ed not detail the strange sensations of our dwindling. We were so
soon to experience them again!

We had searched, when still large, all of Polter's grounds. Some of
his men undoubtedly escaped, made off into the blizzard. How many, we
never knew. None of them ever made themselves known again.

We were ready to start into the atom. The fragment of golden quartz
still lay under the microscope on the white square of stone slab. We
had hurried with our last preparations. The room was chilling. We were
all inadequately dressed for such cold.

I left a note scribbled on a square of paper by the microscope. With
daylight, Polter's wrecked place would be discovered. The police would
come.

"Guard this piece of golden quartz. Take it at once, very carefully,
to the Royal Canadian Scientific Society. Have it watched day and
night. We will return."

I signed it George Randolph. And as I did so, the extraordinary aspect
of these events swept me anew. Here in Polter's weird place I had
seemed living in some strange fantastic realm. But this was the
Province of Quebec, in civilized Canada. These were the Quebec
authorities I was addressing.

I flung the thoughts away. "Ready, Glora?"

"Yes."

* * * * *

Then doubts assailed me. None of Polter's men had gotten large to
fight us. Evidently he did not trust them with the drug. We could well
believe that, for the thing, misused, was diabolical beyond human
conception. A single giant, a criminal, a madman, by the power of
giant size alone, could devastate the earth! The drug, lost, or
carelessly handled, could get loose. Animals, insects, eating it,
could roam the earth, gigantic monsters! Vegetation, nourished with
it, might in a day overrun a great city, burying it with a jungle
growth!

How terrible a thing, if the realm of smallness were suddenly to
emerge! Monsters of the sea, marine organisms, could expand until even
the ocean was too small for them. Microbes of disease, feeding upon
this drug--

Alan was gripping me. "We're ready, George."

"Yes. Yes, I'm ready."

This was not largeness we were facing now, but smallness. I thought of
Babs, down there with Polter, beyond the vanishing point in the realm
of the infinitely small. They had been gone an hour at least. Every
moment lost now was adding to Bab's danger.

"Yes. I'm ready, Alan."

Glora sat with us on the platform. Strange little creature! She was
wholly calm now; methodi