The Pygmy Planet - Jack Williamson

0:00You're the best-feel operative I've ever had. You were born for it. And they won, the embassy won down. We go 25 million in the wall. Where? O'Kill Teran. This is bad. Like run for the hills, bad. Do it now! I don't have the money. And I've got some more valuable. You shall know the truth. The truth? Don't make it free. The fix. Now playing in theaters. Visit Vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.

1:25Don't use if you are allergic to ebglyce. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. I-problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglyce. Before starting ebglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lily. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about ebglyce and visit ebglyce.com. Or you can use it on your website. Or you can use it on your website. Or you can use it on your website. Or you can use it on your website. Visit ebglyce.com or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979. The Pigme Planet by Jack Williamson. Nothing ever happens to me. Larry Manahan grumbled under his breath, sitting behind his desk at the advertising agency which employed his services in return for the consideration of 50 a week. All the adventure I know is what I see in the movies or read about in magazines. What I wouldn't give for a slice of real life.

2:28Unconsciously he tensed the muscles of his six feet of lean hard body. His crisp flame-colored hair seemed to bristle. His blue eyes blazed. He clenched a brown hammer of a fist. Larry felt himself an energetic red-blooded square peg, badly afflicted with the urge for adventure, miserably wedged in a round hole. It is one of the misfortunes of our civilization that a young man who, for example, might have been an excellent pirate a couple of centuries ago, must be kept chained to a desk, and that seemed to be Larry's fate. Things happened to other people he muttered. Why couldn't an adventure come to me? He sat staring wistfully at a picture of a majestic mountain landscape, soon to be used in the advertising of a railway company whose publicity was handled by his agency. When the jangle of the telephone roused him with a start. Oh, Larry! Came a breathless, quivering voice. Then, with a click, the connection was broken.

3:28The voice had been feminine and had carried a familiar ring. Larry tried to place it as he listened to the receiver and attempted to get the broken connection restored. Your party hung up and won't answer the operator informed him. He replaced the receiver on the hook, still seeking to follow the thin thread of memory given him by the familiar note in that eager, excited voice. If only the girl had spoken of few more words. Then it came to him. Agnes, sterling, he exclaimed aloud. Agnes sterling was a slender, selfish, dark-haired girl. Lovely, he had thought her on the occasions of their few brief meetings. Larry knew her as the secretary and laboratory assistant of Dr. Travis Witting, a retired college professor known for his work on the structure of the atom. Larry had called at the home laboratory of the Sevant months before to check certain statistics to be used for advertising purposes and had met the girl there. Only a few times since had he seen her. Now she had called him in a voice that fairly trembled with excitement and he thought,

4:31dread, and she had been interrupted before she had time to give him any message. For a few seconds, Larry stared at the telephone. Then he rose abruptly to his feet, crammed his hat on his head and started for the door. The way to find adventures to go after it, he murmured, and this is the invitation. It was not many minutes later that he sprang out of a taxi at the front of the building in which Dr. Travis Witting made his home and maintained a private experimental laboratory. It was a two-story stucco house, rather out of date, set well back from the sidewalk with a scrap of lawn and a few straggling shrubs before it. The door was closed, the windows curtained blankly. The place seemed deserted and forbidding. Larry ran up the uneven brick walk to the door and rang the bell. In patiently he waited a few moments. No sound came from within. He felt something ominous, fateful about the silent mystery that seemed to shroud the old house. For the first time, it occurred to him that Agnes might be in physical danger

5:32as a result of some incausious experiment on the part of Dr. Witting. Instinctively his hand sought the doorknob. To his surprise the door was unlocked. It swung open before him. For a moment he stared hesitating into the dark hall revealed beyond, then driven by the thought that Agnes might be in danger he advanced impulsively. The several doors opening into the hall were closed. The one at the back he knew gave admittance to the laboratory. Impelmed by some vague premonition, he hastened toward it down the long hall and threw it open. As he stepped inside the room his foot slipped on a spot of something red, recovering his balance with difficulty he peered about. Bending down Larry briefly examined the red spot on which he had slipped. It was a pool of fresh blood which had not yet darkened. Lying beside it Crimson splashed was a revolver. As he picked up the weapon he cried out in astonishment. Something had happened to the gun. The trigger guard was torn from it and the cylinder crushed as if in some resisteless grasp.

6:37The stock was twisted and the barrel bent almost into a circle. The revolver had been crumpled by some terrific force. As a soft clay model of it might have been broken by the pressure of a man's hand. Crimson shades of Caesar he muttered and dropped the crushed weapon to the floor again. His eyes swept the silent laboratory. It was a huge room, taking up all the rear part of the house from the first floor to the roof. Grey daylight streamed through a skylight 20 feet overhead. The ends of the vast room were cluttered with electrical and chemical apparatus, but Larry's eye was caught at once by a strange and complex device which loomed across from him in the center of the room. Two pillars of intense light, a ray of Crimson flame and another of deeply violent radiance, a speed straight down from a complicated array of enormous, oddly shaped electron tubes of mirrors and lenses and prisms, of coils and whirling discs which reached almost to the roof. Upright, a yard and diameter, in almost a yard apart, the strange columns of light were sharp-edged as two transparent cylinders filled with liquid light of ruby and of amethyst.

7:47Each ray poured down upon a circular platform of glass or polished crystal, hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light was a strange-looking greenish globe, a round ball nearly a yard and diameter hung between the rays, almost touching them. Its surface was oddly splotched with darker and lighter areas. It was spinning steadily at a low rate of speed. Larry did not see what held it up. It seemed hanging free several feet above the crystal platforms. Reluctantly, he withdrew his eyes from the mysterious sphere and looked about the room once more. No, the laboratory was vacant of human occupants. No one was hidden among the benches that were cluttered with beakers and test tubes and stills, or among the dynamos and transformers in the other end of the room. A confusion of questions beat through Larry's brain. What danger could be haunting this quiet laboratory? Was this the blood of Agnes Sterling or the scientists who employed her that was now clotting on the floor?

8:49What terrific force had crumpled up the revolver? What had become of Agnes and Dr. Whitting and of whatever had attacked them? Had Agnes called him after the attack? Or before? Despite himself, his attention was drawn back to the little globe spinning so regularly, floating in the air between the pillars of red and violet flame, floating alone like a little world in space without a visible support. It might be held up by magnetic attraction, he thought. A tiny planet. His mind quickened at the idea and he have forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular blueish areas would be seas, the green and brown spaces land. In some parts the surface appeared mistily obscured, perhaps by masses of clouds. Larry saw an odd-looking lamp set perhaps ten feet behind the slowly spinning, floating ball throwing upon at a brilliant ray of vividly blue light.

9:49Half the strange sphere was brilliantly illuminated by it. The rest was in comparative darkness. That blue lamp it came to Larry lit the sphere as the sun lights the earth. Nonsense, he muttered. It's impossible. Aroused by the seeming wonder of it, he was drawn nearer the ball. It spun rather slowly, Larry noted, and each rotation consumed several seconds. He could distinguish green patches that might be forests and thin silvery lines that looked like rivers and broad red-brown areas that must be deserts, and the broad blue stretches that suggested oceans. A toy world he cried, a laboratory planet, what an experiment! Then his eyes looking up caught the glistening polished lens of a powerful magnifying glass, which hung by a black ribbon from a hook on one of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of silently wearing apparatus. Eagerly he unfassened the magnifier, holding it before his eyes he bent toward the strange sphere,

10:51spinning steadily in the air. Suffering shades of Caesar he ejaculated. Beneath the lens a world was racing. He could see masses of vividly green forest, vast expanses of bare cracked, oachyrous desert, wastes of smooth blue ocean. Then he was gazing at a city. Larry could not be sure that he had seen it correctly. It had slipped very swiftly beneath his lens. But he had a momentary impression of tiny fantastic buildings clustered in an elf-like city. A pygmy planet spinning in the laboratory like a world in the Gulf of space. What could it mean? Could it be connected with the strange call from Agnes with the blood on the floor with the... You're the best-feel laboratory I've ever had. You were born for it. In the 81, the embassy went down. We go 25 million in the wall. Hotel, Teran. This is bad. Like run for the hills, bad. Do it now!

11:53I don't have the money. But I've got some more valuable. You shall know the truth. The truth? Don't make it free. The fix. Now playing in theaters. This week at Vons & Albertans, USDA Choice Tri-Tip Rhoes untrimmed are 599 per pound, Limit 4 Rhoes with membership were applicable, and medium-ripe Hassovacados are 99 cents each, with membership were applicable, plus Kellogg's cereals 8.8 to 16.1 ounces, selected varieties, or peppered farm goldfish 5.9 to 8 ounces are 190.9 each when you buy three.

12:58Limit 3 offers with membership were applicable. Visit Vons or Albertans.com for more deals and ways to save. Strange and ominous silence that shrouded the deserted room? Oh, Larry. A clear familiar voice rang suddenly from the door. You came. Startled, Larry leaped back from the tiny whirling globe and turned to the door. A girl had come silently into the room. It was agnistirling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, and her brown eyes were wide with fear. In a white hand which shook a little, she carried a small gold-plated automatic pistol. She ran nervously across the wide floor to Larry with relief dawning in her eyes. I'm so glad you came, she gasped panting with excitement. I started to call you on the phone, but then I was afraid it would kill you if you came. Please be careful. It may come back any minute. You better go away. It just took Dr. Whitting. Wait a minute, Larry put in just one thing at a time. Let's get this straight.

13:58To begin with, what is it that might kill me and that got the doctor? It's terrible, she gasped, trembling. A monster. You must go away before it comes back. Larry drew a tall stool from beside one of the crowded tables and placed it beside her. Don't get excited, he urged. I'm sure everything will be all right. Just sit down and tell me about it. The whole story. Just what is going on here and what happened to Dr. Whitting? He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at him gratefully and began to speak in a rapid voice. You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carried the doctor back there. And I know it will soon be back for another victim for sacrifice. She had pointed across the great room toward the strange little globe which hung between the pillars of red and violet light. Please go slow, Larry, broken. You're too fast for me. Are you trying to tell me that that spinning ball is really a planet? Agnes seemed a little more composed though she was still flushed and breathing rapidly.

14:59Her small hand still gripped the bright automatic. Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy planet, Dr. Whitting called it. He said it was the great experiment of the century. We began with the planet young and hot and watched it until it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and development of life upon it and the rise and decay of a strange civilization. Until now its people are strange things with human brains and mechanical bodies worshipping a rusty machine like a god. Go slow, Larry, bleed it again. I don't see. Did the doctor build create that planet himself? Yes, it began with his work on atomic structure. He discovered that certain frequencies of the X-ray, so powerful that they are almost akin to the cosmic ray, have the power of altering electronic orbits. Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system with electrons revolving about a proton. And these rays would cause the electrons to fall into incredibly smaller orbits causing vast reduction in the size of the atoms and in the size of any object which the atoms formed.

16:03They would cause anything living or dead to shrink to inconceivably microscopic dimensions or restore it to its former size depending upon the exact wavelength used. And the time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects, probably because the electrons move faster in their smaller orbits. That is what suggested to Dr. Witting that he would be able to watch the entire life of a planet in the laboratory. And so, at first we experimented merely with solitary specimens or colonies of animals, but on the pygmy planet we have watched the life of a world, the whole panorama of evolution. It seems too wonderful, Larry Mutterd. Could Dr. Witting actually decrease his size and become a dwarf? No trick at all, Agnes assured him. All you have to do is stand in the vial it beam to shrink and move over to the red one when you want to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Witting to the pygmy planet. Bin, Larry stopped breathless with astonishment. See the little airplane, Agnes said pointing under the table. Larry gasped.

17:07Beneath the table stood a toy airplane. The spread of its glistening perfect wings was hardly three feet. A wonderful delicate toy, accurate in every detail of propeller, motor and landing gear of brace and rudder and alleron. Then he realized that it was no toy at all, but a faithful miniature of a commercial plane. A complete, tiny copy of one of the latest single motor cabin monoplane models. It looks just like it would fly, he said. A friend of mine has a big one just like it, taught me to fly at last summer vacation. This is the very image of it. It will fly, Agnes assured him, now composed enough to smile at his amazement. I have been with the doctor to the pygmy planet in it. You stand in the vial it ray until you're about three inches high, she explained. And then get into the plane. Then you fly up into the vial it ray at the point where it touches the planet and remain there while you grow smaller. When you are the right size all you have to do is drop to the surface and land. To come away you rise into the red ray and stay in it till you grow to a proper size when you come down in land.

18:14You...you've actually done that, he gasped? It sounds like a fairy story. Yes, I've done it, she assured him. Then she shuddered apprehensively. And the things, the machine monsters Dr. Whitting called them, have learned to do it too. One of them came down the red ray and attacked him. The doctor had a gun, but what could he do against one of those? She shivered. It carried him back up the vial it being just a few minutes ago. I started to phone you, then I was afraid you would be hurt. Me? Hurt? Larry burst out? What about you here alone? It was my business. Dr. Whitting told me there might be danger when he hired me. And now? What can we do, Larry demanded? I don't know, she said slowly. I'm afraid one of the monsters will be back after a new victim. We could smash the apparatus, but it is too wonderful to be destroyed and besides Dr. Whitting may have escaped, he may be alive there in the deserts. We might fly up in the little plain, Larry proposed doubtfully. I think I could pilot it if you want. The girl's body stiffened. Her brown eyes widened with sudden dread and her small face went pale. She slipped quickly from the stool drawing in her breath with a short gasp. The hand that gripped the automatic trembled a little. What's the matter, Larry cried?

19:34I thought, she guessed. I think I see something in the ray. The machine monster is coming back. Her lips tightened. She lifted the little automatic and began to shoot into the pillar of crimson fire beside the tiny spinning globe. Larry watched tensily, saw a curious bird-like something fluttering about in the red ray, swiftly growing larger. Deliberately and pausing to aim carefully for each shot, the girl emptied the little gun at the figure. Her body was rigid, her small face was firmly set, though she was breathing very fast. A curious numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering of his heart and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, he was paralyzed with fear. The glittering thing that fluttered about in the crimson ray was not an easy target. When the gun was empty it seemed still unharmed and its wings had increased to a span of a foot. Too late, Agnes guessed. Why didn't we do something? Trambling, horrors tricking, she shrank towards Larry. He was staring at the thing in the pillar of Scarlet Light. It had dropped to the crystal disk upon which the red ray fell from the huge glowing tube above. It stood there motionless except for the swift increase in size.

20:51Larry cased at it, lost in fear and wonder. It was like nothing he had ever seen. What was it that Agnes had said of machine monsters of human brains and mechanical bodies? His brain reeled. He strained his eyes to distinguish the monstrosity more clearly. It was veiled in crimson flame. He could not see it distinctly. But suddenly when it was as tall as himself it sprang out into the room toward Larry and the shuddering girl. Just off the crystal disk beyond the Scarlet pillar of fire it paused for long seconds, seeming to regard them with malevolent eyes. For the first time Larry could see it plainly. Its body or its central part was a tube of transparent crystal and upright cylinder rounded at upper and lower ends. It was nearly a foot in diameter and four feet long. It seemed filled with a luminous purple liquid. About the cylinder were three bands of greenish glistening metal. Attached to the lower band were four jointed legs of the same bright green metal upon which the strange thing stood.

21:57Set in the middle band were two glittering polished lenses which seemed to serve as eyes and Larry felt that they were gazing at him with malevolent menace. Behind the eyes two wings sprang from the green band, ingenious folding wings of thin plates and bars of green metal. And from the upper band sprang four slender glistening whip-like tentacles, metallic and brilliantly green, two yards in length, they rived with strange life. It seemed a long time to Larry that the thing stood motionless, seeming to stare evenly at them with eye-like lenses. Then lurching forward a little it moved toward them upon legs of green metal. And now Larry saw another. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Sun rises, prices fall, get a sausage Mcmuffin with egg or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's small hot coffee and hash frowns for just six stars.

23:04And the price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big Mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese McGrittle's make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Big something extra. With a big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. It's fall in America. Make it count at the Ram Drive-In to Fall sales event. Make it powerful with our strongest Ram 1500 ever. Make it move with the Ram Heavy Duty with an available Cummins diesel and make it go the distance with a 10 year or 100,000 mile powertrain limited warranty. Hurray and now for great deals during the Ram Drive-In to Fall sales event. Excludes fully electric vehicles applied to 2026 model year vehicles non-transferable. Visit mopedart.com for complete details and a copy of the powertrain limited warranty.

24:04Cummins is a registered trademark of Cummins Inc. Ram and Hemi are registered trademarks of FCA US LLC. Amazing thing about it. Floating in the brilliant violet liquid that filled the crystal tube was a gray mass wrinkled and corrugated. This was divided by deep clefs into right and left hemispheres which in turn were separated into larger upper and smaller lower segments. White filaments ran through the violet liquid from its base toward the three rings or bands of green metal that encircled the cylinder. In an instant Larry realized that the gray mass was a human brain. The larger upper part of the cerebrum, the smaller mass at the back of the cerebellum and the white filaments were nerves by means of which this brain controlled its astounding mechanical body. A brain in a machine. The violet liquid it came to Larry and his trans of wonder must take the place of blood feeding the brain cells absorbing waste, an eternal mind within a machine free from the ills and weaknesses of the body and devoid to of any pity of any tender form.

25:08The feeling is a cold and selfish mind without emotion unless it might worship itself or its mechanical body. It was this monster that had spilt the pool of blood drying on the floor near the door and it was these glistening green snake-like tentacles that had crumpled the revolver into a broken mass of steel. Abruptly the machine monster darted forward running swiftly upon its four legs of green metal. Slender tentacles reached out toward the shuddering girl at Larry's shoulder. One, Agnes gassed to him quickly, it will kill you. The girl tried to push him back. As she touched him Larry recovered from his days of wondering fear. Agnes was in frightful danger in facing it with quiet carriage. He must find a weapon. While he looked about him, his eyes fell upon the tall heavy wooden stool upon which Agnes had been sitting. Get back, he shouted to her. He snatched up the stool and swinging it over his head sprang toward the machine of violet-filled crystal and glittering green metal. Stop Agnes screamed in a terrified voice. You can't! She had run before him. He seized her arm and swung her back behind him.

26:15He advanced wearily toward the machine monster which had paused and seemed to be regarding him with sinister intentness through its glistening crystal eyelashes. With all his strength Larry struck at the crystal cylinder swinging the stool like an axe. A slender metallic green tentacle whipped out toward the stool from his hands and scented crashing across the room to splinter into fragments on the opposite wall. Larry sent off his balance staggered toward the glittering machine. As he stumbled against the transparent tube that contained the brain he clenched his fist to strike futilely at it. A snake-like metal tentacle wrapped itself about him. He was hurled to the floor to sprawl grotesquely among broken apparatus. His head came against the leg of a bench. For a few moments he was dazed but it seemed only a few seconds to him before he had staggered to his feet rubbing his bruised head. Anxiously he peered about the room. The machine monster and Agnes were gone. He stumbled back to the mass of apparatus in the center of the huge laboratory. Intently he gazed into the upright pillar of crimson flame. Nothing was visible there. Now, the other he gassed, the violet is the way they went.

27:22He turned to the companion ray of violet radiance that beat straight down onto the opposite side of the tiny whirling planet and in that motionless torrent of chill violet flame he saw them. Tied already and swiftly dwindling. With green wings outspread the machine monster was beating swiftly upward through the pillar of purple blue flame and close against the crystal tube that contained its brain was Agnes held fast by the whip-like tentacles of glistening green metal. Larry moved to spring after them into the torrent of violet light but sudden caution restrained him. I'd shrink too, he muttered, and then where would I be? I'd be standing on the glass platform I guess and the thing flying off over my head. He gazed at the rapidly dwindling forms of Agnes sterling and her amazing abductor. As it grew smaller the machine monster flew higher into the violet beam until it was opposite the tiny spinning planet. The distance between the red and the violet rays was just slightly more than the diameter of the pygmy world. The sphere hung between them, one side of it a fraction of an inch from the red, the other as near the violet.

28:29Opposite the elven planet the monster ceased to climb. It hung there in the violet ray and inch from the surface of the little world. And still it swiftly dwindled. It was no larger than a fly and Larry could barely distinguish the form of the girl helpless in the green tentacles. Soon she and the monster became a mere greenish speck. Suddenly they were gone. For a little time he stood watching the point where they had vanished, watching the red and the violet rays that poured straight down upon the crystal discs, watching the tiny green blue planet spinning so steadily between the bright rays. abruptly he recovered from his fascination of wonder. What did she say? He muttered something about the monsters carrying off people to sacrifice to a rusty machine that they worship as a god. It took her for that. He clenched his fists. His lips became a straight line of determination. Then I guess we try a voyage in a little plain. A slim chance maybe, but decidedly better than none.

29:31He returned to the table, dropped to his knees, inspected the tiny airplane. A perfect miniature. Delicately beautiful, it slimmed small wings were bright as silver foil. Carefully he opened the door and peered into the diminutive cabin. Two minute rifles, several lilypution pistols and boxes of ammunition to match lay on the rear seat of the plane. So we are prepared for war, he remarked, grinning in satisfaction. And the next trick I suppose is to get shrunk to fit the plane. About three inches she said. Lord, it's a queer thing to think about. He got to his feet, walked back to the machine in the center of the room with its twin pillars of red and violet flame and the tiny world floating between them. He started to step into the violet ray, then hesitated shivering involuntarily like a swimmer about to dive into icy cold water. Turning back to one of the benches he picked up a wooden funnel rack and tossed it to the crystal disc beneath the violet ray.

30:31Slowly it decreased in size until it had vanished from sight. Safey suppose he muttered, but how do I know when I'm small enough? After a moment he picked up a glass bottle which measured about three inches in height, set it on the floor beside the crystal disc. I dive out when I get to be the size of the bottle, he murmured. With that he leaped into the violet beam. He felt no unusual sensation except one of pleasant tangling warmth as if the direct rays of the sun were bearing down upon him. For a moment he feared that his size was not being affected. Then he noticed not that he appeared to become smaller, but that the laboratory seemed to be growing immensely larger. The walls seemed to race away from him, the green blue sphere of the tiny planet which he proposed to visit expanded and drew away above his head. A abruptly fearful, alarmed at the hugeness of the room he turned to look at the bottle he had placed to serve as a standard of size. It had grown with everything else until it seemed to be about three feet high, and it was swiftly expanding. It reached to the level of his shoulder and higher.

31:38He ran to the edge of the crystal disc which now seemed to floor many yards across and leaped from its edge. It was a dozen steps to where he had left the bottle, and it was as tall as himself. He started across the floor of the laboratory toward the table under which the toy plane stood. The incredible amensity of his surroundings awed him strangely. The walls of the room seemed like distant cyclopian cliffs, the roof was like a sky. Table legs towered up like enormous columns. It seemed a hundred yards across the strangely rough floor to the plane. As he drew near it it gave him huge satisfaction to see that it was of normal size, correctly proportioned to his own dimensions. Great luck he muttered that I can fly. He paused as he reached the cabin's open door to wonder at the astounding fact that a little while ago he had opened that door with a hand larger than his entire body was now. I guess this is my day of wonders he muttered. A law knows I had to wait long enough for it.

32:39First he examined the weapons in the cabin. There were two heavy sporting rifles and two forty-five automatics. There were also two smaller automatics which he supposed had been intended for agnus's use, and there was abundant ammunition. Then he inspected the plane. It looked to be an excellent condition in every way. The gasoline and oil tanks were full. He set about starting the motor using the plane's inertia starter which was driven by an electric motor. Soon the engine coughed, sputtered and gave rise to a roaring rhythmic note that Larry found musical. When the motor was warm he opened the throttle and taxied out from beneath the colossal table and across the laboratory floor towards the Titanic mechanism in the centre. The disc of crystal was set almost flush with the floor. Its edge beveled. The plane rolled easily upon it and out into the cyclopy and pillar of violent flame. Once more Larry felt the sensation that everything about him except the plane itself was expanding inconceivably in size. Soon the laboratory...

33:42The best feel I've ever had. You were born for it. In the 81 the embassy went down. We go 25 million in the wall. Where? Hotel, Tehran. This is bad. Like run for the hills, bad. Do it now! I don't have the money. I've got some more valuable. We shall know the truth. The truth? We'll make it free. The fix. Now playing in theaters. Freeze walls and roof were lost in hazy blue distance. He could distinguish only the broad bright field formed by the surface of the crystal disc with the floor stretching away beyond it like a vast plane. And above the green blue sphere of the tiny planet bright on one side and dark on the other so that it looked like a half moon immensely far off. As he waited he noticed a curious little dial in the lower corner of the instrument board which he had not seen at first. One end of its graduated scale was marked Earth Normal. The other, Pygmy Planet Normal. A tiny black needle was creeping slowly across the scale toward Pygmy Planet Normal.

34:53That's how we tell what size we are without having to look at a bottle he muttered. When the area of the crystal platform appeared to be about half a square mile he decided that he would now have sufficient space to spiral up the violet ray toward the planet. If he waited too long to start the distance would become impossibly great. He gave little plane the gun, the motor thundered a throbbing song, the ship rolled smoothly forward over the polished surface gained flying speed and took the air without a shock. Feels good to hold the stick again Larry murmured, making small circles to keep within the upright pillar of violet radiance he climbed steadily and as rapidly as possible keeping his eyes upon the brilliant half moon of the Pygmy Planet. The strangest flight in the annals of aviation he was flying toward a goal that a few minutes before he could have touched. Toward a goal that at the beginning of his flight was only a few lengths of his plane away and his size dwindled so rapidly as he flew that the planet seemed to swell and draw away from him.

35:55As Larry and the plane grew smaller the relative size of the violet ray increased so there was no longer much danger of flying out of it. It seemed that he flew through a world of violet flame. He met a curious problem in time. It is evident that time passes faster for a small animal than for a large one because nerve currents require a shorter time in transit and all thought and action is consequently speeded up. It took a hundred foot dinosaur nearly a second to know that his tail had been pinched. A fly can get underway in time to escape a descending swatter. The Pygmy Planet rotated in a few seconds of earth time. One of its inhabitants might have lived, aged and died in the duration of a single day in our larger world. So Larry found that time seemed to pass more rapidly or rather that the time of the world he had left appeared to move more slowly as he had ventured into smallness. He had been flying it seemed to him nearly an hour when he reached the level of the planet's equator. Now it seemed a vast world filling half the visible universe.

36:59He flew toward it steadily until he knew by the fading before him of the violet flame which now seemed to fill all space that he was near the edge of the ray. And as he flew he watched the little scale upon which the black needle was now nearing the line marked Pygmy Planet normal. Circling slowly keeping always on the level of the planet's equator and near the edge of the violet ray so as to be as close as possible to his landing place when he reached the proper size, he watched the creeping black needle. Two he scanned with eager eyes the planet floating before him. Bare red deserts narrow strips of green vegetation, shrunken blue oceans, silvery lines of rivers, past and fascinating panorama beneath his eyes. The rate of the planet spinning seemed continually to lessen with the changing of his own sense of time. Agnes, Larry thought of her with a curious eager pain in his heart. She was somewhere on that strange ancient world a prisoner of weird machine monsters, intended victim of a grotesque sacrificial ceremony.

38:02Could he find her in the vastness of an unfamiliar world and having found her would there be a chance to rescue her from her hideous captors? The project seemed insane, but Larry felt a queer unfamiliar urge which he knew would drive him on until he had discovered and saved her, or until he was dead. At last when it seemed to Larry nearly three hours since he had begun this amazing flight the crawling ebb and needle reached the mark Pygmy Planet normal. He flew out of the wall of violet flame toward the planet's surface. Before the distance between the planet and the raised edge had seemed only the fraction of an inch. Now it appeared to be many miles. abruptly the Pygmy Planet which had seemed to be beside him appeared to swing about so that it was beneath him. He knew that it was a change merely in his sensations. He was feeling the gravitation of the new world. It was pulling him toward it. He cut the throttle and settled the plane into a long glide, a glide that was to end upon the surface of a new planet. In what seemed half an hour more Larry had made a safe landing upon the Pygmy Planet. He had come down upon a stretch of fairly smooth red sandy desert which seemed to stretch

39:17a little bit more to the left. The plane was then flying to the east of the planet and the other plane was flying to the west to the west. The plane was flying towards the east of the planet and he was almost immediately toward the rising sun which direction Larry instinctively termed East. To the west was a line of dull green, evidently the vegetation along a stream. The otter desert was scattered with sparse clumps of reddish spiky scrub. Larry taxied the plane into one of those thickets, finding canvas and rope in the cabin he staked down the machine and muffled the motor. It was a panic from the weapons in the cabin and filling his pockets with extra ammunition he left the plane and set out with brisk steps towards the green line of vegetation. I'll follow along the river he reasoned. It may lead me somewhere and it will show the way back to the plane. I may come across something in the way of a clue. Can't go exploring by air or I'll burn up all the gas and be stranded here. To his surprise, the watercourse proved to be an ancient canal, walled with crumbling masonry. Its channel was choked with mud and thorny, thick-leaved desert shrubs of unfamiliar

40:17variety, but a feeble current still flowed along it. After some reflection Larry set out along the banks of the canal. He followed it for two days. Curious, straight bars of light were visible across the sky, a band of violet in the morning and one of crimson at evening. Their apparent motion was in the same direction as that of the sun. The bars of light puzzled him considerably before it occurred to him that they must be the red and violet rays. So you wait until evening and then fly up into the red ray to go home, he murmured. But I may not need that information, he added grimly. Seems to be a pretty big job to search a planet on foot for one person, and I'm not going back without agnus. In the afternoon of the second day he came within view of a city. He could discern vast imposing walls and towers of dark stone. It stood in the barren red desert far back from the green line of the old canal. Larry left the canal and started wearily across

41:18toward it. He had covered several miles of the distance before he saw that the lofty towers were falling, the magnificent walls crumbling. The city was ruined, dead, deserted. The realization brought him a great flood of despair. He had hoped to find people, friends, from whom he might get food and information about this unfamiliar planet. But the city was dead. Larry was standing there in the midst of the vast red plane between ruined city and ruined canal, tired, hungry, lonely, and hopeless. He was looking up at the white sun trying to comfort himself with the thought that the brilliant luminary was merely a queer blue lamp that he was upon a tiny experimental world in a laboratory, but the thought brought him no relief, only confusion and a sense of incredulity. Then he saw the machine-monster, a glittering winged thing of crystal and green metal, identical with the one he had encountered in the laboratory. It must already have seen him for it was dropping swiftly toward him.

42:20Larry started to run, took a few staggering steps, then he recalled the heavy rifle slung over his shoulder. Moving with desperate haste he got it into his hands and raised it just as the monster dropped to the red sand a dozen yards away from him. Steadily he covered the crystal sonder within which the things brain floated in luminous violet liquid. His finger tightened on the trigger, ready to send a heavy bullet crashing into it. Then he paused, swore softly, and lowered the gun. If I kill it, he murmured, I may never find agnus, and if I let it carry me off, it may take me to where she is. He walked toward the monster across the red sand. It stood uncertainly upon green metal leg, seeming to stare at him strangely with eye-like lenses. Its wings of thin green metal plates were folded, its four green tentacles were twitching oddly. Abruptly it sprang upon him. A green tentacle seized the rifle and snatched it from his hands. He felt the automatic pistol and the ammunition being removed from his pockets. Then firmly held in the flexible arms of green

43:25metal he was lifted against the cylinder of violet liquid. The monster spread its broad emerald wings and Larry was swiftly born into the air. In a few moments the wide ruins of the ancient city were spread below with the green line of the choked canal cutting the infinite red waste of the desert beyond it. The monster flew westward. You're the best feel operative I've ever had. You were born for it. In the 81 the embassy went down. We go 25 million in the wall. Where? Hotel, Tyrone. This is bad. Like run for the hills band. Do it now. I don't have the money, but I've got some more valuable. We shall know the truth. The truth. We'll make it free. The fix. Now playing in theaters. For a considerable time nothing saved Baron Ocher's desert was in view. Then Larry's weird capture flew near a strange city, a city of green metal. The buildings were most fantastic.

44:28Pyramids of green crowned with enormous glistening spheres of emerald metal and an impassable wall surrounding the city. Larry had expected the monster to drop into the city, but it carried him on and finally settled to the ground several miles beyond. The green tentacles released him as the thing landed and he sprawled beside it dizzy after his strange flight. As Larry staggered uncertainly to his feet he saw that the monster had released him in an open pen. It was a square area, nearly fifty yards on each side and fenced with thin posts or rods of green metal, perhaps twenty feet high, set very close together and sharply pointed at the top. They formed a barrier apparently insurmountable. In the center of the pen was a huge and strange machine built of green metal. It looked very worn and ancient. It was covered with patches of bluish rust or corrosion. At first it looked quite strange to Larry. Then he was struck by a vaguely familiar quality about it. Looking closer he realized that it was a

45:31colossal steam hammer. Its design of course was unfamiliar, but in the vast corroded frame he quickly picked out a steam chest, cylinder, and the great hammer weighing many tons. He gasped when his eyes went to the anvil. A man was chained across it. A man in torn grimy clothing fastened with fetters of green metal upon wrists and ankles so that his body was stretched beneath the mass of hammer. He seemed to be unconscious. Upon his head which was turned toward Larry was a red and swollen bruise. The monster which had dropped Larry within the pen rose again into the air, and Larry started forward trying to remember just what Agnes had told him of a machine to which the monster's sacrificed. This must be the machine, this ancient steam hammer. As he moved forward Agnes came into view. She walked around the massive base of the great machine carrying a bowl filled with a fragrant brown liquid. She stopped at sight of Larry and uttered a little cry.

46:31The bowl fell from her hands and the fragrant liquid splashed out onto the ground. Her brown eyes went wide with delighted surprise, then a look of pain came to them. Larry, Larry she cried, why did you come? To get you, Hans, are trying to speak as lightly as he could, and the best way I knew to find you was to let one of the monsters bring me cheer up. But even to himself his voice had a tone of discouragement. She smiled wainly. I don't see anything to be cheerful about. Her small face was set and a little white. Dr. Witting is going to be smashed under the hammer of this dreadful machine whenever the steam is up. Then it's my turn, and yours. That's nothing to laugh about. But we aren't smashed yet, Larry insisted. By the way, what was in that bowl? He went on glancing down. I forgot to bring lunch, he grinned. She looked down startled. Oh, Dr. Witting's soup poor fellow. I'm afraid he'll never awake to eat it. There's plenty more. Come around here. She picked up the bowl and led him around the

47:34base of the machine. Then she filled the bowl again with the fragrant red brown liquid from a tall urn of green metal. Larry took the dish eagerly and gulped down the rather insipid and tasteless food. And the monsters worshiped this old steam hammer he inquired when his hunger was appeased. Yes, I think the thing is worked by steam generated by volcanic heat. Anyhow, there isn't any boiler and the steam pipe comes up out of the ground. You can see that. So it runs on without any attention, though I guess the heat is dying down since it is several days between blows of the hammer. And I guess the monsters have forgotten how they used to rule machines. They seem to have dependent upon machines, even giving up their own bodies for mechanical ones until the machine rules them. And when this old hammer kept pounding on through the ages using volcanic steam, I guess they got to considering it alive. They began to regard it as a sort of god, and when they got the idea of giving its sacrifices, it was natural enough to place the victims under the hammer.

48:36They went back to Dr. Whitting who was chained across the anvil. He was still breathing but unconscious. He had been injured in a struggle with the monsters and his body was much emaciated. Agnes explained that he had been a prisoner in the pen for many months of the time of this world, waiting his turn to die. She said that the monsters had just completed the extermination of another race upon the Pygmy planet and were just turning to the greater world for victims. Larry noticed that the great hammer was slowly rising in its guides as the pressure of the steam from the planet's interior increased. In a few hours, just at sunset, it reached the top of its stroke. The air above the pen was suddenly filled with glittering swarms of the green-winged monsters sweeping slowly about in measured flight with strange order in their masses. They had come to witness the sacrifice. With an explosive rush of steam the hammer came down. The ground trembled beneath the terrific globe. The roaring of escaping steam and the crash of the impact were almost

49:37deafening. A heavy white cloud shrouded the corroded green machine. When the hammer slowly lifted, only a red smear was left. Agnes had shrunk trembling against Larry's shoulder. He had put his arms about her and was holding her almost fiercely. My turn next, she whispered, and don't try to fight them. It will only make them hurt you. I can't let them take you, Agnes, Larry, cried in an agonized tone, and the words seem to leap out of themselves because I love you. You do? Agnes cried in a thin, choking voice pressing herself against him. Ever since the first time you came to the laboratory, a score of the monster forms of violet-filled crystal and gleaming green metal had dropped into the pen. They tore Agnes from Larry's arms, hurling him roughly to the ground at the bottom of the green metal fence. For some time he was unconscious. When he had staggered painfully to his feet it was night. The monsters were gone, the starless sky was black and empty. Calling out weekly and stumbling about the pen he found Agnes. She was

50:41chained where Dr. Witting had been. She was conscious, unharmed. For a time they talked a little exchanging broken and coherent phrases. Then they went to sleep, lying on the anvil beneath that mighty hammer that was slowly lifting to strike another fearful blow. When the sun had risen again, Larry brought Agnes some of the brown soup from the metal urn which had been filled again. Then, when he had satisfied himself, he started clamoring up the massive frame of the hammer. If he could put it out of commission. It was a difficult task. He slipped back many times and finally had to choose another place to make the ascent. Twice he slipped and almost fell from a considerable height. But finally he reached the massive wheel of the valve which seemed to control the admission of steam into the cylinder above the hammer. If he could but close that, the steam would be confined in the chest below and when the pressure reached a certain point, something should happen. The valve was not easy to turn. It seemed fixed with the corrosion of ages.

51:43For hours Larry wrestled with it. Then he left it realizing that he must find something to use for a hammer. A vigorous search of the pen's hard earth floor failed to reveal any stone that would do. He turned his attention to the machine and presently saw a slender projecting lever high up on the side of the vast frame which looked as if it had been weakened by corrosion. After a perilous climb he reached the bar of green metal and swung his weight upon it. It broke and he plunged to the ground with the bar in his hands. Clamoring up once more to the great valve he hammered it until the rust that stiffened it was loosened. Then he struggled with the valve until it was closed. We'll see what happens he muttered. Returning to the ground he set to work to break the green metal fetters upon agnus's wrists and ankles using the broken lever as hammer and file. For the greater part of six days he toiled at that task while the great hammer rose slowly. But the green metal seemed very hard. One arm was free at the end of the second day.

52:45The other on the fourth. He had one ankle loose on the morning of the sixth day, but as evening came on and the great hammer reached the top of its stroke the fourth chain still defied him. Before sunset a swarm of the monsters appeared wheeling on green wings. He was forced to leave the work hiding his improvised file. Agnus still lay across the anvil to conceal from the monsters the fact that the chains were broken. Larry sat close beside her nursing hands that were blistered and sore from his days of filing at the chains. A sudden clatter came from the huge mechanism above them and a sharp hiss of steam which became louder. It works Larry whispered to Agnus. The old valve held and the steam can't get into the cylinder to smash us, but Allah knows what will happen when the pressure rises in that old steam chest. Thorkness came. Dusk swallowed the wheeling machine monsters. All night Larry and Agnus waited silently together on the great anvil listening to the hissing of the steam from above which was slowly becoming a shrill monotonous

53:49scream. Monotonous always higher and shriller. The sun rose again. Still the green winged monsters wheeled about. They came in glittering swarms thousands of them. They came nearer the machine now and flew about it more swiftly as if excited. Then it happened. There was a roar like thunder and a colossal bellowing explosion. The air was filled suddenly with scalding steam and with screaming fragments of the bursting steam chest. In the midst of it all Larry felt a crushing blow upon the head and a blanket of darkness fell upon him. The monsters are all gone, darling. Agnus' voice reached him as though they were very much frightened and a piece of the old hammer hit the fence and knocked a hole in it. You must go. Weave me. Weave you, Larry groaned struggling to sit up. Not a bit of it. He touched his head gingerly, felt a swollen bruise. Collecting a few fragments of the wrecked machine to serve as tools he felt to work again upon Agnus' remaining chain.

54:51Already he had cut a deep groove into it. Two hours later it was broken. Carrying the metal urn of brownish liquid they crept out through the hole in the fence which had been torn by the flying fragment of a broken casting of green metal. They left the wreck of the machine which a strange race had worshipped as a bloody god and harried furtively into the desert of Red Sand. Making a wide circuit about the fantastic city of green metal which Larry had seen from the air they struck out eastward across the desolate Ocherous Waste. The food in the urn eaten sparingly lasted until the end of the eighth day. On the morning of the ninth they came in view of the green line of the ancient canal. It was hours later that they staggered weekly over its wall of crumbling masonry clamoured down into the muddy weed-grown channel and drank thirstily of green tepid water. Larry found his old trail beyond the canal. They followed it back. In the middle of the afternoon they stumbled up to the thicket of spiky desert growth in which Larry had hidden

55:53the plane. The machine was undamaged. Before sunset Larry had removed the steak ropes, slipped the canvas cover from the motor, turned the plane around and inspected it and examined the strip of smooth hard red sand upon which he had landed. Agnes pointed out the dim band of crimson across the sky from north to south, slowly rising toward the zenith. That's the red ray she said, we fly into it. And a happy moment when we do Larry rejoined. He roused the motor to life. As the bar of crimson light near the zenith the plane rolled forward across the sand and took off climbing steeply. Larry anxiously watched the approach of the red band. The gravitation of the pygmy planet seemed to diminish as he gained altitude until presently he could fly vertically from it without circling at all. He set the bow toward the scarlet bar across the sky before him. And suddenly he was flying through ruby flame. His eyes went to the little scale at the corner of the instrument board. He saw the little ebb and needle waiver, leave the mark designated pygmy

56:57planet normal and start toward earth normal. For what seemed a long time he was wheeling down the crimson ray. A few times he looked back at Agnes in the rear seat, she had gone to sleep. Then a vast circular field was below the crystal platform. Larry landed the plane upon it, taxided to the center and stopped there with the motor idling. The laboratory taking shape in the blue abyss about him seemed to contract swiftly. Presently the plane covered most of the crystal disk. He taxid quickly off, stopped on the floor nearby and cut the ignition. Agnes woke, together they clamored from the plane's cabin and walked back into the crimson ray. Once more the vast spaces of the room seemed to shrink until it looked familiar once more. The pygmy planet and the huge machine looming over them dwindled to natural size. Agnes watching a scale on the frame of the mechanism which Larry had not noticed leaked suddenly from the red ray drawing him with her. We don't want to be giants she left. Larry drew a deep breath and

57:59looked about him. Once more he was in his own world and surveying it in his normal size. He became aware of Agnes standing close to him. He suddenly took her in his arms and kissed her. Wait a minute she objected slipping quickly from his arms. What are we going to do about the pygmy planet? Those monsters might come again even if you did wreck their god and Dr. Whitting poor fellow. But we mustn't let those monsters come back. Larry doubled up a brown fist and drove it with all his strength against a little globe that spun so steadily between the twin upright cylinders of crimson and a violet flame. His hand went deep into it and it swung from its position. Hung unsteadyly a moment and then crashed to the laboratory floor. It was crushed like a ball of soft brown mud. It spatered. Now I guess they won't come back. Agnes said, a pity to spoil all Dr. Whitting's work though. Larry was standing motionless, holding up his fist and looking at it oddly. I smashed a planet. Think of it. I smashed a planet. Just the other…

59:04why it was just this evening at the office. I was wishing for something to happen. End of The Pygmy Planet by Jack Williamson. You're the best feel operative I've ever had. You were born for it. In the 81 the embassy went down. We go 25 million in the wall. Where? O'Kill Terran. This is bad. Like run for the hills, man. Do it now. I don't have the money. But I've got some more valuable. You shall know the truth. The truth. You'll make it free. The fix. Now playing in theaters.