because he knew in their exhausted condition
it would be bad for them to eat heartily.

It was about two o'clock when they noticed that objects around them no
longer were increasing in size. They had finished their meal and felt
greatly refreshed.

"Things have stopped growing," observed the Very Young Man. "We've done
four pills' worth of the journey anyway," he added facetiously. He rose
to his feet, stretching. He felt sore and bruised all over, but with the
meal and a little rest, not particularly tired.

"I move we go on down now," he suggested, walking to the edge of the
huge crevice in which they were sitting. "It's only a couple of thousand
feet."

"Perhaps we might as well," agreed the Doctor, rising also. "When we get
to the floor of the valley, we can find a good spot and turn in for the
night."

The incongruity of his last words with the scene around made the Doctor
smile. Overhead the sky still showed a narrow ribbon of blue. Across the
valley the sunlight sparkled on the yellowish crags of the rocky wall.
In the shadow, on the side down which they were climbing, the rocks now
shone distinctly phosphorescent, with a peculiar waviness of outline.

"Not much like either night or day, is it?" added the Doctor. "We'll
have to get used to that."

They started off again, and in another two hours found themselves going
down a gentle rocky slope and out upon the floor of the valley.

"We're here at last," said the Big Business Man wearily.

The Very Young Man looked up the great, jagged precipice down which they
had come, to where, far above, its edge against the strip of blue marked
the surface of the ring.

"Some trip," he remarked. "I wouldn't want to tackle that every day."

"Four o'clock," said the Doctor, "the light up there looks just the
same. I wonder what's happened to George."

Neither of his companions answered him. The Big Business Man lay
stretched full length upon the ground near by, and the Very Young Man
still stood looking up the precipice, lost in thought.

"What a nice climb going back," he suddenly remarked.

The Doctor laughed. "Don't let's worry about that, Jack. If you remember
how Rogers described it, getting back is easier than getting in. But the
main point now," he added seriously, "is for us to make sure of getting
down to Arite as speedily as possible."

The Very Young Man surveyed the barren waste around them in dismay. The
floor of the valley was strewn with even la