Part 2

Were these luminescent violet pellets a diminishing drug?... A fly was walking on the white counterpane of Lea's bed. Carter watched it as it flew and landed on the tabletop under the lamp.

"Don't move, Lea," he murmured. "I'll see if I can get that fly to eat some." He laid one of the violet pellets in the circle of lamplight. Breathlessly he and the girl watched. Perhaps the violet luminescence carried an alluring smell, for presently the fly crawled to the pellet.

"It did! It ate some, Lea! Watch it now!"

The fly was standing motionless. For a breathless instant fear stabbed into Carter. Suppose this were the enlarging drug, the same as the other save a different color. That fly, getting large, might dart away. In a moment it might be too large to kill. Still growing, it would burst the room, wreck the house.... With the flash of terrified thoughts, Carter raised his hand to try and kill the motionless insect. But he stopped.

"Look! It is smaller!" Lea murmured.

With wings still folded it was crawling in a wavering little circle near the pellet. And visibly it was diminishing in size. Already the tiny pellet seemed gigantic beside it. Silently Lea and Carter stared. The fly was a tiny black midge now, swiftly crawling, but moving so slowly on the polished tabletop.

"Can you still see it, Lea?" Carter blinked; bent down. It seemed that the insect already was beyond his sight.

"Yes. I see it."

And then it had vanished. Not gone. They knew it was still there; dwindling; soon it would be beyond the reach of any microscope....

For a moment, in the silent little bedroom, Carter and the girl stared at each other, overwhelmed by the momentousness of their discovery.

"You want to go back to your own world, Lea?" he murmured at last. "You can do it now--with this."

"Yes--yes! That is what I shall do." Her eyes were shining. Her whole little figure was trembling. Swiftly she gathered up the pellets, replaced them in the vial. "Your father shall have no chance to destroy them," she declared defiantly. "They are mine, not his."

"If you go, I'm going with you," Carter exclaimed suddenly. His heart was pounding; a band seemed binding his chest. There is no one who can face the Unknown without a thrill of excitement, and fear.

"And leave this your world?" she murmured. "Your father and sister--they who love you just as my people love me--"

"I can come back to them. The journey--"

"The journey, it can be very long and very dangerous--"

"Not so dangerous for me as for you, Lea." He seized her by her slender shoulders and stared earnestly down into her eyes. "Look here, do you want me to come?" he demanded. "Not because I can help you--I don't mean only that. Do you want me to come?"

For an instant it seemed that in the limpid depths of her eyes a mist was gathering. Then her face turned whimsical; her mouth twisted into a little smile as she cocked her head and gazed at him slantwise from behind lowered lashes.

"That is for you to think for yourself," she murmured. "I could not stop you coming if I would. Is that not so?"

"It damn sure is," he agreed. Again he lowered his voice, with a swift glance at the bedroom door. "I don't think I'll say anything about this to father and Alice," he added softly. "Just leave them a message that I'll be right back. No use starting anything, you know."

"And you will come back soon to them? You will thank them for that they have both been so very kind to me here?"

"Sure I will. Why, Lea, we're not going far. Only into the garden, to the sundial's pointer. Why, if you look at it like that, we're not going maybe even an eighth of an inch beneath the surface of that metal pointer!"

He met Lea, a short time later, out in the moonlit garden. They had come furtively down through the silent house. He was wearing his bathing suit, with rubber-soled sneakers on his feet from which he had removed the metal eyelets. Lea was dressed as he had first seen her, in her short gray-blue ragged little garment. The same wild, strange little girl of another world--and now he stared with his heart racing, and he put his hands on her shoulders.

"I'm glad you're not getting away from me," he said unsteadily.

"We should stand by the sundial," she murmured. "We take the drug now?"

"All right," he agreed. They had divided the two drugs, so that each of them carried a vial of both violet and white pellets. "Now listen carefully, Lea," he directed. "Above everything we must keep together. Not only in space--keep close beside each other, I mean--but we must be sure and keep together in size also. We must always take identical amounts of the drug. And take them at identical times."

"That I understand." She had made this trip before; outwardly at least, she was far less excited than himself. "One pellet first, you think?"

"Yes. Until--until we see what happens." He took one of the luminous violet pellets in his palm. A pungent aromatic odor wafted up from it. "Ready, Lea?"

He put the pellet into his mouth and hastily swallowed it. He was conscious of a sickish sweet taste; a burning constriction of his mouth and throat. Then his senses reeled with a dizzying swoop.

* * * * *

He and Lea were clinging together; he felt himself staggering a little. He opened his eyes. The patched black and silver scene of the rock garden was blurred; swaying. Then his sight clarified. The scene steadied. But then he realized that everything was moving--the dim trees, the garden hedge, the little paths and rocks, all very slowly expanding, heightening, widening. And he felt the movement under his feet. With a soft, crawling, shifting, the ground was moving outward, expanding under the soles of his shoes. It drew his feet slowly apart, so that he had to take a staggering step to readjust them.

"Heavens, Lea--it's weird."

She steadied him. "It will seem not so bad in a moment."

One may almost get used to anything. His senses presently were steady. And he knew that all the motion he was seeing was only an optical effect. Nothing was changing save himself and Lea as they dwindled. Amazing scene! The motion of the landscape had accelerated now--soundless expansion of everything within his vision. Only Lea beside him remained seemingly unchanged. To each of us, himself is the center of the Universe. Always throughout all the weird journey, Carter conceived himself his normal six foot height--and all the world around him seemed getting larger.

He had taken a step away from Lea on the unsteady ground. Awed, he stood gazing at the crawling movement of the expanding garden. The trees near at hand already had drawn back; their interlocking branches were strangely high over his head. Beyond a line of huge mossy rocks, forty feet away now when it should have been twenty, he could see the moonlit line of giant hedge. To the left, the moonlight glinted on a great pool of rippling water, with tremendous lily pads and a great line of mossy boulders along the bank--a line which was shifting backward and expanding upward, steadily, as he stared.

Gigantic garden. Why, he could hardly see across it now. A forest of giant trees towered into the sky near its distant lower end.

"George! The sundial!" He felt Lea tugging at him. "We must go--"

"Good Heavens, we've got to climb up there," he gasped. He seized her hand; ran with her. The rocky garden path was broad as a road. The flaring top of the sundial was seven or eight feet above the ground when they got there. Frantically he lifted her up and leaped after her. She pulled at him; tumbled him over the brink. Panting, they lay on the great circular spread of uneven concrete, with the brink down to the moonlit ground beyond its curving edge, close beside them. Beneath him he could feel the concrete turning rougher and shifting outward in all directions. There were sharp jagged points on it now. Then he stared down over the edge. It was an astonishing abyss, sixty feet at least, down to a spread of moonlit rippled lake, which was the lily pool!

He had helped Lea to her feet when abruptly they thought of the sundial pointer. In the center of the circular moonlit spread of concrete the metal pointer stood gleaming, fifty feet away. It was a triangle of metal standing on edge, with its top sloping steeply upward--a slope perhaps thirty feet long now, up to an apex ten feet high. Swiftly they walked toward it. Within a moment, around them was a huge porous plain of jagged rocks gleaming with moonlight. The circular lip of the abyss everywhere was receding. There was only a silvery sheen of darkness beyond it now. Overhead, far up, a single gigantic tree branch still was visible, blurred in the moonlight.

* * * * *

Then they reached the sundial pointer. Its apex towered twenty feet high now; the lower end of its upper sloping edge already was a foot or two above the ragged, porous ground. Carter, standing at the end of the pointer which in another moment was waist high, gazed up a six-foot wide slope of metal which rose steeply into the moonlight. Ten feet or so up the slope there was a depression like a little gully gouged out of the metallic rock.

"That is the place," Lea said.

"All right. We'd better get up there at once."

He lifted her up to the bottom of the slope. Together, up a great jagged expanding ramp which presently was twenty feet wide, arduously they climbed upward. Inexorable expansion! New spaces every moment were opening up beneath their feet. A tiny rift in the jagged metal ground, in a moment was a little gully. Metal stones were apparent now, and tiny pits into which one might thrust a finger. The edge of the slope chanced to be beside Carter; and he gazed down from here on the top of the pointer--down to the concrete circular top of the sundial. Hundreds of feet down there, a vast, shining moonlit surface spread out now to the blurred horizon! Huge pits, gullies, ravines were inky black. On the jagged spires and little butte-tops the moonlight was molten silver. It was a weird, naked scene of gray and yellow-white rocks, fantastic as a Lunar landscape!

Then just for a moment, with mental viewpoint changed, Carter envisaged the actuality. How big, compared to his original six-foot stature, was he now? A sixteenth of an inch perhaps? If his father were here in the garden, bending close over the sundial pointer with a light, he might still be able to see him and the girl as they struggled up the sloping narrow top edge of the sundial pointer!

Amazing how nothing is absolute, but wholly comparative to something else! He had told Lea that they were not going very far! Only from the house to the sundial in the garden. But, based on his present size, his father and Alice off there in the house now, were at least sixty or seventy miles away!

"This is the valley," Lea panted. "I can recognize now. It almost closed upon me as I grew large. I can remember climbing up to here."

The edges of the giant upward slope had drawn away, so that with tumbled boulders intervening, Carter could no longer see them. He and Lea were in a depression, like a huge cauldron with its scooped-out bottom almost level--a place a hundred feet in diameter. Steadily the crawling expansion of all the scene continued. It seemed a uniform rate of expansion now.

"That pellet lasts a long time, Lea." He tried to grin at her. "Don't you suppose its effect is about over?"

"Oh, no! There is a great distance yet."

Distance; size! Meaningless terms. He and Lea--as his father would view it--were not going very far in terms of distance! Just two tiny creatures, almost too small to be seen, struggling on the one-eighth-inch-thick top of the sundial pointer!

"You say we go into a valley?" he suddenly demanded. "I don't see any valley."

"This one," the girl said.

A few feet from them there was a rift, like a little crescent slash. A foot wide and twice as deep, it began here and curved off into the distance. But presently it was a gully--a ragged, curving little canyon fifty feet wide with broken walls that towered above them as they went into it.

"I climbed out from here," Lea said. "I am sure it was just about here where nearly I was crushed. But it looks so very different now." She was puzzled as she gazed about them--gazed at what now was a broad, curving valley with great mountainous sides towering up into the luminous darkness overhead.

"Look here," he said, "I'm getting the hang of this. The secret is not to wait until you're too small before going anywhere. Which way next?"

She was still puzzled. And then she brightened. "Why, it is right here. I see it now."

It was a steeply descending little chasm. It had been a mere crack a moment ago so that she had not recognized it. Now it was a ten-foot rift, with a bottom smooth as black marble--a slide steeply descending into darkness.

Carter peered dubiously. "How far down is it?"

"Not far. I was so big, I jumped up just as these walls almost closed upon me."

He and the girl were very much smaller than that now. They lay down, feet first, at the top of the slide. For a moment he hesitated. How far down would it be for them in this size? But every moment of hesitation was making that worse!

"All right, Lea. Here we go."

Half sliding, half climbing, they started. The smooth, marble-like slide had roughened. Little stones began sliding with them. "Easy!" he gasped. "Don't go too fast!"

He clutched her; they slid together a dozen feet; wildly scrambled to a stop. Then Lea lost her foothold. He gripped at her, and lost his own. Then they were bumping, rolling with a clatter of loosened stones coming after them. And then the terrified Carter was aware of a fall. And a rock struck his head with a bursting roar of light as his senses slid off into the soundlessness of oblivion....

* * * * *

He came to himself with the knowledge that Lea was holding him, kneeling beside him in a luminous darkness. "Oh, you are all right now?" she murmured anxiously.

"Yes. I guess so." Dizzily he sat up. "What happened?"

"We fell."

"You--it didn't hurt you?"

"No. I guess not much."

The action of the drug had worn off. As his head cleared he saw that the rocks were motionless; the ground on which he sat at last was steady. Around them now was a great void of luminous darkness with an undulating landscape of naked rocks dimly visible. In a moment it seemed to Carter that his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. He could see, far away in the distance where the ground rose up seemingly to meet the sky.

"Shall we take another pellet now, Lea?" he suggested at last.

"All right," she agreed.

Again they took the drug; and gazed appraisingly about them as the luminous, naked landscape crawled and shifted with its outward, upward motion. Tremendous journey downward into smallness! Carter had had no conception of the immense new distances which would open before them as they dwindled. For another hour, then two hours--three hours perhaps--they ran, and walked and climbed downward. Lea, with judgment, perception and memory far greater than any Earth-girl could have, had remarked well the main features of her upward climb, so that now she could recognize them. But more often than not, the way was obvious--by mathematical law, it was usually the first large aperture to open near them. Soon Carter was nimbly alert to get into it before it was too large, so that often a step or two downward, or a drop of six feet or so, would represent a long and dangerous descent if they had waited until they were smaller.

Again the drug wore off. "Shall we rest again?" he suggested.

She assented, and he made her lie with her head cushioned by his lap. Around them the phosphorescent darkness showed distant wilds of barren wastes. It was a ragged plateau here, with giant cliffs in the distance that rose thousands of feet against the blurred purple sky. He and Lea had jumped down from those cliffs only a little while ago--and it had been a drop of only waist high.

Poor little Lea.... No wonder she had been terrified when she made this weird journey alone! Was she asleep now? He sat gazing drowsily down at her head on his lap; her delicate little profile, with eyes closed, her pale-gold hair framing her face, never had seemed so beautiful as now with the glowing phosphorescent of the rocks upon it. The luminous light made her delicate skin take on an added opalescent look. How beautiful she was! She would be radiant down there among her own people. They would be very glad to see her. That young fellow Artone--he no doubt would be especially glad to see her. She had said that Artone was handsome and courageous. She was very fond of him, no doubt....

Perhaps Carter himself had dozed a little, here with his back against a rock. His fingers were entwined in a lock of Lea's pale-gold hair which he had been caressing. And suddenly it seemed that he heard something moving near them. It snapped him into startled alertness.

"Lea, wake up!" he whispered. He shook her a little. "Lea--"

"Oh--yes, George?"

"Quiet! Not so loud! I thought I heard something!"

He held her against him as she sat up-right. Staring over her shoulder, he could see nothing but the tumbled spread of crags around them. Then the sound came again--a scratching, scuttling tread as though something gigantic were scampering on the rocks.

"George--" Lea faintly screamed. Her hand pressed her breast in terror as she shrank back against him. From around a nearby boulder a tremendous insect had come scuttling--a monstrous, reddish oblong thing, with a pinched body twenty feet in length and crooked jointed legs. With huge waving feelers, it stood for an instant motionless. Its great compound eyes, like clusters of tiny lanterns, glared balefully.

And then without warning it came lunging at them!

* * * * *

Carter and the girl scrambled to their feet. The monstrous insect came with scuttling, scratching tread. Its antennæ, waving from the top of its ugly round head, furiously lashed. The mandibles of its great jaws worked as though with anticipation of devouring these tiny victims.

"Lea--this way--jump--"

They scurried sidewise. It flashed to Carter that they must take the drug--the enlarging drug--grow large to fight this horrible adversary. But there was no time now to get out the vial. Frantically they darted behind a little group of rocks. The huge red insect, like a charging bull, went past them. Then, fifty feet away, it stopped; reared up on its two hind legs as though puzzled. The luminous radiation from the rocks showed it more plainly now--long bulging body with six crooked legs; body pinched in the middle grotesquely like a spindly waist so small that it seemed as though the twenty-foot body might break in half.

"It doesn't see us, George--"

"Quiet!"

They crouched among the rocks. There seemed no place else they could hide. Could they out-distance the horrible thing in a straightaway run? Carter did not think so; certainly he did not dare try it. He was fumbling with the drug-vial now. And then the monstrous insect saw them! It whirled; dropped to its six legs. The two great compound eyes again were glaring; and now on the top of its flattened, smooth-shelled head, near the sockets of the waving feelers, three other little eyes were visible--gleaming spots of light.

"Here, Lea--take these pellets--quickly--"

The giant insect was coming forward again, more slowly this time as though cautiously to stalk its tiny prey. Carter dropped two of the pellets into the trembling girl's extended palm; and took two himself. They were the violet ones--the diminishing drug. In the panic of the moment he could not select the others. His head reeled as he took the double dose, but he clung to Lea. In the swaying phantasmagoria of the luminous scene, he was aware that the monstrous scuttling thing again was charging head on. The rocks here were swaying, enlarging with a new acceleration, the spaces between them rapidly opening up.

In those horrible seconds, there was nothing Carter could think of to do but fling himself and the girl flat on the ground, squeezing into an opening which a moment ago would have been too small for them. Vaguely he was aware of the sound of the monster's claws as they scratched on the rocks. It came with a rush. It was a monster thirty or forty feet long in a moment. Carter had a dim vision of the broad under surface of the tremendous body as it scrambled almost directly over him--scuttling headlong over the clump of rocks among which its dwindling prey were crouching.

"Now, Lea--up! Run!"

They staggered over the swaying, outward-crawling ground. In a moment Carter turned to look back. Far behind them in the glowing darkness, the insect again had reared up, vainly searching for them--a titan thing now, its reddish body looming a hundred feet or more above the ground. For a second or two it showed etched against the blur of sky, its eyes glaring like distant lighthouse lamps. Then an expanding cluster of nearby rocks intervened and they could no longer see it.

"We've got to be careful, Lea. Do things quickly or we'll get lost in size." With the attacking monster gone, Carter's wits came back to make him aware of a new danger. They had not intended to take this double dose of the diminishing drug. Gripping the girl, Carter stood unsteadily, peering around at the swaying scene. The apparent enlarging of the landscape was greatly accelerated, so swift that it was dizzying. But he could still recognize the main familiar features. Here was the rift into which they had determined they must go....

* * * * *

The doubled drug, though accelerated in action, seemed to last no longer than a smaller dose. But it was two hours or more of wild scrambling. Then at last Carter was aware by the visible slowing of the expanding scenes, that again it was wearing off.

"Well, thank God for that, Lea," he murmured. "Don't let's try anything like that again."

They were resting, preparing to take more of the drug, when on the bottom of Lea's ragged short shirt Carter saw a tiny ant crawling, evidently disturbed by the movement. He stared; then he reached, squashed it between thumb and forefinger.

"Just an ant," he said. "But those red ones can bite. You must have gotten it on you in the garden when we left." A sudden thought made his jaw drop. A red ant--an eighth of an inch long maybe--six legs--a body pinched in the middle....

"Why, good Lord, Lea," he gasped. "There could have been more red ants on us. One of them dropped off while we were getting small--then while we slept it found us and attacked us! That was the monster that nearly got us!"

Just an ant! What an amazing difference size could make!

Surely they still had much to learn about this weird traveling!

Carter could see that the cliffs here were honeycombed with tunnel-passages and cave-mouths. After resting a while they took more of the drug and went on.

They merely touched the pellet to the tongue. The dim landscape began slowly opening; and at intervals they repeated the tiny doses of the drug. They were walking forward, Lea eagerly leading now. To Carter it seemed that they had mounted a hill, topped a rise--emerged at last into the open. He stood amazed. The void of sky here suddenly showed infinite distance--a gigantic black firmament. In a great dome, myriads of stars were glittering--gems strewn upon the black velvet of the heavens, with faint effulgent patches of remote nebulæ, star-dust strewn across the sky!

"There--the sky of my world," Lea murmured. "We need more of the drug now, George. Still, we are so very big--it would be dangerous to go forward in a size like this."