rcling her waist. Her raven black hair hung in two twisted locks
nearly to her knees. Her skin was very white and, even more than
Lylda's, gleamed with iridescent color.

"Only this one door," said the girl. The words brought the Very Young
Man to himself with a start.

No other way out of the room! He knew that Targo and his men would force
their way in very soon. He could not prevent them. But it would take
time. The Very Young Man remembered that now he had time to take the
chemicals. He put his hand to his armpit and felt the pouch that held
the drug. He wondered which to take. The ceiling was very high; but to
fight in the narrow confines of such a room----

He led the girl over to a pile of cushions and sat down beside her.

"Listen," he said briefly. "We are going to take a medicine; it will
make us very small. Then we will hide from Targo and his men till they
are gone. This is not magic; it is science. Do you understand?"

"I understand," the girl answered readily. "One of the strangers you
are--my brother's friend."

"You will not be afraid to take the drug?"

"No." But though she spoke confidently, she drew closer to him and
shivered a little.

The Very Young Man handed her one of the tiny pellets. "Just touch it to
the tip of your tongue as I do," he said warningly.

They took the drug. When it had ceased to act, they found themselves
standing on the rough uneven stone surface that was the floor of the
room. Far overhead in the dim luminous blackness they could just make
out the great arching ceiling, stretching away out of sight down the
length of the room. Beside them stood a tremendous shaggy pile of
coarsely woven objects that were the silk pillows on which they had been
sitting a moment before--pillows that seemed forty or fifty feet square
now and loomed high above their heads.

The Very Young Man took the frightened girl by the hand and led her
along the tremendous length of a pile of boxes, blocks long it seemed.
These boxes, from their size, might have been rectangular, windowless
houses, jammed closely together, and piled one upon the other up into
the air almost out of sight.

Finally they came to a broad passageway between the boxes--a mere crack
it would have been before. They turned into it, and, a few feet beyond,
came to a larger square space with a box making a roof over it some
twenty feet above their heads.

From this retreat they could see the lower part of the door leading