The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

Father and I had of necessity changed our whole mode of life when we undertook the watching of the rock fragment. We gave up our Westchester residence, to live the year around at King's Cove. Father moved his laboratory from Westchester; I relinquished my flying job.

The house at King's Cove, unheated, was not suitable for winter conditions. We installed a heating plant. We cleared out one of the small bedrooms. Barred its windows and its door, so that it had all the aspect of a cell.

The windows we sealed, not to be opened. A new door was hung, closely fitting so that there was not the smallest crack. Into the ceiling we cut a small ventilator to keep the air of the room fresh.

There was one small chair. In the center of the room there was a flat, six-foot-square slab of granite. It was raised above the floor on a sturdy pedestal. In its center lay the precious chunk of rock, with a dome-light over it -- the white electric glare shining strongly down.

The microscope hung in a bracket; and there was another bracket -- a rack of bottles and atomizers. Gruesome to contemplate using them! Bottles of acids and poisons; atomizers to spray poison liquids! These tiny humans which might appear would be treated like deadly insects, at once to be exterminated.

We had three guards employed. Between them, they covered the entire twenty-four hours. They sat armed with automatics. At ten-minute intervals they searched the fragment of rock with the microscope. An electric bell-switch was close at hand, so that in an instant father and I could be summoned.

Yet for all this neither father nor I could for a moment relax. Alternating with our hopeless moods that Drake and Dianne were gone forever was the feeling that Togaro might at any moment attack us. Within the atom thousands perhaps of his followers were preparing to conquer the earth.

It was nerve-racking business. Father was breaking down under the heart-rending strain of it. I knew he could not possibly go on for another year, living under such conditions.

There was never a moment when he and I both dared leave the house at once.

He was asleep this momentous night in mid-May. I had sent the guard out for a ten-minute relaxation. I saw the figure appear. I stood shaking, peering down into the small microscope. The magnified chunk of rock showed jagged and broken. Upon the upper lip of the crater-like hole the tiny figure was visible. A man, blood-stained and battered, with a waving white flag in his hand.

I turned from the microscope. I could just make him out with the naked eye -- a pin-point of white movement.

I rang the bell for father. I stood trembling. Confused by the shock of this actuality which for so long we had been contemplating. A whirl of confused thoughts plunged at me. Was it Drake?

No! It did not seem to look like Drake.

A friend? An enemy? Should I kill it? What was I waiting for?

I became aware that I had seized an atomizer. A puff of it and a torrent of deadly spray would kill that tiny figure; and kill, doubtless, any others which might be there, too small yet for me to see.

I held my hand. A friend? A white flag -- of truce?

The figure was expanding. Without the microscope now I could see it clearly in the brilliant white light.

Dare I let it get larger? I shouted: "Wait! You -- stop!"

Father burst into the room. "Frank!"

And behind him the burly figure of the returning guard. Both were panting from running and from excitement.