or thirty of the figures
here now. Then I saw some of them escaping.

The room was littered with wreckage. I saw that by some miracle of
chance the microscope was still standing, and I had a moment of
sanity.

"Alan, watch out! The microscope! The platform--don't smash it! And
Glora! Look out for her!"

* * * * *

I suddenly became aware that my head and a shoulder had struck the
dome roof. Why, this was a tiny room! Alan and I found ourselves
backed together, panting in the small confines of a circular cubby
with an arching dome close over us. At our feet the platform with the
microscope over it hardly reached our boot-tops. There was a sudden
silence, broken only by our heavy breathing. The tiny forms of humans
strewn around us were all motionless. The others had fled.

Then we heard a small voice. "Here! Take this! Quickly! You are too
large! Quickly!"

Alan took a step. And then a sudden panic was on us both. Glora was
here at our feet. We did not dare turn; hardly dared move. To stoop
might have crushed her. My leg hit the top of the microscope cylinder.
It rocked but did not fall.

Where was Glora? In the gloom we could not see her. We were in a
panic.

Alan began, "George, I say--"

The contracting inner curve of the dome bumped gently against my head.
The panic of confusion which was upon us turned to fear. The room was
closing in to crush us.

I muttered. "Alan! I'm going out!" I braced myself and heaved against
the side and top curve of the dome. Its metal ribs and heavy
translucent, reinforced glass plates resisted me. There was an instant
when Alan and I were desperately frightened. We were trapped, to be
crushed in here by our own horrible growth. Then the dome yielded
under our smashing blows. The ribs bent; the plates cracked.

We straightened, pushed upward and emerged through the broken dome,
with head and shoulders towering into the outside darkness and the
wind and snow of the blizzard howling around us!

CHAPTER IV

_The Journey Into Smallness_

"Glora, that--that was horrible."

We stood, again in normal size, with the wrecked dome-laboratory
around us. The dome had a great jagged hole halfway up one of its
sides, through which the snow was falling. The broken bodies strewn
around were gruesome.

Alan repeated, "Horrible, Glora. This drug, the power of it, is
diabolical."

Glora had grown large after us; had given us the companion drug. I
ne