"I understand," the girl answered readily. "One of the strangers you are—my brother's friend."
"You will not be afraid to take the drug?"
"No." But though she spoke confidently, she drew closer to him and shivered a little.
The Very Young Man handed her one of the tiny pellets. "Just touch it to the tip of your tongue as I do," he said warningly.
They took the drug. When it had ceased to act, they found themselves standing on the rough uneven stone surface that was the floor of the room. Far overhead in the dim luminous blackness they could just make out the great arching ceiling, stretching away out of sight down the length of the room. Beside them stood a tremendous shaggy pile of coarsely woven objects that were the silk pillows on which they had been sitting a moment before—pillows that seemed forty or fifty feet square now and loomed high above their heads.
The Very Young Man took the frightened girl by the hand and led her along the tremendous length of a pile of boxes, blocks long it seemed. These boxes, from their size, might have been rectangular, windowless houses, jammed closely together, and piled one upon the other up into the air almost out of sight.
Finally they came to a broad passageway between the boxes—a mere crack it would have been before. They turned into it, and, a few feet beyond, came to a larger square space with a box making a roof over it some twenty feet above their heads.
From this retreat they could see the lower part of the door leading into the other room and could hear from beyond it a muffled roar—the voices of Targo and his men. Hardly were they hidden when the door opened a little. It struck against the bales the Very Young Man had piled against it. For a moment it held, but with the united efforts of the men pushing from the other side, it slowly yielded and swung open.
Targo stepped into the room. To the Very Young Man he seemed nearly a hundred feet high. Only his feet and ankles were visible at first, from where the Very Young Man was watching. Three other men came with him. They stamped back and forth for a time, moving some of the bales and boxes. Luckily they left undisturbed those nearest the fugitives; after a moment they left, leaving the door open.
The Very Young Man breathed a long sigh of relief. "Gosh, I'm glad that's over." He spoke in a low tone, although the men in the other room seemed so far away they would hardly have heard him if he had shouted at the top of his voice.