"Our limitations were similar to his," Martt put in.
"I know," I said. "I remember in the public newscasting they said----"
"We found the same conditions," Brett put in. "Our vehicle--any vehicle
traveling in outer Space--is not strictly a freely falling body. For
low velocities--the general voyaging from here to Mercury, Venus or
Mars--Space may almost be considered a vacuum. But it is not a vacuum,
as we know. The imponderable, widely separated atoms of the ether--to
use the ancient word--begin to be a factor at velocities over three
million miles an hour. The drag became increasingly noticeable----"
"And the heat of the friction warmed us up," Martt put in. "At six
million miles an hour we were hot, let me tell you. Sweltering--even
with the full refrigeration units going."
"That friction held us to seven and one-half million as our limit,"
Brett added. "Anything else, Frank?"
"Yes, I was wondering about our aural ray here. Could you still see it?"
"Oh yes. Our sun of the Solar System had dwindled--small, but white
and brilliant. With the naked eye the little star which was our earth
showed very faint but distinguishable. With the aurometer--even using
its spreading field of vision so that it embraced all that portion of
the sky--we could see your beam sweeping slowly across the field as the
earth rotated."
"And the myrdoscope?" I suggested. "Hadn't you tried again to locate
the image of that girl?" My heart thumped as I said it.
He nodded. "Beyond Jupiter, when the long hours of inactivity hung on
us, I spent many of them searching ahead of us with the myrdoscope. At
last I picked up the image of the girl--held it for a few moments."
"There was no change?" Dr. Gryce said eagerly.
"No. The little distance we had traveled made no change--in fact, my
smaller instrument, Father, showed it rather less clearly."
"I mean no change in the girl's attitude," Dr. Gryce insisted. "No
change in the attacking giant--or those grinning little dwarfs at the
girl's ankle?"
"None. But she was aware of them. On her face was stark terror--as
we had seen it from here, Father, a month before. I noticed that the
giant's forward step had nearly been completed--and the climbing dwarf
was holding tightly to her sandal cord."
Brett gazed at me inquiringly but I shook my head. "That's all I have
to ask," I said. "Go ahead, Brett. You were telling us about how you
started the size-change----"
Dr. Gryce put in. "I think you had best proceed, Brett. And then if
there is anything Frank does not understand, we can stop and make it
clear."
He nodded, but for a moment he hesitated. "I flung over the switch to
start our growth," he said slowly. "It was the beginning of all those
strangely weird experiences which followed now one upon the other.
Frightening at first. . . ."