Alan held Glora close. And suddenly he was laughing--a madness, half hysteria. "Why, this, all this--why look, Glora, it's funny! This little world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! There's our giant sailboat!"
Down near their feet the inch-long sailboat stood at its dock. Tiny human figures were rushing for it; others, floundering in the water, were trying to climb upon it. Dr. Kent had stepped from the shore a foot or two, and tiny, lashing white rollers rocked the boat, almost engulfing it.
Alan's laugh rang out, "God! It's funny, isn't it? All those little creatures, so excited!"
"Steady, lad!" Dr. Kent touched him. "Don't let yourself laugh! A moment now, then we'll wade across. Polter won't have much start on us. We mustn't get too close to him in size, but try and attack him unawares. We have got to get Babs away from him."
The narrowing passage rose hardly to their knees. They stepped ashore, well to one side of the toy city. Their growth had almost stopped. But suddenly Alan realized that Glora was diminishing! She had taken the other drug.
"I must go back, Alan. This is my world, doomed perhaps, but I cannot forsake it now. I must give the enlarging drug to my father. And others who can rise and fight these monsters."
Dr. Kent said hurriedly, "She's right, Alan. There is a chance they can save their city. For her to leave them would be dastardly."
She cried, "You go on up, Alan. You have enough of the drugs. Leave me, dear one--I am going back!"
"No!" he protested. "You must not! Or if you do, I'll come with you!"
She clung to him. He felt her body diminishing within his encircling arms. His love for her swept him--this girl who had cajoled Polter, or tricked him, stolen several of the little vials from him heaven knows how, and followed him up to the other world. This girl whom Alan now knew he loved, was leaving him. Forever?
As he stood there, with the miniature landscape at his feet in the wan starlight, the panic-stricken tiny city, the island with its monsters rising to overwhelm this microscopic world--it seemed to Alan then that if he let her go it was the end for him of all life's promised happiness.
"Alan, lad, come." His father was pulling at him. So horrible a choice! Alan thought that I was back on that island. But Babs, a prisoner in the golden cage, was with Polter, plunging upward in size. And his father was beside him, pleading.