by Anthology
The Very Young Man thought of the belt around his waist. He put his hand to it, and found it tight as before. So, after all, they would not have to leave anything behind, he thought.
The Doctor rose to his feet and turned away, back under the huge table that loomed up behind him. The Very Young Man got up, too, and stood beside the Big Business Man, holding to him for support. His head felt strangely confused; his legs were weak and shaky.
Steadily larger grew the room and everything in it. The Very Young Man turned his eyes up to the light high overhead. Its great electric bulbs dazzled him with their brilliancy; its powerful glare made objects around as bright as though in daylight. After a moment the Big Business Man's grip on his arm tightened.
"God, it's weird!" he said in a tense whisper. "Look!"
Before them spread a great, level, shining expanse of black, with the ring in its center--a huge golden circle. Beyond the farther edge of the black they could see the feet of the banker, and the lower part of his legs stretching into the air far above them.
The Very Young Man looked up still higher, and saw the Banker staring down at him, "Good-by, my boy," said the Banker. His voice came from far away in a great roar to the Very Young Man's ears.
"Good-by, sir," said the Very Young Man, and waved his hand.
Several minutes passed, and still the Very Young Man stood holding to his companion, and watching the expanse of handkerchief widening out and the gleaming ring growing larger. Then he thought of the Doctor, and turned suddenly to look behind him. Across the wide, glistening surface of the floor stood the Doctor, leaning against the tremendous column that the Very Young Man knew was the leg of the center-table. And as the Very Young Man stood staring, he could see this distance between them growing steadily greater. A sudden fear possessed him, and he shouted to his friend.
"Good Lord, suppose he can't make it!" said the Big Business Man fearfully.
"He's coming," answered the Very Young Man. "He's got to make it."
The Doctor was running towards them now, and in a few moments he was beside them, breathing heavily.
"Close call, Frank," said the Big Business Man, shaking his head. "You were the one said we must keep together." The Doctor was too much out of breath to answer.
"This is worse," said the Very Young Man. "Look where the ring is."
More than two hundred yards away across the black expanse of silk handkerchief lay the ring.
"It's almost as high as our waist now, and look how far it is!" added the Very Young Man excitedly.
"It's getting farther every minute," said the Big Business Man. "Come on," and he started to run towards the ring.
"I can't make it. It's too far!" shouted the Doctor after him.
The Big Business Man stopped short. "What'll we do?" he asked. "We've got to get there."
"That ring will be a mile away in a few minutes, at the rate it's going," said the Very Young Man.
"We'll have to get him to move it over here," decided the Doctor, looking up into the air, and pointing.
"Gee, I never thought of that!" said the Very Young Man. "Oh, great Scott, look at him!"
Out across the broad expanse of handkerchief they could see the huge white face of their friend looming four or five hundred feet in the air above them. It was the most astounding sight their eyes had ever beheld; yet so confused were they by the flood of new impressions to which they were being subjected that this colossal figure added little to their surprise.
"We must make him move the ring over here," repeated the Doctor.
"You'll never make him hear you," said the Big Business Man, as the Very Young Man began shouting at the top of his voice.
"We've got to," said the Very Young Man breathlessly. "Look at that ring. We can't get to it now. We're stranded here. Good Lord! What's the matter with him--can't he see us?" he added, and began shouting again.
"He's getting up," said the Doctor. They could see the figure of the Banker towering in the air a thousand feet above the ring, and then with a swoop of his enormous face come down to them as he knelt upon the floor.
With his hands to his mouth, the Very Young Man shouted up: "It's too far away. We can't make it--we're too small." They waited. Suddenly, without warning, a great wooden oval bowl fifteen or twenty feet across came at them with tremendous speed. They scattered hastily in terror.
"Not that--the ring!" shouted the Very Young Man, as he realized it was the spoon in the Banker's hand that had frightened them.
A moment more and the ring was before them, lying at the edge of the handkerchief--a circular pit of rough yellow rock breast high. They ran over to it and climbed upon its top.
Another minute and the ring had grown until its top became a narrow curving path upon which they could stand. They got upon their feet and looked around curiously.
"Well, we're here," remarked the Very Young Man. "Everything's O.K. so far. Let's get right around after that scratch."
"Keep together," cautioned the Doctor, and they started off along the path, following its inner edge.
As they progressed, the top of the ring steadily became broader; the surface underfoot became rougher. The Big Business Man, walking nearest the edge, pulled his companion towards him. "Look there!" he said. They stood cautiously at the edge and looked down.
Beneath them the ring bulged out. Over the bulge they could see the black of the handkerchief--a sheer hundred-feet drop. The ring curved sharply to the left; they could follow its wall all the way around; it formed a circular pit some two hundred and fifty feet in diameter.
A gentle breeze fanned their faces as they walked. The Very Young Man looked up into the gray of the distance overhead. A little behind, over his shoulder he saw above him in the sky a great, gleaming light many times bigger than the sun. It cast on the ground before him an opaque shadow, blurred about the edges.
"Pretty good day, at that," remarked the Very Young Man, throwing out his chest.
The Doctor laughed. "It's half-past eight at night," he said. "And if you'll remember half an hour ago, it's a very stormy night, too."
The Big Business Man stopped short in his walk. "Just think," he said pointing up into the gray of the sky, with a note of awe in his voice, "over there, not more than fifteen feet away, is a window, looking down towards the Gaiety Theater and Broadway."
The Very Young. Man looked bewildered. "That window's a hundred miles away," he said positively.
"Fifteen feet," said the Big Business Man. "Just beyond the table."
"It's all in the viewpoint" said the Doctor, and laughed again.
They had recovered their spirits by now, the Very Young Man especially seeming imbued with the enthusiasm of adventure.
The path became constantly rougher as they advanced.
The ground underfoot--a shaggy, yellow, metallic ore--was strewn now with pebbles. These pebbles grew larger farther on, becoming huge rocks and bowlders that greatly impeded their progress.
They soon found it difficult to follow the brink of the precipice. The path had broadened now so that its other edge was out of sight, for they could see only a short distance amid the bowlders that everywhere tumbled about, and after a time they found themselves wandering along, lost in the barren waste.
"How far is the scratch, do you suppose?" the Very Young Man wanted to know.
They stopped and consulted a moment; then the Very Young Man clambered up to the top of a rock. "There's a range of hills over there pretty close," he called down to them. "That must be the way."
They had just started again in the direction of the hills when, almost without warning, and with a great whistle and roar, a gale of wind swept down upon them. They stood still and looked at each other with startled faces, bracing with their feet against its pressure.
"Oh, golly, what's this?" cried the Very Young Man, and sat down suddenly upon the ground to keep from being blown forward.
The wind increased rapidly in violence until, in a moment, all three
of the men were crouching upon the ground for shelter.
"Great Scott, this is a tornado!" ejaculated the Big Business Man. His words were almost lost amid the howling of the blast as it swept across the barren waste of rocks.
"Rogers never told us anything about this. It's getting worse every minute. I----" A shower of pebbles and a great cloud of metallic dust swept past, leaving them choking and gasping for breath.
The Very Young Man got upon his hands and knees.
"I'm going over there," he panted. "It's better."
CHAPTER XIV
STRANGE EXPERIENCES
Led by the Very Young Man, the three crawled a few yards to where a cluster of bowlders promised better shelter. Huddled behind this mass of rock, they found themselves protected in a measure from the violence of the storm. Lying there, they could see yellowish-gray clouds of sand go sweeping by, with occasionally a hail of tiny pebbles, blowing almost horizontal. Overhead, the sky was unchanged. Not a vestige of cloud was visible, only the gray-blue of an immense distance, with the huge gleaming light, like an enormous sun, hung in its center.
The Very Young Man put his hand on the Doctor's arm. "It's going down," he said. Hardly were the words out of his mouth before, with even less warning than it began, the gale abruptly ceased. There remained only the pleasantly gentle breeze of a summer afternoon blowing against their faces. And this came from almost an opposite direction to the storm.
The three men looked at one another in amazement.
"Well, I'll be----" ejaculated the Very Young Man. "What next?"
They waited for some time, afraid to venture out from the rocks among which they had taken refuge. Then, deciding that the storm, however unexplainable, was over for the time at least, they climbed to their feet and resumed their journey with bruised knees, but otherwise none the worse for the danger through which they had passed.
After walking a short distance, they came up a little incline, and before them, hardly more than a quarter of a mile away, they could see a range of hills.
"The scratch must be behind those hills," said the Very Young Man, pointing.
"It's a long distance," said the Big Business Man thoughtfully. "We're still growing smaller--look."
Their minds had been so occupied that for some time they had forgotten the effect of the drug upon their stature. As they looked about them now they could see the rocks around them still increasing steadily in size, and could feel the ground shifting under their feet when they stood still.
"You're right; we're getting smaller," observed the Very Young Man. "How long before we'll stop, do you suppose?"
The Doctor drew the Chemist's memoranda from the pouch of his belt. "It says about five or six hours for the first four pellets," he read.
The Very Young Man 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, the whole universe went nutty!" he added to himself in awe.
"What did that?" asked the Big Business Man. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and sat upon a rock, holding his head in his hands.
The Doctor was up in a moment beside him. "We're not hurt," he said, looking at his companions. "Don't let's waste any more time--let's get into that valley." The Very Young Man could see by his manner that he knew or guessed what had happened.
"But say; what----" began the Very Young Man.
"Come on," interrupted the Doctor, and started walking ahead swiftly.
There was nothing for his two friends to do but to follow. They walked in silence, in single file, picking their way among the rocks. For a quarter of an hour or more they kept going, until finally they came to the ridge of hills, finding them enormous rocks, several hundred feet high, strewn closely together.
"The valley must be right beyond," said the Doctor. "Come on."
The spaces between these huge rocks were, some of them, fifty feet or more in width. Inside the hills the travelers found the ground even rougher than before, and it was nearly half an hour before they emerged on the other side.
Instead of the shallow valley they expected to find, they came upon a precipice--a sheer drop into a tremendous cañon, half as wide possibly as it was deep. They could see down to its bottom from where they stood--the same rocky, barren waste as that through which they had been traveling. Across the cañon, on the farther side, lay another line of hills.
"It's the scratch all right," said the Very Young Man, as they stopped near the brink of the precipice, "but, holy smoke! Isn't it big?"
"That's two thousand feet down there," said the Big Business Man, stepping cautiously nearer to the edge. "Rogers didn't say it was so deep."
"That's because we've been so much longer getting here," explained the Doctor.
"How are we going to get down?" asked the Very Young Man as he stood beside the Big Business Man within a few feet of the brink. "It's getting deeper every minute, don't forget that."
The Big Business Man knelt down and carefully approached to the very edge of the precipice. Then, as he looked over, he got upon his feet with a laugh of relief. "Come here," he said.
They joined him at the edge and, looking over, could see that the jagged roughness of the wall made the descent, though difficult, not exceptionally hazardous. Below them, not more than twenty feet, a wide ledge jutted out, and beyond that they could see other similar ledges and crevices that would afford a foothold.
"We can get down that," said the Very Young Man. "There's an easy place," and he pointed farther along the brink, to where a break in the edge seemed to offer a means of descent to the ledge just below.
"It's going to be a mighty long climb down," said the Big Business Man. "Especially as we're getting smaller all the time. I wonder," he added
thoughtfully, "how would it be if we made ourselves larger before we started. We could get big enough, you know, so that it would only be a few hundred feet down there. Then, after we got down, we could get small again."
"That's a thought," said the Very Young Man.
The Doctor sat down somewhat wearily, and again took the papers from his belt. "The idea is a good one," he said. "But there's one thing you overlook. The larger we get, the smoother the wall is going to be. Look, can't you see it changing every moment?"
It was true. Even in the short time since they had first looked down, new crevices had opened up. The descent, though longer, was momentarily becoming less dangerous.