Jag letar efter en gammal novell som jag läste i mitten av sextiotalet.
"Mikroskopiska jättarna" , en kort historia av Paul Ernst , även svaret på denna fråga ; publiceras först i Spännande Wonder Stories , oktober 1936 (tillgänglig på Internetarkiv ); återtryckt i Förtrollande historier , maj 1948 (finns även på Internetarkiv ) och i flera antologier; kanske en av dessa omslag kommer att ringa en klocka. Här är en recension av Everett F. Bleiler på Science-fiction: The Gernsback Years :
Time: 1941, toward the end of the Great War.
Strange happenings in the 45,500-foot-deep copper mine. At the lowest level the concrete turns transparent and little two-foot-tall density-men, obviously unfriendly, walk through the stone and concrete. They are equipped with disintegrators. The narrator, after seeing his friend chopped up, blows up the mine.
Det handlade om män som gick in i den djupaste gruvan som någonsin grävde
Up in the Lake Superior region we had gone down thirty-one thousand feet for it. Then, in answer to the enormous prices being paid for copper, we sank a shaft to forty thousand five hundred feet, where we struck a vein of almost pure ore.
för att kolla något problem
Inte ett problem (först) men en vetenskaplig upptäckt:
"We've uncovered the greatest archaeological find since the days of the Rosetta Stone!" he announced bluntly. "Down in the new low level. I want to phone the Smithsonian Institution at once. There may be a war on, but the professors will forget all about war when they see this!"
Jim Belmont was apt to be over-enthusiastic. Under thirty, a tall, good-looking chap with light blue eyes looking lighter than they really were in a tanned, lean face, he sometimes overshot his mark by leaping before he looked.
"Wait a minute!" I said. "What have you found? Prehistoric bones? Some new kind of fossil monster?"
"Not bones," said Belmont, fidgeting toward the control board that dialed our private number to Washington on the radio telephone. "Footprints, Frayter. Fossil footsteps."
"You mean men's footprints?" I demanded, frowning. The rock formation at the forty-thousand-foot level was age-old. The Pleistocene era had not occurred when those rocks were formed. "Impossible."
"But I tell you they're down there! Footprints preserved in the solid rock. Men's footprints! They antedate anything ever thought of in the age of Man."
och hitta små "män" som kunde ses när de gick in i minens väggar.
As the faint, luminous spot in the concrete grew larger it also took on recognizable form. And the form that appeared in the depths of the stuff was that of a human!
Human? Well, yes, if you can think of a thing no bigger than an eighteen-inch doll as being human.
A mannikin a foot and a half high, embedded in the concrete! But not embedded—for it was moving! Toward us!
Varelserna kommer ut i gruvan där en av dem skjuts av en gruvarbetare.
The mannikin pointed the tiny rod at Belmont, and Belmont shot. I didn't blame him. I had my own gun out and trained on the other two. After all, we know nothing of the nature of these fantastic creatures who had come up from unguessable depths below. We couldn't even approximate the amount of harm they might do, but their eyes told us they'd do whatever they could to hurt us.
An exclamation ripped from my lips as the roar of the shot thundered down the tunnel.
The bullet had hit the little figure. It couldn't have helped but hit it; Belmont's gun was within a yard of it, and he'd aimed point-blank.
But not a mark appeared on the mannikin, and he stood there apparently unhurt!
Belmont fired again, and to his shot I added my own. The bullets did the little men no damage at all.
Varelserna griper gruvarbetaren och drar honom in i stenmurarna och försvinner med honom.
The little men had killed Belmont as a specimen, just as a man might kill a rare insect. They wanted to take him back to their own deep realms and study him. And they were trying to drag him through the solid concrete. It offered only normal resistance to their own compacted tons of weight, and it didn't occur to them that it would to Belmont's body.
Det var inkluderat i en antologi som liknar Star och Avons samlingar och förmodligen trycktes på 1940-talet.
Om det var en paperback, var det förmodligen Science Fiction Terror Tales , redigerad av Groff Conklin .