The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds

Talbot spots a bird with metallic feathers at an abandoned mine near Oracle, Arizona. His assistant Manuel shares his unease, and a strange mechanical sound rises from the shaft. Soon the mystery spreads beyond this lonely spot: floating globes scatter seeds across the countryside, and an extraordinary growth cuts off roads and threatens towns. What begins as a puzzling encounter becomes an emergency drawing the attention of national authorities.

Professor Reubens offers another view of this danger through a modified microscope that permits communication with a world inside an atom. Its inhabitants are intelligent birds whose scientific work opens the possibility of passage between dimensions. The contrast between a remote desert mine and a miniature laboratory gives this science fiction tale its distinctive scale. Readers interested in early magazine fiction will find speculative machinery, escalating public alarm and a discovery whose consequences extend far beyond the workshop.