The machine was undamaged.
* * * * *
Before sunset, Larry had removed the stake ropes, slipped the canvas
cover from the motor, turned the plane around, inspected it, and
examined the strip of smooth, hard red sand upon which he had landed.
Agnes pointed out the dim band of crimson across the sky, from north
to south, slowly rising toward the zenith.
"That's the red ray," she said. "We fly into it."
"And a happy moment when we do," Larry rejoined.
He roused the motor to life.
As the bar of crimson light neared the zenith, the plane rolled
forward across the sand and took off. Climbing steeply, Larry
anxiously watched the approach of the red band. The gravitation of the
Pygmy Planet seemed to diminish as he gained altitude, until presently
he could fly vertically from it, without circling at all. He set the
bow toward the scarlet bar across the sky before him.
And suddenly he was flying through ruby flame.
His eyes went to the little scale at the corner of the instrument
board. He saw the little ebon needle waver, leave the mark designated
"Pygmy Planet Normal" and start toward "Earth Normal."
For what seemed a long time, he was wheeling down the crimson ray. A
few times he looked back at Agnes, in the rear seat. She had gone to
sleep.
Then a vast, circular field was below--the crystal platform.
Larry landed the plane upon it, taxied to the center and stopped
there, with the motor idling. The laboratory, taking shape in the blue
abyss about him, seemed to contract swiftly.
* * * * *
Presently the plane covered most of the crystal disk. He taxied
quickly off, stopped on the floor nearby, and cut the ignition. Agnes
woke. Together they clambered from the plane's cabin and walked back
into the crimson ray.
Once more the vast spaces of the room seemed to shrink, until it
looked familiar once more. The Pygmy Planet, and the huge machine
looming ever them, dwindled to natural size.
Agnes, watching a scale on the frame of the mechanism, which Larry had
not noticed, leaped suddenly from the red ray, drawing him with her.
"We don't want to be giants!" she laughed.
Larry drew a deep breath, and looked about him. Once more he was in
his own world, and surveying it in his normal size. He became aware of
Agnes standing close against him. He suddenly took her in his arms and
kissed her.
"Wait a minute," she objected, slipping quickly from his arms. "What
are we going to do about the Pygmy Planet? Those monsters might come
again, even if you did wreck their god. And Dr. Whiting, poor
fellow--But we mustn't let those monsters come back!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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