ial. Things were lurching
toward this room from the laboratory. Alan with averted face, choked
by the incoming fumes, slammed the door upon the gruesome turmoil.

They took the diminishing drug. The bedroom expanded. The hideous
sounds from the laboratory, and the whole palace now ringing with a
wild alarm, then faded into the blessed remoteness of distance above
them....

* * * * *

"I think it is this way, Alan. Off there--a doorway from my bedroom.
Polter always kept it locked, but it leads into a corridor. We must
get out of here. A crack under the door--is that it, off there?" Dr.
Kent pointed into the gloomy blur of distance. "We are horribly
small--it's so far to run--and I've lost my sense of direction."

The drug had ceased its action. The wooden floor of the room had
expanded to a spread of cellular surface, ridged with broken,
tube-like tunnels; pits and jagged cave-mouths. A knot-hole yawned
like a crater a hundred feet away.

"We are too small," Gloria protested hurriedly. "The door is where you
say, Dr. Kent, but miles away."

With the other drug, the room contracted. The floor-surface shrank and
smoothed a little. The door was distinguishable--a square panel
several hundred feet in width and towering into the upper haze. The
black line of the crack was visible along its bottom.

They ran to it. The top of the crack was ten feet above their heads.
They ran under, across the wide intervening darkness toward a glow of
light. Then they came from under the door into a corridor--and shrank
against a cliff-wall as with a rush of wind and pounding tread the
blurred shapes of a man's huge feet and legs rushed passed. The upper
air was filled with rumbling shouts.

"We must chance it!" exclaimed Dr. Kent. "Too dangerous, so small!
Larger--and if they see us, fight our way out!"

In the turmoil of the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast
aside all restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose
they took of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed.
They rushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was
in their path. Already they were larger than the Polter people.

* * * * *

They squeezed out of a shrinking doorway. The dwindling island was a
turmoil. Little figures were plunging from the palace. At the edge of
the water, Alan, Glora and Dr. Kent stood for an instant looking
behind them. The p