The giant world

STOLEN INTO SMALLNESS

"Life is pleasant here," said Brett. "Pleasant, and indolent. It does not make for progress, but it is happiness—and I'm beginning to wonder if that is not best, after all."

We were sitting in an arcaded passage on the roof of the home where Brett lived. Crescent archways opened to the roof, where stood banks of vivid flowers, with a vista of the city beyond. The building seemed of baked earth, rough like adobe, and of dull orange color. It was a two-storied, crescent-shaped structure, set upon a wide street-corner near the edge of the city. The home of Leela's father. I had never forgotten Leela—the girl Brett and Martt had rescued from the giant on their first visit here. Brett had fallen in love with her. It was she whom tonight he was to marry. And this was her father's home—Greedo, the old musician.

"I have lived here with them six months," Brett said.

Martt exclaimed, "Six months! Why Brett, you have been gone four years!"

We had miscalculated the Time-change of the vehicle. Our purpose had been to strike this realm of the Inner Surface at a point in Time which to Brett would be four years. But now we found it six months only.

Brett smiled. "I'm glad you didn't postpone your arrival. You've no idea how pleased I am to have you—tonight of all nights."

We had not yet seen Leela, or her father. Brett said that Leela would be up presently to greet us. The city was excited over our coming. A crowd was gathered in the street before the house; Brett had made them a brief speech; Frannie, Martt and I had stood at the parapet and waved to them.

Then Brett had spoken of a younger sister of Leela's. Her name was Zelea—they called her Zee.

Martt sat up at this. "Where was she when we were here before?"

"Away," said Brett. "She was too young to meet a man then. Only now has she come to be sixteen. You'll like her, Martt. I want you to like her."

"I will," said Martt enthusiastically, "if she's anything like Leela."

"You were telling us about the life here," I suggested. "We always called this land the Inner Surface——"

"Yes," he agreed. "It is concave, like the inner shell of some great, hollow globe. Within the space it encloses——" He gestured to where, through the arcade, a segment of purple, star-filled sky was visible. "All that which we of Earth called the Celestial Universe is enclosed by this concave shell. You would think that this must be a gigantic region——" He smiled again. "It is not. Compared to our present enormous size, I imagine the circumference of this Inner Surface is not unduly great. I don't know. These people have not explored very far. They are not wanderers—they are too indolent, too contented, to wander."

He paused to drink from a shallow receptacle which stood before us, and offered Martt and me what appeared to be arrant cylinders to smoke.

"I have learned a little of the language. Proper names are impossible to translate. But the meaning of their word for this land, I call in English. Romantica. The romantic land. It is, I fancy, about five hundred miles square. Beyond it lie forests and mountains. No one here has ever penetrated them. There are wild beasts, birds, insect life—and fish and reptiles in the water. But they are not dangerous—not aggressive. It is not because of them that these people avoid exploration. It is—just indolence."

"I don't wonder," I said. "This is very peaceful here—I have no desire to do anything in particular." From the city streets a drone of activity floated up to us; but it was almost somnolent.

"It's always like this," said Brett. "Almost no change of seasons—the light always the same. There is no disease here—or very little. Food—grains, and what we would call vegetables, grow abundantly in this rich soil. The trees give milk—even the bark and pulp of them are edible. Life is easy. There is nothing to struggle against.

"Through generations, it has made the people kindly. There is little crime. No struggle for land, or food or clothing. Crimes involving sex——" He gestured. "Wherever humans exist there will be crimes of that origin. But our women here are very sensible, and when a woman does what is right—well, you know, don't you, that most deeds of violence into which men plunge over women have a woman's wrong actions at the bottom of them? There is little of that here, for the women take care that there shall not be.

"So they call their country Romantica. They are not a scientific people. They do not struggle for advancement. Art has taken the place of science. Painting. Sculpture. Music. They have developed music very far. It has a soul here. It speaks—it sings—it seems a living entity. It is—what music ought to be, but seldom is—the pure voice of love, of romance. . . . I was telling you about our country. Most of its population live in villages, and in individual dwellings strewn about the hills. There are but two large cities. This one—the largest—they call Crescent. Or at least their word for it suggests the shape of the lake. The other city is about fifty miles from here"—he gestured again—"off there where you see the line of mountains. They call it Reaf. It's a quaint city. Built largely over the water—rivers there—hot, subterranean rivers which rush underground—under the mountains. They go—who knows where? No one has ever been down them. The mountains are honeycombed with caves, tunnels, passages leading within, and up. Always up. But into them no one has ever penetrated. Legends tell fabulous tales of a great world up there. The giants, we think——"

When Brett and Martt had first come here, giants had appeared. Dwindling giants—strange, savage beings of half-human aspect. They had appeared—no one knew from where. Growing smaller until they were normal size to this realm. Not many had been seen. Some had kept on dwindling; they had grown so small, when attacked, that they had become invisible. At the thought, I moved my foot involuntarily with a shudder of uneasiness. Here on the floor beside me now, men like beasts might be lurking, so small I could not see them. Yet in a moment they might grow to a stature greater than my own. . . .

Men like beasts! . . . And I remembered that, with size gigantic, they had destroyed the third city of Romantica.

Upon Brett's face lay a cloud of apprehension. "We have never heard from them since. It is thought—I think myself—that they came from the subterranean rivers, or through the underground passages of the mountains. I conceive this concave surface upon which we're living to be the inner surface of a shell. It may not be very thick—there at Reaf. Above it—beyond it—up or down are mere comparative terms—beyond it must lie some vastly greater outside world. This whole realm is doubtless within an atom of that greater world. It would be a convex surface up there—with a sky and stars beyond. . . .

"We have never seen the giants since that time when Martt and I rescued Leela. Everyone here seems to have forgotten them——" Brett's voice was heavy with apprehension. "These people are so trustful! They forget so quickly! No one worries. Our rulers here—a venerable man and woman long past the age when death is expected—are so gentle, kindly, that they can not imagine harm coming to their people. They have forgotten the Hill City which the giants destroyed. Trampled upon it! Six or eight giants—they must have been several hundred feet tall—stamping, kicking the building! I've been there—I've seen the ruins—strewn for miles—and with buildings, colonnades and terraces mashed into the ground! There were no more than half a thousand people surviving that destruction of the Hill City—and thousands died. But everyone says now, 'The giants are gone. We are safe.'"

Brett's voice had risen to a swift vehemence. "It's been like living on a volcano to me, all these months. There are no weapons here. My own few flash-cylinders—of what use would a tiny flash of lightning be against beings so gigantic? We've got to do something. For if those giants come again——"

A step sounded in the oval doorway near at hand. Leela stood smilingly, deprecatingly before us.

II

Brett said, "Come here, Leela. This is my sister, and my friend, Frank Elgon. And here's Martt."

Leela advanced hesitantly, her face a wave of color as she met our gazes. She was smaller, and even slighter than Frannie, her figure adorned and revealed by its single, simple garment—more like a short, glistening veil than a dress. Her hair was long and dark, caught by a band at her neck, and flowing free beneath. Her arms and legs were bare. At her wrists, gray-blue bands with small tassels; on her feet, queerly high-heeled wooden sandals, with tasseled thongs crossing on her ankles. The sandals clacked as she walked; her step was mincing, with a suggestion of the Orientals of our Earth.

Brett eyed the sandals with a humorous twinkle. "For why are those, Leela?"

Her blush heightened. "In honor of our guests. I thought you would like them."

With a swift gesture, she stooped, untied the thongs and cast the sandals off. Her feet were very white, small and delicately formed, with rounded, polished nails stained pink. She stood untrammeled, lithe and graceful as a faun.

"I am glad to meet Brett's sister—and his friend. And you, Martt—I am glad to see you again." Her voice was soft as a Latin's. She shook hands with Martt and with me, and returned Frannie's affectionate embrace.

As I saw them together—these two girls of different worlds—I was struck with the dissimilarity of them. Pert, vivacious little Frannie, blue-eyed, fair of hair—brown-skinned from the outdoor life she loved. And Leela—smooth, white skin, dark hair and luminous eyes, a fragile grace to her every movement. None of my words are adequate. There was about her an aura of romance; a strange wild spirit of something for which every man in his soul has a longing; a beauty with a quality ethereal—half human, but half divine.

A twinge of conscience came to me that I—Frank Elgon—could think such thoughts and see such beauty in any girl who was not Frannie.

Leela was saying, "My father would have you come down soon. And Zee is down there—Zee is very much excited, Brett. There is so much to do before tonight——"

Brett's arm was around her. "And you—of course you're not excited, are you, Leela?"

She returned his caress, embarrassed further by his teasing. He added, "We will be down presently."

"Yes," she said; and with a pretty gesture, she left us.

The sandals lay discarded on the floor. Brett gathered them up, regarding them tenderly. "She is so easy to tease, I love to do it. But if you try that with Zee——"

"You shouldn't tease her," said Frannie. "She's a darling. I love her already."

Brett's wedding day! For all his quiet, whimsical teasing of Leela, the love he bore her enveloped him like a shining cloak. Yet his father whom he loved so dearly was dead, and Brett did not know it. I whispered to Martt about it later.

"I think we should not tell him," said Martt. "Not—until we have to."

And we did not. Looking back on it now, how much was to happen to Brett—to Martt, to us all! What fearsome things—danger, desperation, despair—were to be our allotted portion before we even thought again of old Dr. Gryce who was dead!

III

Brett was to be married that evening—a public festival and ceremony over which the whole city was in an anticipatory fever.

"The festival of lights and music," said Brett. "They hold it at periodic times. It is a wonderful sight. It generally includes a marriage—girls find it romantic. Leela selected it for us. Greedo is in charge of it—Leela and Zee always take part in its music. We must go down—they are waiting for us—there is so much for them to do between now and this evening."

"I'll help," said Frannie. "Come on, Martt—I guess you want to meet Zee, don't you?"

IV

We found Leela's father to be a grave, black-robed, kind-faced old man of an age indeterminate. Sixty, or eighty, I could not have told. In vigorous health, evidently. His figure was spare, straight, but not tall. His thick, gray-black hair he wore long to the base of the neck.

He greeted us quietly, with an admirable dignity commanding immediate respect.

"You are a musician," I said, after we had been talking for a time. "Brett has told us something about your music here. It must be very beautiful."

He smiled. "Music is a wonderful thing. It ennobles. There is in it a touch of something beyond our poor human understanding. A touch of—what you call Divinity."

"You speak our language very well," I exclaimed.

"A language is not difficult. All minds are similar—that is why music can make so universal an appeal." His voice was earnest, his eyes sparkling. It was the subject most absorbing to him.

I said, "You teach music——"

He raised a deprecating hand. "Yes. But that is nothing. I teach the fundamentals"—he struck his breast—"the rest comes from within. For myself, I am a mere retailer of sound. A peddler of something someone else has made. The composer—he is the real artist. I have hoped that some day Leela will compose. Brett has promised that he will urge her. . . . Just now, she sings." He twinkled at Leela. "I fear she thinks she sings very well. Pouf! It is nothing! She, too, is only a sound-peddler."

With a burst, Zee entered the room. A smaller replica of Leela. Yet how different! She came like a mountain torrent tumbling from the hillside. Her short, dull-red draperies whirled about her elfin figure. Her dark eyes were blazing. Black hair, flying over her shoulders with her tumultuous entrance.

"Father! That is not so!" She stamped one of her bare feet, then rose on strong, supple toes and whirled half around. The muscles stood out beneath the smooth satin skin of her calves. "Leela, why do you let him say such a thing? You sing beautifully." She whirled back. "And what am I, then?"

The old man was wholly unperturbed. "You, Zee? Why, you are a peddler of movement. Very swift, tempestuous movement, generally." He added to me, "She thinks she is an artist. She is not. She is only a dancer."

V

It was what on Earth would have been termed late evening when we started for the festival. Greedo, with his two daughters, had left half an hour before.

We were dressed now in the fashion of the country. Brett had suggested it; Martt had insisted upon it. I remembered with what a jaunty swagger Martt had worn his clothes upon his return to Earth that other time. He was dressed similarly now. A cloth shirt of glaring green, with a high, rolling collar in front, and low in the back; short trousers very wide and flapping at the knee. The trousers were a lighter green, with dark green stripes; his stockings were tan; and his green shoes were long and pointed. Over his shirt was a short tan jacket, wide-shouldered and with puffed sleeves, and bangles dangling from elbows and wrists. And there was a skirt to the jacket, rolling upward at the waist.

My own costume was in the same fashion; and though it was a sober gray, befitting my more mature years, I felt for a time awkward and foolish in it. But when in the crowded city streets I found that no one seemed particularly to remark me, I soon forgot it.

Brett wore a long cloak; I did not see how he was dressed. Frannie also wore a cloak. Just before leaving she tossed it aside, and stood before me, waiting for my admiration, with her characteristic twinkle, and her pert upflung face daring me to disapprove. Even by contrast with Leela and Zee, to my eyes at least Frannie was very pretty. She wore the single draped garment with silver cords crossed at her breasts to shape her figure; and with banded wrists, and tasseled bands above the knees. Her blond curls were tied with flowing tassels. The whole costume, a gray and blue, with a single deep-blue flower in her hair. And thin, flexible sandals on her little feet.

She eyed me. "Do you like me, Frank?"

"I—why, why—Frannie——" I would have told her then that I loved her, as I had very nearly told her myriad times in ten years past. But who was I to ask the love of any girl? A sorter of planetary messages, poor as a towerman in the lower traffic! "I—why yes, Frannie. Of course I like you. You're—beautiful."

She had a quaint little circular hat, stiff and round, with a dull-red plume and a tassel. We men wore hats of a solidly wooden aspect—low, round crowns and triangular brims. Martt's was sea-green, with tassels all around its brim. But mine and Brett's were sober gray, and unadorned.

We started on foot. The city streets were dim in the luminous twilight. Overhead, the sky with its thin-strewn stars was cloudless. A holiday aspect was everywhere. Crowds of people were in the streets. Young men and girls, gay with laughter. Most of them were cloaked. A vehicle, with runners like a sleigh gliding over the grassy pavement, drawn by a squat, four-legged animal, went by us. It was jammed with girls; one of them leaned out and waved at me. Her slim white arm came down; her hand twitched off my hat, sent it spinning. I caught a glimpse of her face; dark, laughing eyes, a mouth with mocking lips stained red. . . .

The sleigh passed on.

With Brett leading us we turned toward the lake. Most of the crowd seemed to be heading that way. Occasionally we were recognized. Stares of interest at us, the strangers, and cheers for Brett.

He said to me, "They're all very happy, Frank. Like children." I fancied that he sighed—he, for whom this night of all nights should have been his happiest.

In a group, with the swirling merrymakers about us, we made our way to the lake shore. The water was rippled by a gentle night breeze; the stars gleamed on the water surface with tiny silver paths. Boats were here—double canoes with outriders; and a few sailboats, small, single-masted, with triangular and crescent sails.

We found a small canoe; Brett sculled it with a broad-bladed paddle. Other boats were around us. A long canoe with a dozen sweeping paddles shot by us with the racing strokes of its men, and with shouts from its laughing girls. Another, smaller, turned over. Its men swam, and righted it. They climbed aboard, hauling up the girls. The wet draperies clung to them; they came up like dripping, gleeful water-sprites, tossing their black hair. . . . A barge went slowly along, drawn by two canoes. A lighted canopy was over its occupants—a huge, woven garland of flowers. The canopy gleamed with spots of vivid-colored lights.

"The luminous flowers," said Brett. And I saw that the large purple blossoms were gleaming with a purple light—a phosphorescence inherent in them; and red blossoms, like crimson lanterns; and others orange, and green. Music floated upward from the barge, soft and sweet over the water. The tinkle of strings—the voices of girls singing, and men humming with a deeper background of harmony. . . .

A night for love-making. The night romantic. Brett's wedding night—and yet, he had sighed. I knew why, for upon my own heart lay a weight of apprehension, heavier because it was so incongruous. Martt quite evidently did not feel it—he was shouting and laughing constantly with his pleasure. A girl from a neighboring boat tossed him a large, blood-red, glowing blossom. It fell short, went into the water and slowly sank, staining the water with its red light. Martt all but turned us over trying to rescue it.

Frannie, too, seemed gay. I tried to smile; but I felt that it was forced. The depression upon me would not be shaken off. It grew to seem almost sinister. The very atmosphere of happiness around me seemed to intensify it. These merrymakers—in the midst of life. . . . At such a moment as this, death could choose to strike. . . .

"Look!" shouted Martt. "The lights off there—is that where we're going?"

A patch of gay-colored lights gleamed from over the water ahead. "Yes," said Brett. "An island there, where they hold the festival. It's not far."

It was an irregular circular island, a mile perhaps in extent. The lake waters indented it with a hundred tiny bays, inlets, and narrow, placid waterways. We ascended one of them. The surface of the island was gently undulating, and wooded, with mossy dells—nooks arched with the luminous flowers. Nooks for love-making.

The whole island was strewn thick with the flowers; they grew upon tall, single stems—gay-colored lanterns nodding in the breeze. Beneath them were laughing couples; some hidden, sought and found by groups of marauding girls, to seize the man and laughingly whisk him away. And everywhere was music, soft as an echo. . . .

We ascended the narrow waterways, came to a lagoon with a glassy surface wherein a thousand spots of the lantern-flowers were mirrored like colored stars. Near the shore here, beyond a dock at which we landed, was a broad enclosed space with an arcade of the lantern-flowers arching over it. Brilliant with their light. Most of the crowd seemed congregated there—a milling throng on the level floor inside, with liquid strains of music mingling with the shouts and laughter.

"We'll go in there," said Brett. "I'll find seats for you—then I must leave, to join Leela and her father. There is to be a musical program. But first—just Greedo, Zee and Leela, and our marriage. Most of the music comes afterward."

Within the arcade the lights blended into a kaleidoscope of color. All the cloaks were discarded now. Costumes vividly splashed as a painter's palette. Heavy perfumes. And that soft, echoing music. I could not tell its source.

At one end of the room was a raised, canopied platform, with doors behind it. Most of the crowd were choosing low seats, like stools ranged in rows. Brett got us settled.

"I'll leave you now—and meet you over there by the right-hand end of the platform, afterward."

He left us. With Frannie between us, Martt and I sat quiet, watching and listening. We had not long to wait. The light around us began to dim; sliding curtains were obscuring the flowers over us. A hush fell upon the crowd. The soft music was stilled. A hush of expectancy.

The arcade was in gloom. The light on the platform intensified. A deep-red glow, with a single spot focused upon a small, raised dais. Into the red glow came Greedo, robed unobtrusively in black. He was carrying a crescent frame of strings. He seated himself, and in the silence swept his hands across the strings. His fingers plucked them like a harp; and then his other hand slid upon them. The staccato notes rippled clear as a mountain rill, soft, muted to seem an echo of music. And blended with them was a low, crying melody—a fragment, then silence.

Leela had appeared. She crossed through the red glow, mounted the dais, and stood in the silver light—Leela, robed to her feet in a misty silver veil through which her figure vaguely was outlined. She stood there drooping—a Naiad veiled in the fountain mist. . . . Then Greedo's music sounded. And Leela sang.

It was like nothing I had ever heard before. Music, toned strangely, with strange intervals to make it neither major nor minor. Not happiness, nor yet sadness. A wistfulness. A longing. But with the promise of fulfilment.

I listened, breathlessly; and the arcade around me faded. Greedo's figure in the shadow was forgotten. There was only the white figure of Leela; her face, the purity of girlhood, her eyes half closed, her lips parted with the song. Nothing else—save myself. I stood in a void, stretching out my arms to Romance. All that I had ever dreamed, and vaguely longed for without understanding what it meant, was upon me. All that woman could mean to man—the spirit of the ideal never to be attained in mortal flesh—seemed suddenly attained. Romance—that thing elusive—intangible as a thought in the vaguest of dreams. It was mine!

The song ended. Applause rang out. Leela was gone.

Martt breathed beside me, "Frank! Wasn't that—wonderful! It was like——Look, here comes Zee!"

Zee was on the platform—a whirlwind of veils, stained by the red light, white limbs flashing as she whirled. Greedo's music was faster now. Snapping staccato, with a thrum of melody. The lights changed to a mingled riot of color within which Zee was dancing. An elf. A sprite of the woodland, with tossing hair and fluttering arms; and a laughing face. . . . A figure in the fairy-tale of a child. . . .

But only for a moment. Then the dance slowed. Maturity came suddenly. Zee mounted the dais, and the light there was abruptly green. She stood in an attitude of terror, her eyes wide, hands before her, posturing with horror.

It made my heart leap. For an instant I fancied it had been real. But the light turned silver. The horror faded into a passion of love, her white arms extended, her breasts rising and falling beneath the veils, her red lips parted with passionate longing. The abandonment of youth—so young, with newly awakened passion as yet but half understood. Then again she was whirling around the platform, leaping on her bare toes, light as a faun. . . .

Behind me, suddenly a woman screamed! The reality of a long scream of terror! Greedo's music ceased. The lights wavered. Zee was gone. A scream from the audience; then another. A chaos of mingled cries. Clattering of feet. Stools overturned. . . . Someone fell against me. I went down, recovered and climbed upright. The audience was in a panic. I heard Martt shout, "Look, Frank! Look there over the water!"

People were pushing me—surging to escape from the arcade. Shouting. Calling to one another. And the woman behind me was still screaming.

I saw it then. Through the open side of the arcade, out a mile or more over the water, the great giant figure of a man was standing, waist-deep in the lake, his naked torso towering a hundred feet above it. A giant, wading in the lake, his face grotesque, malevolently grinning in the starlight!

VI

The crowd within the arcade was in a wild panic of terror. I was pushed and shoved, knocked down by heedless, rushing figures. Everyone was trying to get outside. In a moment I was swept away. I could not get back to where I was sitting, or even tell where the spot had been. Martt and Frannie I could not see; the place was all a dim chaos of disheveled, panic-stricken figures. A moment before they had been so gay and jaunty! . . .

A girl rushed past me. The veiling had been torn from her shoulders. Her eyes for an instant met mine, as she searched my face hoping to recognize in me the companion from whom she had been separated. Her dark eyes were wide, red-rimmed with fear. Her face, with all the beauty of youth gone from it, was chalk-white.

She turned and rushed away from me. I thought again, "In the midst of life . . . why, this is horrible!" That giant off there—he could wade to the island in a few moments. . . .

I fought my way out of the arcade, out under the trees by the edge of the lagoon. There was more room out there. In the starlight I could see figures rushing aimlessly away, scattering under the lantern-flowers . . . others hurriedly crowding the boats. One boat was overturned. I wondered vaguely if the struggling figures in the water would be drowned.

Back near the wall of the arcade I saw a girl's figure running. It seemed familiar. Was it Frannie? I dashed after her. But people running in between us blocked me. I lost sight of her; saw her momentarily as she seemed to dart around the farther arcade corner. But when I got there, she was not in sight. Was it Frannie? Had she gone this way? Or into that door, back into the rear of the arcade?

I stood in doubt. Then I saw Brett, running past me, out under the lantern-flowers some fifty feet away. His cloak was discarded; he was bare-headed. Brett in his marriage robe! Black and white, with golden tassels gayly dangling from the rolled skirt of his jacket. He was disheveled; as he ran, I saw him tear off the jacket impatiently and toss it away.

"Brett! Oh, Brett!"

He stopped; whirled toward me. "Frank! Where's Frannie—and Martt?"

"I do not know," I said. "I lost them. That giant——"

"The giant is wading the other way now." He pulled me past a thicket, and pointed. I could see the back of the giant's naked shoulders, towering up against the stars. He was going the other way—wading toward the far-distant opposite lake shore. And now against the island's banks, the waves the giant made were beginning to pound.

Brett said: "I don't know where Leela is. I was in there with her—and with Zee. I rushed out when the alarm came—when I went back they were gone." He stood irresolute. "We must find them, Frank. And get back home." He drew a long breath. "It has come, you see, as I feared."

"I thought I saw Frannie," I said. "Running—that way. But I'm not sure. I lost sight of her——"

From behind the pavilion came a scream. The scream of a girl. Familiar. . . . The blood drained from Brett's face. "Leela!"

And then I heard Frannie screaming from there also. We ran. The two girls were standing there clinging to each other. They seemed unharmed. But they were trembling, shuddering, arms gripping one another.

"Leela! What is it?" Brett held her off, regarding her. "You're not hurt, are you? What is it?"

We four seemed alone here beside the arcade. Lantern-flowers were over us; a thicket was near by. Frannie's arms were around me.

"Frank—oh——" She choked; she seemed struggling to tell me something.

I held her close. "You're not hurt, Frannie. Just frightened. What became of Martt?"

Oh, horrible! What gruesome, horrible thing was this! Within my arms I could feel her sensibly shrinking! Her shoulders within my encircling arm, melting . . . palpably dwindling.

Horrible! And there was a great cry from Brett. "Leela! My God, Leela——"

At the horror of it, Brett and I stood dumbly staring; and again the girls clung together. They seemed dizzy; they swayed, almost fell, then steadied themselves.

Visibly smaller now, like beautifully formed little children, clinging together, no taller than my waist.

Dwindling!

Then Frannie pointed to the thicket. Two small human figures stood there—a foot high, no more. A grinning gnomelike man, with black matted hair on his naked chest; and a woman—a woman thick and shapeless. A foot in height. But they were shrinking very fast. And beside them were four small animals with horns—grotesque like a dream mingling dog and horse and moose. The animals, too, were dwindling.

Brett saw them; but neither he nor I made a move. At our feet Frannie and Leela, no higher than our ankles now, were gazing up at us, with tiny upraised arms, pleading.

"Leela! Frannie!" We knelt by them. Then Brett in an agony of terror lifted Leela in his hand. "Leela! Don't—don't get any smaller!"

Then he put her down. She ran, half fell the distance of my foot to reach Frannie. And I heard Frannie's tiny voice calling up to us in gasps, "We're going! He—that man there with the woman—caught us. Forced—down our throats—a drug. We—going——"

Smaller than my finger. Then so small we knelt to see them. They were huddled against the side of a pebble. Then they seemed struggling toward the pebble. Behind it. Under it. Under its curve. . . .

Brett cried, "Don't move, Frank! My God, we might trample on them! Don't move!"

The figures in the thicket had vanished. By the pebble which Brett guarded so carefully I thought I saw Leela and Frannie. Saw a movement, as though an ant were there, hiding under the pebble.

Then—they were not visible. We did not dare look too closely. They were gone! Still there within a foot of our straining eyes—but so immeasurably distant! Lost! Gone! Stolen into smallness!