fice!"

She had pointed across the great room, toward the strange little globe
which hung between the pillars of red and violet light.

"Please go slow!" Larry broke in. "You're too fast for me. Are you
trying to tell me that that spinning ball is really a planet?"

Agnes seemed a little more composed, though she was still flushed and
breathing rapidly. Her small hand still gripped the bright automatic.

"Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He said
it was the great experiment of the century. You see, he was testing
evolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched it
until it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and
development of life upon it. And the rise and decay of a strange
civilization. Until now its people are strange things, with human
brains in mechanical bodies, worshiping a rusty machine like a god--"

"Go slow!" Larry pleaded again. "I don't see--Did the doctor
build--create--that planet himself?"

"Yes. It began with his work on atomic structure. He discovered that
certain frequencies of the X-ray--so powerful that they are almost
akin to the cosmic ray--have the power of altering electronic orbits.
Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system, with electrons
revolving about a proton.

"And these rays would cause the electrons to fall into incredibly
smaller orbits, causing vast reduction in the size of the atoms, and
in the size of any object which the atoms formed. They would cause
anything, living or dead, to shrink to inconceivably microscopic
dimensions--or restore it to its former size, depending upon the exact
wave-length used.

"And time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects--probably
because the electrons move faster in their smaller orbits. That is
what suggested to Dr. Whiting that he would be able to watch the
entire life of a planet, in the laboratory. And so, at first, we
experimented merely with solitary specimens or colonies of animals.

"But on the Pygmy Planet, we have watched the life of a world--the
whole panorama of evolution--"

* * * * *

"It seems too wonderful!" Larry muttered. "Could Dr. Whiting actually
decrease his size and become a dwarf?"

"No trick at all," Agnes assured him. "All you have to do is stand in
the violet beam, to shrink. And move over in the red one, when you
want to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Whiting to the Pygmy
Planet."

"Been--" Larr