The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

It was an anxious time for Drake, this hour during which he was waiting for me to make my attack on Togaro. He stood, with Ahlma behind him, watching me dwindle. Then he stooped, cautiously keeping back where Togaro could not see him, and gave me the signal.

I was about an inch high, down by his shoe. His gaze followed me as I ran toward the doorway. In the shadows there he saw me getting still smaller, until I was lost to his sight.

Drake whispered to Ahlma, "We must act naturally. " He put his arm around her in his apprehension for Dianne and me and the knowledge that there was disaster ahead for us all. "Ahlma."

She whispered, "Drake!"

They could find no words, but needed none. For a moment he held her, kissed her; saw in her misty eyes an answer to the tumult of his heart.

"We must be alert, Drake. Be ready for what may come. " She turned abruptly and called into the ship, "Frank! Oh, Frank, you go to the control room and tell them again to hasten our landing. Drake and I will watch here. " Calling so that Togaro would hear her and not be suspicious that I was not in evidence!

Drake whispered, "Good idea!"

Alt came up. He said aloud, "The ship is diminishing very fast. We will be there soon. " He added, in a whisper, "He is gone?"

"Yes. Stay here with us."

The minutes dragged by. Togaro sat quiet; he held Dianne close to him; occasionally he spoke to her. Sometimes he would command Drake, "Remember, when we land -- if you do not try to harm me, Dianne will be safe."

Through the windows Dianne's world was constantly visible. It lay now beneath the ship -- a great spread of convex, red-brown surface. The light of its parent sun gleamed upon the mountain tops. The configurations of the land and water areas were plainly visible, save where, in patches, cloud masses obscured them.

The vehicle presently was dwindling quite slowly; then its size-change ceased. It dropped swiftly down toward the globe's surface.

There are a few brief astronomical details which I think I should record. When Drake and the ship landed now upon this little globe Drake was normal in size to its inhabitants. Calling him then his earthly standard of six feet tall, a comparative set of measurements may be given of this atomic world.

You who read this can visualize only by earthly standards. That is natural, for to the human mind the conception of one's self is the starting point of every comparison. During all these events I recall that I almost always felt myself to be my original, normal size. I saw landscapes which were huge, and landscapes small as children's toys.

But always I felt myself to be Frank Ferrule, five feet seven inches tall. Thus quaintly egotistical is the human viewpoint; to each man is his own mind the pivot of the universe.

Dianne's earth within the atom, then, you may visualize as a globe with a diameter of about three hundred miles. A circumference something over nine hundred miles. Its inhabitants were far larger, therefore, in comparison to their globe, than we are to our earth. To them it was indeed a little world -- small as an asteroid would be to us.

It was called, in the native language, "Mita. " A blazing sun was near it -- twenty million miles away, perhaps -- and Mita was the only planet. It rotated on its axis with a revolution of about six hours and forty minutes; so that, as we experienced the passage of time, the equal days and nights were each about three and a third hours in duration.

There was a slight inclination of its axis -- a progression of seasons with a cycle of some three months. There was one small but brilliant moon.

Again, I can only say that textbooks are now being filled with the astronomical technicalities of the planet Mita. I record only such few stray facts as may make my narrative more understandable.

There was, for instance, the gravity as we felt it on Mita. In spite of the globe's smallness, its inhabitants felt a gravitational pull not much different than we feel it on earth. This was caused by the planet's tremendous density. A solid little globe of heavy, metallic rock.