as a scene from
some horrible nightmare. The catastrophe came so rapidly that he could
hardly follow the whirlwind events. The half dozen great leaps he made
from the lashing tentacles of his pursuer sufficed to give him a few
seconds' respite, and then the weird, howling sound of the tortured
world swelled to a piercing wail. His lungs were laboring from the
violence of his exertions; again and again he barely escaped from the
curling whips of metal tentacles. And now the monster was hardly a foot
high; the huge condensers and tubes and colossal machinery were like
those of a pygmy laboratory. And overhead the roof plunged ever
downward.

But Phobar was cornered at last. He stood in the center of a circle of
the foot-high things. His captor suddenly shot forth a dozen rope-like
arms toward him as the others closed in. He had not even a weapon, for
he had dropped the bar in his first mad bound away from the
control-panel. He saw himself trapped in his own trick, for in minutes
at most the laboratory would be crushing him with fearful force.

* * * * *

Blindly Phobar reverted to a primitive defense in this moment of
infinite danger and kicked with all his strength at the squat monster
before him. The thing tried to whirl aside, but Phobar's shoe squashed
thickly through, and in a disorder of quivering pieces the metal
creature fell, and subsided. Knowing at last that the invaders were
vulnerable and how they could be killed, Phobar went leaping and
stamping on those nearest him. Under foot, they disintegrated into
little pulpy lumps of inert metal.

In a trice he broke beyond the circle and darted to the control-panel.
One quick glance showed him that the roof was now scarcely a half dozen
yards above. With fingers that fumbled in haste at tiny levers and
dials, he spun several of them--the repulsion-ray full--the
attraction-ray full. And when they were set, he picked up the bar he
had dropped and smashed the controls so that they were helplessly
jammed. He could almost feel the planet catapult through the heavens.

The laboratory roof was only a foot over his head. He whirled around,
squashed a dozen tiny creeping things, leaped to a disk that was now not
more than a few inches broad. Stooping low, balancing himself
precariously, he somehow managed to close the tiny switch. A haze of
orange light enveloped him, there came a great vertigo and dizziness and
pain, he felt himself fall