A switch was pulled over, and the dynamo"s drone pulsed through the room. Hagendorff"s fingers rested on a large lever that jutted from the switchboard. Slowly, he pulled it to one side.
The imprisoned cat, small as a rat, had been nervously whipping its tail from side to side and meowing plaintively; but, as the lever swung over, there came a change. The vacuum tubes behind the switchboard glowed green; a bright white ray poured from the spray in the chamber, making the metal plate below a shimmering, almost molten thing. The animal"s legs suddenly braced on it; its narrowed eyes widened, glazing weirdly, while the tail became a stiff, bristling ramrod. And, as a balloon swells from a strong breath, the cat"s body increased in size. It grew not in spurts, but with a smooth, flowing rhythm: grew as easily as a flower unfolding beneath the sun.
In only a few seconds its original size was attained. Howard raised his hand; the lever shot back and the white beam faded into nothingness. A full sized and very angry cat tore around the inside of the chamber.
"Normal?" Hagendorff questioned. The other nodded and prepared to open the door.
"Wait! She always was a little undersized; I give her a few inches more as a reward."
"Not too much," warned Garth. "She"s got a nasty temper; we don"t want a wildcat prowling round here!"
The white beam flashed, the tubes glowed and almost instantly flickered off again. When the chamber"s door was opened, an indignant and slightly oversized cat bounded through, leaped from the table with a squawled oath of hatred and streaked into the front room of the cabin.
Garth turned and faced Hagendorff, a smile on his lips and a gleam in his eyes. He ran his fingers through his black hair.
"Well," he said, "now it"s time for the final experiment. Who shall it be?"
Hagendorff did not answer at once, and the American went on:
"I think it"d better be me. There"s a slight risk, of course, and I, as the inventor, could never ask an a.s.sistant to do anything I wouldn"t. Is it all right with you?"
Hagendorff nodded quickly in answer. Garth stood reflecting for a moment.
"Guinea pigs, rabbits and insects have survived reduction to one-twentieth normal size," he said slowly. "It should be safe for the human body to descend just as far. But stop me at about two feet this first time. I"m not taking any chances; I want to be alive and kicking when I announce the success of my experiments to the scientific world."
His a.s.sistant said nothing.
"Well, here goes," Garth added. "I"d better take off my clothes if I don"t want to be buried in them. They"re not affected by the process.
Must be because of the lack of organic connection between their fibers and the human body."
A few minutes later, nude, he jumped onto the laboratory table. He presented a perfect specimen of well-developed manhood as he stood before the door of the chamber. His smooth skin, under which the rounded muscles rolled easily, gleamed white beneath the glare of the floodlight. His gray eyes glanced at the stolid a.s.sistant, who already had one hand on the switchboard"s lever. Garth saw that the hand was trembling slightly, and smiled as he realized Hagendorff was as excited as he. He said:
"I"ll leave the door ajar, so you can more easily watch every phase of the reduction. If it"s painful--well, I guess I can stand anything a cat can!"
Then, stooping slightly, Garth stepped in and drew the door almost shut.
He relaxed as much as possible from the tremendous excitement that filled him, and nodded at Hagendorff.
"I"m ready," he said. "Go ahead!"
The ray came to his body as the crash of thunder comes to the ear. His nerves leaped as it struck and enveloped him. He felt as if he were entombed in ice, and yet his veins were aflame. Fiery shafts fanged him all through and resolved, presently, into a measured, tingling beat.
His thoughts raced. He knew that those minute particles of matter, the atoms of his body, were being compacted; he sensed that his legs were rigid, his body stiff, his eyes clamped ahead in a glazed stare. He was only half-conscious of the objects outside, but the dim sight of them was fantastic and nauseous.
There was Hagendorff"s face peering in at him--growing! Swelling as the cat"s body had swollen; and yet receding and rising until Garth, momentarily forgetting that he was the one whose size was changing, thought that the man"s t.i.tanic body would fill the room. But the room was growing, too: the stools were becoming leviathans of wood, the walls were like cliffs, the compact switchboard was a large surface of black, and the chamber in which he stood grew into a high-roofed vault, its sides shooting up and retreating as if shoved by invisible hands.
And still he sank, and still the terrible light devoured him.
Suddenly a delirious sensation engulfed him; his senses went reeling away, and he staggered. Then with a wrench he came to. As he regained control of his mind he knew the lever had been switched off and the process completed.
He found that he was gasping. He pa.s.sed a hand over his sweat-studded face and looked around.
Outside was the room of a giant. And in a moment a giant became visible. His vast bulk filled the chamber"s doorway; his mammoth face peered in. Garth"s eardrums quivered from a deep ba.s.s rumble, sounding like thunder on a distant horizon.
"Are you all right, Howard?"
A finger half the length of his own arm reached forward and prodded him. For a second Garth could do nothing but stare at it. It brought home to him starkly the puny size of his body, only two feet in height. He felt suddenly afraid. But that was foolish, he thought; and he laughed, his voice ludicrously high and shrill.
"I"m all right," he cried. "But I can hardly understand you. If I were much smaller, I probably couldn"t--your voice"d seem so deep. Gangway, Hagendorff, I"m coming out!"
His eyes were just below the level of the giant"s shoulders. He stepped from the black chamber and stared amazedly at the room, at the chairs, the objects in it--at the laboratory table on which he was standing, along which he might have sprinted thirty yards. A surge of exultant animal spirits flowed through him. His dream had become a reality; the machine had pa.s.sed its last test! His body was sound and whole; he felt perfectly natural; he had not changed, save in size; and in size he was like Gulliver, confronted with a Brobdingnagian room!
He hurdled a five-inch-high box of tools, ran down the creaking table and stood laughing in front of a rack of test tubes half as high as he was. Three strides took Hagendorff opposite him; and from above the thunderous voice rumbled:
"What were your sensations?"
"Probably as close as man"ll ever get to the feelings of a spark of electricity!" the midget replied. "But bearable, though I was freezing and burning at the same time. My body was rigid, paralyzed--just like the animals we used. I couldn"t move."
"You"re sure you couldn"t move? You were helpless?"
The booming voice throbbed with sudden interest. Garth looked up curiously. "No," he repeated. "I couldn"t move. But lift me down, Hagendorff. I want to take a walk on the floor."
A hand wrapped around his body, tensed and strained upwards. The two-foot-high man was not quite pulled off the table. Then Hagendorff grunted and relaxed his grasp.
"I had forgotten," he rumbled. "Your weight remains the same. You are one-third my size, yet you weigh almost as much as I do. Weight, which is the sum of the ma.s.s of all the atoms in you, is not, naturally, affected by compacting those atoms."
It was only by a great effort that he was able to deposit the manikin on the floor.
For a while Garth strolled around, savoring to their full the fantastic sensations his diminished stature gave him, at once amused and somehow frightened by the overwhelming size of the laboratory. To his eyes, the tables were like bridges; Hagendorff"s broad figure loomed monstrously over him, and the guinea pigs and rabbits in their cages seemed as big as fair-sized dogs. With a grin, he looked up at the giant who was his a.s.sistant.
"Think I"ll make the return trip, and give you a chance," he said.
"I"ve had my share, and the process has been proven. It"s weird, being down in this new world all alone. I"d hate to think what would happen if a rat came along!"
Silently, Hagendorff stooped and grasped him again. But Garth, when he stood once more inside the chamber, regarded his huge, rough-moulded face curiously.
"Say," he said, puzzled, "your hands are trembling like the devil!
What"s wrong? You"re more nervous than I am!"
Hagendorff did not answer. He advanced to the switchboard. His narrowed, deep-set eyes shot a quick glance at the small, nude man inside the chamber, and for a second one hand hovered over the lever on the panel.