The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

It was near the dawn of May 21 when Drake and I, with Dianne and Ahlma, crouched in our boathouse at King's Cove. Giants seemed everywhere outside, towering figures in the moonlight, tramping about the cove.

I think that our best chance to escape from the Togarite territory was offered us there at the beginning -- those first minutes just before dawn. We had the drugs. We might have plunged into the channel, swimming out, expanding our size and taking the chance that we would not be discovered too soon.

How easy to look back on what one might have done! But instead of that we crept from the boathouse and turned inland. Ran back from the cove. Past our house; Togarites in our normal size were thronging it.

We were confused. Behind us, giants were rising everywhere. People were pouring from the boathouse.

"If we can get to Elton -- " Drake panted. We found the road and dashed along it. The moon was momentarily under a cloud. The concealing darkness was helpful.

A giant went past us. We ducked off the road. He did not see us -- he strode toward Elton.

We started again. Then the moon came out. We did not dare use the open road. We skulked through the fields. Then the moon was paling with the coming dawn. We had not escaped. Giants were ahead of us, and to the sides.

We crouched by a fence and argued. If we got large, we might in a few moments dash out of this captured territory. But we would be seen at once -- pounced upon.

If we got smaller, we would be safe from discovery.

But Drake was vehement against it. "Damn it, Frank, I've had enough of that! It'd be a journey of a hundred miles just to Elton, when we're smaller! I tell you we've got to get out of here quickly! Frank, these drugs are vital to the world."

It seemed that our best chance was in our normal size. The dawn came. We found a dilapidated barn on a side road halfway to Elton. We hid in it.

We were, with the daylight upon us, hopelessly caught within the Togarite lines. It was soon obvious that getting to Elton would not help us. Giants were already there. We thought, if we could head inland, but then south, toward Portland, we might get past them.

So many things we might have dared to do are apparent, looking back upon it now! We struggled -- all those days in May -- to get to civilization somewhere, to find transportation south to New York. We had the vital weapon -- the one thing the world could successfully use against this enemy. Because it was so important, we were afraid to chance anything. If Togaro caught us, the world was doomed. Terrible responsibility! An excess of caution was upon us.

We skulked and hid by day, and traveled at night. But there were always giants around us. Patrolling watchfully in the daylight, and at night with their lights and torches. It seemed that we could never escape those widening lines. Within a day or two we realized that we should have headed north; but it was too late now to change.

We tried to get to the coast. It was too dangerous; there were more giants that way than anywhere else. We had a hundred narrow escapes from capture. It was a problem to find food and water as we went. But there were deserted houses into which we slid by night.

Once we found an abandoned automobile. We ran it southward, all one night, dashing forward, stopping with lights out and silent motor when a giant approached. Then on again -- until at last we barely were able to fling ourselves from it and take the diminishing drug, when a giant came up, stooped and tossed the car into the air. We lay in the bushes by the roadside and dwindled in size until the danger was past.

We lost count of the days on this strange flight. And we lost our way -- wandered, following what roads we dared, working southward by what devious routes I have no idea. It seemed a hopeless journey. The country was now a torn mass of wreckage. Littered, burning towns. Roads obstructed. No storm of nature could ever devastate a countryside like this!

After more than a week of wandering, it seemed that we were still as far inside the spreading Togarite lines as ever. We had stolen garments to disguise the girls. We had several times tried getting larger. One dark night, when it chanced that the lights of the giants were not too near us, we traveled in a fifty-foot size for hours. It gained us so much distance that we tried it again several times. We passed inland from Boston, crossing into the desolation of what had been Rhode Island, then into Connecticut.

There came a night which, though we did not know it, was the evening of the 1st of June. We lay in the wreckage of a farmhouse which had been demolished. The girls were too exhausted to travel farther, and we all needed a rest. It had been the most fearful day of our trip. That morning we had been driven out of our hiding place where we intended to spend the daylight hours. It was an abandoned house near the edge of a town. What town I do not know.

Marauding giants had come and burned the town. We had escaped into smallness. It was night when after desperate efforts, we again emerged to find ourselves barely a hundred feet away from where we had been before.