The Pygmy Planet - Jack Williamson

Immerse yourself in captivating science fiction short stories, delivered daily! Explore futuristic worlds, time travel, alien encounters, and mind-bending adventures. Perfect for sci-fi lovers looking for a quick and engaging listen each day. 🎧 Go to www.solgoodmedia.com to access ad-free listening, exclusive content, and more!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Pigmy 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 fifty a week. All the adventure
I know is what I see in the movies or

(00:21):
read about in magazines. What I wouldn't give for a
slice of real life. Unconsciously, 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

(00:44):
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 like Mary's fate.
Things happened to other people, He muttered, Why couldn't an

(01:04):
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.

(01:27):
The 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

(01:49):
girl had spoken a few more words, then it came
to him. Agnes Sterling, he exclaimed aloud. Agnes Sterling was
a slender, elfish, dark cared girl, lovely, he had thought
her on the occasions of their few brief meetings. Larry
knew her as the secretary and laboratory assistant of doctor
Travis Whitting, a retired college professor known for his work

(02:12):
on the structure of the atom. Larry had called at
the home laboratory of the savant 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 dread,
and she had been interrupted before she had time to

(02:33):
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 doctor Travis whitting made

(02:55):
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

(03:16):
and rang the bell impatiently. 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 as a result of some
incautious experiment on the part of doctor Whitting. Instinctively, his

(03:37):
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.

(03:58):
Impelled 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

(04:19):
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 resistless grasp. The stock was twisted
and the barrel bent almost into a circle. The revolver

(04:40):
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 them house, from
the first floor to the roof. Gray daylight streamed through

(05:04):
a skylight twenty 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, beat straight
down from a complicated array of enormous, oddly shaped electron tubes,

(05:28):
of mirrors and lenses, and prisms of coils and whirling discs,
which reached almost to the roof upright a yard in
diameter and 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. Each ray poured
down upon a circular platform of glass or polished crystal.

(05:51):
Hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light
was a strange looking greenish globe. A round ball nearly
a yard in 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

(06:13):
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

(06:34):
the room. The 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 scientist who employed her,
that was now clotting on the floor. What terrific force
had crumpled up the revolver? What had become of Agnes
and doctor Whitting and of whatever had attacked them? Had

(06:56):
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

(07:19):
mind quickened at the idea, and he half forgot the
weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere.
It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish
areas would be seas, the green and brown space's land.
In some parts the surface appeared mistily, obscured, perhaps by
masses of clouds. Larry saw an odd looking lamp set

(07:42):
perhaps ten feet behind the slowly spinning floating ball, throwing
upon it a brilliant ray of vividly blue light. Half
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,

(08:05):
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 whirled, He cried, a laboratory planet.

(08:29):
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 unfastened the magnifier, Holding it before
his eyes, he bent toward the strange sphere, spinning steadily

(08:51):
in the air. Suffering sheads of Caesar, he ejaculated beneath
the lens. A world was racing. He could see mass
of vividly green forest, vast expanses of bare, cracked, ochuous desert,
wastes of smooth blue ocean. Then he was gazing at
a city. Larry could not be sure that he had

(09:12):
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,

(09:33):
with the 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 Agnes Sterling. Her dark hair
was tangled, her small face was flushed, and her brown

(09:55):
eyes were wide with fear. In a white hand which
shook a little, she carried us 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

(10:16):
come back any minute. You better go away. It just
took doctor Whitting. Wait a minute, Larry, put in just
one thing at a time. Let's get this straight to
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

(10:37):
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 doctor Whitting.
He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at
him gratefully and began to speak in a rapid voice.

(10:58):
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 broke in, You're too fast for me.

(11:18):
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. Her small
hand still gripped the bright automatic. Yes, it is a planet,
the pygmy planet, doctor 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

(11:41):
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, worshiping
a rusty machine like a god. Go slow, Larry pleaded again.
I don't see. Did the doctor Bill create that planet himself? Yes.

(12:05):
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

(12:27):
the atoms and in the size of any object which
the atoms formed. They 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.

(12:49):
That is what suggested to doctor Whitting 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 cop 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 muttered,

(13:10):
could doctor Whitting 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 Doctor
Whitting to the Pygmy planet. Bin Larry stopped breathless with astonishment.

(13:30):
See the little airplane, Agnes said, pointing under the table.
Larry gasped. Beneath 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 aileron.
Then he realized that it was no toy at all,

(13:53):
but a faithful miniature of a commercial plane, a complete,
tiny copy of one of the latest single motor cabin
mono plane 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 it last summer vacation.
This is the very image of it. It will fly,
Agnes assured him, now composed enough to smile at his amazement.

(14:16):
I have been with the Doctor to the Pygmy planet.
In it, you stand in the violet ray until you're
about three inches high, she explained, and then get into
the plane. Then you fly up into the violet 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

(14:38):
ray and stay in it till you grow to a
proper size when you come down in land. You 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, doctor Whitting called them,
have learned to do it too. One of them came

(14:59):
down the ris 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 violet beam.
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. Doctor Whitting told me there might be danger

(15:21):
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, doctor Whitting may have escaped.
He may be alive there in the deserts. We might
fly up in the little plane, Larry proposed, doubtfully. I

(15:44):
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, I thought, she gasped. I. I think I
see something in the ray. The machine monster is coming back.

(16:08):
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 tensely, 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,

(16:30):
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 and the

(16:50):
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 gasped,
why didn't we do something? Trembling horror stricken, she shrank
towards Larry. He was staring at the thing in the
pillar of scarlet light. It had dropped to the crystal

(17:11):
disc upon which the red ray fell from the huge
glowing tube above. It stood there, motionless except for the
swift increase in size. Larry gazed 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

(17:33):
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 a long seconds, seeming to regard them

(17:53):
with malevolent eyes. For the first time, Larry could see
it plainly. Its body, or its cent part, was a
tube of transparent crystal. An upright cylinder round it 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

(18:15):
greenish glistening metal. Attached to the lower band were four
jointed legs of the same bright green metal upon which
the strange thing stood. Set in the middle band were
two glittering, polished lenses, which seemed to serve his eyes,
and Larry felt that they were gazing at him with
malevolent menace. Behind the eyes, two wings sprang from the

(18:36):
green band, ingenious folding wings of thin plates and bars
of green metal, And from the upper band sprang four slender,
glistening whiplike tentacles, metallic and brilliantly green. Two yards in length.
They writhed with strange life. It seemed a long time
to Larry that the thing stood motionless, seeming to stare

(18:57):
evilly 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 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 clefts into right and left hemispheres, which in

(19:19):
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

(19:40):
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 trance of wonder, must take the place
of blood feeding the brain cells absorbing waste, an eternal
mind within a machine, from the ills and weaknesses of

(20:01):
the body, and devoid two of any pity, of any
tender feelings, 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 snakelike tentacles that had crumpled the revolver into
a broken mass of steel. Abruptly, the machine monster darted forward,

(20:25):
running swiftly upon its four legs of green metal. Slender
tentacles reached out toward the shuddering girl at Larry's shoulder. Run.
Agnes gasped to him quickly, It will kill you. The
girl tried to push him back as she touched him.
Larry recovered from his daze of wondering fear. Agnes was
in frightful danger and facing it with quiet carriage. He

(20:46):
must find a weapon. Wildly, 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 towards the machine of violet filled crystal and glittering
green metal. Stop Agnes screamed in a terrified voice. You can't.

(21:07):
She had run before him. He seized her arm and
swung her back behind him. Then he advanced warily toward
the machine monster, which had paused and seemed to be
regarding him with sinister intentness through its glistening crystal eye lenses.
With all his strength, Larry struck at the crystal cylinder,
swinging the stool like an axe. A slender, metallic green
tentacle whipped out, tore the stool from his hands, and

(21:29):
sent it 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 snakelike metal tentacle wrapped itself
about him. He was hurled to the floor to sprawl
grotesquely among broken apparatus. His head came against the leg

(21:53):
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

(22:15):
there now the other he gasped, The violet is the
way they went. He turned to the companion ray of
violet radiance that beat straight down on to the opposite
side of the tiny whirling planet, and in that motionless
torrent of chill violet flame, he saw them tide already
and swiftly dwindling with green wings outspread. The machine Monster

(22:36):
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 whiplike 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.

(22:57):
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 pigmy world.

(23:20):
The sphere hung between them, one side of it a
fraction of an inch from the red, the other as
near the violet Opposite the elfin planet, the monster ceased
to climb. It hung there in the violet ray, an
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

(23:41):
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 disks, watching the tiny
green blue plant and its spinning so steadily between the

(24:01):
bright rays. Abruptly, he recovered from his fascination of wonder
what did she say. He muttered something about the monster's
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

(24:24):
the little plane. A slim chance, maybe, but decidedly better
than none. He returned to the table, dropped to his knees,
inspected the tiny airplane, a perfect miniature, delicately beautiful. Its slim,
small wings were bright as silver foil. Carefully he opened
the door and peered into the diminutive cabin. Two minute rifles,

(24:45):
several Liliputian 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,

(25:06):
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 disk beneath

(25:27):
the violet ray. Slowly it decreased in size until it
had vanished from sight. Safe, I 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 disk. I dive out when I get to be
the size of the bottle, he murmured. With that, he

(25:49):
leaped into the violet beam. He felt no unusual sensation,
except one of pleasant, tingling 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 effected.
Then he noticed not that he appeared to become smaller,
but that the laboratory seemed to be growing immensely larger.

(26:10):
The walls seemed to race away from him. The green
blue sphere of the tiny planet, which he proposed a visit,
expanded and drew away above his head 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

(26:31):
was swiftly expanding. It reached to the level of his
shoulder and higher. He ran to the edge of the
crystal disk, which now seemed a 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.

(26:52):
The incredible immensity of his surroundings awed him strangely. The
walls of the room seemed like distant cyclopeans, 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,

(27:15):
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. Allah
knows I had to wait long enough for it. First,

(27:37):
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 Agnes'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.

(27:59):
He set about star guarding 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

(28:19):
mechanism in the center of the room. The disk of
crystal was set almost flush with the floor, its edge beveled.
The plane rolled easily upon it and out into the
cyclopean pillar a violent flame. Once more, Larry felt the
sensation that everything about him, except the plane itself, was
expanding inconceivably in size. Soon the laboratory's walls and roof

(28:41):
were lost in hazy blue distance, he could distinguish only
the broad, bright field formed by the surface of the
crystal disk, 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.

(29:01):
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 pigmy planet normal. A
tiny black needle was creeping slowly across the scale toward
pigmy planet normal. That's how we tell what size we

(29:21):
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 the little
plane the gun. The motor thundered a throbbing song. The

(29:43):
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, keep his eyes upon
the brilliant half moon of the pygmy planet. The strangest

(30:04):
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. As
Larry in the plane grew smaller, the relative size of

(30:25):
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

(30:48):
a hundred foot dinosaur nearly a second to know that
his tail had been pinched. A fly can get under
way in time to escape a descending swater. 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 an hour larger world.
So Larry found that time seemed to pass more rapidly,

(31:10):
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. He flew toward it steadily until he knew,
by the fading before him of the violet flame, which

(31:31):
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

(31:51):
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 passed in fascinating panorama. Beneath his eyes.
The rate of the planet's spinning seemed continually to lessen

(32:13):
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. Could he find her in the vastness
of an unfamiliar world, And having found her, would there

(32:34):
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 Ebben Needle reached

(32:55):
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 ray's 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

(33:15):
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

(33:37):
Pygmy planet. He had come down upon a stretch of
fairly smooth, red sandy desert which seemed to stretch illimitably
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 ocher desert was scattered
with sparse clumps of reddish, spiky scrub. Larry taxied the

(34:00):
plane into one of those thickets. Finding canvas and rope
in the cabin, he staked down the machine and muffled
the motor. Then, selecting a rifle and a heavy automatic
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,

(34:23):
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
water course proved to be an ancient canal, walled with
crumbling masonry. Its channel was choked with mud and thorny,
thick leaved desert shrubs of unfamiliar variety, but a feeble

(34:46):
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 mo morning,
and one of crimson at evening. Their apparent motion was
in the same direction as that of the sun. The

(35:06):
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 Agnes.

(35:28):
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
toward it. He had covered several miles of the distance
before he saw that the lofty towers were falling, the

(35:51):
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 plain between ruined city and ruined canal, tired, hungry, lonely,

(36:16):
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,

(36:37):
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.
Larry 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.

(36:58):
A dozen yards away from from him. Steadily, he covered
the crystal cylinder within which the thing's 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 Agnes, and if I

(37:20):
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 legs, 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.

(37:41):
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 metal, he was lifted against the
cylinder of violet liquid. The monster spread its broad emerald wings,
and Larry was swiftly borne in the air. In a
few moments, the wide ruins of the ancient city were

(38:04):
spread below, with the green line of the choked canal,
cutting the infinite red waste of the desert beyond it.
The monster flew westward for a considerable time, nothing save
barren Ocheris Desert was in view. Then Larry's weird captor
flew near a strange city, a city of green metal.
The buildings were most fantastic pyramids of green, crowned with

(38:27):
enormous glistening spheres of emerald metal, 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

(38:49):
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

(39:10):
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 colossal steam hammer. Its design, of course,

(39:31):
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

(39:52):
beneath the massive hammer. He seemed to be unconscious. Upon
his head, which was turned toward Larry, was a red
and swollen and 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 monsters sacrificed. This

(40:12):
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. The bowl fell from
her hands, and the fragrant liquid splashed out onto the ground.

(40:33):
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? He answered, 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 vainly.

(40:56):
I don't see anything to be cheerful about. Her small
face was set, and a little white doctor Whitting 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,

(41:19):
he grinned. She looked down, startled, Oh, doctor Whitting 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 base 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

(41:41):
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 asia, though I guess the heat
is dying down, since it is several days between blows

(42:04):
of the hammer. And I guess the monsters have forgotten
how they used to rule machines. They seemed to have
depended 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

(42:27):
they got the idea of giving its sacrifices, it was
natural enough to place the victims under the hammer. They
went back to doctor 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

(42:48):
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.

(43:12):
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 blow,
the roaring of escaping steam, and the crash of the

(43:32):
impact were almost deafening. 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

(43:53):
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 seemed 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

(44:15):
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 weakly and
stumbling about the pen, he found Agnes. She was chained

(44:38):
where doctor Whitting had been. She was conscious, unharmed. For
a time they talked a little, exchanging broken incoherent 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,

(44:59):
which had been filled again. Then, when he had satisfied himself,
he started clambering 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

(45:19):
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. For hours, Larry wrestled with it.

(45:42):
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

(46:03):
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. Clambering 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

(46:24):
the green metal fetters upon Agnes'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, the other on the fourth. He had
one ankle loose. On the morning of the sixth day.

(46:46):
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 revised file. Agnes still lay across the anvil to
conceal from the monsters the fact that the chains were broken.

(47:07):
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 Agnes. 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

(47:30):
that old steam chest. Darkness came, dusk swallowed the wheeling
machine monsters. All night, Larry and Agnes waited silently together
on the great anvil, listening to the hissing of the
steam from above, which was slowly becoming a shrill, monotonous scream, monotonous,
always higher and shriller. The sun rose again, still the

(47:52):
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

(48:15):
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. Agnes's 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, leave me, Leave you, Larry groan, struggling

(48:35):
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
fell to work again upon Agnes's remaining chain. Already he
had cut a deep groove into it. Two hours later
it was broken, Carrying the metal urn of brownish liquid.

(48:56):
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 worshiped as a bloody god,
and hurried 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

(49:16):
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 weakly over its wall of
crumbling masonry, clambered down into the muddy, weed grown channel,
and drank thirstily of green, tepid water. Larry found his

(49:41):
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
the plane. The machine was undamaged. Before sunset, Larry had
removed the stake ropes, slipped the canvas cover from the
motor turned the plane around, inspected it, and a examined
the strip of smooth, hard red sand upon which he

(50:03):
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 neared the zenith, the plane rolled forward across

(50:24):
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 bough toward the scarlet bar across the
sky before him, and suddenly he was flying through ruby flame.

(50:46):
His eyes went to the little scale at the corner
of the instrument board. He saw the little Ebben needle
waver leave the mark designated Pygmy planet 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

(51:08):
the crystal platform. Larry landed the plane upon it, taxied
it 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 taxied quickly off, stopped on the
floor near by, and cut the ignition. Agnes awoke. Together,

(51:29):
they clambered 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, leaped
suddenly from the red ray, drawing him with her. We

(51:52):
don't want to be giants, she laughed. Larry drew a
deep breath and looked about him once more. He was
in his own worlding 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

(52:14):
come again even if you did wreck their God and
doctor 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 the little globe that
spun so steadily between the twin upright cylinders of crimson
and of violet flame. His hand went deep into it,
and it swung from its position, hung unsteadily a moment,

(52:37):
and then crashed to the laboratory floor. It was crushed
like a ball of soft brown mud. It spattered. Now.
I guess they won't come back, Agnes said, A pity
to spoil all doctor 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

(53:00):
just the other Why it was just this evening at
the office. I was wishing for something to happen. And
of the Pygmy Planet by Jack Williamson