ON THE LAKE
"You're right--we are being followed," the Very Young Man said soberly.
He had pulled the girl over close against the wall of a house. "Did you
see that?"
"Three, they are," Aura answered. "I saw them before--in the street
below--Targo's men."
Evidently the three men had been watching the house from which they had
come and had followed them from there. If they were Targo's men, as
seemed very probable, the Very Young Man could not understand why they
had not already attacked him. Perhaps they intended to as soon as he and
Aura had reached a more secluded part of the city. They must know he had
the drugs, and to gain possession of those certainly was what they were
striving for. The Very Young Man realized he must take no chances; to
lose the drugs would be fatal to them all.
"Are we near the edge of the city?" he asked.
"Yes, very near."
"Then we shall get large here. If we make a run for it we will be in the
country before we are big enough to attract too much attention.
Understand, Aura?"
"I understand."
"We mustn't stir up the city if we can help it; with giants running
around, the people would get worked up to a frenzy. You could see that
with Lylda this afternoon. Not that you can blame them altogether, but
we want to get Loto back before we start anything here in Arite." He
took the pellets out as he spoke, and they each touched one of them to
the tip of their tongues.
"Now, then, come on--not too fast, we want to keep going," said the Very
Young Man, taking the girl by the hand again.
As they started off, running slowly down the street, the Very Young Man
looked back. The three men were running after them--not fast, seeming
content merely to keep their distance. The Very Young Man laughed. "Wait
till they see us get big. Fine chance they've got."
Aura, her lithe, young body in perfect condition, ran lightly and easily
as a fawn. She made a pretty picture as she ran, with her long, black
hair streaming out behind her, and the short silk tunic flapping about
her lean, round thighs. She still held the Very Young Man by the hand,
running just in advance of him, guiding him through the streets, which
in this part of the city were more broken up and irregular.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when the pavement began to
move unsteadily under them, as the deck of a plunging ship feels to one
who runs its length, and the houses they were swiftly passing began
visibly to decrease in size. The Very Young Man felt the girl falter in
her stride. He dropped her hand and slipped his arm about her waist,
holding her other hand against it. She smiled up into his eyes, and thus
they ran on, side by side.
A few moments more and they were in the open country, running on a road
that wound through the hills, between cultivated fields dotted here and
there with houses. The landscape dwindled beneath them steadily, until
they seemed to be running along a narrow, curving path, bordered by
little patches of different-colored ground, like a checkerboard. The
houses they passed now hardly reached as high as their knees. Sometimes
peasants stood in the doorways of these houses watching them in terror.
Occasionally they passed a farmer ploughing his field, who stopped his
work, stricken dumb, and stared at them as they went swiftly by.
When they were well out into the country, perhaps a quarter of the way
to Orlog--for to beings so huge as they the distance was not great--the
Very Young Man slowed down to a walk.
"How far have we gone?" he asked.
Aura stopped abruptly and looked around her. They seemed now to be at
the bottom of a huge, circular, shallow bowl. In every direction from
where they stood the land curved upward towards the rim of the bowl that
was the horizon--a line, not sharp and well defined, but dim and hazy,
melting away into the blackness of the star-studded sky. Behind them,
hardly more than a mile away, according to their present stature--they
had stopped growing entirely now--lay the city of Arite. They could see
completely across it and out into the country beyond.
The lake, with whose shore they had been running parallel, was much
closer to them. Ahead, up near the rim of the horizon, lay a black
smudge. Aura pointed. "Orlog is there," she said. "You see it?"
To the Very Young Man suddenly came the realization that already he was
facing the problem of how to get into Orlog unheralded. If they remained
in their present size they could easily walk there in an hour or less.
But long before that they would be seen and recognized.
The Very Young Man feared for Loto's safety if he allowed that to
happen. He seemed to be able to make out the city of Orlog now. It was
smaller than Arite, and lay partially behind a hill, with most of its
houses strung along the lake shore. If only they were not so tall they
could not be seen so readily. But if they became smaller it would take
them much longer to get there. And eventually they would have to become
normal Oroid size, or even smaller, in order to get into the city
unnoticed. The Very Young Man thought of the lake. Perhaps that would be
the best way.
"Can you swim?" he asked. And Aura, with her ready smile, answered that
she could. "If we are in the water," she added, seeming to have followed
his thoughts, "they would not see us. I can swim very far--can you?"
The Very Young Man nodded.
"If we could get near to Orlog in the water," he said, "we might get a
boat. And then when we were small, we could sail up. They wouldn't see
us then."
"There are many boats," answered the girl in agreement. "Look!"
There were, indeed, on the lake, within sight of them now, several
boats. "We must get the one nearest Orlog," the Very Young Man said. "Or
else it will beat us in and carry the news."
In a few minutes more they were at the lake shore. The Very Young Man
wore, underneath his robe, a close-fitting knitted garment very much
like a bathing-suit. He took off his robe now, and rolling it up, tied
it across his back with the cord he had worn around his waist. Aura's
tunic was too short to impede her swimming and when the Very Young Man
was ready, they waded out into the water together. They found the lake
no deeper than to Aura's shoulders, but as it was easier to swim than to
wade, they began swimming--away from shore towards the farthest boat
that evidently was headed for Orlog.
The Very Young Man thought with satisfaction that, with only their heads
visible, huge as they would appear, they could probably reach this boat
without being seen by any one in Orlog. The boat was perhaps a quarter
of a mile from them--a tiny little toy vessel, it seemed, that they
never would have seen except for its sail.
They came up to it rapidly, for they were swimming very much faster than
it could sail, passing close to one of the others and nearly swamping it
by the waves they made. As they neared the boat they were pursuing--it
was different from any the Very Young Man had seen so far, a single,
canoe-shaped hull, with out-riders on both sides--they could see it held
but a single occupant, a man who sat in its stern--a figure about as
long as one of the Very Young Man's fingers.
The Very Young Man and Aura were swimming side by side, now. The water
was perfect in temperature--neither too hot nor too cold; they had not
been swimming fast, and were not winded.
"We've got him, what'll we do with him," the Very Young Man wanted to
know in dismay, as the thought occurred to him. He might have been more
puzzled at how to take the drug to make them smaller while they were
swimming, but Aura's answer solved both problems.
"There is an island," she said flinging an arm up out of the water. "We
can push the boat to it, and him we can leave there. Is that not the
thing to do?"
"You bet your life," the Very Young Man agreed, enthusiastically.
"That's just the thing to do."
As they came within reach of the boat the Very Young Man stopped
swimming and found that the water was not much deeper than his waist.
The man in the boat appeared now about to throw himself into the lake
from fright.
"Tell him, Aura," the Very Young Man said. "We won't hurt him."
Wading through the water, they pushed the boat with its terrified
occupant carefully in front of them towards the island, which was not
more than two or three hundred yards away. The Very Young Man found this
rather slow work; becoming impatient, he seized the boat in his hand,
pinning the man against its seat with his forefinger so he would not
fall out. Then raising the boat out of the water over his head he waded
forward much more rapidly.
The island, which they reached in a few moments more, was circular in
shape, and about fifty feet in diameter. It had a beach entirely around
it; a hill perhaps ten feet high rose near its center, and at one end it
was heavily wooded. There were no houses to be seen.
The Very Young Man set the boat back on the water, and they pushed it up
on the beach. When it grounded the tiny man leaped out and ran swiftly
along the sand. The Very Young Man and Aura laughed heartily as they
stood ankle-deep in the water beside the boat, watching him. For nearly
five minutes he ran; then suddenly he ducked inland and disappeared in
the woods.
When they were left alone they lost no time in becoming normal Oroid
size. The boat now appeared about twenty-five feet long--a narrow,
canoe-shaped hull hollowed out of a tree-trunk. They climbed into it,
and with a long pole they found lying in its bottom, the Very Young Man
shoved it off the beach.