her planet!

A tremendous, pinkish-gray wall lowered near them, split into segments,
and surrounded their plateau. The plateau was lifted--with a dizzy
swiftness that made their stomachs turn.

With sickening speed the plateau moved forward. The texture of the
heavens above them changed. The sun--the one thing in their new universe
that seemed unchanged in size and aspect--shone down on them. The
plateau came jarringly to rest. Great cliffs of what seemed black basalt
gleamed high over them.

Matt had carried them out of the building, and had set the patty-dish on
the black leather seat of his automobile.

There was a distant thundering, as though all the worlds in the universe
but Earth were being dashed to pieces. That was the motor starting. And
then, as the car moved off, Jim and Dennis realized their mistake in
choosing a patty-dish to ride in!

* * * * *

In spite of the yielding leather cushion on which their dish was set,
the two quarter-inch men were hurled this way and that, jounced horribly
up and down, and slid headlong from one end of the plateau to the other
as the automobile passed over the city streets. Impossible to stand.
They could only crouch low on the hard glazed surface, and try to keep
from breaking legs and arms in the worst earthquake it is possible to
imagine. Anyone who has ever seen two bugs ill-advisedly try to walk
across the vibrating hood of an automobile while the motor is running,
will have some idea of the troubles that now beset Dennis and Jim.

"The ass!" groaned Jim, in a comparatively quiet spell. "Why doesn't he
drive more carefully?"

"Probably," groaned Denny, "he's doing the best he can."

Probably! All that was left them was conjecture. They could only guest
at what was happening in the world about them!

Matthew Breen's face and body were lost in sheer immensity above them.
They knew they were riding in a car; but they couldn't see the car. All
they could see was the black cliff that was the seat-cushion behind
them. The world had disappeared--hidden in its bigness; the world,
indeed, was just at present a patty-dish.

Somehow they endured the ride. Somehow they avoided broken bones, and
were only shaken up and bruised when the distant roar of the motor
ceased and the wind stopped howling about their ears.

"Well, we're here," said Dennis unsteadily. "Now for the real--"

His words were stopped by the sudden rising of the plateau