The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

We returned to our normal size; and found Drake, father and Ahlma together. Father was shaken by his encounter with Togaro, but unharmed. Drake was bruised, battered and bleeding; but with his youth and strength he soon recovered.

The afternoon wore away. We had decided to start for the island as soon as it was dark. There was no sign of Togaro.

I talked that afternoon for more than an hour with Dianne. She told me many things of her strange world. Drake talked with Ahlma. I heard him say once, "You saved my life -- he would have stamped upon me."

I recall with what a singular mixture of emotion I touched Dianne's hand. My adored little sister? A strange foreign princess? The two ideas, so wholly different, mingled in my heart. I recall, too, the flush on Drake's face, his low eager voice as he talked with Ahlma.

The darkness closed in around King's Cove. We were ready to start. Father, with an automatic in his hand, followed us down to the boathouse. We had tried to have him summon a car and go to the village earlier in the afternoon. Or summon help.

"Nonsense, lads -- I can take care of myself. We've got to keep this secret. Why, suppose the authorities were to order that atom destroyed!"

The channel was black. The sea was calm, with a sullen, oily calmness. No giants had been reported. The lights of occasional patrol planes passed overhead; out at sea the lights of the waiting battleship were plainly visible.

Drake and I rowed swiftly, with the two girls huddled in the stern. I was tense, my mind roving upon a thousand weird unnatural dangers which at any moment might come upon us. But there seemed nothing.

The island loomed black and silent ahead of us. What was there?

I shipped my oar. We grounded on the beach. No sign of anything.

We prowled through the dark trees, with automatics ready. Drake had a small flash light. We came upon the embers of Dianne's signal fire of the morning.

Tiny figures stirred in the grass under Drake's light.

"Careful, Drake."

Dianne bent down cautiously. A microscopic voice called up to her. She said to us:

"They have not seen Togaro."

She led us a few feet to one side of the embers. "Drake, give me your light."

There was a patch of soft loam here, with grass and ferns growing in it. A small rock projected up in the grass. No one would ever have noticed it. Drake and I knelt down carefully over it. Dianne held the light.

It was the top of what seemed a bowlder buried here. Only a few jagged inches showed. Rock, scarred and pitted; coppery-looking. Metallic.

Drake murmured, "Why, this is a meteorite buried here."

It seemed so. We dug with our fingers in the soil around the projection. The thing bulged out underground. A meteorite that might have weighed a ton. Metallic rock, scarred and pitted and fused by the heat of its falling through the atmosphere to earth. Centuries ago it might have fallen, a visitor from the realms of space. It had buried itself here; or been buried since by the drifting silt of the passing years.