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 canon, 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 canon, 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.
"You see," continued the Doctor, "if the valley were only a few hundred
feet deep, the precipice might then be so sheer we could not trust
ourselves to it at all."
"You're right," observed the Big Business Man.
"Well, it's not very hard to get down now," said the Very Young Man.
"Let's get going before it gets any deeper. Say," he added, "how about
stopping our size where it is? How would that work?"
The Doctor was reading the papers he held in his hand. "I think," he
said, "it would be our wisest course to follow as closely as possible
what Rogers tells us to do. It may be harder, but I think we will avoid
trouble in the end."
"We could get lost in size just as easily as in space, couldn't we?" the
Big Business Man put in. "That's a curious idea, isn't it?"
"It's true," agreed the Doctor. "It is something we must guard against
very carefully."
"Well, come on then, let's get going," said the Very Young Man, pulling
the Doctor to his feet.
The Big Business Man glanced at his watch. "Twenty to ten," he said.
Then he looked up into the sky. "One hour and a half ago," he added
sentimentally, "we were up there. What will another hour bring--I
wonder?"
"Nothing at all," said the Very Young Man, "if we don't ever get
started. Come on."
He walked towards the place he had selected, followed by his companions.
And thus the three adventurers began their descent into the ring.