One peculiar thing about difference in size, is that the smaller an object is, the larger is its exposed surface in proportion to volume and mass. That greater surface in relation to weight, allows the bombardment of passing air molecules to lift anything of dust-grain dimensions and density into wingless flight. It also can give a sense of helplessness, as if the atmosphere has become a treacherous medium full of irresistible currents.
We tumbled, we laughed, and would have been panic stricken except for knowing that our real selves were in normal circumstances. Nearby, the air seemed to shimmer. A gnarled thing floated close—floss, looking like a twisted tree-stump, to which clear ovoids clung—some common form of microscopic life. A chunk of mineral dust came drifting nearer, its sheared-off side glinting like quartz strata. Our two pairs of eyes still were not developed to distinguish colors. Yet Jan had reasons when she exclaimed in tinkling tones:
"Beautiful, truly beautiful! We came—we got here! In a sense, it's farther than the stars! But now what happens? Where are—they?"
"I don't believe they'll be long in coming," Dr. Lanvin said at last. "To write, to make tools, and to get into our sealed ship requires a capacity to think and plan. So, about us, they must be following a set purpose."
IV
Tension mounted in me. As we drifted in the air, I looked at our human selves, seated giants in armor, cowled, brooding, and of legendary height. Here was a chance for a meeting with entities of another shape, flesh, and history. For the Martians and Xians seemed as extinct as the dinosaurs. Their artifacts and mummies were known; but their voices, movements, and real selves, were elusively beyond imagining.
In most of the old imaginative stories of the future, beings from another region spoke and thought like men. But a recent University course had pointed out how deeply different must be races sprung from wholly separate chains of evolution, not only in form but psychology; how there would be no helloes or similarity of custom on the other side, and how one must wait with perfect self-control and mind utterly open, until an equal horror of alienness lessened in the alien beings, too....
Jan said, "Look." The word was a single, flat, undramatic note. But we saw them. A mass of lint, gray to our colorblind vision, drifted toward us like twisted branches. Out of it, as from shrubbery, a dozen pair of eyes peered—lenses with a moist glint, fuzzed at the edges; here I thought not so much of lashes as of strange, misplaced antennae. The creatures were like rough-hewn dolls, with craggy, almost triangular heads. Yet these were not metal robots. Their skin was rough, as from a coarse binding of spherical cells, still small, yet almost large enough to be seen individually.
These beings possessed two arms and two legs. Yet, in still another way they were familiar. They took all their major details from the mummied bodies of the Xians, though those original Xians had been of human size. What strange retreat, or advance, was implied here?