The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

Drake and I took the small pellets which Dianne offered. She had them in a phial at her waist. She said hurriedly: "Ahlma, you stay here. Keep her with you, father. Stay here in the room. Watch us -- then, when you can't see us any longer, sit down! Don't move about -- you might trample on us!"

It seemed that we had last seen the figure along the inner wall, away from the door or the windows. This was a small room. Two windows on one side, and the single door. It had once been a bedroom; but it was furnished meagerly now, with a small table and a few chairs.

"Here," said Dianne, "I think this is the best place. He may be -- right here now. He could not go far -- not far from this particular spot -- when he is so small. Stand beside me, Drake. Here, Frank."

Father stammered: "You -- you won't be gone long?"

"No," said Dianne. "Togaro would not dare go far into smallness here. It would lead him into the unknown -- he would get lost. We will be back -- in an hour perhaps. You ready, Frank? Ready, Drake?"

The pellet tasted a trifle sweetish. It dissolved on my tongue. I gulped and swallowed. Cold beads of sweat stood on my forehead. But it was fear only. My head reeled. The room seemed to take a dizzying, sweeping lurch. Dianne's steadying arm was around me and Drake; and in a moment my senses cleared. I later learned the details of this drug's effect. A contraction of the cells of my body, preserving their form, contracting each of them in normal relation to the others. An aura of its effect, like a magnetic field, was around me. My garments contracting; even the air, as I breathed it, was diminished in all its inherent molecules and atoms.

Dianne's voice said: "You feel all right?"

I heard Drake mutter: "Yes. But -- Dianne -- strange."

I was standing still, yet everywhere the room was in movement -- a crawling, flowing movement. I could see the near-by wall at which I stared, moving upward, expanding, growing steadily larger. The ceiling over me, lifting. The wall receding. A moment ago I could have touched it. Not now. It was drawing back from me. A visual enlargement of all my surroundings. An illusion, because I was dwindling.

I was still dizzy; I did not dare turn my head or shift my gaze. Beside me was a chair. I could see it out of the tail of my eye. The chair was shifting away, and growing huge. Already its seat loomed higher than my head. I saw Dianne and Drake beside me; in all this movement they alone were unchanged.

And I could feel the movement. The floor under my feet was shifting with a steady crawl. It was spreading out, expanding. The pull of it drew my feet apart so that every moment I had to take a step to keep from falling. All this in what perhaps was a minute.

Dianne cast me off. "You're all right now. Come on -- I think we should stand nearer the wall."

The wall seemed ten feet or more from us now. We walked toward it. The effect was dizzying, but we overcame that presently. Dianne turned and waved her hand upward. Drake and I swung around to follow her gesture.

This room gigantic! The ceiling seemed thirty or forty feet above us. The opposite wall was farther than that. High up were huge rectangles of windows. The chairs and the table were enormous.

We moved again toward the wall. We ran this time. A foot or two away we stopped.

Another minute passed. The room wall was white plastered, and it had a lower baseboard of wood. The plaster surface rose sheer a hundred feet now. It was like a great cliff-face. The lamplight up there was a yellow glow. The baseboard was twice the height of our heads, with a ledge on top upon which we could have walked. The wood looked rough and jagged.

The visual growth went on. The wall was again far away, and receding so fast that if we ran we might fail to reach it. The board floor under us was turning rough -- uneven, with ridges and undulations everywhere.

Another minute.

In the distance behind us one of the table legs rose like a huge monolith into the heights of the lamplight. Shadows and blurred, dark outlines were up there. Farther away on the rolling, jagged surface which was now the floor I could see a formless dark blur which might have been one of father's feet. Half a mile away, perhaps, and receding in the distance.

Then even the nearer wall was gone! Vaguely, as though it were some ten miles off, it loomed like the white sheen of an ice cliff. Then vanished.