the
inside, not the outside of the world.

"The situation, as I now understand it, was this: According to the
smallest stature I reached, and calling my height at that time roughly
six feet, I had descended into the ring at the time I met Lylda several
thousand miles, at least. By the way, where is the ring?"

"Here is it," said the Very Young Man, handing it to him. The Chemist
replaced it on his finger. "It's pretty important to me now," he said,
smiling.

"You bet!" agreed the Very Young Man.

"You can readily understand how I descended such a distance, if you
consider the comparative immensity of my stature during the first few
hours I was in the ring. It is my understanding that this country
through which I passed is a barren waste--merely the atoms of the
mineral we call gold.

"Beyond that I entered the hitherto unexplored regions within the atom.
The country at that point where I found the forest, I was told later, is
habitable for several hundred miles. Around it on all sides lies a
desert, across which no one has ever penetrated.

"This surface is the outside of the Oroid world, for so they call their
earth. At this point the shell between the outer and inner surface is
only a few miles in thickness. The two surfaces do not parallel each
other here, so that in descending these tunnels we turned hardly more
than an eighth of a complete circle.

"At the city of Arite, where Lylda first took me, and where I had my
first view of the inner surface, the curvature is slightly greater than
that of our own earth, although, as I have said, in the opposite
direction."

"And the space within this curvature--the heavens you have
mentioned--how great do you estimate it to be?" asked the Doctor.

"Based on the curvature at Arite it would be about six thousand miles in
diameter."

"Has this entire inner surface been explored?" asked the Big Business
Man.

"No, only a small portion. The Oroids are not an adventurous people.
There are only two nations, less than twelve million people all
together, on a surface nearly as extensive as our own."

"How about those stars?" suggested the Very Young Man.

"I believe they comprise a complete universe similar to our own solar
system. There is a central sun-star, around which many of the others
revolve. You must understand, though, that these other worlds are
infinitely tiny compared to the Oroids, and, if inhabited, support
beings nearly as much smaller than the Oroid