The Girl in the Golden Atom

A chemist peers through a microscope of his own making into a scratch on his mother's wedding ring and sees, deep inside a single atom of gold, a girl sitting beside a pool. He cannot forget her. So he invents drugs to shrink himself, vanishes into the ring, and returns with a tale of Lylda and her gentle people of Arite, a city menaced by raiders.

Then he goes back in, leaving his four friends at the Scientific Club, the Doctor, the Banker, the Big Business Man and the Very Young Man, with his formulas and a promise. When years pass without a word, they strip, swallow the drugs, and set off into a world that grows vaster with every step.