looked at his watch. "Quarter to nine. We've been
less than an hour yet. Come on, let's keep going," and he started
walking rapidly forward.

They walked for a time in silence. The line of hills before them grew
visibly in size, and they seemed slowly to be nearing it.

"I've been thinking," began the Doctor thoughtfully as he glanced up at
the hills. "There's one theory of Rogers's that was a fallacy. You
remember he was quite positive that this change of stature became
steadily more rapid, until it reached its maximum rate and then remained
constant. If that were so we should probably be diminishing in size more
rapidly now than when we first climbed on to the ring. If we had so much
trouble getting to the ring then"--he smiled at the remembrance of their
difficulty--"I don't see how we could ever get to those hills now."

"Gee, that's so," said the Very Young Man. "We'd never be able to get
anywhere, would we?"

"How do you figure it works?" asked the Big Business Man.

The Doctor folded up the paper and replaced it in his belt. "I don't
know," he answered. "I think probably it proceeds in cycles, like the
normal rate of growth--times of rapid progress succeeded by periods of
comparative inactivity."

"I never knew people grew that way," observed the Very Young Man.

"They do," said the Doctor. "And if these drugs produce the same effect
we----" He got no further, for suddenly the earth seemed to rise swiftly
under them, and they were thrown violently to the ground.

The Very Young Man, as he lay prone, looked upward, and saw the sunlike
light above fall swiftly down across the sky and disappear below the
horizon, plunging the world about them into the gloom of a
semi-twilight. A wind, fiercer than before, swept over them with a roar.

"The end of the world," murmured the Very Young Man to himself. And he
wondered why he was not frightened.

Then came the feeling of an extraordinary lightness of body, as though
the ground were dropping away from under him. The wind abruptly ceased
blowing. He saw the ball of light rise swiftly from the horizon and
mount upward in a great, gleaming arc to the zenith, where again it hung
motionless.

The three men lay quiet, their heads reeling. Then the Very Young Man
sat up dizzily and began feeling himself all over. "There's nothing
wrong with me," he said lugubriously, meeting the eyes of his friends
who apparently were also more surprised than hurt. "But--oh, my gosh,