CHAPTER XXVI

_The Black and White Flags_

"It Seems so strange, Dianne, our being alone together."

"Strange, Frank?" Her laugh was like the pealing of little fairy bells. "Strange? Why, when we were children we were together nearly all the time."

Six years now since I had been alone with Dianne. She had been my sister. We were alone now in the abyss--I was very conscious of how alone we were. We sat by a rock, resting. We had found a pool of water. This was our first stopping since we had escaped from Togaro.

We had no food, but we felt that we could get out of the rock fragment to father before the need of it would be serious. We had encountered no Togarites. This vast abyss--these endless mountains, cañons and caverns of rock--seemed able to hold friends and enemies innumerable, and yet never force them together.

We had at first got small enough to escape from the Togarite encampment; had run, cautiously making our size larger so that the running would take us an appreciable distance from the camp. Once away from immediate pursuit, we started our upward journey in earnest.

We had soon found ourselves lost. It was all a strange, desolate, unknown region to me. But Dianne had traveled it before; as we grew larger, the main configurations of the dwindling region became familiar to her. She found a route different from that which the Togarite expedition had proposed using.

Discussing it with Dianne, I found myself puzzled at her confidence in finding her way out and still avoiding the Togarite parties who were ahead of us. Strange physical conditions, those of this size-change traveling! Yet a moment's thought made the matter clear.

Traveling inward--becoming small--the slightest deviation from the true direction would lead the traveler into vast new realms. Countless universes spreading at his feet. There was space here, limitless. In the size we were when upon Mita there was around us in just that single atom countless light-years of astronomical distance. Coming back, we left the atom. It shrank to a microscopical point. We grew larger than the atoms; larger than the molecules.

Space within this fragment of rock which father was guarding was constantly shrinking. Yet even in the abyss of the Togarite camp it was a vast space. I cannot calculate it. But envisaging the distance from one side of the rock fragment to the other, let us call it a thousand miles.

We grew still larger. Soon, to us, there would be only five hundred miles of distance in here. Then one hundred. Then one mile. Then only a few feet, until at last we would emerge and see that all the space had shrunk to the size of our hand.

Thus, coming out, all roads led in very nearly the same direction. There was no solidity to the rock when viewed from the smaller viewpoint; there is, indeed, no solidity to anything. A growing body, avoiding being crushed, would at last emerge, no matter in what direction it went.

Do I make it clear? I hope so.

At last we stopped, between the drug doses, to rest. We were at the bottom of a vast circular caldron. Tumbled crags strewn in heaps. The opposite rim, some ten miles away, was dimly visible in the gloom. There were shadows in here now; it seemed that overhead a vague sheen of light was apparent. We were near the top. Soon we would be out. I touched Dianne's hand.

"You think we're larger--ahead of all the Togarites now?"

"Yes, I think so."

I did, also. It was imperative that we get out of the rock first, get up there and warn father what was coming. If we did that, the expanding Togaro hordes wouldn't have a chance.

"We'll have to rig up a black and white flag as a signal to father. You remember, Dianne? I told you I'd arranged that with him. But how the deuce can we?"

She surprised me by drawing from her robe a square of white fabric with black stripes upon it.

"Dianne!"

"I found a chance to make it, Frank--on the ship when Togaro sent me to another cabin."

She displayed it proudly. "Is it all right?"

It certainly was. A flag about two feet square. I stood up now and spread it out.

"We'll wave it--like this, Dianne. Father will see it when we're still very small."

I showed her how we'd wave it.

"Frank! Stop!"

Her gaze was off across the dim abyss of the caldron.

"Over there, Frank! Do you see something moving? I do!"

Miles away, partly up the opposite cliffside of the caldron, it seemed that something was moving. The light was very dim, yet distant objects were unnaturally sharp and clear. Something moving off there. We stared. Then we thought we saw human figures standing on that far-off cliff, and something waving.

"A flag, Frank!"

It seemed a flag. A black and white flag, something like our own, waving at us!

The space-voyage which Drake, Ahlma, and Alt made from the doomed planet, was very similar to this one I had just taken on the Togaro ship. The Mitans landed in the abyss of rock. A hundred miles, or a thousand, from the Togarite camp? There is no one to judge.

It was a full day, perhaps, after Togaro landed. A similar scene of activity ensued, save that nearly three times as many people were here; unorganized, badly equipped, refugees struggling upward, not bent upon conquest, seeking only safety.

The voyage had been a busy one for Drake. He had tried to organize things. There was not enough food or enough of the expanding drug for this multitude. Drake organized it into smaller divisions, each in charge of one of the Mitan officials.

When they landed, and the ship was hidden, the refugees began moving upward in size, the leader of each party going ahead with food and drugs, expanding them and dealing them out to his people.

It was the same system that Togaro was using. A slow journey upward, stopping at each stage to erect a new encampment.

And immediately upon disembarking, Mitan leaders were sent out as scouts--alert to locate the Togarites, and to avoid them.

In the first encampment Drake sat in consultation with Jain.

"I think, Jain, this is the best we can do. Get part way up--get all the people up to that size--and then wait."

There was room down here to avoid the Togarites. But farther up in the dwindling space a clash would be inevitable.

"You wish to go ahead of us?"

"Yes, with Alt and Ahlma. They know the way. We will take this black and white flag." (Ahlma had made a flag.) "We can travel fast, Jain. We'll go out and see my father. He controls everything up above. The Togarites can't get out--and if we keep away from them, we're safe enough. No use killing any of our Mitan people by fighting down in here."

"But what about us?" Jain demanded with a touch of suspicion.

"I'll come back to you, Jain. Warn my father that this Togarite horde may try to make a rush out, or get out by trickery. Warn him--and make arrangements so that he can distinguish you Mitans from the Togarites. Then, in small parties, we will go out."

Drake, Ahlma, and Alt started upon their journey. They went swiftly. Thousands of miles, perhaps, from Dianne and me at the beginning. Like us, they got safely ahead of the Togarites. At one stage they sighted a Togaro party, but managed to avoid and pass it without being discovered.

The dwindling space near the top brought them in our vicinity. They were standing on the caldron rim, and saw our black and white flag as I tentatively waved it for Dianne. They waved their own.

We were cautious approaching one another, each suspecting an enemy ruse. But we came together at last.

Reunion! The five of us here, with all the Togarites presumably behind us; and father and the safety of our blessed earth close overhead. It seemed, with Drake and Alt here with me--with Ahlma and Dianne babbling news of what had happened to each other--that all our dangers were at an end. It was an inexpressible relief.

We grew out of the caldron into the space above, the huge familiar valley. I remembered it; but it seemed rather darker now than it had been before.

With our flags out, we stood expanding. Above this valley was the upper surface of the rock fragment. Once we got up there to the summit, father would see us. I wondered if he would be on guard. Or Foley? Or the other man--Ransome--whom we employed? It had only been a few days since Alt and I left here. Days? The events which had crowded them made them seem months to my memory.

The valley shrank and closed in upon us. A pit now.

"Drake, shall we climb out? Or wait a little longer?"

It seemed best for us to start climbing. It was no more than a hundred feet up. Easy enough, with us three men to help the girls.

We scrambled up the rocky slope. We were halfway up when it had dwindled so that the upper rim was barely ten feet above us. There was light up there, and vague, blurred shadows of form in the hazy sky.

"Jump, Dianne. Here, I've got you."

We scrambled out of the closing pit, and stood a moment expanding upon the upper surface. Jagged rock spires were around us, a broken area of crags upon the summit of the rock. A few acres up here, and down over an abyss was the surface of the granite slab.

The scene shrank further, and then the last drug we had taken ceased its action. We stood on a narrow, jagged peak of rock. A slope led down beside us to a broad, undulating plain. It was only ten feet down.

Alt stood with the girls. Drake and I were together, waving our flags. We saw things dimly at first--the brighter light up here confused us.

"Frank, you think he sees us?"

"What is that, off there?"

There was something very strange here! A chill swept over me. Drake was not familiar with the surroundings father and I had prepared for the guarding of the rock, but I was. This seemed a very strange scene now!

Words choked me. I stood clutching Drake.

"What is it, Frank--what's the matter?"

This light overhead was not the light father and I had rigged up! There was no giant microscope up there in the sky.

Vague blurred shapes of a ceiling and wall were up there, and a light--but not our light in the guarded room of our house at King's Cove.

This vast plain, gleaming dimly rough and undulating in the light--it should have been our granite slab. But it was not!

Realization surged over me with a chilling rush of horror. This was a different room. There were people here; I heard an echoing rumble of their giant voices. But not father, nor Foley nor Ransome!

The rock fragment had been moved, stolen from father and taken somewhere else! These were enemies, guarding the rock upon the top of which we stood fatuously waving our little black and white flags!