The Girl in the Golden Atom | Page 3

looked it seemed like the reversed
tail of a comet, or the dim glow of the Milky Way, and penetrating to
equally remote realms of space.
"Perhaps I fell asleep, or at least there was an interval of time during
which I was so absorbed in my own thoughts I was hardly conscious of
the scene before me.
"Then I became aware of a dim shape in the foreground--a shape
merged with the outlines surrounding it. And as I looked, it gradually
assumed form, and I saw it was the figure of a young girl, sitting beside
the liquid pool. Except for the same waviness of outline and
phosphorescent glow, she had quite the normal aspect of a human being
of our own world. She was beautiful, according to our own standards of
beauty; her long braided hair a glowing black, her face, delicate of
feature and winsome in expression. Her lips were a deep red, although I
felt rather than saw the colour.

"She was dressed only in a short tunic of a substance I might describe
as gray opaque glass, and the pearly whiteness of her skin gleamed with
iridescence.
"She seemed to be singing, although I heard no sound. Once she bent
over the pool and plunged her hand into it, laughing gaily.
"Gentlemen, I cannot make you appreciate my emotions, when all at
once I remembered I was looking through a microscope. I had forgotten
entirely my situation, absorbed in the scene before me. And then,
abruptly, a great realization came upon me--the realization that
everything I saw was inside that ring. I was unnerved for the moment at
the importance of my discovery.
"When I looked again, after the few moments my eye took to become
accustomed to the new form of light, the scene showed itself as before,
except that the girl had gone.
"For over a week, each night at the same time I watched that cave. The
girl came always, and sat by the pool as I had first seen her. Once she
danced with the wild grace of a wood nymph, whirling in and out the
shadows, and falling at last in a little heap beside the pool.
"It was on the tenth night after I had first seen her that the accident
happened. I had been watching, I remember, an unusually long time
before she appeared, gliding out of the shadows. She seemed in a
different mood, pensive and sad, as she bent down over the pool,
staring into it intently. Suddenly there was a tremendous cracking
sound, sharp as an explosion, and I was thrown backward upon the
floor.
"When I recovered consciousness--I must have struck my head on
something--I found the microscope in ruins. Upon examination I saw
that its larger lens had exploded--flown into fragments scattered around
the room. Why I was not killed I do not understand. The ring I picked
up from the floor; it was unharmed and unchanged.
"Can I make you understand how I felt at this loss? Because of the war

in Europe I knew I could never replace my lens--for many years, at any
rate. And then, gentlemen, came the most terrible feeling of all; I knew
at last that the scientific achievement I had made and lost counted for
little with me. It was the girl. I realized then that the only being I ever
could care for was living out her life with her world, and, indeed, her
whole universe, in an atom of that ring."
The Chemist stopped talking and looked from one to the other of the
tense faces of his companions.
"It's almost too big an idea to grasp," murmured the Doctor.
"What caused the explosion?" asked the Very Young Man.
"I do not know." The Chemist addressed his reply to the Doctor, as the
most understanding of the group. "I can appreciate, though, that
through that lens I was magnifying tremendously those peculiar
light-radiations that I have described. I believe the molecules of the
lens were shattered by them--I had exposed it longer to them that
evening than any of the others."
The Doctor nodded his comprehension of this theory.
Impressed in spite of himself, the Banker took another drink and leaned
forward in his chair. "Then you really think that there is a girl now
inside the gold of that ring?" he asked.
"He didn't say that necessarily," interrupted the Big Business Man.
"Yes, he did."
"As a matter of fact, I do believe that to be the case," said the Chemist
earnestly. "I believe that every particle of matter in our universe
contains within it an equally complex and complete a universe, which
to its inhabitants seems as large as ours. I think, also that the whole
realm of our interplanetary space, our solar system