_The Return to Earth_
"Not that way, Frank! Let's get around the back--I think it's a better
chance."
We had clambered down the ten feet of jagged rock. We didn't change
size--we had to risk it as we were, for to have got smaller would have
made the descent too great. Somehow we were not discovered. We seemed
to be on the floor of a room. A stone floor--we saw it as a ridged,
uneven rocky plain. Off in the distance was what might have been a
table, chairs, and the legs of seated men.
Ahead of us, a quarter of a mile away, was a cliff-like precipice. I
figured it to be the wall of the room. It seemed darker over there.
We ran. The rock had a small fence around it--a fence which, compared
to the normal room-size, was probably a foot or two high. We darted
through its bars. In five minutes, perhaps, we were in the shelter of
the bottom of the wall. It was seemingly of rocks and earth, piled and
plastered together. It was dank with moisture, but solid to us in this
size.
We stood a moment in the shadows here, panting from the run.
"Where do you suppose this is?" Drake demanded. "Can you make anything
out of it, Frank?"
We were secure for the moment. It was dark over here. Standing with
quiet survey I could imagine that there were three or four men off
there in the distance. That this was a room with a single light
overhead. No window on this side. The other walls were too far away to
be visible.
"The door," said Drake. "That's what we've got to find--got to get out
through it."
But where were we? Certainly this was no room in our home. It looked
as though it might be a place hastily, amateurishly built. But it was
tight. No crevices--no cracks or openings. The bottom of this wall was
plastered solid with wet mud. The air down here was dank and heavy with
moisture.
Dianne murmured, "Listen! That sounds like water."
A strange, muffled reverberating roar sounded from some great distance.
A giant sea pounding? It seemed like that. My heart sank. Why this
could be a place very far from King's Cove. The wild thought came to
me--was this an earthly sound, this muffled pounding of the sea.
I said something like that to Drake.
"Nonsense! They've stolen the rock, Frank, and built this hiding
place--probably not far from King's Cove. Where could they go?"
Dianne said abruptly, "I think this is all very small--this place
they've built down here."
It was a new idea to us. But it seemed probably true. The Togarites
would be in hiding. They had stolen the rock, made it small, and built
this tiny housing place.
Our escape was still undiscovered. Not far from us was a long, slanting
shadow--as though a table perhaps were cutting off the light. We
walked until the shadow was upon us. And by the wall along here was
a neglected pile of caked mud, large as a house to us. We found an
opening like a cave-mouth, and squeezed in.
We were momentarily safe. "You stay here with the girls," I suggested
to Drake. "I'll get large enough to see what the place looks like and
how we can get out."
A discussion in the room interrupted us. The rock was visible a quarter
of a mile away. A figure was growing upon it, expanding swiftly. A
man. He leaped from the rock. We could see him moving in the opposite
direction from us, reaching the little fence, climbing over it.
He had shouted. The distant giant shapes had sprung into action. They
seemed bending down. There was surprise, but no turmoil.
"Togaro!" murmured Ahlma.
It was Togaro. As he expanded, there was a size when, with the light
upon him, we saw him plainly. There had been no guards to challenge
him. He had come swiftly out of the rock, and was large enough when he
first shouted to enable the men in the room to recognize him. He was
standing off there now, growing to their size. We could hear the rumble
of their voices.
It changed our plans. The fact that the guards were missing would now
be discovered.
"We can't stay here," said Drake. "If they suspect us, they'll begin
searching."
Nor could we run the miles along the walls of this room, hoping to find
an open door. We decided we would have to dare a slightly larger size.
We stood in the comparative darkness beside this cake of mud and grew--
The room, in a moment, had dwindled. We huddled against its wall. We
knew that at any moment we might be discovered, but we had to take the
risk. It was a small, windowless cell to its other occupants, though
still gigantic to us.
Four men, and Togaro, stood by a table of stone. There was a closed
door in the opposite wall. Two men stood by it. A light now sprang over
it, so that the room over there was brightly illumined.
Ahlma heard them, "Togaro is saying his first party is coming out now."
They were already coming! The rock seemed much closer to us now, and
smaller. Tiny figures showed on its summit. They leaped down, they
stood expanding.
It was at once a dismaying and welcome diversion. The missing guards
were forgotten in the turmoil of the arriving Togarites. A hundred or
more of them came. The room was in confusion. They tramped about while
we shrank again into our niche. They grew large, and in parties of ten,
were checked through the door, passing under the light to the darkness
outside.
The turmoil made it easier for us. We got around the wall, near to the
door. It was a long march, for near the end when we were sure of our
direction, we shrank again to a smaller size, and kept close against
the wall so that we might not be trampled.
The Togarites were pouring now from the rock. This was the arrival of
the first thousand. They seemed so formidable as they grew gigantic and
jammed the room! Giant hordes, arriving here on earth! The conquest had
begun!
It made us realize anew that with the world harried by these giants,
possession of the drug was of vital importance. The drugs were Togaro's
chief weapons. But we four had them also. If we could get out of
here--get quickly to the authorities and deliver the drugs--it might be
the difference between defeat and victory for the world.
We may have stood there an hour. The arriving Togarites poured into the
room; they marched through the doorway in a steady stream.
But we did not dare try to slip through. The light was bright, and
there were two guards with gaze always upon the floor. From where we
lurked we could see outside; a dim vista of blurred, luminous darkness
and crowding giant figures. There was a babble of rumbling voices, both
outside and in here.
An hour passed.
Then came the chance we had felt must come at last. The bodies of the
Togarites we had killed on the rock summit were discovered! A group of
the arriving people carried them down. Togaro had been moving about the
room. His voice rang out with commands.
Ahlma translated: "He says, 'Close the door!' No more people are to
come now from the rock! Oh, Drake, they're going to search for us! They
know now that we are here!"
The guards sprang to the sliding door. But that act momentarily took
their gaze from the floor. We were, to them, a few inches high. We were
desperate. The door slid closed; but we had made a wild dash and gone
through!
We found ourselves outside, in what seemed an outdoor darkness. A void,
with a sheen of distant silver light far overhead. Giants trampling
about. We dashed for a great jagged porous column. It was wood. We hid
in one of its cave cells--a broken niche in its side. There was no
search going on out here for us. The giants were tramping about, moving
away.
Presently we dared to increase our size again, when the space out
here seemed cleared momentarily of the tramping figures. Of all the
size-change we ever experienced, I think that this was now the most
surprising. The giants in the distance seemed also growing. We could
hear them, but soon realized that another wall was between us and them.
We were, for the moment, alone.
We had taken only a taste of the enlarging drug.
"Where are we?" exclaimed Drake. "How small are we?"
The pounding of the distant sea had been louder out here. But now, as
we grew, it shrank until presently it was a murmur. Not a roar, far
away--but a murmur, near at hand. The gentle lapping of water, close
somewhere here.
And we found a tiny, mound-like house of sand and mud shrinking at our
feet. It was sheltered by an overhanging arch of rock. The room from
which we had escaped! It dwindled and was gone into smallness.
A rush of madness swept me as I saw that tiny mound. A kick of the toe
of my shoe would crush it. Kill Togaro and all his men in there. But
the madness passed. For all I knew, father might be in there. And the
rock certainly was down in there. If I stamped, that tiny grain of
rock would be forever lost. And a hundred thousand Mitan refugees were
in it, waiting for Drake to return to them with help!
Other walls closed in around us. The giants were obviously outside of
them. A floor became apparent--a floor of earth and sand, and near
by there was a vast spread of uneven wood. As we grew, it shrank to
planking. A void of darkness was beyond it. No, not darkness! A patch
of silver sheen. Water, off there. Water, with moonlight on it; water,
lapping gently under this planking on which we were now standing.
Dawning recognition was coming to us. The rough boards; walls; this
ceiling close over us, with timbered beams; this archway, with shining
water beyond it--it was the interior of our own boathouse on the shore
of King's Cove!
It was night--a calm, placid night of moonlight on the water. The
boathouse was empty, save for ourselves as at last, in a normal size to
earth, we stood in a corner.
Our dory was gone. The slip of water here was vacant. Outside the
boathouse we heard the throng of Togarites tramping about the cove!