I think I could never get used to
the outward strangeness!

The room in a moment was expanding. I could feel the platform floor
crawling outward beneath me, so that I had to hitch and change my
position as it pulled. We were seated together, Alan and I on each side
of Glora. My fingers were on her arm. It did not change size, but it
slowly drew away with a space opening between us. Overhead, the dome
roof, the great jagged hole there, was receding, lifting, moving upward
and away.

Glora pulled us to our feet. "We had better start now. The distance
grows very far, so quickly."

We had been sitting within five feet of the stone slab with its four
inch high railing around it. A chair was by the microscope eyepiece. As
we stood swaying I saw that the chair was huge, and its seat level with
my head. The great barrel-cylinder of the microscope slanted sixty feet
upward. The dome roof was a distant spread three hundred feet up in the
dimness. The dome-room was a vast arena now.

Alan and I must have hesitated, confused by the expanding scene--a slow,
steady movement everywhere. Everything was drawing away from us. Even as
we stood together, the creeping platform floor was separating us.

A moment passed. Glora was urging us on vehemently:

"Come! You must not stand there!"

We started walking. The railing around the slab was knee-high. The slab
itself was a broad, square surface. The fragment of golden quartz lay in
its center. It was now a jagged lump nearly a foot in diameter.

The platform seemed to shift as we walked; the railing hardly came
closer as we advanced toward it. Then suddenly I realized that it was
receding. Thirty feet away? No, now it was more than that--a great,
thick rope, waist-high, with a huge spread of white surface behind it.

"Faster!" urged Glora. We ran, and reached the railing. It was higher
than our heads. We ran under it, and cut out upon the white slab--a
level surface, larger now than the whole dome-room had been.

Glora, like a fawn, ran in advance of us, her robe flying in the wind.
She turned to look back.

"Faster! Faster, or it will be too hard a climb!"

Ahead lay a golden mound of rock. It was widening; raising its top
steadily higher. Beyond it and over it was a vast dim distance. We
reached the rock, breathless, winded. It was a jagged mound like a great
fifty-foot butte. We plunged upon it and began climbing.

The ascent was steep; precipitous in places. There were lit