"A princess," father repeated. "And soon after she was born an evil leader came into power in her world. Human life is the same everywhere, lads. She has told me it all--you shall hear every detail. But now--I need tell you only that Dianne's parents, with their throne threatened, had their scientists spirit Dianne away. They have a drug--you can call it that--and a space-flying vehicle, capable of changing size. They brought their little princess out into what to them is infinite largeness. Left her here. To save her life from this conqueror who threatened their throne." My thoughts reached to grasp what father was saying. I could envisage an atom of rock there on Bird's Nest Island. One atom out of the uncounted billions. It chanced to contain human life. I tried to imagine becoming infinitely small. Space would, by comparison, open up around me. The whirling electrons within the atom would be blazing suns in a firmament of illimitable space. With a space-flying vehicle infinitely small, I could then traverse that starry universe. Land upon a dark star--a planet--an earth. And find there a human civilization. I knew something of modern physics. I knew that the similarity of atomic structure to our astronomical universe was already recognized. A difference of size only. And all comparative. I could hold a fragment of rock on the palm of my hand. Billions of atoms, clinging together to make what I saw as a tiny rock fragment. Yet each of those atoms held within itself a starry universe of limitless distance--if I were to become small enough to see it from the other viewpoint. I stared at Dianne. My sister? There suddenly seemed a vast gulf between us. This gentle creature, so strangely beautiful, with the crescent glowing on her forehead. Not my sister. A princess of a different world. She caught my gaze and smiled. And said, as she had said several times before, "Don't look at me like that, Frank! I'll tell them, father. That day Frank, when you and I and Drake went to the island. You call it five years ago? When you left me, this Togaro suddenly appeared. He took me--into the atom--into smallness--into what soon I learned was my own native world. "He wanted the throne which some day would have been mine. He--he wanted--he wants me. But the people turned against him. I was rescued--taken from him. I am ruler of that world now. I've told all the details--your father will explain to you." She was speaking fast, almost breathlessly. And I realized now the regal dominance of her manner, mixed so queerly with the little Dianne we used to know. She went on: "I've come back here--and Togaro knows it. He learned, some long time ago, our scientists' secret of traveling into largeness--into this world of yours so gigantic. He learned English from me. He learned many things of your Earth and its people.