Chapter 33: The Rescue Of Loto

The Very Young Man heard the clang of the closing door with sinking heart. The two newcomers, passing close to him and Aura as they stood shrinking up against the wall, joined their friends at the table. The Very Young Man turned to Aura with a solemn face.

“Are there any other doors?” he asked.

The girl pointed. “One other, there--but see, it, too, is closed.”

Far across the room the Very Young Man could make out a heavy metal door similar to that through which they had entered. It was closed--he could see that plainly. And to open it--so huge a door that its great golden handle hung nearly a hundred feet above them--was an utter impossibility.

The Very Young Man looked at the windows. There were four of them, all on one side of the room--enormous curtained apertures, two hundred feet in length and half as broad--but none came even within fifty feet of the floor. The Very Young Man realized with dismay that there was apparently no way of escape out of the room.

“We can’t get out, Aura,” he said, and in spite of him his voice trembled. “There’s no way.”

The girl had no answer but a quiet nod of agreement. Her face was serious, but there was on it no sign of panic. The Very Young Man hesitated a moment; then he started off down the room towards one of the doors, with Aura close at his side.

They could not get out in their present size, he knew. Nor would they dare make themselves sufficiently large to open the door, or climb through one of the windows, even if the room had been nearer the ground than it actually was. Long before they could escape they would be discovered and seized.

The Very Young Man tried to think it out clearly. He knew, except for a possible accident, or a miscalculation on his part, that they were in no real danger. But he did not want to make a false move, and now for the first time he realized his responsibility to Aura, and began to regret the rashness of his undertaking.

They could wait, of course, until the conference was over, and then slip out unnoticed. But the Very Young Man felt that the chances of their rescuing Loto were greater now than they would be probably at any time in the future. They must get out now, he was convinced of that. But how?

They were at the door in a moment more. Standing so close it seemed, now, a tremendous shaggy walling of shining metal. They walked its length, and then suddenly the Very Young Man had an idea. He threw himself face down upon the floor. Underneath the door’s lower edge there was a tiny crack. To one of normal Oroid size it would have been unnoticeable--a space hardly so great as the thickness of a thin sheet of paper. But the Very Young Man could see it plainly; he gauged its size by slipping the edge of his robe into it.

This crack was formed by the bottom of the door and the level surface of the floor; there was no sill. The door was perfectly hung, for the crack seemed to be of uniform size. The Very Young Man showed it to Aura.

“There’s the way out,” he whispered. “Through there and then large again on the other side.”

He made his calculation of size carefully, and then, crushing one of the pills into powder, divided a portion of it between himself and the girl. Aura seemed tired and the drug made her very dizzy. They both sat upon the stone floor, close up to the door, and closed their eyes. When, by the feeling of the floor beneath them, they knew the action of the drug was over, they stood up unsteadily and looked around them.

They now found themselves standing upon a great stone plain. The ground beneath their feet was rough, but as far away as they could see, out up to the horizon, it was mathematically level. This great expanse was empty except in one place; over to the right there appeared a huge, irregular, blurred mass that might have been, by its look, a range of mountains. But the mass moved as they stared at it, and the Very Young Man knew it was the nearest one of Targo’s men, sitting beside the table.

In the opposite direction, perhaps a hundred yards away from where they were standing, they could see the bottom of the door. It hung in the air some fifty feet above the surface of the ground. They walked over and stood underneath; like a great roof it spread over them--a flat, level surface parallel with the floor beneath.

At this extraordinary change in their surroundings Aura seemed frightened, but seeing the matter-of-fact way in which her companion acted, she maintained her composure and soon was much interested in this new aspect of things. The Very Young Man took a last careful look around and then, holding Aura by the hand, started to cross under the door in a direction he judged to be at right angles to its length.

They walked swiftly, trying to keep their sense of direction, but having no means of knowing whether they were doing so or not. For perhaps ten minutes they walked; then they emerged on the other side of the door and again faced a great level, empty expanse.

“We’re under,” the Very Young Man remarked with relief. “Do you know where Loto is from here?”

Aura had recovered her self-possession sufficiently to smile.

“I might, perhaps,” she answered, with a pretty little shrug. “But it’s a long way, don’t you think? A hundred miles, it may be?”

“We get large here,” said the Very Young Man, with an answering smile. He was greatly relieved to be outside the audience room; the way seemed easy before them now.

They took the opposite drug, and after several successive changes of size, succeeded in locating the upper room in the palace in which Loto was held. At this time they were about the same relative size to their enemies as when they entered the audience chamber on the floor below.

“That must be it,” the Very Young Man whispered, as they cautiously turned a hallway corner. A short distance beyond, in front of a closed door, sat two guards.

“That is the room of which they spoke,” Aura answered. “Only one door there is, I think.”

“That’s all right,” said the Very Young Man confidently. “We’ll do the same thing--go under the door.”

They went close up to the guards, who were sitting upon the floor playing some sort of a game with little golden balls. This door, like the other, had a space beneath it, rather wider than the other, and in ten minutes more the Very Young Man and Aura were beneath it, and inside the room.

As they grew larger again the Very Young Man at first thought the room was empty. “There he is,” cried Aura happily. The Very Young Man looked and could see across the still huge room, the figure of Loto, standing at a window opening.