Across the vast reaches of the cellar, the oil-burner flame roared up again, and he felt the bed vibrate under him. That meant the temperature had fallen in the house above and that the thermostat had kicked a switch and now heat was flowing again through the floor grilles.

He thought of them up there, the woman and the little girl. His wife and daughter. Were they still that to him? Or had the element of size removed him from their sphere? Could he still be considered a part of their world when he was the size of a bug to them, when even Beth could crush him underfoot and never know it?

In six days he would be gone.

He'd thought about it a thousand times in the past year and a half, trying to visualize it. He'd never been able to. Invariably, his mind had rebelled against it, rationalizing: the injections would start to work now, the process would end by itself, something would happen. It was impossible that he could ever be so small that…

Yet he was; so small that in six days he would be gone.

When it came on him, this cruel despair, he would lie for hours on his makeshift bed, not caring whether he lived or died. The despair had never really gone. How could it? For no matter what adjustment he thought he was making, it was obviously impossible to adjust, because there had never been a tapering or a levelling off. The process had gone on and on, ceaseless.

He twisted on the bed in restless agony. Why did he run from the spider? Why not let it catch him? The thing would be out of his hands then. It would be a hideous death, but it would be quick; despair would be ended. And yet he kept fleeing from it, and improvising and struggling and existing.

Why?

68"

When he told her, the first thing she did was laugh.

It was not a long laugh. Almost instantly it had been choked off and she stood mutely before him, staring. Because he wasn't smiling, because his face was a taut blankness.

"Shrinking?" The word was spoken in a trembling whisper.

"Yes." It was all he could manage to say.

"But that's-"

She'd been about to say that was impossible. But it wasn't impossible, because now that the word had been spoken, it crystallized all the unspoken dread she'd felt since this had begun, a month before; since Scott's first visit to Dr. Branson, when he'd been checked for possible bowing of the legs or dropping of the arches, and the doctor's first diagnosis of loss of weight due to the trip and the new environment and his pushing aside of the possibility that Scott was losing height as well.