CHAPTER XIV
STRANGE EXPERIENCES
Led by the Very Young Man, the three crawled a few yards to where acluster of bowlders promised better shelter. Huddled behind this mass ofrock, they found themselves protected in a measure from the violence ofthe storm. Lying there, they could see yellowish-gray clouds of sand gosweeping by, with occasionally a hail of tiny pebbles, blowing almosthorizontal. Overhead, the sky was unchanged. Not a vestige of cloud wasvisible, only the gray-blue of an immense distance, with the hugegleaming light, like an enormous sun, hung in its center.
The Very Young Man put his hand on the Doctor's arm. "It's going down,"he said. Hardly were the words out of his mouth before, with even lesswarning than it began, the gale abruptly ceased. There remained only thepleasantly gentle breeze of a summer afternoon blowing against theirfaces. And this came from almost an opposite direction to the storm.
The three men looked at one another in amazement.
"Well, I'll be----" ejaculated the Very Young Man. "What next?"
They waited for some time, afraid to venture out from the rocks amongwhich they had taken refuge. Then, deciding that the storm, howeverunexplainable, was over for the time at least, they climbed to theirfeet and resumed their journey with bruised knees, but otherwise nonethe worse for the danger through which they had passed.
After walking a short distance, they came up a little incline, andbefore them, hardly more than a quarter of a mile away, they could see arange of hills.
"The scratch must be behind those hills," said the Very Young Man,pointing.
"It's a long distance," said the Big Business Man thoughtfully. "We'restill growing smaller--look."
Their minds had been so occupied that for some time they had forgottenthe effect of the drug upon their stature. As they looked about them nowthey could see the rocks around them still increasing steadily in size,and could feel the ground shifting under their feet when they stoodstill.
"You're right; we're getting smaller," observed the Very Young Man. "Howlong before we'll stop, do you suppose?"
The Doctor drew the Chemist's memoranda from the pouch of his belt. "Itsays about five or six hours for the first four pellets," he read.
The Very Young Man looked at his watch. "Quarter to nine. We've beenless than an hour yet. Come on, let's keep going," and he startedwalking rapidly forward.
They walked for a time in silence. The line of hills before them grewvisibly in size, and they seemed slowly to be nearing it.
"I've been thinking," began the Doctor thoughtfully as he glanced up atthe hills. "There's one theory of Rogers's that was a fallacy. Youremember he was quite positive that this change of stature becamesteadily more rapid, until it reached its maximum rate and then remainedconstant. If that were so we should probably be diminishing in size morerapidly now than when we first climbed on to the ring. If we had so muchtrouble getting to the ring then"--he smiled at the remembrance of theirdifficulty--"I don't see how we could ever get to those hills now."
"Gee, that's so," said the Very Young Man. "We'd never be able to getanywhere, would we?"
"How do you figure it works?" asked the Big Business Man.
The Doctor folded up the paper and replaced it in his belt. "I don'tknow," he answered. "I think probably it proceeds in cycles, like thenormal rate of growth--times of rapid progress succeeded by periods ofcomparative inactivity."
"I never knew people grew that way," observed the Very Young Man.
"They do," said the Doctor. "And if these drugs produce the same effectwe----" He got no further, for suddenly the earth seemed to rise swiftlyunder them, and they were thrown violently to the ground.
The Very Young Man, as he lay prone, looked upward, and saw the sunlikelight above fall swiftly down across the sky and disappear below thehorizon, plunging the world about them into the gloom of asemi-twilight. A wind, fiercer than before, swept over them with a roar.
"The end of the world," murmured the Very Young Man to himself. And hewondered why he was not frightened.
Then came the feeling of an extraordinary lightness of body, as thoughthe ground were dropping away from under him. The wind abruptly ceasedblowing. He saw the ball of light rise swiftly from the horizon andmount upward in a great, gleaming arc to the zenith, where again it hungmotionless.
The three men lay quiet, their heads reeling. Then the Very Young Mansat up dizzily and began feeling himself all over. "There's nothingwrong with me," he said lugubriously, meeting the eyes of his friendswho apparently were also more surprised than hurt. "But--oh, my gosh,the whole universe went nutty!" he added to himself in awe.
"What did that?" asked the Big Business Man. He climbed unsteadily tohis feet and sat upon a rock, holding his head in his hands.
The Doctor was up in a moment beside him. "We're not hurt," he said,looking at his companions. "Don't let's waste any more time--let's getinto that valley." The Very Young Man could see by his manner that heknew or guessed what had happened.
"But say; what----" began the Very Young Man.
"Come on," interrupted the Doctor, and started walking ahead swiftly.
There was nothing for his two friends to do but to follow. They walkedin silence, in single file, picking their way among the rocks. For aquarter of an hour or more they kept going, until finally they came tothe ridge of hills, finding them enormous rocks, several hundred feethigh, strewn closely together.
"The valley must be right beyond," said the Doctor. "Come on."
The spaces between these huge rocks were, some of them, fifty feet ormore in width. Inside the hills the travelers found the ground evenrougher than before, and it was nearly half an hour before they emergedon the other side.
Instead of the shallow valley they expected to find, they came upon aprecipice--a sheer drop into a tremendous canon, half as wide possiblyas it was deep. They could see down to its bottom from where theystood--the same rocky, barren waste as that through which they had beentraveling. Across the canon, on the farther side, lay another line ofhills.
"It's the scratch all right," said the Very Young Man, as they stoppednear the brink of the precipice, "but, holy smoke! Isn't it big?"
"That's two thousand feet down there," said the Big Business Man,stepping cautiously nearer to the edge. "Rogers didn't say it was sodeep."
"That's because we've been so much longer getting here," explained theDoctor.
"How are we going to get down?" asked the Very Young Man as he stoodbeside the Big Business Man within a few feet of the brink. "It'sgetting deeper every minute, don't forget that."
The Big Business Man knelt down and carefully approached to the veryedge of the precipice. Then, as he looked over, he got upon his feetwith a laugh of relief. "Come here," he said.
They joined him at the edge and, looking over, could see that the jaggedroughness of the wall made the descent, though difficult, notexceptionally hazardous. Below them, not more than twenty feet, a wideledge jutted out, and beyond that they could see other similar ledgesand crevices that would afford a foothold.
"We can get down that," said the Very Young Man. "There's an easyplace," and he pointed farther along the brink, to where a break in theedge seemed to offer a means of descent to the ledge just below.
"It's going to be a mighty long climb down," said the Big Business Man."Especially as we're getting smaller all the time. I wonder," he addedthoughtfully, "how would it be if we made ourselves larger before westarted. We could get big enough, you know, so that it would only be afew hundred feet down there. Then, after we got down, we could get smallagain."
"That's a thought," said the Very Young Man.
The Doctor sat down somewhat wearily, and again took the papers from hisbelt. "The idea is a good one," he said. "But there's one thing youoverlook. The larger we get, the smoother the wall is going to be. Look,can't you see it changing every moment?"
It was true. Even in the short time since they had first looked down,new crevices had opened up. The descent,
though longer, was momentarilybecoming less dangerous.
"You see," continued the Doctor, "if the valley were only a few hundredfeet deep, the precipice might then be so sheer we could not trustourselves to it at all."
"You're right," observed the Big Business Man.
"Well, it's not very hard to get down now," said the Very Young Man."Let's get going before it gets any deeper. Say," he added, "how aboutstopping our size where it is? How would that work?"
The Doctor was reading the papers he held in his hand. "I think," hesaid, "it would be our wisest course to follow as closely as possiblewhat Rogers tells us to do. It may be harder, but I think we will avoidtrouble in the end."
"We could get lost in size just as easily as in space, couldn't we?" theBig Business Man put in. "That's a curious idea, isn't it?"
"It's true," agreed the Doctor. "It is something we must guard againstvery carefully."
"Well, come on then, let's get going," said the Very Young Man, pullingthe Doctor to his feet.
The Big Business Man glanced at his watch. "Twenty to ten," he said.Then he looked up into the sky. "One hour and a half ago," he addedsentimentally, "we were up there. What will another hour bring--Iwonder?"
"Nothing at all," said the Very Young Man, "if we don't ever getstarted. Come on."
He walked towards the place he had selected, followed by his companions.And thus the three adventurers began their descent into the ring.