But it meant nothing, and Drake knew it. He gripped Ahlma and Alt, and flung them back against the passage wall, staring with futile, helpless horror. The already huge body of Togaro was expanding. But already he filled the small cabin. He lunged, heaved his shoulders up against the ceiling. Drake shouted again, with more rationality this time. "Togaro, don't hurt Dianne!" Togaro panted, "No!" He held her in the protecting hollow of his arm. He rose, straining his shoulders once again against the ceiling in a monstrous lunge. The ceiling broke. Togaro stood a moment in the wreckage, expanding until only his giant legs remained in the cabin. Then he leaped upward. With a single jump he cleared the ship and landed upon the ground, scattering the terror-stricken crowd. A growing giant, with huge bounds he fled away down a moonlit road toward the lake. The crowd on the landing field, staring after him, saw the small figure of Dianne hanging to his neck. At the back of his waistline they saw a far smaller figure. It was I--clinging desperately to his belt, riding him like a clutching insect of whose presence he was unaware! CHAPTER XIX _Night of Turmoil_ Drake hurried with Ahlma and Alt from the ship. It was a scene of wild confusion as the frightened crowd milled over the moonlit field. In the distance the figure of the running Togaro loomed, a huge dark shape towering over the landscape. This little world was visibly convex: the horizon was very close. Drake could see Togaro bounding along the road which followed the lakeshore, beyond the city outskirts. His giant figure sank lower until presently it was gone below the horizon. The crowd, which had been watching the giant, redoubled its confusion. Men and women were here; even a few children were held aloft to keep from being trampled. The near-by throng surged upon Drake. Alt gasped, "They saw a man hanging to Togaro. Very small." "Frank!" "Move--back--" Alt began in English, then burst into a flood of his native language. The crowd was pressing close upon them. Drake had all he could do to protect Ahlma from the roughly surging people. They were all about Alt's size--men bare-headed and barelegged, with jackets long to the knee, flaring like a skirt; women, some of them dressed like the men, but with hair bound on their heads, or young girls with longer skirts and flowing hair. Drake, who wore the native costume, with a band about his forehead to hold his hair from his eyes, stood head and shoulders above the crowd. He held an arm about Ahlma, and struggled to force his way across the field. His instinct had been to take the enlarging drug and follow Togaro. But that was not practical. Togaro, always able to be the larger, could have turned upon him. And with Dianne in Togaro's arms--and now myself, so tiny, clinging to him--Drake realized that any combat would only kill us both.