He met Lea, a short time later, out in the moonlit garden. They had come furtively down through the silent house. He was wearing his bathing suit, with rubber-soled sneakers on his feet from which he had removed the metal eyelets. Lea was dressed as he had first seen her, in her short gray-blue ragged little garment. The same wild, strange little girl of another world—and now he stared with his heart racing, and he put his hands on her shoulders.
"I'm glad you're not getting away from me," he said unsteadily.
"We should stand by the sundial," she murmured. "We take the drug now?"
"All right," he agreed. They had divided the two drugs, so that each of them carried a vial of both violet and white pellets. "Now listen carefully, Lea," he directed. "Above everything we must keep together. Not only in space—keep close beside each other, I mean—but we must be sure and keep together in size also. We must always take identical amounts of the drug. And take them at identical times."
"That I understand." She had made this trip before; outwardly at least, she was far less excited than himself. "One pellet first, you think?"
"Yes. Until—until we see what happens." He took one of the luminous violet pellets in his palm. A pungent aromatic odor wafted up from it. "Ready, Lea?"
He put the pellet into his mouth and hastily swallowed it. He was conscious of a sickish sweet taste; a burning constriction of his mouth and throat. Then his senses reeled with a dizzying swoop.
He and Lea were clinging together; he felt himself staggering a little. He opened his eyes. The patched black and silver scene of the rock garden was blurred; swaying. Then his sight clarified. The scene steadied. But then he realized that everything was moving—the dim trees, the garden hedge, the little paths and rocks, all very slowly expanding, heightening, widening. And he felt the movement under his feet. With a soft, crawling, shifting, the ground was moving outward, expanding under the soles of his shoes. It drew his feet slowly apart, so that he had to take a staggering step to readjust them.
"Heavens, Lea—it's weird."