The Girl in the Golden Atom by Ray Cummings (free ebook reader for pc TXT) 📕

was not alone, he told himself. His three friends were still there, hardly two feet from the toe of his shoe. He wondered how they were making out. Would they come back any moment? Would they ever come back?

And then the Banker found himself worrying because the ring was not in the center of the handkerchief.

He felt frightened, and he wondered why. Again he looked at his watch. They had been gone more than two hours now. Swiftly he stooped, and lifting the ring, gazed at it searchingly, holding it very close to his eyes. Then he carefully put it down in the center of the handkerchief, and lay back in his chair with a long sigh of relief. It was all right now; just a little while to wait, and then he could take it back to the Museum. In a moment his eyes blinked, closed, and soon he was fast asleep, lying sprawled out in the big leather chair and breathing heavily.

CHAPTER XIII PERILOUS WAYS

The Very Young Man sat on the floor, between his two friends at the edge of the handkerchief, and put the first pellets of the drug to his tongue. His heart was beating furiously; his forehead was damp with the sweat of excitement and of fear. The pellets tasted sweet, and yet a little acrid. He crushed them in his mouth and swallowed them hastily.

In the silence of the room, the ticking of his watch suddenly sounded very loud. He raised his arm and looked at its face; it was just ten minutes past eight. He continued to stare at its dial, wondering why nothing was happening to him. Then all at once the figures on the watch became very sharp and vivid; he could see them with microscopic clearness. A buzzing sounded in his ears.

He remembered having felt the same way just before he fainted. He drew a deep breath and looked around the room; it swam before his gaze. He closed his eyes and waited, wondering if he would faint. The buzzing in his head grew louder; a feeling of nausea possessed him.

After a moment his head cleared; he felt better. Then all at once he realized that the floor upon which he sat was moving. It seemed to be shifting out from under him in all directions. He sat with his feet flat upon the floor, his knees drawn close against his chin. And the floor seemed to be carrying his feet farther out; he constantly had to be pulling them back against him. He put one hand down beside him, and could feel his fingers dragging very slowly as the polished surface moved past. The noise in his head was almost gone now. He opened his eyes.

Before him, across the handkerchief the Banker sat in his chair. He had grown enormously in size, and as the Very Young Man looked he could see him and the chair growing steadily larger. He met the Banker's anxious glance, and smiled up at him. Then he looked at his two friends, sitting on the floor beside him. They alone, of everything within his range of vision, had grown no larger.

The Very Young Man thought of the belt around his waist. He put his hand to it, and found it tight as before. So, after all, they would not have to leave anything behind, he thought.

The Doctor rose to his feet and turned away, back under the huge table that loomed up behind him. The Very Young Man got up, too, and stood beside the Big Business Man, holding to him for support. His head felt strangely confused; his legs were weak and shaky.

Steadily larger grew the room and everything in it. The Very Young Man turned his eyes up to the light high overhead. Its great electric bulbs dazzled him with their brilliancy; its powerful glare made objects around as bright as though in daylight. After a moment the Big Business Man's grip on his arm tightened.

"God, it's weird!" he said in a tense whisper. "Look!"

Before them spread a great, level, shining expanse of black, with the ring in its center—a huge golden circle. Beyond the farther edge of the black they could see the feet of the banker, and the lower part of his legs stretching into the air far above them.

The Very Young Man looked up still higher, and saw the Banker staring down at him, "Good-by, my boy," said the Banker. His voice came from far away in a great roar to the Very Young Man's ears.

"Good-by, sir," said the Very Young Man, and waved his hand.

Several minutes passed, and still the Very Young Man stood holding to his companion, and watching the expanse of handkerchief widening out and the gleaming ring growing larger. Then he thought of the Doctor, and turned suddenly to look behind him. Across the wide, glistening surface of the floor stood the Doctor, leaning against the tremendous column that the Very Young Man knew was the leg of the center-table. And as the Very Young Man stood staring, he could see this distance between them growing steadily greater. A sudden fear possessed him, and he shouted to his friend.

"Good Lord, suppose he can't make it!" said the Big Business Man fearfully.

"He's coming," answered the Very Young Man. "He's got to make it."

The Doctor was running towards them now, and in a few moments he was beside them, breathing heavily.

"Close call, Frank," said the Big Business Man, shaking his head. "You were the one said we must keep together." The Doctor was too much out of breath to answer.

"This is worse," said the Very Young Man. "Look where the ring is."

More than two hundred yards away across the black expanse of silk handkerchief lay the ring.

"It's almost as high as our waist now, and look how far it is!" added the Very Young Man excitedly.

"It's getting farther every minute," said the Big Business Man. "Come on," and he started to run towards the ring.

"I can't make it. It's too far!" shouted the Doctor after him.

The Big Business Man stopped short. "What'll we do?" he asked. "We've got to get there."

"That ring will be a mile away in a few minutes, at the rate it's going," said the Very Young Man.

"We'll have to get him to move it over here," decided the Doctor, looking up into the air, and pointing.

"Gee, I never thought of that!" said the Very Young Man. "Oh, great Scott, look at him!"

Out across the broad expanse of handkerchief they could see the huge white face of their friend looming four or five hundred feet in the air above them. It was the most astounding sight their eyes had ever beheld; yet so confused were they by the flood of new impressions to which they were being subjected that this colossal figure added little to their surprise.

"We must make him move the ring over here," repeated the Doctor.

"You'll never make him hear you," said the Big Business Man, as the Very Young Man began shouting at the top of his voice.

"We've got to," said the Very Young Man breathlessly. "Look at that ring. We can't get to it now. We're stranded here. Good Lord! What's the matter with him—can't he see us?" he added, and began shouting again.

"He's getting up," said the Doctor. They could see the figure of the Banker towering in the air a thousand feet above the ring, and then with a swoop of his enormous face come down to them as he knelt upon the floor.

With his hands to his mouth, the Very Young Man shouted up: "It's too far away. We can't make it—we're too small." They waited. Suddenly, without warning, a great wooden oval bowl fifteen or twenty feet across came at them with tremendous speed. They scattered hastily in terror.

"Not that—the ring!" shouted the Very Young Man, as he realized it was the spoon in the Banker's hand that had frightened them.

A moment more and the ring was before them, lying at the edge of the handkerchief—a circular pit of rough yellow rock breast high. They ran over to it and climbed upon its top.

Another minute and the ring had grown until its top became a narrow curving path upon which they could stand. They got upon their feet and looked around curiously.

"Well, we're here," remarked the Very Young Man. "Everything's O.K. so far. Let's get right around after that scratch."

"Keep together," cautioned the Doctor, and they started off along the path, following its inner edge.

As they progressed, the top of the ring steadily became broader; the surface underfoot became rougher. The Big Business Man, walking nearest the edge, pulled his companion towards him. "Look there!" he said. They stood cautiously at the edge and looked down.

Beneath them the ring bulged out. Over the bulge they could see the black of the handkerchief—a sheer hundred-feet drop. The ring curved sharply to the left; they could follow its wall all the way around; it formed a circular pit some two hundred and fifty feet in diameter.

A gentle breeze fanned their faces as they walked. The Very Young Man looked up into the gray of the distance overhead. A little behind, over his shoulder he saw above him in the sky a great, gleaming light many times bigger than the sun. It cast on the ground before him an opaque shadow, blurred about the edges.

"Pretty good day, at that," remarked the Very Young Man, throwing out his chest.

The Doctor laughed. "It's half-past eight at night," he said. "And if you'll remember half an hour ago, it's a very stormy night, too."

The Big Business Man stopped short in his walk. "Just think," he said pointing up into the gray of the sky, with a note of awe in his voice, "over there, not more than fifteen feet away, is a window, looking down towards the Gaiety Theater and Broadway."

The Very Young. Man looked bewildered. "That window's a hundred miles away," he said positively.

"Fifteen feet," said the Big Business Man. "Just beyond the table."

"It's all in the viewpoint" said the Doctor, and laughed again.

They had recovered their spirits by now, the Very Young Man especially seeming imbued with the enthusiasm of adventure.

The path became constantly rougher as they advanced.

The ground underfoot—a shaggy, yellow, metallic ore—was strewn now with pebbles. These pebbles grew larger farther on, becoming huge rocks and bowlders that greatly impeded their progress.

They soon found it difficult to follow the brink of the precipice. The path had broadened now so that its other edge was out of sight, for they could see only a short distance amid the bowlders that everywhere tumbled about, and after a time they found themselves wandering along, lost in the barren waste.

"How far is the scratch, do you suppose?" the Very Young Man wanted to know.

They stopped and consulted a moment; then the Very Young Man clambered up to the top of a rock. "There's a range of hills over there pretty close," he called down to them. "That must be the way."

They had just started again in the direction of the hills when, almost without warning, and with a great whistle and roar, a gale of wind swept down upon them. They stood still and looked at each other with startled faces, bracing with their feet against its pressure.

"Oh, golly, what's this?" cried the Very Young Man, and sat down suddenly upon the ground to keep from being blown forward.

The wind increased rapidly in violence until, in a moment, all three of the men were crouching upon the ground for shelter.

"Great Scott, this is a tornado!" ejaculated the Big Business Man. His words were almost lost amid the howling of the blast as it swept across the barren waste of rocks.

"Rogers never told us anything about this. It's getting worse every minute. I——" A shower of pebbles and a great cloud of metallic dust swept past, leaving them choking and gasping for breath.

The Very Young Man got upon his hands and knees.

"I'm going over there," he panted. "It's better."

CHAPTER XIV STRANGE EXPERIENCES

Led by the Very Young Man, the three crawled a few yards to where a cluster of bowlders promised better shelter. Huddled behind this mass of rock, they found themselves protected in a measure from the violence of the storm. Lying there, they could see yellowish-gray clouds of sand go sweeping by, with occasionally a hail of tiny pebbles, blowing almost horizontal. Overhead, the sky was unchanged. Not a vestige of cloud was visible, only the gray-blue of an immense distance, with the huge gleaming light, like an enormous sun, hung in its center.

The Very Young Man put his hand on the Doctor's arm. "It's going down," he said. Hardly were the words out of his mouth before,