Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 1 (1929-01).djvu/58



LL space is relative. There is no such thing as size. The telescope and the microscope have produced a deadly leveling of great and small, far and near. The only little thing is sin, the only great thing is fear."

For the hundredth time Professor Quierling repeated his statement, and for the hundredth time we listened to him in silence, afraid to enter into a controversy with him. It was not the fact that he knew more than we did that kept us quiet, but it was the haunting fear that filled us when we listened to him or watched him at his work.

Working at an unsolved problem, he seemed a soul detached, a spirit separated from its earthly home, a being, living only in the realm of thought. Motionless, his body sat catatonic; his eyes stared, unwinking, till his mind, satisfied, condescended to return to its bone-bound cell. Then, in magnificent condescension, he would talk in long, limpid language of the things that he had considered and the conclusions that he had deduced. We, chosen scientists, university graduates, hailed him as our master and hated him for admitting the mastery.

We hoped that some evil would befall him, and yet we realized that the success of the expedition depended upon his continued leadership. It was necessary for our future fame: we were struggling young men with all of life ahead of us, and if we failed in our first effort, there would be no other opportunities granted us.

In a specially constructed yacht, a floating laboratory, we were south of Borneo, making a detailed study of the microscopic sea life. In deep-sea nets we gathered the tiny organisms, and then with microscope, photography, and the cinema we observed them for the future instruction of the human race. There were hundreds of species, thousands of varieties, each to be identified, classified, described, studied, and photographed. We gathered in the morning, studied till midnight and restlessly slept till morning. The only thing in which we agreed was ambition. Our solitary united emotion was a dreaded hatred of the professor.

He knew how we felt and enjoyed taunting us.

"I am your leader because I willed it," he would whisper to us. "The will to attain with me is synonymous with the accomplishment of my desire. I believe in myself, and through this belief I succeed. There is nothing that a strong man can not do if he wills to do it and believes in his strength. Our ideas of space, size and time are but the fanciful dreams of children. I am fifty-nine inches tall, and, with my clothes, weigh one hundred and ten pounds. If I desired, I could make myself a colossus and swallow the earth as a child swallows a pill. If I willed it, I could fly through space like a comet or 56