With wings still folded it was crawling in a wavering little circle
near the pellet. And visibly it was diminishing in size. Already the
tiny pellet seemed gigantic beside it. Silently Lea and Carter stared.
The fly was a tiny black midge now, swiftly crawling, but moving so
slowly on the polished tabletop.
"Can you still see it, Lea?" Carter blinked; bent down. It seemed that
the insect already was beyond his sight.
"Yes. I see it."
And then it had vanished. Not gone. They knew it was still there;
dwindling; soon it would be beyond the reach of any microscope....
For a moment, in the silent little bedroom, Carter and the girl stared
at each other, overwhelmed by the momentousness of their discovery.
"You want to go back to your own world, Lea?" he murmured at last. "You
can do it now--with this."
"Yes--yes! That is what I shall do." Her eyes were shining. Her whole
little figure was trembling. Swiftly she gathered up the pellets,
replaced them in the vial. "Your father shall have no chance to destroy
them," she declared defiantly. "They are mine, not his."
"If you go, I'm going with you," Carter exclaimed suddenly. His heart
was pounding; a band seemed binding his chest. There is no one who can
face the Unknown without a thrill of excitement, and fear.
"And leave this your world?" she murmured. "Your father and
sister--they who love you just as my people love me--"
"I can come back to them. The journey--"
"The journey, it can be very long and very dangerous--"
"Not so dangerous for me as for you, Lea." He seized her by her slender
shoulders and stared earnestly down into her eyes. "Look here, do you
want me to come?" he demanded. "Not because I can help you--I don't
mean only that. Do you want me to come?"
For an instant it seemed that in the limpid depths of her eyes a mist
was gathering. Then her face turned whimsical; her mouth twisted into
a little smile as she cocked her head and gazed at him slantwise from
behind lowered lashes.
"That is for you to think for yourself," she murmured. "I could not
stop you coming if I would. Is that not so?"
"It damn sure is," he agreed. Again he lowered his voice, with a swift
glance at the bedroom door. "I don't think I'll say anything about this
to father and Alice," he added softly. "Just leave them a message that
I'll be right back. No use starting anything, you know."
"And you will come back soon to them? You will thank them for that
they have both been so very kind to me here?"
"Sure I will. Why, Lea, we're not going far. Only into the garden, to
the sundial's pointer. Why, if you look at it like that, we're not
going maybe even an eighth of an inch beneath the surface of that metal
pointer!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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