Chapter I: Front Matter

The GIANT WORLD

By RAY CUMMINGS

NOTE--This: serial, while complete in itself, is a
sequel to _Explorers Into Infinity_, which
narrated the previous adventures of Brett and Martt
on the distant world. The story appeared in
WEIRD TALES for last April, May and June.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January, February, March 1928.]

CONTENTS

1 THE SUMMONS
2 STOLEN INTO SMALLNESS
3 THE THING IN THE FOG
4 THE WILD NIGHT RIDE
5 CLIMBING INTO LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE
6 THE BLOOD-RED DAY
7 THE FIGHT ON THE PARAPET
8 YOUTH!

_CHAPTER 1_

THE SUMMONS

I was startled. Yet I think that I subconsciously I was prepared for it; expecting it. The little cylinder flipped out of its tube and dropped on my desk before me. My name was on it, glowing with tiny luminous letters: _Frank Elgon, Interplanetary Mails, Division 4, Great-New York_. It looked just like any other Departmental message cylinder. But instinctively I knew it was not; and my heart was beating fast as I clicked it open.

Relayed through Code Headquarters. I saw that on the small rolled tape inside. And saw the signature, Dr. Gryce. It should not have been startling, but my fingers were trembling as I unrolled the tape and hooked it into the automatic decoder. And I stood gripping my chair as the line of English letters pricked themselves on the blank white sheet at which I was staring:

"Frank--I can not bear it any longer. We must go--we must find
Brett at any cost. Will you stand by us? Come at once. Hurry.

DR. GRYCE."

My mind leaped back. I sat at my desk staring blankly, while in the office around me all the bustling activity of the accursed Interplanetary Mails faded before the surging visions of my memory. It was four years since that other momentous day when Dr. Gryce had sent for me. And I had gone to him; and listened amazed at his weird, fantastic theories. Our sun, planets, and stars--all the vastness of the star-filled heavens, he had told me then--were but the infinite smallness of a greater world. All this that we call our Celestial Universe was no more than an atom--of the giant world encompassing it.

Fantasy! Yet it had proved sober, tragic fact. Tragic, because Dr. Gryce's older son, Brett, had gone out there to that giant world. Gone, and never returned. Nor been heard from; four years now, while old Dr. Gryce at the end of his life waited despairingly.

I had known always that the time would come when Dr. Gryce would wait no longer. He would send for me--friend of Brett--and friend of his other two children, Martt and Francine. For a year every cylinder that had dropped on my desk had made my heart leap that it might contain this summons which now lay before me.

"_I can not bear it any longer. Will you stand by us?_" So simple an appeal! But I knew the turgid torrent of heartache--the final desperation of an old man's suffering--which prompted it.

Young Grante at the desk next to mine was sorting his pile of official communications newly arrived by the Venus mail. I turned to him.

"I'm going away," I told him. In spite of myself--an unfortunate mannerism when I am perturbed--my voice sounded gruff, ill-tempered. "There is no time to argue--will you please notify Official 4 that my--my post is vacant."

He raised his eyebrows. "Vacant?"

"Yes. I'm going away." I was on my feet. Outwardly calm, but within me was a seething emotion. Going away! Out there into the immensity of the Unknown, where my friend Brett had gone, not to return. Young Grante could not guess. He was thinking Great-London perhaps--or the Asiatic province. Or perchance, Venus, or Mars.

I laughed harshly. "Don't question me, Grante. Just tell them--my post is vacant."

I left the room with his amazed stare following me. In the corridor, through a window I caught a glimpse of the tenth pedestrian level; its crowd of people moving upon the diverse activities of their tiny lives. Already I felt apart from them. Frank Elgon, Division 4. Presently, to such of them as knew me, I would be no more than a memory. "That young, rather quarrelsome Elgon, who walked out of his office in a temper, and vanished." They would say that, and then forget me.

I laughed again. But the thought brought a pang of regret, and a shudder.

In ten minutes I was within a pneumatic cylinder, speeding underground to the Southern Pennsylvania area, to the home of Dr. Gryce.