By R. F. Starzl
from AMAZING STORIES QUARTERLY, Summer 1928
Nineteen-twenty-eight was the boom year for Amazing Stories. Whereas reprints had held sway during most of its first eighteen months of existence, in 1928 a whole army of new authors swamped the field, amongst them David H. Keller, Jack Williamson, Stanton Coblentz and R. F. Starzl.
Starzl took as the theme for his first story the sub-microscopic world. It was far from new. Fitz-James O’Brien had more or less invented it with his lengthy story “The Diamond Lens” which had appeared in Atlantic Monthly for January 1858. This story is marred however by O’Brien’s lapses into spiritualism. Coming more up-to date, the theme was really taken into hand by Ray Cummings, whose own first story. “The Girl in the Golden Atom” appeared in All-Story for March 15th 1919. His hero manages to enter the miniature world, where his adventures were not unlike imitation Burroughs. Nevertheless Cummings returned again and again to the mini-world theme, but he never expanded on his original concept.
Starzl in all probability had read the Cummings story. He would have been nineteen at the time. But it is quite likely he was inspired by Wertenbaker’s story “The Man in the Atom”, which, if he had not read it when it originally appeared, he would have doubtless found when Gernsback reprinted it in the first issue of Amazing Stories. Wertenbaker was intrigued with the mechanics of sub-universes, something Cummings avoided. But whereas Wertenbaker approached the theme from within, Starzl approached it from without. Hence with “Out of the Sub-Universe” we have a unique view of a world within a world.
Sub-Universes was a popular theme in the first decade of sf magazines. It was being used so often that in the end it became monotonous. Stories in the Cummings school were the more common, unfortunately, although some were more adventurous, such as S.P. Meek’s “Submicroscopic” and its sequel “Awlo of Ulm” which appeared in Amazing Stories in 1931. Fiction of the Starzl school is echoed in such capable gems as Edmond Hamilton’s “The Cosmic Pantograph” (Wonder Stories October 1935). So common was the theme, that it even recurs in this anthology, but only as a device within the story. But I shall let that story come as a surprise.
Starzl was a reporter whose fiction was always competent and literate. Born in 1899 he would feature prominently in Gernsback’s magazines, but also appeared in Argosy in the 1930’s. He is strictly an author of this period, since, apart from reprints, his last sf magazine appearance was “Dimension of the Conquered” in the October 1934 Astounding Stories.
* * * *
“If you really are so anxious to go, I won’t keep you from going any more,” said Professor Halley with a sigh, to the young man who sat opposite to him in his laboratory. “Eventually it will become necessary for a human being to make the journey, and no better qualified than you to make an accurate report.”
“Indeed, I should think not,” smiled Hale McLaren, his friend and pupil, “as long as I’ve been your assistant, and, you might say, co-discoverer. But—” his eyes clouded, “I don’t know about Shirley. She wants to go along.”
“I think you should let her go along if she wants to,” said Halley slowly. “You know that I love my daughter even more than she loves you, but I realize that if you failed to come back, as our experimental rabbits failed to come back, she could never be happy again. She would rather be with you, no matter how inhospitable the little world to which you are going.”
“But I will come back!” insisted Hale McLaren urgently. “We know why our experimental animals did not return. As soon as they arrived on the surface of whatever little planet they happened to land on, they did not bother to wonder where they might be. They simply wandered on, and of course, it was impossible for our apparatus to find them again. You may be sure that I won’t leave the landing spot.”
“Nevertheless, it is possible you may fail to return. Shirley is almost a grown woman. We will explain the dangers to her, and if she still wants to go, she shall go.”
He stepped to the telephone and called the number of his home, only a short distance from the little inland college where he was head of the physics department. In a few minutes Shirley came into the presence of the two men and regarded their soberness amusedly.
“Whose funeral are you holding today?” she asked.
“Don’t talk of funerals at a time like this,” said McLaren, a little crossly. “We called you over here to explain to you again the danger of the trip you want to make with me. Frankly, I don’t want you along, but your father says you can come if you want to.”
“Of course I’m going!” she retorted with mock defiance. “Do you think I want to lose you to some atomic vamp?”
“This is serious,” he persisted, refusing for once to yield to her rallying. He led the way to the corner of the big, bare room, where he moved aside a denim curtain sliding on a wire, which hid a maze of enigmatic apparatus, evidently electrical in its nature. In the center of a large helix, on a base of peculiar translucent green material, stood a great glass bell, large enough for two or three persons to stand inside. A bank of high-voltage vacuum tubes against one wall was connected by means of heavy copper tubing to various points on the helix. The translucent green base was supported on a number of cylinders, which formed a hydraulic hoist so that the heavy green disc could be lowered in order to permit the introduction of objects under the independently supported bell.
“I’m going to start in a few minutes,” McLaren informed Shirley, and despite his assumed brusqueness, his voice betrayed a tremor of tenderness. “Your father is going to explain the danger to you, and if you still want to go, we start together.”
“You know, Shirley” began Professor Halley in his best class-room manner, “that Hale and I have been engaging extensively in research work to discover the ultimate composition of matter. I will admit that we are as much in the dark regarding our primary quest as ever, but in our researches we have opened new vistas that are fully as beautiful and as interesting as the truths we first sought.
“By utilizing the newly discovered cosmic ray, which has a wave-length infinitely shorter than any other known kind of light, we have been able to get circumstantial evidence that electrons do not consist solely of a negative electric charge, as physicists have thought before, but that this charge is actually held by a real particle of matter, so infinitely small that we would never get direct evidence ot its existence by the older methods.
“While pursuing these studies, we stumbled upon another property of the cosmic ray. We found that certain harmonics of the ray, when enormously amplified, have the property of reducing or increasing the mass and volume of all matter, without changing its form. We have discovered no limit to this power. We believe it is infinite.
“Now this suggests a possible solution of the problem of the constitution of the universe. Could we prove that the atom, with its central nucleus and its satellites, called electrons, is really only a miniature universe, in fact and not by analogy only, we could safely assume that the constituents of the infra-universe beneath us and the super-universe above us are only links of a chain that stretches into infinity!”
Professor Halley paused. His assistant was flushed and enthusiastic, and his daughter’s cheeks glowed brightly and her eyes sparkled. But she was not looking at the apparatus; she was looking at the smooth, dark hair of her fiancé.
“We have sent things into that sub-universe,” he continued, “chairs, coins, glasses, bricks and things like that. And we have brought some of them back. But when we sent guinea pigs or rabbits, or a stray dog into the world of mystery, we could not bring them back. Hale thinks the animals may have wandered away, out of focus of our rays. I don’t know. He may be right, or they may have met some terrible unknown fate. Now he offers himself for the experiment. It is dangerous. It may be ghastly. But if you wish to go with him, you may. Your mother is dead. You may leave me lonely in my old age; but you may go—for science!”
A solemn hush followed the simple words. Then Shirley said clearly: “I will go.”
* * * *
The physicist turned his head for a moment. When he faced them again, there was no sign of his mental struggle. Firmly, he threw a lever, and the green base silently lowered to the floor. McLaren and the girl stepped upon it, and when it rose again it carried them into the glass bell. The professor turned to the raised platform where the control board was located.
“Good-bye!” he called. “I’ll bring you back when an hour has passed.”
“Good-bye!” they returned, their voices muffled.
A powerful generator sprang into action, filling the laboratory with its high-pitched whine. The vacuum tubes glowed dully, and a powerful odor of ozone permeated the air. With a loud crash, the high-tension electricity discharged between adjacent turns of the helix. The professor hastened to adjust a condenser, and again the silence was broken only by the whine of the generator and a low humming.
As the professor continued to adjust the controls, the bell gradually filled with a deep violet light that swayed and swirled tenuously like the drapes of an aurora borealis. The light swirled around the man and the girl, at times almost hiding them from view. It gradually concentrated toward the bottom of the bell, seeming to cling to the green base, intertwining the two living forms until it almost hid them from view. Yet they continued to smile and wave encouragement.
And now it was evident that they were growing smaller. Already they were less than four feet tall, and as the apparatus was brought more and more into perfect resonance, their rate of shrinkage accelerated. Soon they were but a foot high, standing in a sea of violet light, then six inches, then hardly an inch. The professor turned off the generator.
The girl and the man now walked the few inches necessary to bring them to the exact center of the base. Here, in a slight depression in the smooth material, was a tiny granule of carbon, one of the atoms of which they were to explore. It was so tiny that it could hardly be seen under the microscope, ordinarily, yet to McLaren, it must already have become plainly visible, for he soon spoke to the girl and she joined him, standing with him very closely near a spot on the floor which he indicated.
Again the mysterious harmonics of the cosmic ray were brought into action, and the two tiny figures vanished from sight. The professor stayed at the controls, his eyes fixed anxiously on his watch until the proper time had elapsed, as indicated by his calculations. He stopped the dynamo again and laid his watch on the table. He marked the time when he should recall them, 10 minutes after four, and paced nervously up and down the room in which he was now alone. Moisture beading his brow, he stopped and stared at the slight depression in which lay a million universes, each one as complete and as perfect as his own, and in one of those universes was a whirling speck on which he had deposited his daughter and best-loved assistant.
He started as the telephone whirred and disposed of a student who wanted to make a trifling inquiry. Then he went back to his watch again, listened to see if his watch might have stopped. It was very still in the laboratory, and when a small rill of water suddenly cascaded out of the cooling jacket of one of the heavy duty vacuum tubes, the noise seemed loud and strident
A new thought was now harassing Professor Halley. Suppose that in that unthinkably small world, there were dangerous creatures, with whom Hale and Shirley might be battling for their lives even at that moment. Perhaps this world might happen to be a blazing sun; suppose they had gasped their lives out on a sterile and airless moon? He looked at his watch again. The half-hour was almost up. A few more minutes, and they’d be ready and waiting to come back—wouldn’t do to turn on the ray while they might be a short distance away, out of focus.—A few more seconds—now!
* * * *
With a fierce sweep, he threw the switch and the violet light filled the glass bell again, Quickly he reversed the current—then crept to the base of the glass dome so that he might see the returned wanderers as soon as they grew into visibility.
Within a few minutes a small cloudy patch appeared in the glassy depression where the microscopic granule of carbon lay. Before the physicist’s eyes this spot resolved itself into hundreds of tiny dots—dots that grew rapidly until they resembled minute upright pegs—pegs that presently grew large enough to show arms and legs. Small human-like creatures that were plainly men and women by the time they were half an inch tall. Men and women that grew and walked about, and were evidently greatly perturbed.
Halley watched them with amazement until they were a few inches tall. He did not move until they began to be so crowded that there was danger of smothering some of them. Then he leaped to the switch to stop their growth, and lowered the green disc until it was at the same level as the table, to which some of the more venturesome now jumped for the sake of more room. As he watched them in stupefaction, looking vainly for McLaren and Shirley, a man separated himself from the crowd, walked to the edge of the table, made a deep obeisance, and called:
“Where are we?”
His voice was thin and reedy, like the chirp of an insect, and his accent was slurred and difficult to understand. Yet he spoke recognizable English.
“You are on earth,” said Halley automatically.
This remark created the most profound impression. A thin, sighing cry arose from the little people, and many of them prostrated themselves. They wore filmy, short robes that came to their knees, held to their bodies by girdles. Men and women were dressed pretty nearly alike, but there was a well defined plan of ornamentation which distinguished the sexes.
The leader turned on them and cried.
“Hark! Hark! Is it not as we, your priests, have told you! To the faithful shall it be granted to be carried from our vale of tears to the Earth, with its portals of gold, where the milk and honey flow. You have heard the voice of the Angel. In a voice of thunder he has told you, you are at the gateway of the Earth, while those who believe not shall be cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth!
Someone in the background began a hymn. The mass of pygmy humanity joined, and the faint insect-like chorus filled the room.
Halley addressed the priest again.
“Where do you come from?”
“We are citizens of Elektron, so named by our illustrious ancestors, Hael, the Man, and Shuerrely, the Woman, who came to our planet in its youth, aeons and aeons ago—so many millions of years ago that they are to be reckoned only in geological epochs.”
“How did you know the name of our earth?”
“It was handed down to us from generation to generation. It is preserved in our monuments and temples and in the records of our wise men. We knew for many ages that it is the elysium of perfection—the place of infinite happiness. For did not our illustrious forebears, Hael and Shuerrely, pine for the Earth, though they came to our Elektron when it was a young planet with a soft climate, and rich in luscious fruits?”
“You say Hale and Shirley came to your planet many ages ago? Wasn’t your planet peopled then?”
“There were animals, some of terrifying size and frightful armament. But our Earth-sent ancestors, through superior cunning, overcame them, and their children gradually conquered all of Elektron. We are their descendants, but we have preserved their language, and their traditions, and their religion, and we treasured the Great Promise?”
“The Great Promise?”
“The Great Promise,” the Elektronite intoned, almost sonorously, despite his small size, “was given us by Hael and Shuerrely. They declared that a great wizard, an Angel of superlative power and understanding, would some day penetrate the vast empty Earth. On the spot where they first appeared, they commanded that their children reside and await the coming of the Angel, which they called Cosmicray. Many were there who fell from that true religion, but we have builded ourselves a temple on that sacred spot, and The Great Promise has been kept!”
Halley said to them dully, pain in his heart, “I am Shirley’s father and Hale’s friend, and it is not an hour since I sent them to your Elektron!”
But his grandchildren a thousand generations removed, again prostrated themselves and burst into song anew.
* * * *
Professor Halley was in a decidedly awkward position, He narrowly escaped being indicted for murder. The disappearance of his daughter and his assistant naturally provoked inquiry, and the ugly suspicion was current that he had done away with them and consumed the bodies in his formidable looking Cosmic Ray machine.
Curiously enough, the proof which finally cleared him of the murder suspicion got him into trouble with the immigration authorities, who did not know what to do with several hundred lilliputian people who couldn’t be deported to anywhere. Professor Halley positively refused to send them back to Elektron unless they agreed to go of their own free will, and none of them wanted to go back. Finally the immigration authorities consented to admit the Elektonites under bond, after they had been increased to normal size. Friends were found who assisted them in adjusting themselves to a new type of civilization, and according to latest reports, most of them are getting along very well.
The writer, after many attempts, finally obtained from Professor Halley a first-hand account of his experience and a detailed explanation of the operation of his invention. Skipping the technical details, which have nothing to do with this story, it is only necessary to give here the professor’s own explanation of the remarkable fast life-cycle as lived on Elektron.
“I blame myself,” said Professor Halley sadly, “for overlooking this important point. While it is true that the sub-universe resembles our own; while it is true that the electrons follow their orbits in a manner analogous to the planets around the suns; yet I overlooked the fact that due to the great difference in size there is also an enormous difference in time. It takes the earth a year to go around the sun; an electron circles its positive nucleus mil lions of times a second. Yet every time it completes its orbit it is like a year to the inhabitants.
“Before I had time to even blink an eye, Shirley and Hale had lived, loved, died, and many generations of their children had gone through their life cycles. It was normal to them—to us it was unthinkably brief.”
He turned his patient face wearily towards the window, staring over the broad campus with unseeing eyes. They say his scientific apparatus is dusty from disuse, but the college board has decided to keep him on the faculty as long as he lives. He is a gentle, pathetic old man who will not live long.