They stepped ashore,
well to one side of the toy city. Their growth had almost stopped. But
suddenly Alan realized that Glora was diminishing! She had taken the
other drug.

"Glora! What are you doing?"

"I must go back, Alan. This is my world, doomed perhaps, but I cannot
forsake it now. I must give the enlarging drug to my father. And others
who can rise and fight these monsters."

"Glora!"

Dr. Kent said hurriedly, "She's right, Alan. There is a chance they can
save their city. For her to leave them would be dastardly."

She cried, "You go on up, Alan. You have enough of the drugs. I am going
back!"

"No," he protested. "You can't! If you do, I'm coming with you!"

She clung to him. He felt her body diminishing within his encircling
arms. His love for her swept him--this girl who had cajoled Polter, or
tricked him and stolen several of the vials from him, heavens knows how,
and followed him up to the other world. This girl whom Alan had come to
love, was leaving him, perhaps forever.

As he stood there, with the miniature landscape at his feet in the wan
starlight--the panic-stricken tiny city, the island with its monsters
rising to overwhelm this tiny world--it seemed to Alan that if he let
her go it was the end for him of all life's promised happiness.

"Alan, lad, come." His father was pulling him along. So horrible a
choice! Alan thought that I was back on that island. But Babs, a
prisoner in the golden cage, was with Polter, plunging upward in size.
And his father was beside him, pleading.

"Alan--come--I can't get out alone, or save Babs. And Polter, with the
power of this drug, can conquer and enslave our Earth as he has enslaved
Orena--just one little city of one tiny golden atom! Believe me, lad,
your duty lies above."

Glora's head was now down at Alan's waist. He stooped and kissed her
white forehead; his fingers, just for an instant, smoothed her glossy
hair.

"Good-bye, Glora."

She plunged away, and her tread as she dwindled mashed the forest behind
the city. Alan and his father ran for the cliff. They were too large to
squeeze into the little hole. But in a moment they made themselves
smaller. They climbed as they dwindled; checked the drug action and
rushed into the tunnel-mouth.

Alan stopped just for an instant to gaze out over the starlit scene. It
was almost the same viewpoint from which he had his first sight of
Glora's world only an hour or two before. The distant island beyon