Chapter III

Dr. Gryce interrupted. "Just a minute, Brett--I want to make absolutely clear to Frank the principles involved in this change of size in relation to velocity."

"May I ask a question first?" I hazarded.

"All you like," said Brett.

"I'm wondering why in your normal size you could attain no greater velocity than seven and one-half million miles an hour. Theoretically, you know, a freely falling body will accelerate to infinity. And with repulsion added--a body, not only falling, but being _pushed_ downward----"

Frannie said, "Nogar found his approximate limit at five million----"

"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. . . ."