"Your father—and the big men of science—they would never allow that," she said. "I heard your father say that this enlarging drug, it could devastate your world. He is right. And so could one that made people smaller, so that they would vanish forever into smallness. Is that not so, George?"
"I don't care," he asserted. "I'll take a chance. I'll be careful what chemists I give it to. And father needn't know what I'm going to do anyway. Let's see the drug."
She opened the neck of her pajama top; and produced a flat brown box, of a strange hard fiber which undoubtedly was vegetable. Within it were two small vials of the same material.
"This one I used," she said. "There is some of the drug here left." Opening it, she showed him a number of tiny white pellets. A luminous phosphorescence seemed to stream up from them when they were held in shadow. "The dose I first took was three," she added. "But at the journey end, no more than did I touch one to the tip of my tongue."
The other vial, identical in size, shape and color, was sealed with a wax-like gum. George opened it. They stared; Lea faintly gasped as he poured the tiny pellets out into his palm. They were not white like the others, but a deep violet, with the same luminescence seeming to stream up from them.
"Why, what is that?" Lea murmured. "I thought that all the drug was the same."
"But Taroh maybe figured he wouldn't want to stay gigantic," George exclaimed with rising excitement. "Why not? Maybe our work is all done for us, Lea."
Were these luminescent violet pellets a diminishing drug?... A fly was walking on the white counterpane of Lea's bed. Carter watched it as it flew and landed on the tabletop under the lamp.
"Don't move, Lea," he murmured. "I'll see if I can get that fly to eat some." He laid one of the violet pellets in the circle of lamplight. Breathlessly he and the girl watched. Perhaps the violet luminescence carried an alluring smell, for presently the fly crawled to the pellet.