Chapter 38: Lost in Size

The Very Young Man stood ankle deep in the turgid little rivulet, a tightness clutching at his chest, and with his head whirling. At his feet his antagonist lay motionless. He stepped out of the water, putting his foot into a tiny grove of trees that bent and crackled like twigs under his tread. He wondered if he would faint; he knew he must not. Away to the left he saw a line of tiny hills; beyond that a luminous obscurity into which his sight could not penetrate; behind him there was only darkness. He seemed to be standing in the midst of a great barren waste, with just a little toy river and forest at his feet--a child’s plaything, set down in a man’s great desert.

The Very Young Man suddenly thought of his friends. He stepped into the middle of the river and out again on the other side. Then he bent down with his face close to the ground, just above the tops of the tiny little trees. He made the human figures out finally. Hardly larger than ants they seemed, and he shuddered as he saw them. The end of his thumb could have smashed them all, they were so small.

One of the figures seemed to be waving something, and the Very Young Man thought he heard the squeak of its voice. He straightened upright, standing rigid, afraid to move his feet. He wondered what he should do, and in sudden fear felt for the vial of the diminishing drug. It was still in place, in the pouch under his armpit. The Very Young Man breathed a sigh of relief. He decided to take the drug and rejoin his friends. Then as a sudden thought struck him he bent down to the ground again, slowly, with infinite caution. The little figures were still there; and now he thought they were not quite as tiny as before. He watched them; slowly but unmistakably they were growing larger.

The Very Young Man carefully took a step backwards, and then sat down heavily. The forest trees crackled under him. He pulled up his knees, and rested his head upon them. The little rivulet diverted from its course by the body of Targo, swept past through the woods almost at his side. The noise it made mingled with the ringing in his head. His body ached all over; he closed his eyes.

“He’s all right now,” the Doctor’s voice said. “He’ll be all right in a moment.”

The Very Young Man opened his eyes. He was lying upon the ground, with Aura sitting beside him, and his friends--all his own size again--standing over him.

He met Aura’s tender, serious eyes, and smiled. “I’m all right,” he said. “What a foolish thing to faint.”

Lylda stooped beside him, “You saved us all,” she said. “There is nothing we can say--to mean what it should. But you will always know how we feel; how splendid you were.”

To the praise they gave him the Very Young Man had no answer save a smile of embarrassment. Aura said nothing, only met his smile with one of her own, and with a tender glance that made his heart beat faster.

“I’m all right,” he repeated after a moment of silence. “Let’s get started.”

They sat down now beside the Very Young Man, and earnestly discussed the best plan for getting out of the ring.

“You said you had calculated the best way,” suggested the Doctor to the Chemist.

“First of all,” interrupted the Big Business Man. “Are we sure none of these Oroids is going to follow us? For Heaven’s sake let’s have done with these terrible struggles.”

The Very Young Man remembered. “He stole one of the vials,” he said, pointing to Targo’s body.

“He was probably alone,” the Chemist reasoned. “If any others had been with him they would have taken some of the drug also. Probably Targo took one of the pills and then dropped the vial to the ground.”

“My idea,” pursued the Big Business Man, “is for us to get large just as quickly and continuously as possible. Probably you’re right about Targo, but don’t let’s take any chances.

“I’ve been thinking,” he continued, seeing that they agreed with him. “You know this is a curious problem we have facing us. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It seemed a frightful long trip down here, but in spite of that, I can’t get it out of my mind that we’re only a very little distance under the surface of the ring.”

“It’s absolutely all in the viewpoint,” the Chemist said with a smile. “That’s what I meant about having an easier method of getting out. The distance depends absolutely on how you view it.”

“How far would it be out if we didn’t get any larger?” the Very Young Man wanted to know.

“Based on the size of a normal Oroid adult, and using the terrestrial standard of feet and inches as they would seem to us when Oroid size, I should say the distance from Arite to the surface of the ring would be about one hundred and fifty to a hundred and sixty thousand miles.”

“Holy mackerel!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.

“Don’t let’s do much walking while we’re small.”

“You have the idea exactly,” smiled the Chemist.

“Taking the other viewpoint,” said the Doctor. “Just where do you figure this Oroid universe is located in the ring?”

“It is contained within one of the atoms of gold,” the Chemist answered. “And that golden atom, I estimate, is located probably within one one-hundredth of an inch, possibly even one one-thousandth of an inch away from the circular indentation I made in the bottom of the scratch. In actual distance I suppose Arite is possibly one-sixteenth of an inch below the surface of the ring.”

“Certainly makes a difference how you look at it,” murmured the Very Young Man in awe.

The Chemist went on. “It is obvious then, that although when coming down the distance must be covered to some extent by physical movement--by traveling geographically, so to speak--going back, that is not altogether the case. Most of the distance may be covered by bodily growth, rather than by a movement of the body from place to place.”

“We might get lost,” objected the Very Young Man. “Suppose we got started in the wrong direction?”

“Coming in, that is a grave danger,” answered the Chemist, “because then distances are opening up and a single false step means many miles of error later on. But going out, just the reverse is true; distances are shortening. A mile in the wrong direction is corrected in an instant later on. Not coming to a realization of that when I made the trip before, led me to undertake many unnecessary hours of most arduous climbing. There is only one condition imperative; the body growing must have free space for its growth, or it will be crushed to death.”

“Have you planned exactly how we are to get out?” asked the Big Business Man.

“Yes, I have,” the Chemist answered. “In the size we are now, which you must remember is several thousand times Oroid height, it will be only a short distance to a point where as we grow we can move gradually to the centre of the circular pit. That huge inclined plane slides down out of it, you remember. Once in the pit, with its walls closing in upon us, we can at the proper moment get out of it about as I did before.”

“Then we’ll be in the valley of the scratch,” exclaimed the Very Young Man eagerly. “I’ll certainly be glad to get back there again.”

“Getting out of the valley we’ll use the same methods,” the Chemist continued. “There we shall have to do some climbing, but not nearly so much as I did.”

The Very Young Man was thrilled at the prospect of so speedy a return to his own world. “Let’s get going,” he suggested quickly. “It sounds a cinch.”

They started away in a few minutes more, leaving the body of Targo lying where it had fallen across the river. In half an hour of walking they located without difficulty the huge incline down which the Chemist had fallen when first he came into the ring. Following along the bottom of the incline they reached his landing place--a mass of small rocks and pebbles of a different metallic-looking stone than the ground around marking it plainly. These were the rocks and boulders that had been brought down with him in his fall.

“From here,” said the Chemist, as they came to a halt, “we can go up into the valley by growth alone. It is several hours, but we need move very little from this position.”

“How about eating?” suggested the Very Young Man.

They sat down at the base of the incline and ate another meal--rather a more lavish one this time, for the rest they had taken, and the prospect of a shorter journey ahead of them than they had anticipated made the Doctor less strict. Then, the meal over, they took the amount of the drug the Chemist specified. He measured it carefully--more than ten of the pills.

“We have a long wait,” the Chemist said, when the first sickness from this tremendous dose had left them.

The time passed quickly. They spoke seldom, for the extraordinary rapidity with which the aspect of the landscape was changing, and the remarkable sensations they experienced, absorbed all their attention.

In about two hours after taking the drug the curving, luminous line that was the upper edge of the incline came into view, faint and blurred, but still distinct against the blackness of the sky. The incline now was noticeably steeper; each moment they saw its top coming down towards them out of the heights above, and its surface smoothing out and becoming more nearly perpendicular.

They were all standing up now. The ground beneath them seemed in rapid motion, coming towards them from all directions, and dwindling away beneath their feet. The incline too--now in form a vertical concave wall--kept shoving itself forward, and they had to step backwards continually to avoid its thrust.

Within another hour a similar concave wall appeared behind them which they could follow with their eyes entirely around the circumference of the great pit in which they now found themselves. The sides of this pit soon became completely perpendicular--smooth and shining.