ry roof and barely miss striking
his captor behind. Even as Phobar created the image of that terrific
death, his captor whirled around in a lightning movement, a long arm of
metal flicking outward at the same instant to drop Phobar to the ground.

Like a flash Phobar was on his feet; his hand whipped from his pocket,
and with all his strength he flung a gleaming object straight toward the
fifth lever on the control-panel a dozen yards away. As a clumsy arrow
would, his oversize bunch of keys twisted to their mark, clanked, and
spread against the fifth control, which was the size regulator.

As rapidly as Phobar's captor had spun around, it reversed again, having
guessed the trick. A tentacle of pliant metal snaked toward Phobar like
a streak of flame.

But in those few seconds a terrific holocaust had taken place. As
Phobar's keys spattered against the fifth lever, there came an
immediate, growing, strange, high whine, and a sickening collapse of
the very surface beneath them. Everywhere outlines of objects wavered,
changed melted, shrank with a steady and nauseatingly swift motion. The
roof of the laboratory high overhead plunged downward; the far-distant
walls swept inward, contracted. And the metal monsters themselves
dwindled as though they were vast rubber figures from which the air was
hissing.

* * * * *

Phobar sprang back as the tentacle whipped after him. Only that jump and
the suddenly dwarfing dimensions of the giant saved him. And even in
that instant of wild action, Phobar shouted aloud--for this whole world
was collapsing, together with everything on it, except he himself who
came of a different universe and remained unaffected! It was the long
shot he had gambled on, the one chance he had to strike a blow.

All over the shrinking laboratory the monsters were rushing toward him.
His dwindling captor flung another tentacle toward the control-panel to
replace the size-regulating lever. But Phobar had anticipated that
possibility and had already leaped to the switchboard, sweeping a heavy
bar from its place and crashing it down on the lever so that it could
not be replaced without being repaired. Almost in the same move he had
bounded away again, the former hundred-foot giant now scarcely more than
his own height. But throughout the laboratory, the other metal things
had halted in their tasks and were racing onward.

Phobar always remembered that battle in the laboratory