Frannie forced her way out of the crowded arcade, with its struggling,
panic-stricken occupants. She was confused, terrified. Separated from
me, and then from Martt, her only idea was to find us again; or find
Brett. Outside the arcade she turned aimlessly to where the crowd
momentarily was least dense. Panic-stricken people--all strangers. Then
she saw Leela in the shadow of a doorway of the arcade, and ran to her.
"Leela! What is it? What has happened?"
People around them were shouting. Leela said, "Giants. There is a
giant off there in the lake. I was looking for Brett. He came out
here. Oh, Frannie----"
The two girls clung to each other. It was dark where they stood. At
the moment the crowd had surged the other way. Suddenly Frannie became
aware of a dark form looming beside her. A man twice the size of
herself. She tried to scream, but a great palm went over her face. She
felt herself being jerked from her feet. . . .
She half fainted; recovered to find herself in a thicket within a few
feet of the arcade. Leela was beside her. Leela panted, "Don't scream,
Frannie! They'll--kill us if we scream!"
The man was with them, and a thick-set lump of a woman. Not so large
now. Almost normal in size, for they were dwindling. The man was naked
to the waist, a gray-white, barrel-like chest matted with hair. A face,
fearsome with menacing eyes, and a head of matted black locks.
And in the thicket were four horned animals; saddled, like large horses
with spreading antlers. The animals were dwindling. . . .
The man rasped a command at Leela. From his belt he drew small pellets,
white like tiny pills of medicine. He thrust one at Leela, forced it
down her throat. Leela gasped, "You must take it, Frannie. He says--it
is harmless--but if we resist--he will kill."
Then the man thrust his fingers into Frannie's mouth, his arm holding
her roughly. She gulped, swallowed. It was an acrid taste. . . .
The man pushed her roughly from the thicket. And pushed Leela. His
triumphant laugh was the rasp of a file on metal. Leela and Frannie
stumbled to the wall of the arcade, stood clinging together. And
suddenly, with the realization of what was upon her, Leela screamed.
And Frannie screamed, though she did not yet understand.
A wave of nausea possessed Frannie. Her head was reeling. Voices
sounded near by--familiar men's voices. My voice, and Brett's! We came
running at the sound of the screams.
Frannie held tight to the swaying Leela as Brett and I rushed up. And
I took Frannie in my arms. Brett was demanding, "Leela, what is it?
You're not hurt, are you? What is it?"
Frannie wanted to try and tell me. "Frank--oh----" She choked; her
throat was constricted.
And then Frannie really knew! Within my arms she felt herself
shrinking! Growing smaller; but it was not so much that; rather was it
that my encircling arm was expanding, holding her more loosely.
With the horror of it, Brett and I stood apart. Frannie's nausea was
passing; her head was steadier, but dizzy with the strange movement of
the scene around her. She clung to Leela, and, of everything within her
vision, only Leela was unchanging. The wall of the arcade was slowly
passing upward; its nearer corner was moving slowly away; Brett and
I were growing. Our waists reaching to Frannie's head; and then our
knees. She gazed upward to where, fifteen or twenty feet above her, our
horrified faces stared down.
The mind always takes its personal viewpoint. Frannie and Leela were
dwindling into smallness. But now that the nausea and dizziness
were past, to them, they alone were normal. Everything else seemed
changing . . . the whole scene, growing gigantic. . . .
It was a slow, crawling growth--a steady, visible movement. The ground
beneath their feet was a fine white sand. To Frannie's sight this patch
of sand had originally been some ten feet, with the arcade wall on one
side, and a thicket on the other. But the ground was shifting outward
with herself as a center. Under her bare feet she could feel its steady
movement--drawing outward, shifting so that her feet were drawn apart.
She had to move them constantly.
Beside her now she saw my foot and ankle as large as herself; the
towering shafts of my legs--my face a hundred feet or more above her.
The arcade wall stretched up almost out of sight--lantern-flowers
loomed up there like great colored suns. . . . The thicket was a
hundred feet away--a tangle of jungle.
Then Frannie saw the giant Brett reach down and pick Leela up on his
hand--saw Leela whirled gasping into the air. A moment, then Brett set
her gently back on the ground. She was some twenty feet from Frannie.
She ran, half stumbled across the rough white ground until again the
girls were together.
The arch of my sandaled foot was now as tall as Frannie. The arcade
wall was very distant; the thicket was a blur in the distance. That
small patch of white sand had unrolled to a great stony plain. Rough;
yellow-white stones strewn everywhere. Frannie saw my feet and
Brett's--as large as the arcade once had been--moving away with great
surging bounds up into the air and back. A boulder was near by--a rock
as tall as Frannie. It was visibly growing. She gripped Leela--together
they crept to the boulder's side, huddled there.
But they could not remain still. The boulder was expanding. It towered
over them; but it was drawing away as well, for the ground was
expanding. Constantly they shifted their position to remain close to
it, to huddle under its protecting curve. It had been a rock taller
than their heads; it was now a mountain. It loomed above them--a
bulging cliff-face of naked, ragged rock.
Then it was no longer moving. Everything now had steadied; the ground
was motionless. A normality came to Leela and Frannie. Their terror
faded into apprehension, and a desire, a determination to do what they
could to help themselves. They stood up and looked around them.