The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (buy e reader txt) 📗

with even less warning than it began, the gale abruptly ceased. There remained only the pleasantly gentle breeze of a summer afternoon blowing against their faces. And this came from almost an opposite direction to the storm.

The three men looked at one another in amazement.

"Well, I'll be——" ejaculated the Very Young Man. "What next?"

They waited for some time, afraid to venture out from the rocks among which they had taken refuge. Then, deciding that the storm, however unexplainable, was over for the time at least, they climbed to their feet and resumed their journey with bruised knees, but otherwise none the worse for the danger through which they had passed.

After walking a short distance, they came up a little incline, and before them, hardly more than a quarter of a mile away, they could see a range of hills.

"The scratch must be behind those hills," said the Very Young Man, pointing.

"It's a long distance," said the Big Business Man thoughtfully. "We're still growing smaller—look."

Their minds had been so occupied that for some time they had forgotten the effect of the drug upon their stature. As they looked about them now they could see the rocks around them still increasing steadily in size, and could feel the ground shifting under their feet when they stood still.

"You're right; we're getting smaller," observed the Very Young Man. "How long before we'll stop, do you suppose?"

The Doctor drew the Chemist's memoranda from the pouch of his belt. "It says about five or six hours for the first four pellets," he read.

The Very Young Man looked at his watch. "Quarter to nine. We've been less than an hour yet. Come on, let's keep going," and he started walking rapidly forward.

They walked for a time in silence. The line of hills before them grew visibly in size, and they seemed slowly to be nearing it.

"I've been thinking," began the Doctor thoughtfully as he glanced up at the hills. "There's one theory of Rogers's that was a fallacy. You remember he was quite positive that this change of stature became steadily more rapid, until it reached its maximum rate and then remained constant. If that were so we should probably be diminishing in size more rapidly now than when we first climbed on to the ring. If we had so much trouble getting to the ring then"—he smiled at the remembrance of their difficulty—"I don't see how we could ever get to those hills now."

"Gee, that's so," said the Very Young Man. "We'd never be able to get anywhere, would we?"

"How do you figure it works?" asked the Big Business Man.

The Doctor folded up the paper and replaced it in his belt. "I don't know," he answered. "I think probably it proceeds in cycles, like the normal rate of growth—times of rapid progress succeeded by periods of comparative inactivity."

"I never knew people grew that way," observed the Very Young Man.

"They do," said the Doctor. "And if these drugs produce the same effect we——" He got no further, for suddenly the earth seemed to rise swiftly under them, and they were thrown violently to the ground.

The Very Young Man, as he lay prone, looked upward, and saw the sunlike light above fall swiftly down across the sky and disappear below the horizon, plunging the world about them into the gloom of a semi-twilight. A wind, fiercer than before, swept over them with a roar.

"The end of the world," murmured the Very Young Man to himself. And he wondered why he was not frightened.

Then came the feeling of an extraordinary lightness of body, as though the ground were dropping away from under him. The wind abruptly ceased blowing. He saw the ball of light rise swiftly from the horizon and mount upward in a great, gleaming arc to the zenith, where again it hung motionless.

The three men lay quiet, their heads reeling. Then the Very Young Man sat up dizzily and began feeling himself all over. "There's nothing wrong with me," he said lugubriously, meeting the eyes of his friends who apparently were also more surprised than hurt. "But—oh, my gosh, the whole universe went nutty!" he added to himself in awe.

"What did that?" asked the Big Business Man. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and sat upon a rock, holding his head in his hands.

The Doctor was up in a moment beside him. "We're not hurt," he said, looking at his companions. "Don't let's waste any more time—let's get into that valley." The Very Young Man could see by his manner that he knew or guessed what had happened.

"But say; what——" began the Very Young Man.

"Come on," interrupted the Doctor, and started walking ahead swiftly.

There was nothing for his two friends to do but to follow. They walked in silence, in single file, picking their way among the rocks. For a quarter of an hour or more they kept going, until finally they came to the ridge of hills, finding them enormous rocks, several hundred feet high, strewn closely together.

"The valley must be right beyond," said the Doctor. "Come on."

The spaces between these huge rocks were, some of them, fifty feet or more in width. Inside the hills the travelers found the ground even rougher than before, and it was nearly half an hour before they emerged on the other side.

Instead of the shallow valley they expected to find, they came upon a precipice—a sheer drop into a tremendous cañon, half as wide possibly as it was deep. They could see down to its bottom from where they stood—the same rocky, barren waste as that through which they had been traveling. Across the cañon, on the farther side, lay another line of hills.

"It's the scratch all right," said the Very Young Man, as they stopped near the brink of the precipice, "but, holy smoke! Isn't it big?"

"That's two thousand feet down there," said the Big Business Man, stepping cautiously nearer to the edge. "Rogers didn't say it was so deep."

"That's because we've been so much longer getting here," explained the Doctor.

"How are we going to get down?" asked the Very Young Man as he stood beside the Big Business Man within a few feet of the brink. "It's getting deeper every minute, don't forget that."

The Big Business Man knelt down and carefully approached to the very edge of the precipice. Then, as he looked over, he got upon his feet with a laugh of relief. "Come here," he said.

They joined him at the edge and, looking over, could see that the jagged roughness of the wall made the descent, though difficult, not exceptionally hazardous. Below them, not more than twenty feet, a wide ledge jutted out, and beyond that they could see other similar ledges and crevices that would afford a foothold.

"We can get down that," said the Very Young Man. "There's an easy place," and he pointed farther along the brink, to where a break in the edge seemed to offer a means of descent to the ledge just below.

"It's going to be a mighty long climb down," said the Big Business Man. "Especially as we're getting smaller all the time. I wonder," he added thoughtfully, "how would it be if we made ourselves larger before we started. We could get big enough, you know, so that it would only be a few hundred feet down there. Then, after we got down, we could get small again."

"That's a thought," said the Very Young Man.

The Doctor sat down somewhat wearily, and again took the papers from his belt. "The idea is a good one," he said. "But there's one thing you overlook. The larger we get, the smoother the wall is going to be. Look, can't you see it changing every moment?"

It was true. Even in the short time since they had first looked down, new crevices had opened up. The descent, though longer, was momentarily becoming less dangerous.

"You see," continued the Doctor, "if the valley were only a few hundred feet deep, the precipice might then be so sheer we could not trust ourselves to it at all."

"You're right," observed the Big Business Man.

"Well, it's not very hard to get down now," said the Very Young Man. "Let's get going before it gets any deeper. Say," he added, "how about stopping our size where it is? How would that work?"

The Doctor was reading the papers he held in his hand. "I think," he said, "it would be our wisest course to follow as closely as possible what Rogers tells us to do. It may be harder, but I think we will avoid trouble in the end."

"We could get lost in size just as easily as in space, couldn't we?" the Big Business Man put in. "That's a curious idea, isn't it?"

"It's true," agreed the Doctor. "It is something we must guard against very carefully."

"Well, come on then, let's get going," said the Very Young Man, pulling the Doctor to his feet.

The Big Business Man glanced at his watch. "Twenty to ten," he said. Then he looked up into the sky. "One hour and a half ago," he added sentimentally, "we were up there. What will another hour bring—I wonder?"

"Nothing at all," said the Very Young Man, "if we don't ever get started. Come on."

He walked towards the place he had selected, followed by his companions. And thus the three adventurers began their descent into the ring.

CHAPTER XV THE VALLEY OF THE SACRIFICE

For the first half-hour of their climb down into the valley of the scratch, the three friends were too preoccupied with their own safety to talk more than an occasional sentence. They came upon many places that at first glance appeared impassable, or at least sufficiently hazardous to cause them to hesitate, but in each instance the changing contour of the precipice offered some other means of descent.

After thirty minutes of arduous effort, the Big Business Man sat down suddenly upon a rock and began to unlace his shoes.

"I've got to rest a while," he groaned. "My feet are in terrible shape."

His two companions were glad of the opportunity to sit with him for a moment.

"Gosh, I'm all in, too!" said the Very Young Man with a sigh.

They were sitting upon a ledge about twenty feet wide, with the wall down which they had come at their back.

"I'll swear that's as far down there as it ever was," said the Big Business Man, with a wave of his hand towards the valley below them.

"Further," remarked the Very Young Man. "I've known that right along."

"That's to be expected," said the Doctor. "But we're a third the way down, just the same; that's the main thing." He glanced up the rocky, precipitous wall behind them. "We've come down a thousand feet, at least. The valley must be three thousand feet deep or more now."

"Say, how deep does it get before it stops?" inquired the Very Young Man.

The Doctor smiled at him quietly. "Rogers's note put it about twelve thousand," he answered. "It should reach that depth and stop about"—he hesitated a moment, calculating—"about two o'clock," he finished.

"Some climb," commented the Very Young Man. "We could do this a lot better than we're doing it, I think."

For some time they sat in silence. From where they sat the valley had all the appearance of a rocky, barren cañon of their own world above, as it might have looked on the late afternoon of a cloudless summer day. A gentle breeze was blowing, and in the sky overhead they could still see the huge light that for them was the sun.

"The weather is certainly great down here anyway," observed the Very Young Man, "that's one consolation."

The Big Business Man had replaced his shoes, taken a swallow of water, and risen to his feet, preparing to start downward again, when suddenly they all noticed a curious swaying motion, as though the earth were moving under them.

"Now what?" ejaculated the Very Young Man, standing up abruptly, with his feet spread wide apart.

The ground seemed pressing against his feet as if he were weighted down with a heavy load. And he felt a little also as though in a moving train with a side thrust to guard against. The sun was no longer visible, and the valley was plunged in the semidarkness of twilight. A strong wind sprang up, sweeping down upon them from above.

The Very Young Man and the Big Business Man looked puzzled; the Doctor alone of the three seemed to understand what was happening.

"He's moving the ring," he explained, with a note of apprehension in his voice.

"Oh," ejaculated the Big Business Man, comprehending at last, "so that's the——"

The Very Young Man standing with his back to the wall and his legs spread wide looked hastily at his watch. "Moving the ring? Why, damn it——" he began impetuously.

The Big Business Man