Amazing voyage into smallness! I find an adequate picture of it
difficult to paint. It was, as Drake had said, a voyage shorter in time
than I had been led to expect. Fifteen or twenty hours of elapsed time,
perhaps. We tried to preserve a normality of routine. We ate several
meals, and I tried to sleep. For the remainder of the time we sat in
that small room, by the window; and I gazed at a panorama so singularly
awe-inspiring that I am at a loss now to describe it.
For some time the ship did not seem to move. We sat talking. There
was obviously no movement. The room was steady, save for a humming
vibration. But outside the window things were changing. The forest
trees were sliding upward. Expanding, and drawing away. We were
dwindling faster than an intensity of the drug. Then I felt the ship
lift slightly. We hung poised in a rocky void.
I conjured all manner of wild, gruesome thoughts. Nor were they
all picturing danger to myself or to Dianne's world. Nor even the
threatened conquest of earth. There was a danger that seemed to me now
greater than any of these. Togaro desired Dianne!
I sat close by Dianne. I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to
fear. Togaro would not dare get large, here on our ship. For if he did,
at once we would seize him.
We discussed it. The thing seemed incredible, that he was here so close
to us and we could not find him. Incredible, but true.
We stood at the window, Dianne, Drake, and I. But Alt and Ahlma would
not relax their watching of the room. The ship had been dwindling now
for more than an hour. The forest was gone.
I saw a dark void, in which seemingly we were hanging in mid-air. At
first I thought it was wholly dark. But as I stared, with my eyes--or
perhaps merely my mind--becoming accustomed to this pregnant darkness,
I found that there were things to see.
We hung motionless in the void. But presently rock walls were visible;
how far away I could not guess. Great mountains of rock, expanding,
sliding upward, and drawing away, though they did not vanish. It seemed
that my vision must be sharpening, or that the light was increasing. It
was a queer sort of light--an iridescence, vaguely diffused throughout
everything.
For a long while this went on. The visual sensation was that we were
falling like a swiftly dropping elevator car. But it was not so. The
rock walls were sliding upward, but it was largely an optical illusion.
A meal was served us. The ship was reaching a greater intensity of its
shrinking size, dwindling more rapidly.
I could hear the current rising to a higher, sharper and louder whine.
Drake said, "That's a hundred times faster for us now."
Another few hours. The scene outside was undergoing a progressive
change. The distant rocks constantly had a different aspect. I could
not fathom it--could not define it. A suggestion of roundness. I stared
at the far-away wall. It seemed as though great round things were piled
in loose masses. A wall of bowlders loosely piled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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