"Hah!"
"And could you reduce a human being in stature as radically as you did the dog? For example, could you make a man ... ant-size?"
Matt nodded vigorously, eyes fairly flaming. "I could make him even smaller."
Dennis stared at Jim. His face was transfigured. He shook with nervous eagerness. And Jim gazed back at Dennis as breathlessly and as tensely.
"Well?" said Dennis at last.
Jim nodded slowly.
"Yes," he said. "Of course."
And in those few words two men were committed to what was perhaps the strangest, most deadly, and surely the most unique, adventure the world has yet known. The improbable had happened. A man who lived but for dangers and extraordinary action, and a man who would have gambled his soul for the scientist's ecstasy of at last learning all about a hidden study—both had seen suddenly open up to them a broad avenue leading to the very pinnacle of their dreams.