led. Then abruptly I felt something touch my
face! Alan and I were lying in shadow. No one had noticed my writhing
movements, and Alan was still in drugged unconsciousness. Something
tiny and light and soundless as a butterfly wing brushed my face! I
jerked my head aside. On the floor, within six inches of my eyes, I
saw the tiny figure of a girl an inch high! She stood, with a warning
gesture to her lips--a human girl in a filmy flowing drapery. Long
pale golden tresses lay on her white shoulders; her face, small as my
little fingernail, colorful as a miniature painted upon ivory, was so
close to my eyes that I could see her expression--warning me not to
move.

There was a faint glow of light on the floor where she stood, but in a
moment she moved out of it. Then I felt her brush against the back of
my head. My ear was near the ground. A tiny warm hand touched my
ear-lobe; clung to it. A tiny voice sounded in my ear.

"Please do not move your head! You might kill me!"

There was a pause. I held myself rigid. Then the tiny voice came
again.

"I am Glora, a friend. I have the drug! I will help you!"

CHAPTER III

_The Fight in the Shrinking Dome Room_

It seemed that Alan was stirring. I felt the tiny hand leave my ear. I
thought that I could hear faint little footfalls as the girl scampered
away, fearful that a sudden movement from Alan would crush her. I
turned cautiously after a moment and saw Alan's eyes upon me. He too
had seen, with a blurred returning consciousness, the dwindling
figures of Babs and Polter. I followed his gaze. The white slab with
the golden quartz under the microscope seemed empty of human movement.
The several men in this huge circular dome-room were dispersing to
their affairs: three of them sat whispering by what I now saw was a
pile of gold ingots stacked crosswise. But the fellow at the
microscope held his place, his eye glued to its aperture as he watched
the vanishing figures of Polter and Babs on the rock-fragment.

Alan seemed trying to convey something to me, He could only gaze and
jerk his head. I saw behind his head the figure of the tiny girl on
the floor behind him. She wanted evidently to approach his head but
did not dare. When for an instant he was quiet, she ran forward, but
at once scampered back.

From the group by the ingots, one of the men rose and came toward us.
Alan held still, watching. And the girl, Glora, seized the opportunity
to come nearer. We both hea