Aura, with a cry, pushed several of the others back; Oteo and Eena, frightened, started down the declivity.
"We must get smaller!" the Big Business Man reiterated.
The panic was growing among them all. Above their excited cries the Doctor's voice rose.
"Stand still—all of you. If we move—even a few steps—we can never get small and hope to find him."
The Doctor—himself too confused to know whether he should take the diminishing drug at once or not—was bending over the ground. And as he watched, fascinated, the Very Young Man's figure dwindled beyond the vanishing point and was gone!
CHAPTER XXXIX
A MODERN DINOSAUR
The Very Young Man never knew quite how it happened. The Doctor had told them to check their growth: and he took the drug abstractedly, for his mind was on Aura and how she would feel, coming for the first time into this great outer world.
What quantity he took, the Very Young Man afterward could never decide. But the next thing he knew, the figures of his companions had grown to gigantic size. The rocks about him were expanding enormously. Already he had lost the contour of the ledge. The cañon wall had drawn back almost out of sight in the haze of the distance. He turned around, bewildered. There was no precipice behind him. Instead, a great, rocky plain, tumbling with a mass of boulders, and broken by seams and rifts, spread out to his gaze. And even in that instant, as he regarded it in confusion, it opened up to greater distances.