The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

We stood in the shadows of the dark forest, with its gnarled, stunted trees. The red light flamed near by. A dim figure glided up to Drake. He gave an order; the figure hastened away. In a moment, the red light vanished.

Drake spoke hurriedly. He and Dianne and Ahlma were leading Alt and me toward where the red light had been. Drake half whispered:

"We saw you coming -- lighted the red signal for Alt. Dangerous to keep it lighted now; Togaro's flyer has been here. His men -- they may be near this size -- would capture our flyer if they could."

We hardly went a hundred yards. To my questions Drake was impatient. "Presently, Frank. Here, this way."

I saw, in an open space, the dim shape of an interplanetary vehicle. An elongated globe, forty feet long, with its bulging middle half as wide. It lay dark and silent; but I saw that it had elliptical windows and a small doorway which stood open to receive us.

Strange vehicle! As we approached I could see that what I had thought was a dead-black thing of metal was in reality far different. Drake hurried us up a small ladder, into its interior. But I saw that the vehicle's side was not solid.

It seemed rather a myriad woven wires. The thing was a big cage, woven of intricate metal threads like a basket. Rigid, yet resilient.

I learned afterward some of the details of this strange vehicle. Standing inert, as it was now, the outer air circulated freely through it. The wire, of which its hull and all its interior ribs and braces were composed, was drawn from a ductile metal unknown to our world, a metal which contracted or expanded freely under the impulse of an alternation of electronic current. With the current charging it, the hull became a solid electrical surface, with the entire interior an active magnetic field, so that ourselves and all the contents of the vehicle were contracted in size as the hull diminished.

No drugs were needed now. We could use them inside the vehicle merely to change our size in comparison to the vehicle itself.

There were chemical air-renewers, and heaters to keep the interior warm against the cold of interplanetary space.

An interplanetary voyage! I could not at first grasp it. No vast space was here. We were in a dark forest, with a limited mountain valley around us. No stars were overhead; no great astronomical reaches were here. Where could this vehicle go? Into smallness, I knew that. But how? Sail off over these stunted trees? Why, in a moment with any speed at all it could reach the mountain barrier down which Alt and I had just come.

But I knew, as I pondered, that if this flyer remained just where it was, as it diminished in size, sufficient space for any flight would open up around it.

The door was barred behind us. We passed along a low, narrow passage, walking on a metal grid of woven wires. I saw small rooms; ladders leading up and down to other levels. A small room, crowded with strange instruments faintly throbbing as though all this wired bundle of mechanism was impatient to be gone.

We came to a little room with a window in the concave side of the hull; a table of woven wire; and a few wire chairs.

"Sit down," said Drake. "You particularly, Frank -- be careful as we start. Your first voyage! The shock is different from the drug. I see you brought the weapons?"

"Yes. Do you want them now, Drake?"

"Keep them. We'll look them over presently. Sit quiet, Frank. " He spoke hurriedly, abstractedly. "We must get started at once."

He hastened from the room to give orders for the starting. I had seen some eight or ten men aboard the vehicle. Four were in the instrument control room; Drake went in there.

I sat down, with Dianne beside me. Alt was whispering to Ahlma near by. Dianne murmured:

"Don't talk now -- just for a moment."