The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

I need not concern these pages with further details of Drake and Ahlma. I have already made it clear that they escaped that same morning. Drake awakened, just before dawn, to find that Dianne and I were gone. He and Ahlma rushed outside. There was a commotion off by the coast. They stared at it, half understanding. Drake soon realized that his best move would be not to follow me.

He and Ahlma ran the other way, and took the fifty-foot size. They were desperate; and luck or Fate, as you will, was with them. The patrolling giants were standing in amazement, gazing off toward Long Island. Under ordinary circumstances of those past days Drake and Ahlma would have been attacked in a moment. But now the giants did not notice these fifty-foot figures running along the ground. The boundary of the Togarite lines chanced to be near here. A fifty-foot human runs with strides of thirty or forty feet. Drake and Ahlma, taking every chance now, clung to the open road.

They got past the Togarite area within half an hour. The giants all were behind them. The country was still devastated. Then the pair passed into an abandoned area, still intact, where the giants had not been, and crossed it.

They came at last, just after dawn, within sight of soldiers patrolling the edge of what still was civilization. Drake took the overcoat from Ahlma so that her robe would show. They dwindled to normal size; encountered the soldiers.

Civilization at last! A motor car took them to where a plane was available. Drake learned that father was in Washington -- the whole world now knew father's name, and where he was, and what he had to say!

The telephone lines here were down. Drake found a way of sending a radiogram. But at that moment Togaro was devastating New York -- in the chaos Drake's message was never delivered. The plane landed in Mount Vernon. Drake telephoned his message: "Don't yield -- I have the drugs -- "

Meanwhile, in the starlit darkness before dawn, I ran after the fugitive Dianne. She had taken the drug -- I took mine also.

"Dianne!"

She saw that she could not shake me off. She stopped abruptly. She had cast away the overcoat because it impeded her running. I dashed up to her golden-robed figure. The trees were dwindling beside us; the open starlight was overhead.

"Dianne, are you crazy?"

"Go back, Frank!"

I was fumbling for the other drug. I pulled at her, but she resisted me.

"Frank, go back. Not two of us -- Drake said one was best -- he said it to you. He did say it. Frank, I mustn't stay here -- I must run -- run -- "

But still I held her. She exclaimed:

"If you try to stop me, I'll call out!"

"Dianne, you promised me you'd be careful -- not try a wild thing like this. " I shook her. "Did you promise?"

"Yes. But I've changed my mind."

A madness was on her. She fought to escape me. "Let me go! Oh, Frank, I can make it! I can run very fast, and I know how to handle the drugs."

"No!"

"Then you come with me."