Collected Short Fiction, page 401
The wire bars were being re-melted, he saw, and cast into larger ingots. These, apparently, were being worked in a huge rolling mill beyond. But still he could not see the destination of the copper. Perhaps the answer awaited him somewhere at the other end of this vast underground plant.
Trent held his breath when a little limping man with broom and dust pan approached the locker. His tense body trembled. One shout of alarm would destroy him. He groped for the tiny weapon that was one of the useful implements he wore in the belt under his rags.
But the little janitor seemed too tired to be observant. He dropped his equipment in the corner of the dark locker, hung up his soiled apron, and limped wearily away, sighing:
“Ach, Hitler!”
Trent put on the apron, took up broom and dust pan. He waited five minutes, and limped out of the locker in the other direction—toward the rolling mill and whatever mystery lay beyond.
SOMETIMES Trent thought of himself as an actor. Certainly he had played many roles, as exacting as any of the stage. Now, he knew, death hung waiting as the penalty for one flaw in his unrehearsed performance.
But he had not expected a safe job when he’d volunteered to find out what became of the American electrolytic copper so mysteriously purchased and smuggled through the British blockade into Germany. The Reich would be sure to resent intrusion upon such a closely-guarded secret as this—perhaps the secret of another of their surprise weapons, upon which the entire fate of a campaign of the war might depend. It would be worth it, though, to come once more to grips with his old adversary, von Schlegel. Nor did he regret the cramps remaining in his seventy-nine year old bones from the long journey, when he dared not venture for a single second from his hiding place in the copper car.
He limped down through the forest of pillars. It wouldn’t do for the little janitor to appear too interested in his surroundings—that was one false note which could mean death. But he managed to see the electric trucks that carried the massive copper plates from the mill. He heard the ring of pneumatic hammers beyond. And at last he saw—
The copper box!
On a massive concrete foundation, it loomed before him. He stared, gasping with puzzled astonishment. It was simply a cube-shaped copper box, made of great, riveted copper plates. But it rose forty feet high, almost to the smoke-darkened concrete roof.
Workmen with the ringing hammers were still driving rivets into the lid. His role forgotten, Trent gazed up at the immense copper hinges, the mighty lock. What could be the possible use of a copper box large enough to hold a four-story house?
He recovered himself, and resumed the janitor’s limp. His eyes flashed about, seeking some explanation of the box. And he saw something else that was equally startling.
Beyond the immense box, a painted wooden partition enclosed an office space against the concrete wall. Window-openings and roof were covered with steel grilles. Painted on the door was the legend that stopped Trent’s heart:
Herr Doktor von Schlegel—Privat
It was a little time before Trent could breathe. His thin brown hands were trembling. He felt a numb prickling over all his tired grimy body. And the pain reminded him that an old man must be careful of his heart.
But he got his breath again, and remembered that the little janitor must limp on. An eager elation rose in him. The President’s assignment had led him straight to the Prussian agent, after all.
Trent tried to keep the joyous grin off his tired wrinkled face. But he was going to have his chance—the last chance he ever wanted at anything in all his life—to stop whatever new plot von Schlegel’s twisted scientific brain now directed at peace and democracy.
Instantly, he made up his mind to enter the office. It was dark, probably empty. He knew the risk attached. But no risk was too great now.
The door was locked. But Trent had learned long ago how to deal with locks. In the leather belt be wore against his skin were half a dozen gleaming steel instruments, several of his own invention.
By the time his weary limp had brought him to the door, a bright implement was in his trembling fingers. It shot back the bolt as readily as any key, and the tired little janitor shuffled inside, to clean von Schlegel’s office.
THE office didn’t really need cleaning. It was in strict Prussian order. There was not a fleck of dust anywhere. Sharpened pencils were like ranks of bayonets on the great desk. Green filing cabinets stood like a file of soldiers against the wall, beyond a huge, odd-looking television set.
Trent reached for another tool from his belt, to open the locked drawers of the desk. Perhaps there would be some letter or blue print or report that would clear up the riddle of the colossal copper box—and tell him what strange new hell von Schlegel had brewing for the world outside the Reich.
Trent stopped, however, with the implement in the lock. Gray daylight had fallen suddenly upon him. He looked up through the metal bars that made a net above the office, and saw that an opening was widening in the concrete roof.
He glimpsed the branches of a fir, black against low gray clouds. Snow powdered down. Then the opening was darkened again—by the silhouette of a strange machine I
The amazing vehicle dropped through the opening. It sank lightly toward the floor, near the immense copper box. Trent hastened to one of the barred windows, and stared in wonderment.
The flying thing was a globe, a dozen feet in diameter. It was blue and glistening. There were disk-shaped caps above and below it, and the disks glowed with a faint greenish radiance. Something made a soft monotonous musical note.
A novel aircraft! There were no such familiar items as wings or propellers. Had von Schlegel found some new principle of flight?
A thick oval door opened in the sphere’s gleaming side, and two men emerged. And still Trent stared, more bewildered than ever.
The man in the lead looked as strange as the ship. Tall and thin, he had a bearing of arrogant pride. His yellow hair was curled, his full red mouth red-painted. He wore a curiously cut green tunic, and tight-fitting yellow trousers.
Close behind him strode—
Ernst von Schlegel!
Staring at the Prussian, Trent was conscious of a numbing chill. Twenty years had hardly changed the spy. He was tall and powerful, with a deceptive look of awkwardness. His head was round and hairless. White and mask-like, his face framed small, deep-set gray eyes that were cold as his glittering monocle.
They approached the office. Von Schlegel stepped ahead, reaching for his key. The unlocked door swung open to his touch. His cold gray eyes glared into the room.
With wax and cloth from the pockets of the grimy apron, Trent was busily polishing the brass handles of the filingcabinet drawers. He paused as von Schlegel entered, tensed either to make a salute, or to snatch for the hidden weapon in his belt.
BUT THE sweeping eyes of the Prussian did not pause. A janitor was beneath his regard. Stalking to the desk, he continued to talk in deep gutturals to the man with yellow hair.
“The key is cast, Your Highness.” Oddly, von Schlegel spoke English. “The box is ready to be contracted. In an hour the trap will be set—and baited.”
His glassy eyes looked triumphantly down at something in his hand.
“Ach!” he muttered thickly. “What a bait—to trap a world!”
The tall man called Your Highness paused in the doorway.
“Careful, Herr Doktor!” His English had an odd, musical accent—definitely not German. His tone was brittle, with the sharpness of one used to obedience. Yet, Trent sensed, he was afraid. “Don’t hurt Rori Ron!”
Von Schlegel set the little object on his desk.
“Your Princess will be safe,” he said.
His Highness twisted his long white fingers, nervously.
“The people of our world love her, don’t forget,” he said huskily. “If she is killed or injured, not all the soldiers of your swastika could make Oru yield to my rule. I’m clever enough to realize that.”
The Prussian peered down at the tiny object.
“She’ll be safe,” he insisted. “See, I have given her food and water and a tube of oxygen.” The monocle glittered sardonically. “I know you are extremely clever, Your Highness. Together, we cannot fail! Now, I am going to contract our trap.”
Furiously rubbing brass, Trent shuddered again. But the swift cold eyes did not see him. The door slammed, and he was alone. He limped over to the desk, to look at the little object that von Schlegel had left there—and gasped.
It was a glass bottle, three inches tall, stoppered and sealed with black wax. Inside the bottle stood a tiny living woman!
CHAPTER II
The Prisoner in the Vial
ALIVE?
Trent blinked incredulously. The figure in the bottle was scarcely two inches tall. It must be just a remarkable toy, or some optical illusion. He forgot his polishing, forgot that von Schlegel was apt to return.
Reaching under his rags, he slipped a tiny powerful lens from its pocket in his belt. Holding it like a jeweler’s glass with the muscles about his eye, he bent to study the woman in the vial.
She was alive—and beautiful!
Trent felt an ache of pity in his throat. He saw the oxygen cylinder at her feet, the brown vacuum jug, the torn paper bag of sandwiches wrapped in incredibly minute pages of Das Schwarze Korps. Those were links with the real world.
Had some trick of von Schlegel’s made her tiny?
Lips close to the vial, Trent whispered.
“Rori Ron—Princess of Oru—can you hear me?”
No sign that she did.
“Please, Rori Ron—”
Pain closed Trent’s throat. She was so small, so utterly helpless—yet so brave and proud and angry. He choked with pity for her.
Under the lens, she was large as life. He wanted to touch her flame-yellow hair, to soothe her bitter hurt. A tender longing rose in him. For a moment he had completely forgotten the barriers between them.
He had forgotten size, and years, and desperate peril. But, to her, he must be a monstrous giant. He was an old man—too old to be dreaming the fantastic dreams of youth. And his life hung on the slender thread of chance.
He sighed, whispered again:
“Rori, please let me know if you can hear. Believe me, these men are no friends of mine. Speak—and it may be that I can help you.”
Slowly, with a queen’s grace, she turned in the bottle.
Bright with tears, her dark eyes studied him.
“Can you speak to me?” Trent breathed urgently. “I’m alone here. Enemies surround me. But tell me what you need, and I’ll do anything I can.”
At last she cupped tiny hands against her lips. Trent bent near. Thin and tiny, yet clearly audible, her voice came through the glass:
“My own world is beautiful, far-off Oru. I was stolen from it by the Herr Doktor and the Ghendhu Ghan. They plan to use me to lure Oru into their trap, because the people love me.”
“You are the ruler of Oru?” whispered Trent.
Her bright head nodded.
“But not such a ruler as you know on Earth—not such as this queer god called Hitler,” her tiny voice said. “For Oru is a world of science, advanced beyond the need of law and punishment.
“We approached your planet, and learned your language, so that we could bring you our science as a gift—if we found that you were ready.”
“And we weren’t,” Trent said.
The tiny girl shook her flame-head, solemnly.
“BUT the fault is not all Earth’s,” she told him. “We should have guarded the Gendhu Ghan more securely. Once his ancestors ruled all Oru. But the Ghans have long been exiled to the lonely rock of Krandevar, and almost forgotten.
“It happened that the Ghan picked up the Herr Doktor’s television ray. The Herr Doktor fanned the ancestral resentment and ambition in him. Together, they have made this plot to trap Oru.”
“To trap a world?” Trent’s whisper was faint with amazement. “How can that be?”
“Oru is not large,” shouted Rori Ron. “You could toss the planet on your palm.”
Trent was silent. Staring at the tiny proud girl in the bottle, he was almost overwhelmed with incredulity. A far cry from the old war of espionage, and millions of men shivering in muddy trenches!
He caught his breath; he was used to the unexpected.
“Where is Oru?” he whispered. “Can I take you back, or carry warning?”
Slowly, Rori Ron shook her head.
“No machine of Earth can reach it,” she told him. “We were secure, until the Ghan betrayed our science to the Herr Doktor.”
Trent tried to smooth the distress from her face.
“Perhaps things aren’t so bad,” he said. “Hitler is already fighting for his life, against two great nations.”
“I know.” The girl in the bottle shook her tiny head. “The people of England and France are brave—but there is no hope for them.”
Trent started. “What?”
“Already,” Rori Ron shouted through the glass, “the Ghan has given the Herr Doktor a weapon that will destroy them. That is the secret of contracting matter. It can make metal harder than anything you know. Armored with contracted metal, and armed with guns made of it, the hordes of the swastika can sweep over Earth.”
Trent shook himself, bewildered.
“Contracted matter—” He was voiceless. “Do you mean that anything can be made small, as you are?” Sudden desperate hope shook him. “Anybody?”
Abruptly, in the vial, Rori Ron was pointing.
“The Herr Doktor!” Her tiny voice was tense and high. “Now he is using the force, to contract the trap!”
Carefully, Trent picked up the bottle. He hurried to one of the barred windows. Outside, in the dusk of the underground plant, he saw the huge copper box. Now two huge circular plates had been fastened to opposite sides of it, and thick black cables coiled from them to immense transformers.
He saw von Schlegel and the Gendhu Ghan, dwarfed beneath the equipment. The Prussian threw a switch. The transformers whined, and an odd green light shone from the disks.
And the copper box shrank!
TRENT stared, speechless. The box contracted steadily, until it was thirty feet on a side. Twenty. And still it dwindled. He heard the tiny, frightened voice of Rori Ron:
“That is the trap they have made for Oru—and I am the bait!”
Still Trent gazed, trembling and breathless.
As if from far away, he heard Rori’s thin small voice:
“That same force was used to make Oru small. For once it was a world as large as Earth, until a giant comet swept in from the gulf of space. Collision seemed certain. Desperately, the people fought for life. It was then that the regents of science overthrew the old dictatorship of the Ghans. They made heroic plans, to save Oru.
“But every effort failed until one scientist—and his name was Ron—discovered the secret of contraction. Then Oru was saved. No collision with uncontracted matter could harm it. And the regents soon learned to steer it like a ship out of the path of the comet—whose fragments you know as the asteroids.
“With a world for a ship, the people of Oru became explorers of space. And the contraction had other fruits. The higher energy-level of the contracted atoms proved amazingly beneficial to all the processes of life. Illness and age and death seemed conquered—”
The tiny girl shuddered abruptly in the vial.
“But now that same secret is going to destroy us!”
Trent lifted her close in front of his lens. “Just how is your planet in danger?” he whispered urgently. “And what—”
Silent in the vial, she made a warning gesture. Trent saw that the copper box had become a tiny bright cube, no more than six inches on a side, half hidden between the thick cables.
Von Schlegel had stopped the whining transformers. Trent gasped, when he strode to the box—and picked it up! He lifted metal that had required scores of freight cars for transportation from Rotterdam!
“Mass is changed into energy,” Rori Ron reminded him. “It is the higher energy level that causes the biological effects—” Her voice went keener, with alarm. “Here they come!”
Carrying the box in his arms, followed by the yellow-haired Gendhu Ghan, von Schlegel came back toward his office. Hastily, Trent set the vial back on the desk.
“Remember my name—Austin Trent,” he whispered against the glass. “I’ll do anything I can.” Looking down at the tiny, frightened, bright-haired girl, he breathlessly added her name. “Rori—Rori Ron!”
Her brief smile seemed brave—even gay.
Trent limped quickly back to the filing cabinets. He became the meek tired old janitor again, busily polishing brass. Von Schlegel came into the room, walking noisily on hard-heeled military boots. Grunting with effort, he set the copper box on the big desk.
“The trap!” his gutturals rasped at the Gendhu Ghan, behind him. “Ja—and the bait!”
He picked up the vial. The tiny girl was on her knees, with white arms lifted.
“Wait patiently, Your Highness,” the Prussian said thickly. “Your people will come to aid you—and perish with you, if they refuse to kiss the swastika!”
He set the bottle in the copper box, closed the lid, and locked it. His hand carried the key to his pocket—and came out with a heavy, ugly-nosed Luger, pointing straight at Trent.
“Aujgestanden!—Stand up, and make no move!” The monocle was a disk of ice. “I don’t forget an-enemy—not even in twenty years. And the real janitor is wise enough to do his work when I am gone.”
A cold smile twisted his pale, puttylike face.
“You beat me once, Herr Trent,” he said softly.
His hand tensed on the Luger. . . .
CHAPTER III
The Shrunken World
TRENT’S head was splitting. He felt the sticky pull of dried blood on his scalp, and felt the pressure of a bandage. Groping in a red mist of pain, he remembered von Schlegel’s bullet.
It had just grazed his skull. Deliberately, the Prussian agent had spared his life—why? Trent couldn’t understand it. Von Schlegel wasn’t famous for mercy.
