"Remember, dad, keep watch here. Closer than ever. And when we come back--look for our signal." A flag of striped black and white which we would wave. Alt explained the drugs. I would not let him touch them. The belt had eight compartments on each side. Two drugs, of opposite action. Eight intensities of each. Small, metallic vials held the tiny pellets. "Have we enough?" I demanded. "Oh yes, I think so. Or if we had not, it would be easy to set some aside, and pick them up again when we were smaller." We stood in the center of the room on the floor beside the granite slab. Father sat in a chair. Foley stood regarding us as though we were ghosts and expecting us to dissolve into nothingness. I handed Alt a pellet. "This right?" "Yes." It was the diminishing drug of the weakest intensity, like the one Dianne had given us, when in the bedroom we had pursued Togaro that brief distance into smallness. "Yes," Alt repeated. "We each take one at the same instant." He touched me. "There is the great danger that we may become separated from each other. You understand? Lost in size. You will take none that you do not give me the same?" "No," I agreed. Friend or enemy, I could not blame him for being apprehensive. I had the drugs; he had none. Lost in size--stranded. We took the pellets. The familiar lurching sensation came as before. But this time I was prepared for it. I stood quiet, with the swimming room around me. I was facing the granite slab. It was waist high, with the rock fragment in its center. The slab seemed lifting; expanding--and receding. I was presently below it, looking up at its bottom resting upon the wooden supports. Alt was unchanged beside me. He said in a moment, "Your father will lift us up?" "Yes." My thoughts went winging off. I was not frightened this time. My heart was beating normally. A sense of eager exhilaration was on me. Soon we would reach Drake and Dianne. I was abruptly aware of Alt plucking at me. "Your father, he must lift us up!" The slab was far overhead. At a distance, the wooden pedestal legs rose like great round columns of some strange, crudely-fashioned temple. I recall that just at that instant, I had the impression of a tug at my shoelace. A tiny twitch. But it was driven from my mind. I had no time to look down. Something gigantic came swooping at me from overhead. Something monstrous, pink-white, wrapped itself around me. I was lifted. Squeezed breathless; and snatched up with a dizzy swoop. Up--a hundred feet it seemed, through the rushing air. Into a glare of light. And then released. I saw the great pink-white hairy thing leaving me. It was father's hand. I staggered dizzily and fell upon a rough expanse of stone.