Beyond the Vanishing Point

at your world looks like this at night, in summer. Ours is always like this. No day, no ni

. It's very

rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight. The night air was soft, with a gentl

d people. There were fields beneath our ledge, with farm implements lying in them; no workers, for t

n their island. Everyone sleeps n

s seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large compared to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it a

re?" said Alan. "You

women

re many

N

are they? In relation to us now,

hat many thousands of our people, here. Slaves, because the giants are four times as large. This little city, thes

are insects, but no wild beasts-nothing to harm us. Nature is kind he

and people," Alan sai

Our nation is ten times what is here. We have a few ot

city no doubt of that. The boat will take him and that girl

o any further we have to decide what size to be. We can't be giganti

ke us hours to get from here to the boat. Glora pointed out where it would land-just beyond the village where the houses were set in

e would be able to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might only be mistak

against the stars. A field and a road were near us. The road seemed of normal size. A man was in the fie

vials. We wanted our stature now to be four times what it was. Glora gave us

taken at once give just the growth to take us fr

none of our enlarging drug upon the journey, and the

felt-there in that golden atom-the same height. This landscape seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby-spreading, fantastic-looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But still-as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown leav

that. Years before, he had made them large-his few hundred men and women. They were, Glora said, people both of this realm a

tature-I saw around me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth, level path; the little field near us had

along the road, skirting the edge of the little town. None of its houses were taller than ourselves. The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have

her. "There are trees-thick trees-quite near where the boat lands. We can get in them and hide and

woods, with thick, interlacing treetops about our own height, lay ahead. It extended a few hundred feet over to the lake shore. The sai

small now, with distance lengthening between us and

s it seemed that a crowd of little people were near the dock. Polter must have been sitting. But now he rose up. We could not mistake his thick hunched figure, the lump on his shoulders clear

were at the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! L

? Where

with me. "Don't let him see us! We can't rush him Ala

this sudden crisis now most confused Alan and me.... To get l

oods best in this size. We won't be s

us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were about shoulder height. We

softly shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three

w starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng of people all no more than a foot and a h

evening trousers and a white shirt and collar with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed-the change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an ab

was plucking at me. "On the white ch

irt bosom something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there

e held flat against his shirt front-a l

uring, "A cage! W

was a golden cage strapped there. And I seemed to se

box with bars? The girl, Babs, is a prisoner in there." She sp

t to go? I do what you say. I had the wi

lan. "We must kee

ause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen hostility

in English. "You speak my lang

wd fell

see her? She iss small now. But she has the m

forward, but it lacked a leader, and t

u will like her. She iss kind and very beautiful

people and struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. T

ow dare you? I show you what gia

f terror. Polter had the struggling eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around hi