Beyond the Vanishing Point

gether. Momentarily the giant was out of sight, but we could hear his heavy tread and panting breath. We emerged having passed him. He was taller now. He seemed confused at our sudden scampering a

g insects; he could not tell w

"Glora, does

nk of rock, flung it up. I saw the giant's face above us. He was kneeling to reach

its ten-foot width just as the giant came lunging up. He was far larger than before. Lo

lan, wher

darker in this tunnel of broken rocky wa

an's voice: "Ge

ming accustomed to the gloom. The tunnel was illumined by a dim phosphoresce

re the ri

ent the round, light hole of the exit was obscured again. His head and shoulders! He was lying

arms. Or perhaps he was confused, or forgot his growth. He did not reach us.

Anger. A note of fear. Finally stark terror. He heaved, but the rocks of the opening held solid. Then there was a crack, a gruesome rattling, s

upward. Falling rocks-an avalanche, a c

oose metallic earth was strewn upon his head and torso, illumined by the

ed body was still expanding; shoving at the litter of loose rocks. I

got to get out of here. God-do

t had taken was about at its end. The growth presently stopped. That huge

haking; my head was reeling. Alan's face,

his way! The tunnel is

ps weapons. "Wait!" I urged. "You

d at least a hundred feet long; the mangled shoulders and chest filled the great torn hole in the cliff. I climbe

cylinder vial. It was black, the enlarging drug. I set

ge! Y

the drug he carried. Evidently Polter was only se

t?" Alan demanded. "L

e tugged at the huge stopper, and exposed a few of the pel

pread some ten feet long. It was covered with a scrawled handwriting in pencil, but its giant characters seemed thick blurred strokes of charcoal. We could not read it; we were

r

will be too dangerous to wait for my return. Put their

ollowed. And Polter said he wou

ad been traveling four or five hour

t time-rate. I do not know how much difference. My world speeds f

ing things, compressed into a shorter interval. It was not apparent: there was nothing to which comparison could be made. I recalled Alan's description of Polter-no

ith a steady downward slope. And suddenly I realized that we had turned downward nearly half the diameter of a circle! We

my feet, instead of overhead. Then we went level. I forgot the confusion: this was normality here. We turned upward a little.

is the way out. All these p

gs which Glora had given me. Alan wore the same sort of belt. We had found them in the wrecked dome-room. I heard a click on the ground at my feet. I was about to

steep rocky wall some fifty feet above a wide level landscape. Vegetation! I saw trees-a forest off to the left. A range of naked hills lay behind it. A mile away, in f

nterplanetary space! Light years of distance. Gigantic worlds, blazing suns off

an inch of

, from the other viewpoint, I had only descended perhaps an eighth, or a quarter of an inch, beneath the broken pit