The Velvet Feet

By Ross Gallun

Originally appearing in Planet Comics issue #63 in 1949.

I should have known better, of course! I'm not exactly an amateur at these matters, and my scientific reputation is a sound one, founded on solid achievement in the field of bio-physics. But even the best of us blunder at times. And, after all, there's one thing you must say for me after reading this—when I make a mistake I don't indulge in half measures. I go all the way. Even to the brink of death! 

It happened on a Thursday afternoon. Catherine had been working with me in the lab, and we were discussing, in general terms, the possible success or failure of my current experiment. 

Catherine said: "Imagine—the great Harry Cawthorne stumped! I can hardly believe it." 

She can be a sweet girl at times, can Catherine, but there are other times when she gets on the nerves. This was one of those times. She was needling me because, up until now, I had failed dismally in my efforts to find a formula which would cause shrinkage of the basic micro-cell in living tissue. Already I had solved the problem of expanding the same cells and had produced a form of giantism in animals and plants. I could, had I wanted, have also produced the same results with human beings, but I will never, knowingly, tamper so with the bodies of men and women. Now, reading the foregoing line, I have to laugh a little bitterly. It reflects, but how ironically, how I felt about matters before it happened. 

As I say, I had been trying to shrink the basic cells, and to bring about a dwarf species of plants and animals. Over three hundred experiments and still failure. It is small wonder, then, that her remarks rankled Scientists, in spite of their reputations for calm and stolidity, can sometimes be as giddy as opera singers. I blew up. 

"Shut that mouth of yours," I told her. "I'm running things in this lab. You're here to assist me, that's all! When I want any of your cheap advice I'll ask you for it. Now get back to work—we don't stop tonight until this culture is completed." 

Catherine stared at me. She flushed until her face was a beet red. "I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean to..." 

The rage was still burning in me. Rage, actually, at myself. I would have struck her had I dared. Instead, in my anger, "I kicked the cat! Poor old Tom, who at the moment was rubbing his arched back against my leg! 

Tom sailed across the floor like a furry kite. I had kicked hard. When he stopped skidding he spat at me, every hair on end, and then ran to hide beneath a table. 

"Harry!" Catherine was angry now. "You're acting like a spoiled school boy. The idea-kicking a cat, a pet, because your old experiment isn't panning out. You should be ashamed of yourself!" 

I was ashamed. My anger left me as swiftly as it had come. I picked up the open test tube on which I had been working and handed it across the table to her. It must have happened then, I've already admitted that I should have known better than to handle the stuff so carelessly, but I was nervous over having made such a fool of myself, and I didn't notice the open glass of water standing on the table. One drop, which would have been more than enough, of the culture must have fallen from the side of the test tube. Must have fallen into the glass of water. And neither of us noticed it! 

I told Catherine I was sorry for acting such a fool. "Wait till I feed the mice and lock them up, then we'll quit for the day," I said. "Maybe go out and get something to eat. I guess I owe you a steak. Guess I owe Tom something, too. I'll bring the old fellow some liter tomorrow when I come.” 

All this time I was busy gathering up the white mice from the glassed cage on the table, and putting them back into their regular cages on the walls. Of Tom there was no sign, and I suspected him of sulking beneath the table and awaiting a chance to claw me in revenge. I could not know, then, that It would happen in a very few minutes. 

When I had finished I turned to see Catherine drinking from the glass of water. She extended a small tin box toward me. "Have an aspirin, Harry. It might help. I worked up a little headache this afternoon." 

Without really wanting or needing the aspirin I accepted it, and washed it down with a swig of the tepid water. 

It began to happen! 

Catherine screamed "Harry! Something is wrong! I—I'm growing smaller! Oh, Harry, help me. Yah—your formula!" 

Of course. My formula! I'd hit it at last, without ever knowing, and a drop of the stuff had fallen into the glass of water. We drank. And now It was happening. Such is the wonder of the scientific mind that I could observe, with interest, and without any particular fear, the thing that was happening to us. Although knowing that exactly the same changes were occurring in me, I was fascinated by the sight of Catherine. 

She stopped shrinking perhaps two minutes after her first outcry. Only just in time, I must say, because when the micro-cellular reaction ceased she was a bare three inches tall. She was standing close to me, fear etched on her face and tears in her eyes. I wondered that she was so little changed, except for size, and then realized that it was because I was also only three inches tall. Relatively she was the same as before. 

What an idiot I must have sounded. I said: "Don't worry, Catherine. It'll be all right. We'll just have to spend the night like this and, when Carl comes to work in the morning he'll prepare some of the giantism formula and we'll grow again. Really it's quite a lark—remember Alice in Wonderland..." 

She was not listening. She was staring over my shoulder. Her mouth was a round, red O of horror! I have never seen such mortal terror before. 

She screamed again. "Harry! The cat!" 

Yes! The cat. Good old Tom, whom I had kicked only moments before. I know, now, how our first ancestors must have felt when they stared up into the yawning jaws of some giant prehistoric monster! Tom was huge! Tom was immense! His yellow eyes were shining pools of hatred, A red tongue licked and licked out of a pink cavern set with feral white fangs. A rank, sour odor came from him, an odor I had never noticed before. His tail twitched, and even as I stood frozen to the spot he made a movement with one paw and unsheathed long pale claws. 

Tom crouched, moving his body in the sinuous motion common to the great cats before they spring for the kill. Saber-toothed tiger, I thought! And we were completely at his mercy. Oddly enough, my brain was functioning perfectly—I even thought of how I had handled the white mice just before IT happened. The scent of those mice was upon me now, which was in itself enough to spell my doom. 

Catherine screamed once more and flung herself against me. My own urge for survival came flooding back. Perhaps there was still a chance. I gathered the girl in my arms and began to run. Around the leg of the table, looming like a giant redwood tree, and across the slick floor. Behind us was the stealthily pad of feet. At any moment I expected to feel the sharp claws biting into my flesh. 

Tom would play with us, of course. Hold us in his mouth, never biting quite hard enough to kill. He would lie, snarling softly, with his great paw over us for a time. Perhaps he would let us run away, once or twice, waiting until we had gone some little distance. Then, with one great leap, he would have us again. I wondered if I would squeal like a mouse when I died! 

I saw the broom then. A common kitchen broom. It loomed like a forest of bamboo. In a moment, still carrying Catherine, who had fainted now, I darted into the protecting thicket of broom straw. I burrowed as deeply as I could and waited for the cat's next move. It soon came. With a rending, crunching sound—a paw came into the broom forest, curving cruelly, bending and probing and seeking. A dozen times those claws almost hooked into my flesh. At last Tom seemed to give up. I dared not peer out of our haven, but I knew he had not gone far. Soon I heard the thunder of his purr. He was watching—and waiting! 

What a night that was. Catherine regained consciousness soon, and we comforted one another as best we might, while praying for morning and the arrival of my other assistant, Carl. Several times Tom came back to sniff and poke at the broom, and it was plain that he was puzzled. We lived! I would not have written this otherwise. When Carl came in ,early, coughing and yawning, we had another bad moment or two. When his trousered legs stood like two blue serge pillars, close to the broom, Catherine and myself took a deep breath and ran for it. The fuzzy stuff of his clothing made hard climbing, but we made it, climbing for our lives, and the claws of the cat missed us by a tenth of an inch. 

What use to recount Carl's surprise, his yell, his first conviction that he was going mad, when we appeared on his shoulder. I screamed into his ear and he afterward said it was the faintest of whispers. But he mixed the proper formula and brought an eye dropper, and soon we regained our normal size. 

Catherine quit immediately. But not before she had slapped my face. And a funny thing about Tom—he seems to have dissappeared! Hmm—I wonder... 

THE END