The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

"Good-by, Frank," Drake reached carefully down and touched my dwindling shoulder with the tip of his finger. "Be cautious -- don't take too many chances."

"No."

"Remember -- if he once sees you -- well, that's the end, Frank."

I called softly upward. "I'll be careful. You give me the signal, Drake, when you think I'm small enough to start toward him. And remember the plan. If I can distract his attention -- if Dianne leaps away -- you shoot him."

I was already not much higher than Drake's shoe top. The passage floor was in shadow. The wall was drawing away from me.

I had taken what was perhaps half of one of the pellets of the weakest intensity. Its effect was gone in a minute or two. I stood quiet, trying to judge my height compared to Drake; and waiting for his signal to tell me that I was small enough to dare advance into Togaro's doorway.

A scene of singular strangeness, here on the floor of the shadowed passageway! The floor was a grid, or grill of laced metal. I saw it now as a spread of level surface; girders three feet wide, with others crossing to checker it into squares -- three-foot squares, each of them a black abyss. The perpendicular passage wall was fifty feet from me. The other way, I could see Drake's monstrous figure; it blurred up into the distance overhead. I gazed, trying to estimate his apparent height. Four hundred feet tall, or more. Beyond him -- it seemed a quarter of a mile at least -- there was the blur of Ahlma's robe.

I concluded that to Drake I was about an inch high. I saw him move; as though some great dark mountain were falling upon me, his body stooped above me. His hand came slowly down; his palm spread like a pink-white roof close over my head. And then swooped upward; I could feel the suction-wind as it rose.

It was our agreed-upon signal. With my heart pounding I turned toward the cliff which was the passage wall. I walked, half ran upon one of the broad metal girders.

I came to the wall; followed one of the girders going lengthwise of the passage. This huge passage! A vaulted, shadowed place five hundred feet across, and twice as high.

Ahead of me the cliff ended in a great opening. Togaro's doorway! I stopped at the edge of it; stood cautiously peering. I could see into the gigantic room. Togaro's back seemed half turned to me. I could distinguish only his foot and leg. The blur of his body showed in the upper distance; and Dianne up there -- a dim golden blur of her robe.

I took a few more steps. It was several hundred yards into the room to reach that huge foot.

But in my present size I could not cross the threshold without the chance of his seeing me. I had nearly an hour; I decided to get smaller.

A taste of the drug. The girder beneath my feet widened until it was a broad, rough metal roadway.

Space above me and to the sides was so great I seemed almost in the open. Ahead in the distance there were dim blurs of shape. And there seemed occasionally the muffled rumble of monstrous voices.

I ran until I was winded, then walked. How far, I have no idea. It seemed, altogether, a mile or more. The roadway ended in a great spread of rough metal surface. I climbed a gentle slope like a mound, passed over it and descended.

The threshold! I was in the room.

I had been advancing toward the mountainous outlines which were Togaro's body. I came near them now. He wore rough cloth trousers. The corrugations of them were tremendous fantastic ridges of gray surface rising into the air.

I stood again trying to fathom just where I was, and what I might do. I was still a considerable distance from where those billowing folds of cloth rested upon this metal ground. I ran again, then walked to get my wind. I was already tired. The gray mountain was at hand. I think I was behind Togaro. The folds of his trousers rose in an almost formless shape to where, several hundred feet up, I thought might be the line of his belt.

I stood beside his leg. I even touched him. The cloth was like woven strands of rope. Each strand was rough with dangling edges.