

"Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He said it was the great experiment of

the century. You see, he was testing evolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched it

until it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and development of life upon it. And the

rise and decay of a strange civilization. Until now its people are strange things, with human brains in

mechanical bodies, worshiping a rusty machine like a god—"

"Go slow!" Larry pleaded again. "I don't see— Did the doctor build —create—that planet himself?"

"Yes. It began with his .work on atomic structure. He discovered that certain frequencies of the

Xray—so powerful that they are almost akin to the cosmic ray—have the power of altering electronic

orbits. Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system, with electrons revolving about a proton. And

these rays would cause the electrons to fall into incredibly smaller orbits, causing vast reduction in the size

of the atoms, and in the size of any object which the atoms formed. They would cause anything, living or

dead, to shrink to inconceivably microscopic dimensions—or restore it to its former size, depending upon

the exact wave-length used.

"And time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects—probably because the electrons move faster

in their smaller orbits. That is what suggested to Dr. Whiting that he would be able to watch the entire life

of a planet, in the laboratory. And so, at first, we experimented merely with solitary specimens or

colonies of animals.

"But on the Pygmy Planet, we have watched the life of a world—the whole panorama of

evolution—"

"IT seems too wonderful!" Larry muttered. "Could Dr. Whiting actually decrease his size and become

a dwarf?"

"No trick at all," Agnes assured him. "All you have to do is stand in the violet beam, to shrink. And

move over in the red one, when you want to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Whiting to the

Pygmy Planet."

"Been—" Larry stopped, breathless with astonishment.

"See the little airplane," Agnes said, pointing under the table. Larry gasped.

Beneath the table stood a toy airplane. The spread of its glistening, perfect wings was hardly three

feet. A wonderful, delicate toy, accurate in every detail of propeller, motor and landing gear, of brace

and rudder and aileron. Then he realized that it was no toy at all, but a faithful miniature of a commercial

plane. A complete, tiny copy of one of the latest single-motor, cabin monoplane models.

"It looks like it would fly," he said "a friend of mine has a big one, just like it! Taught me to fly it, last

summer vacation. This is the very image of it!"

"It will fly!" Agnes assured him, now composed enough to smile at his amazement. "I have been with

the doctor to the Pygmy Planet in it.

"You stand in the violet ray until you're about three inches high," she explained, "and then get into the

plane. Then you fly up and into the violet ray at the point where it touches the planet, and remain there

while you grow smaller. When you are the right size, all you have to do is drop to the surface, and land.

To come away, you rise into the red ray and stay in it till you grow to proper size, when you come down

and land."

"You—you've actually done that?" he gasped. "It sounds like a fairy story!"

“YES, I've done it," she assured him. Then she shuddered apprehensively. "And the things—the

machine-monsters, Dr. Whiting called them—have learned to do it, too. One of them came down the red

ray, and attacked him. The doctor had a gun—but what could he do against one of those?" She

shivered.

"It carried him back up the violet beam. Just a few minutes ago, I started to phone you. Then I was

afraid you would be hurt—"

"Me, hurt?" Larry burst out. "What about you, here alone?" "It was my business. Dr. Whiting told me

there might be danger, when he hired me."

"And now, what can we do?" Larry demanded.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'm afraid one of the monsters will be back after a new victim. We

could smash the apparatus, but it is too wonderful to be destroyed. And besides, Dr. Whiting may have

escaped. He may be alive there, in the deserts!"

"We might fly up, in the little plane," Larry proposed, doubtfully. "I think I could pilot it. If you

want—"

The girl's body stiffened. Her brown eyes widened with sudden dread, and her small face went pale.

She slipped quickly from the stool, drawing in her breath with a sort of gasp. The hand that gripped the

automatic trembled a little.

"What's the matter?" Larry cried. "I thought—" she gasped, "I think I see something in the ray! The

machine-monster is coming back!"

Her lips tightened. She lifted the little automatic and began to shoot into the pillar of crimson fire

beside the tiny, spinning globe.

Larry, watching tensely, saw a curious, bird-like something fluttering about in the red ray, swiftly

growing larger!

Deliberately, and pausing to aim carefully for each shot, the girl emptied the little gun at the figure.

Her body was rigid, her small face was firmly set, though she was breathing very fast.

CURIOUS numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering

of his heart, and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have

admitted it, he was paralyzed with fear.

The glittering thing that fluttered about in the crimson ray was not an easy target. When the gun was

empty, it seemed still unharmed. And its wings had increased to a span of a foot.

"Too late!" Agnes gasped. "Why didn't we do something?"

Trembling, horror-stricken, she shrank toward Larry.

He was staring at the thing in the pillar of scarlet light.

It had dropped to the crystal disk upon which the red ray fell from the huge, glowing tube above.

It stood there, motionless except for the swift increase of its size.

Larry gazed at it, lost in fear and wonder. It was like nothing he had ever seen. What was it that

Agnes had said, of machine-monsters, of human brains in mechanical bodies? His brain reeled. He

strained his eyes to distinguish the monstrosity more clearly. It was veiled in crimson flame; he could not

see it distinctly.

But suddenly, when it was as tall as himself, it sprang out into the room, toward Larry and the

shuddering girl. Just off the crystal disk, beyond the scarlet pillar of fire, it paused for long seconds,

seeming to regard them with malevolent eyes.

For the first time, Larry could see it plainly.

Its body, or its central part, was a tube of transparent crystal; an upright cylinder, rounded at upper

and lower ends. It was nearly a foot in diameter, and four feet long. It seemed filled with a luminous,

purple liquid.

About the cylinder were three bands of greenish, glistening metal. Attached to the lower band were

four jointed legs of the same bright green metal, upon which the strange thing stood.

Set in the middle band were two glittering, polished lenses, which seemed to serve as eyes, and Larry

felt that they were gazing at him with malevolent menace. Behind the eyes, two wings sprang from the

green band. Ingenious, folding wings, of thin plates and bars of green metal.

And from the upper band sprang four slender, glistening, whip-like tentacles, metallic and brilliantly

green, two yards in length. They writhed with strange life!

IT seemed a long time to Larry that the thing stood, motionless, seeming to stare evilly at them with

eye-like lenses. Then, lurching forward a little, it moved toward them upon legs of green metal. And now

Larry saw another amazing thing about it.

Floating in the brilliant violet liquid that filled the crystal tube was a gray mass, wrinkled and

corrugated. This was divided by deep clefts into right and left hemispheres, which, in turn were separated

into larger upper and smaller lower segments. White filaments ran through the violet liquid from its base

toward the three rings or bands of green metal that encircled the cylinder.

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