She was smiling, but urgently fearful of this delay. "Should we get
that small, then it would be, from here"--she gestured toward the
microscope--"to there, a journey of very many miles. Don't you
understand?"

This thing so strange!

Alan was plucking at me. "Ready, George?"

"Yes."

I put the pellet on my tongue. It tasted slightly sweet, but seemed
quickly melted and I swallowed it hastily. My head swam. My heart was
pounding, but that was apprehension, not the drug. A thrill of heat
ran through my veins as though my blood were on fire.

Alan was clinging to me as we sat together. Glora again had vanished.
In the background of my whirling consciousness the sudden thought
hovered that she had tricked us; done to us something diabolical. But
the thought was swept away in the confusion of the flood of
impressions upon me.

I turned dizzily. "All right, Alan?"

"Yes, I--I guess so."

My ears were roaring, the room seemed whirling, but in a moment that
passed. I felt a sudden, growing sense of lightness. A humming was
within me--a soundless tingle. To every tiny microscopic cell in my
body the drug had gone. The myriad pores of my skin seemed thrilling
with activity. I know now it was the exuding volatile gas of this
disintegrating drug. Like an aura it enveloped me, acted upon my
garments.

* * * * *

I learned later much of the principles of this and its companion drug.
I had no thought for such things now. The huge dimly illumined room
under the dome was swaying. Then abruptly it steadied. The strange
sensations within me were lessening, or I forgot them. And I became
aware of externals.

The room was shrinking! As I stared, not with horror now, but with
amazement and a coming triumph, I saw everywhere a slow, steady,
crawling movement. The whole place was dwindling. The platform, the
microscope, were nearer than before, and smaller. The pile of ingots,
with the men off there, was shifting toward me.

"George! My God--weird!"

I saw Alan's white face as I turned to him. He was growing at the same
rate as myself evidently, for of all the scene he only was unchanged.

We could feel the movement. The floor under us was shifting, crawling
slowly. From all directions it came, contracting as though it were
being squeezed beneath us. In reality our expanding bodies were
pushing outward.

The pile of boxes which had been a few feet away, were thrusting
themselves at me I mov