Chapter 29: On the Lake

“You’re right--we are being followed,” the Very Young Man said soberly. He had pulled the girl over close against the wall of a house. “Did you see that?”

“Three, they are,” Aura answered. “I saw them before--in the street below--Targo’s men.”

Evidently the three men had been watching the house from which they had come and had followed them from there. If they were Targo’s men, as seemed very probable, the Very Young Man could not understand why they had not already attacked him. Perhaps they intended to as soon as he and Aura had reached a more secluded part of the city. They must know he had the drugs, and to gain possession of those certainly was what they were striving for. The Very Young Man realized he must take no chances; to lose the drugs would be fatal to them all.

“Are we near the edge of the city?” he asked.

“Yes, very near.”

“Then we shall get large here. If we make a run for it we will be in the country before we are big enough to attract too much attention. Understand, Aura?”

“I understand.”

“We mustn’t stir up the city if we can help it; with giants running around, the people would get worked up to a frenzy. You could see that with Lylda this afternoon. Not that you can blame them altogether, but we want to get Loto back before we start anything here in Arite.” He took the pellets out as he spoke, and they each touched one of them to the tip of their tongues.

“Now, then, come on--not too fast, we want to keep going,” said the Very Young Man, taking the girl by the hand again.

As they started off, running slowly down the street, the Very Young Man looked back. The three men were running after them--not fast, seeming content merely to keep their distance. The Very Young Man laughed. “Wait till they see us get big. Fine chance they’ve got.”

Aura, her lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about her lean, round thighs. She still held the Very Young Man by the hand, running just in advance of him, guiding him through the streets, which in this part of the city were more broken up and irregular.

They had not gone more than a hundred yards when the pavement began to move unsteadily under them, as the deck of a plunging ship feels to one who runs its length, and the houses they were swiftly passing began visibly to decrease in size. The Very Young Man felt the girl falter in her stride. He dropped her hand and slipped his arm about her waist, holding her other hand against it. She smiled up into his eyes, and thus they ran on, side by side.

A few moments more and they were in the open country, running on a road that wound through the hills, between cultivated fields dotted here and there with houses. The landscape dwindled beneath them steadily, until they seemed to be running along a narrow, curving path, bordered by little patches of different-colored ground, like a checkerboard. The houses they passed now hardly reached as high as their knees. Sometimes peasants stood in the doorways of these houses watching them in terror. Occasionally they passed a farmer ploughing his field, who stopped his work, stricken dumb, and stared at them as they went swiftly by.

When they were well out into the country, perhaps a quarter of the way to Orlog--for to beings so huge as they the distance was not great--the Very Young Man slowed down to a walk.

“How far have we gone?” he asked.

Aura stopped abruptly and looked around her. They seemed now to be at the bottom of a huge, circular, shallow bowl. In every direction from where they stood the land curved upward towards the rim of the bowl that was the horizon--a line, not sharp and well defined, but dim and hazy, melting away into the blackness of the star-studded sky. Behind them, hardly more than a mile away, according to their present stature--they had stopped growing entirely now--lay the city of Arite. They could see completely across it and out into the country beyond.

The lake, with whose shore they had been running parallel, was much closer to them. Ahead, up near the rim of the horizon, lay a black smudge. Aura pointed. “Orlog is there,” she said. “You see it?”

To the Very Young Man suddenly came the realization that already he was facing the problem of how to get into Orlog unheralded. If they remained in their present size they could easily walk there in an hour or less. But long before that they would be seen and recognized.

The Very Young Man feared for Loto’s safety if he allowed that to happen. He seemed to be able to make out the city of Orlog now. It was smaller than Arite, and lay partially behind a hill, with most of its houses strung along the lake shore. If only they were not so tall they could not be seen so readily. But if they became smaller it would take them much longer to get there. And eventually they would have to become normal Oroid size, or even smaller, in order to get into the city unnoticed. The Very Young Man thought of the lake. Perhaps that would be the best way.