When I last wrote, I was living in a state of awful quiescence upon a planet of the star Delni-I do not know yet what it would be called here, or whether it is even existent now for us. And it is a story a thousand times more fantastic, more impossible, than the story of my journey. Who in the universe could have hoped against all the knowledge of insuperable fate which had come to me? Who could hope to overcome Time and Space, to recapture that which was gone forever? Yet it is just this that I have done-or something very like it. NEVER hoped-never dreamed, when I wrote the tale you have read, that I should ever see the earth again. He is there alone in utter desolation and despair, ever pining for those he left behind, whom he can never hope to see again. He does not understand their language and cannot understand their customs. He cannot find it and does not reach the Earth, but lands instead on a strange planet, with strange inhabitants, so far advanced in intellect that he feels like a savage among them. He rages and fumes around for some time and finally decides to decrease to a size small enough to enable him to go back to earth and forthwith sets out to find the same nebula through which he originally left the Earth. When he awakes, he gets into a state of utter despair, for instead of being on the Earth, he finds himself on some unknown planet. He swims ashore, but he is so exhausted, he falls right off to sleep. Then he suddenly finds himself coming up out of water-floating. The velocity of his motion is so great that he travels for hundreds of miles more before he can stop. But he has traveled so fast and is so far away that he becomes panic-stricken and decides to press the "stop" button. He presses the right button and immediately begins to diminish in size. After the first rush of excitement, Kirby becomes alarmed about it all and decides to come back to Earth. He begins to increase in size and soon is so large that he just naturally slips away from the Earth and goes off into ultra-planetary space.
He is fitted with an elastic suit, specially made for the purpose of keeping out intense cold or heat and retaining an even degree of temperature.
It is put into operation by merely pressing the middle button on this little machine, which is attached with straps, over his chest. Somewhat even to his own surprise, Professor Martyn invents a machine whereby anyone can at will, either increase or diminish in size, and Kirby agrees-with foreboding in his heart-to test the machine. PROFESSOR MARTYN was an inventor of genius, and Kirby-one of the very few friends he had-was always a willing test object for many of his inventions.
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