The opposite wall where the red ray was striking, now seemed glowing of itself, a blank, opaque wall, stained red by the billions of imponderable particles bombarding it.
But it was no longer an opaque wall. Of itself it was now glowing, becoming translucent, transparent! The stars! Through the wall I could see the placid night outside, the dark hillside, the stars!
I felt Alice’s hand gripping my arm. From the glowing model on the table, the tiny vehicle was issuing. The dead white thing. It came very slowly, floating out the doorway, as though drawn by the red diverging stream of light.
Slowly it passed me, ascending a trifle, no longer dead white, for it was transfigured—alive now, shimmering, its outlines wavy, unreal. It moved a trifle faster, came to the wall of the room, passed through it.
“Watch,” breathed Alice.
The vehicle—that tiny oblong shape smaller than my hand—was outside over the treetops, plunging onward in the red stream of light. Yet at that distance I could see it plainly, its image as large as when it was a few feet from my face.
And suddenly I realized I was staring after a thing gigantic. It showed now far over the hilltop. I could have sworn it was but some great air liner. A patch of stars was blotted out behind it.
Another moment; the silver thing off there was far away. Was it as far as the moon? It was larger now than the moon would have seemed, hanging out there!
I watched. I could still see it as plainly as when it started. But then suddenly came a change. Its image became fainter, thinner, and rapidly expanding. There was a faint image of it out there in the heavens, an image larger than the hillside.
There was an instant when I fancied that the image had expanded over all the sky—a wraith, a dissipating ghost of the projectile.