CHAPTER XXVIII

_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!