"This one," the girl said.
A few feet from them there was a rift, like a little crescent slash. A foot wide and twice as deep, it began here and curved off into the distance. But presently it was a gully—a ragged, curving little canyon fifty feet wide with broken walls that towered above them as they went into it.
"I climbed out from here," Lea said. "I am sure it was just about here where nearly I was crushed. But it looks so very different now." She was puzzled as she gazed about them—gazed at what now was a broad, curving valley with great mountainous sides towering up into the luminous darkness overhead.
"Look here," he said, "I'm getting the hang of this. The secret is not to wait until you're too small before going anywhere. Which way next?"
She was still puzzled. And then she brightened. "Why, it is right here. I see it now."
It was a steeply descending little chasm. It had been a mere crack a moment ago so that she had not recognized it. Now it was a ten-foot rift, with a bottom smooth as black marble—a slide steeply descending into darkness.
Carter peered dubiously. "How far down is it?"
"Not far. I was so big, I jumped up just as these walls almost closed upon me."
He and the girl were very much smaller than that now. They lay down, feet first, at the top of the slide. For a moment he hesitated. How far down would it be for them in this size? But every moment of hesitation was making that worse!
"All right, Lea. Here we go."