"How do you suppose that girl got in there?" asked the Very Young Man, coming out of a brown study. "What puzzled me," resumed the Chemist, ignoring the question, "is why the girl should so resemble our own race. I have thought about it a good deal, and I have reached the conclusion that the inhabitants of any universe in the next smaller or larger plane to ours probably resemble us fairly closely. That ring, you see, is in the same--shall we say--environment as ourselves. The same forces control it that control us. Now, if the ring had been created on Mars, for instance, I believe that the universes within its atoms would be inhabited by beings like the Martians--if Mars has any inhabitants. Of course, in planes beyond those next to ours, either smaller or larger, changes would probably occur, becoming greater as you go in or out from our own universe." "Good Lord! It makes one dizzy to think of it," said the Big Business Man. "I wish I knew how that girl got in there," sighed the Very Young Man, looking at the ring. "She probably didn't," retorted the Doctor. "Very likely she was created there, the same as you were here." "I think that is probably so," said the Chemist. "And yet, sometimes I am not at all sure. She was very human." The Very Young Man looked at him sympathetically. "How are you going to prove your theories?" asked the Banker, in his most irritatingly practical way. The Chemist picked up the ring and put it on his finger. "Gentlemen," he said. "I have tried to tell you facts, not theories. What I saw through that ultramicroscope was not an unproven theory, but a fact. My theories you have brought out by your questions." "You are quite right," said the Doctor; "but you did mention yourself that you hoped to provide proof." The Chemist hesitated a moment, then made his decision. "I will tell you the rest," he said. "After the destruction of the microscope, I was quite at a loss how to proceed. I thought about the problem for many weeks. Finally I decided to work along another altogether different line--a theory about which I am surprised you have not already questioned me." He paused, but no one spoke. "I am hardly ready with proof to-night," he resumed after a moment. "Will you all take dinner with me here at the club one week from to-night?" He read affirmation in the glance of each. "Good. That's settled," he said, rising. "At seven, then." "But what was the theory you expected us to question you about?" asked the Very Young Man. The Chemist leaned on the back of his chair. "The only solution I could see to the problem," he said slowly, "was to find some way of making myself sufficiently small to be able to enter that other universe. I have found such a way and one week from to-night, gentlemen, with your assistance, I am going to enter the surface of that ring at the point where it is scratched!" CHAPTER II INTO THE RING