Weird Tales/Volume 11/Issue 2/The Giant World
"Frannie struggled in the grip of the
blood-red, vegetable thing."
The Story Thus Far
To rescue Brett Gryce, who has been gone four years on a voyage to a distant world, his sister Frannie and his brother Martt, with Frank Elgon, go to that distant world in a space-vehicle that can travel through space and time. They find Brett, who is to be married to Leela, the daughter of Greedo the musician. The people celebrate the occasion, but while the wedding ceremonies are in progress, a giant appears in the lake, wading towards them. In the resultant confusion, and panic, they get separated. Brett and frank find Frannie (Brett's sister) and Leela, but the two girls dwindle away until they disappear from sight into smallness before the horrified gaze of the two men. They have been forced by two of the giants to swallow some of the size-changing drug. Martt and Zee (Leela's sister) find a sail-boat and go across the lake in pursuit of the giants who have captured Frannie, and Leela. They reach the city of Reaf, only to find that the giants have carried Frannie and Leela up into largeness unfathomable to their own world. At Reaf, a loathsome, whimpering, luminous beast that babbles human word and has its eye on a long stalk instead of a head, blunders into Martt. He attacks it, and the snoring of the giant left on guard in Reaf warns him of still more serious danger. The hideous, whimpering beast poises itself for a spring, and leaps upon Martt.
CHAPTER 4
THE WILD NIGHT RIDE
FRANNIE forced her way out of the crowded arcade, with its struggling, panic-stricken occupants. She was confused, terrified. Separated from me, and then from Martt, her only idea was to find us again; or find Brett. Outside the arcade she turned aimlessly to where the crowd momentarily was least dense. Panic-stricken people—all strangers. Then she saw Leela in the shadow of a doorway of the arcade, and ran to her.
"Leela! What is it? What has happened?"
People around them were shouting. Leela said, "Giants. There is a giant off there in the lake. I was looking for Brett. He came out here. Oh, Frannie"
The two girls clung to each other. It was dark where they stood. At the moment the crowd had surged the other way. Suddenly Frannie became aware of a dark form looming beside her. A man twice the size of herself. She tried to scream, but a great palm went over her face. She felt herself being jerked from her feet. . . .
She half fainted; recovered to find herself in a thicket within a few feet of the arcade. Leela was beside her. Leela panted, "Don't scream, Frannie! They'll—kill us if we scream!"
The man was with them, and a thick-set lump of a woman. Not so large now. Almost normal in size, for they were dwindling. The man was naked to the waist, a gray-white, barrel-like chest matted with hair. A face, fearsome with menacing eyes, and a head of matted black locks. And in the thicket were four homed animals; saddled, like large horses with spreading antlers. The animals were dwindling. . . .
The man rasped a command at Leela. From his belt he drew small pellets, white like tiny pills of medicine. He thrust one at Leela, forced it down her throat. Leela gasped, "You must take it, Frannie. He says—it is harmless—but if we resist—he will kill."
Then the man thrust his fingers into Frannie's mouth, his arm holding her roughly. She gulped, swallowed. It was an acrid taste. . . .
The man pushed her roughly from the thicket. And pushed Leela. His triumphant laugh was the rasp of a file on metal. Leela and Frannie stumbled to the wall of the arcade, stood clinging together. And suddenly, with the realization of what was upon her, Leela screamed. And Frannie screamed, though she did not yet understand.
A wave of nausea possessed Frannie. Her head was reeling. Voices sounded near by—familiar men's voices. My voice, and Brett's! We came running at the sound of the screams.
Frannie held tight to the swaying Leela as Brett and I rushed up. And I took Frannie in my arms. Brett was demanding, "Leela, what is it? You're not hurt, are you? What is it?"
Frannie wanted to try and tell me. "Frank—oh" She choked; her throat was constricted.
And then Frannie really knew! Within my arms she felt herself shrinking! Growing smaller; but it was not so much that; rather was it that my encircling arm was expanding, holding her more loosely.
With the horror of it, Brett and I stood apart. Frannie's nausea was passing; her head was steadier, but dizzy with the strange movement of the scene around her. She clung to Leela, and, of everything within her vision, only Leela was unchanging. The wall of the arcade was slowly passing upward; its nearer corner was moving slowly away; Brett and I were growing. Our waists reaching to Frannie's head; and then our knees. She gazed upward to where, fifteen or twenty feet above her, our horrified faces stared down.
The mind always takes its personal viewpoint. Frannie and Leela were dwindling into smallness. But now that the nausea and dizziness were past, to them, they alone were normal. Everything else seemed changing . . . the whole scene, growing gigantic. . . .
It was a slow, crawling growth—a steady, visible movement. The ground beneath their feet was a fine white sand. To Frannie's sight this patch of sand had originally been some ten feet, with the arcade wall on one side, and a thicket on the other. But the ground was shifting outward with herself as a center. Under her bare feet she could feel its steady movement—drawing outward, shifting so that her feet were drawn apart. She had to move them constantly.
Beside her now she saw my foot and ankle as large as herself; the towering shafts of my legs—my face a hundred feet or more above her. The arcade wall stretched up almost out of sight—lantern-flowers loomed up there like great colored suns{{...|4}] The thicket was a hundred feet away—a tangle of jungle.
Then Frannie saw the giant Brett reach down and pick Leela up on his hand—saw Leela whirled gasping into the air. A moment, then Brett set her gently back on the ground. She was some twenty feet from Frannie. She ran, half stumbled across the rough white ground until again the girls were together.
The arch of my sandaled foot was now as tall as Frannie. The arcade wall was very distant; the thicket was a blur in the distance. That small patch of white sand had unrolled to a great stony plain. Rough; yellow-white stones strewn everywhere. Frannie saw my feet and Brett's—as large as the arcade once had been—moving away with great surging bounds up into the air and back. A boulder was near by—a rock as tall as Frannie. It was visibly growing. She gripped Leela—together they crept to the boulder's side, huddled there.
But they could not remain still. The boulder was expanding. It towered over them; but it was drawing away as well, for the ground was expanding. Constantly they shifted their position to remain close to it, to huddle under its protecting curve. It had been a rock taller than their heads; it was now a mountain. It loomed above them—a bulging cliff-face of naked, ragged rock.
Then it was no longer moving. Everything now had steadied; the ground was motionless. A normality came to Leela and Frannie. Their terror faded into apprehension, and a desire, a determination to do what they could to help themselves. They stood up and looked around them.
II
They were in the midst of a vast, rock-strewn plain, illumined by a half twilight. It seemed miles in extent—a rolling country of naked rock over which, for a sky, hung a remote murk of distance. A naked landscape, rolling upward to a circular horizon, with the circular mountain of rock standing beside them at its center.
Leela now seemed quite calm. She said, "We are not unfathomably small. Too small for Brett to see us, but not if he gets a glass to magnify. He will mark the spot where we are—he will do something, Frannie—we must not be too much frightened."
There seemed nothing that they could do to help themselves. No use to wander; though no great harm either, for they could roam for miles over this rocky waste to cover no more than a foot or two of the white sand Brett would be guarding.
To Frannie's imagination came the thought of insects! A crawling ant in that white sand would now be a monster gigantic! She gazed around in terror, but there was nothing of the kind in sight.
A desolate landscape, empty of movement. Frannie's heart leaped. In the distance something was moving! She gripped Leela.
"There's something out there—something moving out there!"
Tiny moving specks. Too terrified to run, the girls stood staring. A mile or two away, specks were moving across the rocky plain. They seemed coming nearer. They separated into four specks. Four gray blobs, coming swiftly forward.
In a few moments they were distinguishable. Four running animals, bounding, leaping over the rocks. Animals with horns. Two of them running free; two with riders.
Leela gasped, "That's the giant! And the woman! They're coming to find us!"
For a moment the two girls stood transfixed, heedless that they would be discovered. To Frannie came the thought: The giant, the woman and the four animals had been dwindling. They had stood in the thicket, hiding from Brett. They were coming from the thicket now, riding over the vast rocky plain headlong to regain their captives. Brett could not see them; they were too small. Brett was probably standing a few feet from here on the sand—afraid to come closer for fear of treading upon the girls; and those few feet were miles away across this naked desert.
The four animals came leaping forward. They ran low to the ground, necks extended like huge dogs on a trail. Already they were no more than half a mile away. The figures of the riding man and woman showed plainly. They all seemed about normal size as compared to Frannie and Leela.
Abruptly Frannie recovered her wits. "We must hide! They must not find us!"
They hid, out of sight around a corner of the lower rock-face of the mountain; crouched, waiting with wildly beating hearts.
But it was useless. Either they had been seen or the animals scented them. Soon they heard the man calling his mount. No noise of galloping hoofs, for the beasts ran lightly on padded feet. A moment, then the animals burst into view around the jutting rock; bounded up and stopped before the crouching girls.
The man dismounted. His grin was a leer of triumph. He spoke to Leela—a harsh, guttural command in her own language, as he had spoken before when he forced the drug upon her.
Leela dragged herself to her feet, and Frannie after her. The man spoke again. Less harshly this time, and at greater length. He gestured at Frannie.
Leela said, with a quiver in her voice that she tried to hold to calmness, "He tells me that his name is Rokk. This woman here is his mate—he calls her Mobah. He says they come from a very big world—down here to our world of infinite smallness. Oh, Frannie, what can we do? He says they are going to take us with them, up there to that Giant World."
Frannie, too, strove for calmness. "Ask him—why? What harm have we done to him? Tell him—we don't want to go"
Leela turned to this man who had called himself Rokk. Then she appealed to the woman—but the woman stared dumbly and turned away.
"Frannie—he says we will learn later what he wants. He says—we will not be harmed if we cause no trouble. We are going—he says he is going to take us"
"Which way?" Frannie interrupted.
"I don't know. I suppose to Reaf."
"Ask him."
Leela asked him. "Yes, by way of Reaf. He says we will mount the animals—he calls them dhranes. They run very swiftly—as Brett describes your wolves of the northern ice-fields of your Earth."
Frannie demanded, "He says we go to Reaf?"
"Yes. We will cross the island—out the lagoon—riding the dhranes as they swim."
Memory of the island—the arcade—the lagoon and the lake came to Frannie. The island! It seemed so remote, so gigantic. This vast rocky waste surrounding them now was only a small patch of white sand beside the arcade wall.
She said swiftly, "Leela, ask him how we can ever do that when we are so small? Why, it must be hundreds of miles—for us in this size—just to reach the shore of the island."
"I told him that. He said, 'Of course.' He said he has been riding from the thicket ever since he got small enough to avoid Brett's sight. While they were still diminishing they were riding. He was afraid Brett would see them—but he had to take that chance."
"I mean," said Frannie breathlessly, "tell him we must get larger. It is too far in this small size. Tell him you know the island and the lake well—we will help him escape"
Leela nodded eagerly. "So that if we get large, Brett may see us?"
"Yes. Try and get him to make us large at once—now. Tell him we'll help him"
Rokk grinned sardonically at Leela's words.
Leela turned to Frannie in chagrin.
"He says he will do as he thinks best—and we will do as we are told."
Rokk added another command. Leela said, "We must mount the dhranes, Frannie. I think we had better do as he says—and not talk. Can you ride a saddle like that?"
From Frannie's viewpoint, the dhranes were now about the size of small horses—four-legged, long-haired, shaggy beasts with crooked, wide-spreading antlers. They moved as though on springs. Frannie was reminded by their movements of giant leopards she had seen in cages on Earth. But they seemed gentle, docile enough. The saddles were oblong, padded with fur, with a high and a low foot-rail, both upon the same side, on which the rider's feet could rest.
"I can ride that," said Frannie; and nimbly mounted. There was no bridle; Frannie leaned forward and clutched the antlers. Leela mounted. Rokk moved his dhrane about by spoken words, and by slapping its haunches with his hands.
Leela said, "He is going to give us some of the drug, Frannie. Some now—to make us larger. But before we are very large he says we will be beyond the arcade, in the woods where Brett can not see us. We will ride very fast"
The animals lapped their drug eagerly. The man and woman took theirs, with Leela and Frannie. To Frannie again came a moment of nausea—a reeling of the senses. But it was quickly passed.
Rokk shouted. Frannie tensed herself. The dhrane under her bounded forward. The ride began.
III
At first Frannie clung tensely to the antlers; but soon she found it was not necessary to do so. The dhrane ran with long, smooth bounds; sure-footed on the rocks as a chamois, noiseless, lithe as a great cat. It ran, with head extended, low to the ground; beneath her, Frannie could feel the play of its smooth muscles, rippling under its shaggy skin.
The woman Mobah rode her dhrane behind Frannie. Leela was directly ahead, with Rokk leading. In single file they bounded forward. Leela's black hair and draperies flew in the wind. She rode, bending forward, her body loosely responsive to the animal's bounds.
The wind of their forward movement sang in Frannie's ears. The ground fled by under her with a blur of yellow movement. And all around her was the murky night, rushing at her, passing, and closing in behind. A wild, night ride like the fairy dream of a child. Wild, and free . . . a fairy dream. . . .
An exaltation was upon Frannie; she urged her mount to greater speed. And thought of the drug she had taken. . . .
The drug was acting. The rushing night seemed shrinking. Everywhere the murk was contracting. The ground was smoothing and turning from its yellow to white. Overhead a remote—very remote—spot of red light shone like a dying sun in the heavens. A lantern-flower! Frannie's heart leaped with triumph. They were growing larger. . . .
She heard Rokk shout to his dhrane; felt her own mount stretch closer to the ground as the speed was increasing. The rushing night contracting . . . they seemed riding up . . . and up . . . the ground, the night was shrinking under them. . . .
A wild, night ride up through a fairy’s dream . . . it seemed endless. Wildly free, with the exaltation of a child’s fancy upon it. . . .
Frannie became aware that the vast rocky plain was shrunken to a smoother level. And ahead now, she saw a great forest, with colored suns about it. Soon they were in the forest. A jungle. Flat, orange stalks of grass twenty feet high. The dhranes bounded through them. Shaggy outlines of tree trunks, each vast as a mountain. They rose into unfathomable murky distance overhead. But these were all dwindling. The giant jungle was shrinking . . . passing slowly, but ever faster.
A fantasy . . . the dream of a child. . . .
Rokk called again. Their pace slackened. Frannie saw an open space ahead. Coarse white sand—a patch of it half a mile in extent. Beyond it a broad beach. Water shining off there. The lake, with stars above it.
The dhranes ran more slowly. The white open space shrank as they traversed it. The beach rushed at them. It had narrowed. Frannie saw it as almost of normal aspect—the narrow shore of the island. The lake was starlit — beautiful.
Rokk paused a moment at the water’s edge. Frannie gazed around. The woods were behind them. A large, dark tree-trunk was near by on the shore. Frannie gazed that way idly; and though she did not know it, Martt and Zee were crouching there, staring with a confused fascination. A moment. The shore shrunk further; the water had advanced to lap the stamping, impatient feet of the dhranes. Rokk spoke softly. His dhrane waded in, with the others following.
Frannie again gripped her beast’s horns. The water rose almost to the saddle. It was warm and pleasant. The dhrane swam smoothly, swiftly, with neck stretched out, nose skimming the surface.
A dwindling silver lake. Ripples of silver-green phosphorescence; lines of silver fire diverging behind the swimming animals. . . .
Frannie turned to gaze at the receding island. An island already shrunken, dotted with shrinking colored lights. And ahead, the empty starlit lake.
IV
Riding over the land, it had been a breathless whistling of wind, a swift surging of the ground beneath Frannie’s feet. Here in the lake it was quiet and calm; the warm lapping of the silver-streaked water; the quiet stars overhead. Frannie heard Rokk talking back over his shoulder to Leela, and then Leela drew in her mount and spoke to Frannie.
"He says the giants have all gone back through Reaf to their own world. One was wading out here toward Reaf. He was very large then; he is to stay in Reaf on guard, while we go on. He is there now—it is not far."
"How big are we, Leela? Did he say?" There was no way, here in the lake, by which size could be compared. The exaltation of the ride—its swift, tempestuous movement—the wild, romantic fantasy of it—all this was leaving Frannie. A depression was upon her. She added, "Oh, Leela, Brett did not see us! And Frank—will we ever see them again?"
Leela said, "We are about twice normal size—it will not be far to Reaf, swimming like this." In the starlight, Frannie could see that Leela was smiling; a wistful, heavy-hearted smile. She was trying to be brave. And Frannie smiled back.
"We mustn't get frightened, Leela. Just watch our chance—try to escape. You stay by me all you can. I mean—when we get"—there was a catch in her voice—"when we get—under the mountains beyond Reaf."
Leela nodded. Rokk was calling, and Leela urged her dhrane forward.
Soon the left-hand shore and the mountains ahead were visible. The water grew warmer. Small islands appeared. The dhranes panted with the heat of the water; in the muddy channels between the islands, sometimes they floundered. Steam was in the air; ahead it lay like a bank of fog, with the frowning mountains rising above it.
Presently, through the fog, the houses of Reaf came into view. Small ghostly outlines of houses on stilts. To the right of them was a yawning black mouth where one of the rivers plunged into the mountain. The turgid current was swinging that way; Rokk urged the dhrane across it, to the left.
Soon they were swimming among the houses. These seemed very small. Frannie reached up from the dhrane's back and laid her hand on the roof of one as she passed it. Rokk was heading inshore. The mountain here was a frowning cliff-face, with a very narrow ledge at the water level. The ledge ended in a wooden incline bridge leading upward to a group of buildings near shore. Six or eight small houses with doors and rectangles of windows, clustered there together, perched on stiff wooden legs over the water. The incline bridge connected them with the shore, and they were strung together by a broad wooden platform.
Rokk shouted, and from behind the buildings a giant appeared. He had been sitting in the water. He stood up, with mud and slime dripping from him. A man, like Rokk, but younger. His hair was sleek and black, and fell long to his bared chest, across which a skin was draped. His face was broad and flat, and hairless. He stood with the water to his knees, beside the buildings with his arm arched over their roofs as he leaned against them.
He smiled. He called, "Ae, Rokk!" And Rokk answered, "Ae, Degg."
They spoke together. Then they spoke in Leela’s language. Leela murmured to Frannie, "This man Degg is to remain here until we are safely above."
Rokk issued his commands. Degg sat down again in the water, waist-deep, with his arms holding his hunched-up knees. He yawned and waved his hand as Rokk swam his dhrane away.
Again in single file, they swam. As they passed the buildings Frannie chanced to glance up. On the porch-like platform up there she caught a glimpse of a green-white shape—a thing stretched out somnolent—a thing, headless!
It was only a glimpse. Frannie's swimming dhrane carried her beyond sight of it. . . . She was shuddering.
The water now was unpleasantly hot. The current was strong. It was beginning to ripple the water. Ugly, white ripples . . . sinister.
The dhranes swam with the moving water. But they tossed their heads, uneasy. . . . Rokk was continually shouting, forcing his mount forward.
There were no houses here. The cliff-face was moving swiftly past. And then a black mouth swept into view. A hundred feet high and twice as broad. A mouth, with steam like the fetid breath of a monster. . . .
The water was sweeping that way. Surging in a torrent. White water, leaping over jagged rock-points that split it into foam. . . .
And from the mouth came a sullen roaring. . . .
Frannie's dhrane lifted its head with a sharp bleat of fear. Its body was swung sidewise by the tumbling water, but it recovered and swam desperately.
The roaring rose to a deafening torrent of sound. White water was leaping everywhere. Frannie half closed her eyes; she could see a whirling blob which was Leela ahead of her. Then the black mouth opened to encompass the world as Frannie was swept into it.
An inferno of roaring blackness. . . .
CHAPTER 5
CLIMBING INTO LARGENESS
UNFATHOMABLE
In the fog and darkness at the foot of the incline, Martt stood tense, with upraised knife. The green-white thing was poised for its leap. It was not babbling now; its eye on the stalk glared balefully. A shudder swept Martt, as Frannie had shuddered an hour before when she and Leela passed this way, and she had caught a glimpse of this thing lying somnolent on the platform
Martt muttered, "Stay back, Zee." And then the headless thing leaped. Martt caught it on his outflung hand and knife, but did not stop it. He felt his hand sinking within it—a soft, sticky warmth. Its body came on, and struck his chest—a blow as though a soft, yielding pillow had struck him.
There was a moment, there in the darkness, of unutterable horror as Martt felt and saw his body mingled with the body of this gleaming thing clawing at him. He struck wildly, fighting, kicking in a panic of futility. Wet, warm and sticky! He seemed to tear its body apart. But the glowing, lurid outlines, wavering, came back always into shape.
The thing itself was in a panic. Lunging, twisting. Its claws scraped Martt's face, too imponderable to scratch. The slit of its mouth opened to grip his throat; its teeth sank impotently within his flesh. Pressing against him . . . the slime of it was warm, with a stench, noisome. . . .
Horrible! A nausea made Martt reel. And the thing now was crying with terrible, frightened cries. But they were low, suppressed.
Martt staggered. And suddenly the lurid green shape gathered itself and fled. Martt saw a quivering dark wound in its side. It fled whimpering along the rocks of the shore and disappeared.
Martt relaxed. He was unhurt. He stooped to the water and washed the stickiness from him. He felt a wild, hysterical desire to laugh.
"Zee, it—that thing was as frightened as I was!"
"Are you all right, Martt? It's gone! What was it?" She clutched at him anxiously.
"Yes—all right. It couldn't hurt me and I couldn't hurt it. Not much." He laughed again, but suddenly sobered. "Zee, there's a giant up there asleep. Hear him?"
They listened. From up there in the fog the deep, heavy breathing still sounded. Martt whispered, "You wait here, Zee. I'll creep upon him—get the drugs." He turned to her tensely. "Zee, you stay here. Close against the rocks. Whatever happens, you stay here. I'll—if I get the drugs—I'll make myself very large. Kill him—then I'll come back to you. Don't move—whatever happens."
He left her. The wooden incline sloped sharply upward. The fog momentarily seemed clearing. Martt saw above him the outlines of the houses, a broad platform connecting them. And stretched the length of the platform was the huge, recumbent figure of a man. He seemed about forty feet tall. He lay hunched, cramped for space, with one arm upflung to the roof of a house, and one leg dangling nearly to the water.
Martt reached the platform. He crept past the giant's legs. The waist, wrapped in a skin, was rising and falling with the giant's breathing. Martt's own breath was held. His heart was thumping wildly. The giant stirred; Martt stepped nimbly aside to avoid the movement of the great body.
At the giant's waist he paused, reached up, fumbling. There seemed a belt here, with pockets. The drugs should be there. The bulge of the giant's middle was nearly as high as Martt's chest as he stood upright. He reached up, and over, feeling with careful fingers.
With a thrill of triumph, Martt found two cylinders, each as long as his forearm. In the starlight he opened them, drew from each a flat, square tablet of compressed powder. The drugs! But which was for growth and which for shrinkage? One was larger than the other. It suggested growth. It was flat and square—the length of Martt's thumb. Impulsively he would have crushed it in his mouth and swallowed it. But a thought gave him pause. This giant was nearly seven times larger than, himself. This expanded dose of the drug then would be too great. Martt bit off a comer of the white tablet. Swallowed it. An acrid taste. . . . He replaced the remainder in the cylinder and put both cylinders in his pocket, tying his jacket close around them. Would they expand with his body? He could only hope so.
Expand? How did he know but that he had taken the wrong drug? Well, he could soon rectify that. . . . A panic swept Martt that the giant might awaken too soon. . . . The drug was taking effect; Martt was sick and dizzy. He reeled to a post at an outer comer of the platform. Clung there. He all but slipped and fell into the water ten feet below.
A moment, then the sickness passed. He was growing! He could feel the post shrinking within his grip. The outlines of the houses were contracting. The knife in his hand, already tiny, slipped and fell into the water with a splash.
The post soon was too small for Martt to hold. He reached over and steadied himself upon the grass roof of the nearest house. It was melting under his hands. The sleeping giant lay at his feet, a giant no longer; a man, like himself—the two of them crowding a tiny, flimsy platform with toy houses beside it, and black water flowing sluggishly close underneath.
A sense of power swept Martt. A triumph. He was not afraid of this man, unarmed like himself. Already the man was undersized. . . . Why, Martt could grip him, choke him! . . . These toy houses—a sweep of Martt's arm would have scattered them.
Martt was bending awkwardly over the roof-tops. A ripping, tearing noise sounded. The platform, the houses, quivered, wavered, collapsed! The whole structure, bending beneath the weight of the two huge bodies, gave way. Martt found himself floundering in warm, muddy water, entangled in a debris of splintered wood and grasslike house-roofs.
And with him, his antagonist, awakened to a startled confusion, floundering, struggling to get upon his feet.
Martt rose to his knees. The shallow lake bottom was sticky with mud. A house-roof hung upon his shoulder. He heaved it off; stood upright, dripping, breathless. The other man was up also. In the starlight, amid the floating wreckage, they faced each other. Martt was the taller; and he was still growing. He saw his enemy shrinking before him. A slim young fellow, with long black hair. A broad, flat face, with a startled surprize on it.
Martt laughed. And shouted, "I've got you now!" He would have leaped. But abruptly he recalled Zee, tiny in size, huddled there by the shore. A lunge of his body—or of this other man's body—a flip of one of these torn housebeams—and Zee would be killed. . . .
Martt turned and waded rapidly away. He wondered if the other man would follow him. Martt wanted to get him farther out into the lake. It was an error; for as Martt turned to look back, he saw his antagonist's hand go to his belt; and then to his mouth. More of the drug! Martt thought that he had in his own pocket all there was of it here. But the giant had more. Already he was growing. As Martt stood undecided, he saw the giant growing like himself. He was smaller than Martt now, but growing more swiftly. He stood for an instant with his arms upflung toward the stars; then he came wading forward.
The mountains were at Martt's right hand. Shrinking, swiftly contracting. The water now came not much over his ankles; a small patch of wreckage marked where the collapsed buildings had stood.
Martt retreated slightly; he turned, moved to the cliff-face with his back against it.
Then, with a swirl of water, his enemy rushed at him. Martt met the rush unyielding. They locked. Swaying, struggling each to throw the other. The lake at their ankles was lashed white. They fought silently, grimly. The fellow was strong; he pushed Martt backward against the mountain. His hands strove for Martt's throat. But Martt ripped them away. With a body-hold he bent his adversary backward; but always he could feel the man's body swelling within his grasp.
A desperation seized Martt. If he could not win now, at once, he would lose. This fellow was growing too large. Beside them, as they swayed, Martt caught a glimpse of the mountain. It was now a cliff not much higher than his head. At his feet Martt was dimly aware of a small black hole in the cliff into which water was rushing.
One of Martt's legs was wrapped around the legs of his adversary; and suddenly the man tipped. They went down together, Martt on top. It was like falling into a puddle of water. They lunged, rolled over. And then the giant rose, with Martt clinging to him. He. was much larger than Martt now; he heaved himself upward, flung Martt against the cliff. Martt's head and shoulders went over its top. Jagged spires of rock; loose rocks lying there. The giant jerked Martt back; he fell on his feet; saw his antagonist towering over him.
But in Martt's hand now was a jagged lump of rock which he had snatched from the cliff. He flung it, and it caught the giant full on the forehead. He staggered, and as his grip on Martt loosened, Martt leaped away.
And the giant came crashing down, his huge body falling before the hole in the mountain; blocking it so that the surging lake backed up with a deepening torrent of the hot, black water.
II
Martt stood panting in the starlight. He had won. The scene around him was still dwindling, but in a moment it stopped. Cliffs to his shoulder. A shrunken, shallow lake. Its tiny flat islands were no bigger than his foot. Along its shore where the cliff ended he could see the open country. Tiny threads of roads. An island with points of colored light—the island of the festival. At his feet, miniature houses on stilts, many of them strewn on the water, trampled by this combat of giants in which he had been victorious.
And the fallen giant there in the water, blocking the river mouth, the water deepening against his side.
Martt took a cautious step. Zee was down there somewhere. Then he saw her figure, dimly, in the mist which hung over the lake at his ankles. She seemed about the size of his finger. She was standing at the water's edge, waving up to him.
He bent down—carefully. He said softly, "I see you, Zee. You must get larger. I'll give you some of the drug to take."
She shouted, "Yes."
It was a very tiny voice, echoing from far away.
Martt's jacket had been partly torn from him. One of his shoulders was bare, bleeding from where he had been thrown against the cliff-top. He stooped and dashed water upon the wound; and saw Zee crouch and shield herself from the deluge of water he splashed.
He thought, "Careful, Martt;" and from his pocket drew one of the cylinders. The tablets of the drug still were the size of his thumb. He took one, laid it carefully at the water's edge, near Zee. It was nearly the size of her body. She walked to it, examined it.
"Break it," he said. "Eat some—about the size of your thumb."
He could hardly have seen a speck of it so small. Zee found a loose rock. She pounded at the white tablet. Ate a fragment. And presently Martt gave her some of the other drug to stop her growth; and she was his own size, standing beside him, gazing at the shrunken scene in wonderment.
III
They stood consulting over what they should do. They had the precious drugs. Should they return with them to Brett, or go on and rescue Frannie and Leela? Martt was confident. With the drugs in his pocket, all sense of fear was passed. It was obvious that the world here was in no danger. This fallen giant at their feet was the last. But Frannie and Leela were captured; were taken up to that other realm. To delay following would be most dangerous of all.
And Zee agreed. Her eyes were sparkling. She stretched out her white arms. She said, "With this power we would be cowards to turn back"
The giant still had some of the drugs about his person. Martt bent over him.
"Zee! He isn't dead!"
The young giant's face was white; blood was on his forehead where the rock had struck. He opened his eyes; rolled over in the water. The dammed river surged again into its black hole.
"Zee, look! He isn't dead!"
He sat up; smiled in a daze, struggled to rise to his feet but could not.
The rock which Martt had hurled lay like a great boulder in the lake. Martt seized it, but Zee caught his wrist.
"Martt! Don't"
A sense of shame struck at Martt; he dropped the rock. "Zee, can you talk to him—try if he understands your language."
She spoke, and the young giant answered. He was trying to smile, grateful for the words. Zee stooped and splashed water on his wounded forehead.
"Martt, he says his name is Degg—he has seen Leela and Frannie —a man and woman took them into the river mouth."
The fellow did not seem greatly hurt. He was frightened, watchful, but docile enough. Martt took the drugs from him. "Ask him the way up to his world—it will help us"
It was the one thing that would help them! Martt realized it.
Degg, outwardly at least, seemed friendly enough. When Zee promised that they would not hurt him—would take him to his own world, the only way he would ever get there, since he had no drugs—he agreed readily to lead them.
"But we must be careful," said Martt. "Never let him get larger than ourselves. And watch him, always."
At Degg's direction, first they diminished their stature until, compared to the buildings of Reaf, they were about fifty feet tall. Degg said, in Zee's language, "We wade now into the black river. Rokk likes to swim—but wading is easier."
They were ready to start. Soon they would be beyond this world—up into largeness unfathomable. Martt said, "We must leave some message for Brett. Let him know what became of us."
There was no way to leave a written message. Conspicuously on a rock near the shore, Martt left the broad belt of his jacket. As he turned away, Degg was calling softly, "Ae! Eeff! Eeff, come here!" The green-white, headless thing was lurking among the rocks. "Eeff, come here!"
It advanced, whimpering. Compared to Martt's fifty-foot stature it seemed now no bigger than a rat. Martt conquered his aversion and stood waiting while it approached. In the starlight it glowed unreal; its eye on the stalk pointed distrustfully at Martt. It stood at Degg's feet; whimpering—and mumbling words.
Degg said to Zee, "It is afraid of your man. I tell it you will do no harm. It wants to come with us." He stooped over. "Eeff, you come with us?"
It understood, partly the words spoken in Zee's language, and partly the gesture. It said mouthingly, "Yes. Eeff come—with you."
Uncanny! Horrible! Martt shuddered. Degg was saying, "It is a very good friend to me. May we take it?"
"All right," said Martt shortly, when Zee translated. But it worried him. He resolved more than ever to watch Degg carefully, and to watch this headless thing Degg called a friend.
They fed a small morsel of the drug to Eeff, until it had grown to a size normal to them. Then they started. The black mouth of the river, to them in this size, seemed a passageway ten or twelve feet high and twice as broad. The river swirled about their legs; hot, with steam rising. Soon they were in darkness, following the river around a bend. But only for a moment. Martt and Zee were hand in hand. Degg was in advance; Martt could just distinguish Degg's figure with the shining blob of Eeff in the water beside him.
Darkness. But Martt's eyes were growing accustomed to it. And now the rocks of the caverns seemed to be giving light—a dim phosphorescence. The cavern expanded. They waded across a broad, shallow lake where the water was calm. Then again into a tunnel. Miles down its tortuous course with the river swirling and tumbling about them.
Sometimes there was a dry ledge upon which they could walk. Sometimes the river deepened, and they had to swim. Always Degg advanced grimly, steadily, and silently. A foreboding grew upon Martt. Were they going right? Was this the way Frannie and Leela had gone? Once he whispered, "Do you think, Zee, that he's tricking us?"
She shook her head. "You have all the drugs. He would not dare."
They had waded for hours. Then ahead of them they saw Degg pause. The river here plunged straight down into a black abyss. To the left a passageway turned upward. It was some ten feet high and two or three times as wide. It went up at an incline into the green, luminous darkness. They followed Degg. A mile perhaps, steadily climbing. Martt calculated. They had already walked possibly fifteen miles—and they were more than eight times the normal size of Zee's world. That was more than a hundred and twenty miles underground—most of it downward.
Martt realized that he was tired. And hungry. Before leaving Reaf he had thought of food necessary for this trip. Degg had a concentrated food—a dull brown powder. Martt promptly had appropriated it—had tested it to make sure it was not a size-drug. . . .
The passageway abruptly opened into black, empty space. A rocky slope rolling gently upward, strewn with huge black boulders. It extended as far as Martt could see, upward into a luminous darkness. Overhead was a black sky—murky with distance.
Degg stopped. "We begin getting large here."
Zee translated it to Martt.
"Let's eat, then," said Martt. "Zee, aren't you tired and hungry?"
There was water lying in flat pools on the rocks. It was clear, cold and sweet. They sat down, talking and eating. Then Zee slept. And Degg slept also.
Martt sat alert, watching, while the headless thing stretched itself somnolent on a rock near by, its single eye on the stalk wilting downward in drowsiness.
Martt strove to master his revulsion. He called softly, "Eeff! Eeff, come here!"
But it would not come. It moved farther away, whimpering to itself.
IV
"Zee, wake up! We've got to get started. You've slept hours."
The real size-change now began. In single file they walked up the black slope. It shrank beneath them—creeping, crawling, dwindling away under their feet. The boulders shrank into rocks, into pebbles. In an hour they were walking upon a smooth surface.
The black void was no longer empty. Mountains showed ahead—and to the sides. Giant faces of rock, looming into unfathomable distance of the black sky. The mountains were drawing closer; contracting, rushing down with a violent movement.
Martt apprehensively glanced behind. A wall of dwindling rock was coming after them. The drug in these larger doses seemed acting with a multiplied power. The scene was a dizzy swirl of movement. Mountains closing in everywhere. To Martt came a flash of terror. They would be crushed. Their bodies were growing tremendously to fill this constricted space. . . .
Degg had stopped walking. They were gathered in a group. They were now in the center of a circular valley, with a ring of mountains closing in. A ten-mile valley . . . a mile . . . a hundred feet. . . .
But the mountains shrank to hills; to a low cliff-wall—a ridge. . . . It closed in. . . .
"Now!" shouted Degg. They leaped over the low ledge of encircling rock; scrambled over it and fell on a level ground above. . . .
Beside them Martt saw a small jagged hole in the ground. . . . The size of his waist {{...} his fist . . . his finger. . . . It dwindled, closed and was gone; while again, above them and all about, were black, empty spaces, filled soon with shrinking canyons out of which hastily they climbed. . . .
A fantasmagoria of climbing, struggling upward to avoid being crushed by their own growth. . . .
There was a canyon too narrow, with sides too high. . . . They had to stop their growth, and climb its jagged, precipitous side. The climb took hours. There was another meal, while Martt slept and Zee remained on guard.
Then another valley. Broad, with a steeply inclined floor. They grew out of it; into another; and another. . . .
Martt became conscious of a change in the air. Cooler, with a dankness. And now at last, overhead the void was no longer black. A suggestion of purple. And suddenly as they leaped from a chasm which shrank and closed under them, Martt saw a sky. Somber purple, with stars.
A new conception of it all swept Martt. His Earth—the stars of its Universe. The Inner Surface of the Atom, Zee's realm—millions of times larger. And now—compared to Reaf . . . was he now a million times the size of Reaf?. . . Or a million million? Largeness, unfathomable. A convex world out here. The surface of a globe, whirling in Space. And overhead, still other stars, so gigantic—so remote!
V
Martt gazed curiously around. They were at last in Degg's world—the region of the Ares. A tumbled land of crags upon which lay a gray-black snow. Martt's heart sank before its utter desolation—a tumbled waste, upheaved as though by some cataclysm of nature. Desolation! And as though to veil it, a fall of blackish snow—a somber, tragic shroud.
It was night. And, Martt surmised, a winter season. Yet the air was not cold; merely dank. And the snow seemed not cold, congealed perhaps by the dank, heavy air; but to Martt's touch, not cold, no more than chill.
With her bare limbs and filmy veiling, Zee was shivering. Martt discarded his jacket, but she did not want it.
He said, "But you must be cold, Zee."
"I'm not." She shook herself. "I'm—frightened. This—night up here—it's like a tomb, Martt."
Tomblike, indeed. A dank, chill silence brooded over the night. And then, almost unheralded, it was not night, but day. A small, cold-red sun leaped up from the distant black horizon. A day of dull, flat light. It stained the snow with blood{{..|4}}
Blood everywhere. . . .
Degg said somberly to Zee, "Always blood. It is an omen{{..|4}} My land, doomed" There was a quiver in Zee's voice as she repeated his words to Martt.
They had come now not to mistrust Degg. He seemed a well-meaning youth. Simple-minded. He had told them something of his world—of Rokk, and the woman Mobah. Degg, in his heart, hated and feared Rokk.
"Why?" demanded Zee.
He turned his dark, solemn eyes upon her. "You are too gentle, little girl Zee, to understand. We have many—horrible things here in Arc. I would not talk of them with you."
It had been Rokk's plan, Degg said, to take Leela and Frannie to the place where he lived. Degg was to join Rokk there. . . . It was not so very far. . . . Degg called it Rokk's mound. They were headed that way now. Soon it would be night again—Martt could do what he thought was best toward rescuing the two girl prisoners. And Martt promised he would protect Degg.
Vaguely in Martt's mind had been the idea that he could use the drugs again now—make himself still larger—catch Rokk unawares. But the large drug would take no further effect. The maximum size had been reached. Degg did not know why; save that these drugs were for smallness—the large one merely an antidote to the other.
Martt was left without tangible plan. But his first desire was to get near Rokk's mound—whatever sort of place that might be. And he would decide then what could be
The blood-red sun came swiftly up in a low arc, and plunged as swiftly down again. To Martt, it had been some half an hour of daylight. Now came the brooding night—and in another half-hour the sun would again make its low sweep.
Martt urged Degg forward. Eeff was leading—lurid, green-white against the black of the ground. Then it stopped. Its eye quivered; it screamed—a long, shuddering, half-human cry of fright. Degg stood frozen—a statue in the gloom. And then Martt—and Zee also, for she uttered a low, suppressed cry—saw what had frightened Eeff.
It was about a hundred feet away—a dull, glowing red as though the blood of sunlight were upon it. A thing which might have been a long, blood-red vine. Not animal, but vegetable. It lay on the ground—a great, thick stem, with upflung leafy branches waving like tentacles. At intervals, upon long stalks, were round spots of green light. Gleaming, baleful eyes.
The thing was lying its length upon the ground. Not quiescent, but everywhere in quivering, undulating, snakelike movement. Its eyes seemed all turned this one way. Eyes suggesting an intelligence—a reasoning behind them. A thing, not animal but vegetable! Its brain, lacking even the least vestige of human or animal restraint, cast in a mold unutterably horrible.
Eeff was crouching at Degg's feet, babbling with terror. Degg muttered, "It is unrooted! Free! It—I told Rokk they would break free some time—before he was ready!"
"Unrooted!" Zee echoed.
Unrooted! It was slithering, out there in the darkness. . . . It shrank to a blood-red blur. . . . It vanished. . . .
They went on again. Degg would not talk, save to reiterate fearsomely, "I knew they would cast off their roots! Roaming, everywhere. And Rokk thought he dared to grow them"
A rise of ground lay ahead. Beyond its crest only the purple sky was visible, with stars sweeping in rapid, low arcs. Martt, Degg and Zee were walking together, with Eeff close before them.
Eeff began whimpering again; then screamed. And ahead, from over the crest of the hill, as though in answer came an echoing scream! Yet not an echo! A scream, human! It drove the blood to Martt's heart; stopped his breathing. The scream of a voice familiar—a girl's voice—Frannie!
For all the horror surging over him, Martt leaped forward. And stopped, stricken on the hill-crest.
Beneath him in the gloom lay a shallow, bowl-like depression. The starlight illumined it wanly. Frannie was down there, struggling in the grip of a blood-red, vegetable thing! A segment of it was wrapped around her, dragging her forward. The light of it drenched her with blood; its myriad green eyes glared throughout its waving length.
And ahead of it was a line of others of its kind, leading the way, slithering up and over the opposite slope!
The horrors of the Blood-red Day, the City of Ice, and the
diabolical designs of Rokk will be told in the thrilling
chapters that bring this story to an end
in next month's WEIRD TALES