Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/86

Rh Close against the rocks. Whatever happens, you stay here. I'll—if I get the drugs—I'll make myself very large. Kill him—then I'll come back to you. Don't move—whatever happens."

He left her. The wooden incline sloped sharply upward. The fog momentarily seemed clearing. Martt saw above him the outlines of the houses, a broad platform connecting them. And stretched the length of the platform was the huge, recumbent figure of a man. He seemed about forty feet tall. He lay hunched, cramped for space, with one arm upflung to the roof of a house, and one leg dangling nearly to the water.

Martt reached the platform. He crept past the giant's legs. The waist, wrapped in a skin, was rising and falling with the giant's breathing. Martt's own breath was held. His heart was thumping wildly. The giant stirred; Martt stepped nimbly aside to avoid the movement of the great body.

At the giant's waist he paused, reached up, fumbling. There seemed a belt here, with pockets. The drugs should be there. The bulge of the giant's middle was nearly as high as Martt's chest as he stood upright. He reached up, and over, feeling with careful fingers.

With a thrill of triumph, Martt found two cylinders, each as long as his forearm. In the starlight he opened them, drew from each a flat, square tablet of compressed powder. The drugs! But which was for growth and which for shrinkage? One was larger than the other. It suggested growth. It was flat and square—the length of Martt's thumb. Impulsively he would have crushed it in his mouth and swallowed it. But a thought gave him pause. This giant was nearly seven times larger than, himself. This expanded dose of the drug then would be too great. Martt bit off a comer of the white tablet. Swallowed it. An acrid taste He replaced the remainder in the cylinder and put both cylinders in his pocket, tying his jacket close around them. Would they expand with his body? He could only hope so.

Expand? How did he know but that he had taken the wrong drug? Well, he could soon rectify that A panic swept Martt that the giant might awaken too soon The drug was taking effect; Martt was sick and dizzy. He reeled to a post at an outer comer of the platform. Clung there. He all but slipped and fell into the water ten feet below.

A moment, then the sickness passed. He was growing! He could feel the post shrinking within his grip. The outlines of the houses were contracting. The knife in his hand, already tiny, slipped and fell into the water with a splash.

The post soon was too small for Martt to hold. He reached over and steadied himself upon the grass roof of the nearest house. It was melting under his hands. The sleeping giant lay at his feet, a giant no longer; a man, like himself—the two of them crowding a tiny, flimsy platform with toy houses beside it, and black water flowing sluggishly close underneath.

A sense of power swept Martt. A triumph. He was not afraid of this man, unarmed like himself. Already the man was undersized Why, Martt could grip him, choke him! These toy houses—a sweep of Martt's arm would have scattered them.

Martt was bending awkwardly over the roof-tops. A ripping, tearing noise sounded. The platform, the houses, quivered, wavered, collapsed! The whole structure, bending beneath the weight of the two huge bodies, gave way. Martt found himself floundering in warm, muddy water, entangled in a debris of splintered wood and grasslike house-roofs.