And where was Tork tonight? At this time, almost always he was in his apartment in one of the pyramid-cities. Frane now was in his laboratory; Tork would join him there later. But sometimes Tork vanished on one of his mysterious missions. And it occurred to Nixon that possibly tonight, with poison slowly overcoming the giant, Tork himself might be planning to do something....
Then Nixon suddenly was aware that out through the glowing purple bars, the stars were paling above the distant cliffs. The moon was rising. The time had come! Nixon still sat quiet, hunched against the face of the rock. Diagonally up over his head, the little entrance of the control room was visible. It glowed with radiance. Occasionally the tiny blob of Greev showed as he moved about. Was Loto already up there? He had said that there were places where he could climb up without using the path. And to a six-inch Orite the ledge up there outside the control room was broken and crag-strewn so that Loto easily could hide.
Now Nixon saw the figure of Nona, a pale little blob in the moonlight as she mounted the path. A moment more and she was in the glowing recess with Greev. No Gort had challenged her. Good enough! Another interval and then the guard and Nona came out on the ledge, stood a moment and then moved along it.
Loto's chance! Slowly Nixon stood up, stretching as though casually yawning. His head reeled. His ears were roaring. This accursed sickness!... But now he saw the blob of Loto in the control room! Nixon tensed.
A sudden humming and hissing of current sounded overhead. The barrage went down! The purple bars of light crackled for an instant and were gone!
The giant was free! Overhead he heard the shout of Greev. A spreading alarm, with the voice of Gorts up on the rock; and others out on the rocky slope. Nixon leaped. He was aware that it was a staggering step so that he almost fell. But he recovered himself, staggered on toward the rock-slope. Everywhere there was a turmoil of frightened little voices. This damnable dizziness! But it could be conquered. Nixon shook himself, trying to straighten and get his balance. Now he was aware that a line of Gorts was before him. Behind him the glow of the barrage sprang up again, Greev had evidently rushed back to his post. But it was too late! The giant was out!
In that confused instant, with all the moonlit scene swaying before him, Nixon saw that the attacking Gorts were dragging up lines of wires mounted in foot-high frames. Grids of wire, with cables that led to little wheeled batteries. And Tork was with them. Nixon heard his voice and saw his little figure scurrying in the background. Perhaps Tork had planned this before the barrage went down, or perhaps he had just come, responding to the alarm.... What matter? Nixon could scatter this strange little attack with a kicking, scrambling rush....
In that second Nixon knew that his thoughts were blurred by the roaring in his head. He knew that he was staggering ahead to scatter the Gorts. But there was no time. The grids of wires glowed and crackled. For just another moment it seemed that they were building up the electronic potential of a bolt. Then one of them reached it. A little puff of crackling violet leaped upward. It struck Nixon in the chest.
Nixon knew nothing except that he was staggering, falling....
VI
Slowly Nixon realized that he was coming back to consciousness. He felt that he was lying on the ground. He tried to move, but something was holding him. At first the roaring in his head was the only sound. Then he heard Orite voices; and now he could feel the tread of Orite feet upon his chest.
He opened his eyes to a swaying glare of light. A foot above his chest and neck a hooded light cast its lurid orange glare down on him. As his eyelids fluttered up, the Orite voices, speaking in their own language, sounded startled.
Nixon's gaze swung. There were other Orites on the ground, with a ladder leading up to his chest. And nearby, a crowd of Orites and Gorts stood watching with awe. Nixon saw that he was approximately where he thought he had fallen. The rock butte was some twenty feet away, with the barrage bars futilely standing before it. Again Nixon tried to move one of his legs, and then he realized that he was chained, with chains and ropes that were pegged to the ground.
"You recovered too quickly, giant," Tork's voice said. "For your own good you should have been unconscious as we planned."
With a rush of horror, Nixon realized that these little figures up by his neck were Orite surgeons. Their paraphernalia was mounted there at the base of his throat. The orange light gleamed on their instruments. One who was goggled held a tiny circular blade. It whirled with a faint humming; a revolving knife, electronically heated. Nixon could feel its radiating heat on the skin of his throat as the surgeon held it poised.
Vivisection! Nona and Loto had been right. Tork at last had persuaded the Orite leaders to order this.
"Wait!" Nixon muttered. He was still dazed, bathed with the sweat of weakness. "Where is Frane? Get Frane!"
This damnable roaring in his head made everything seem so blurred and far away. Nixon's eyelids drooped, but he opened them, fighting the drowsiness. And it seemed that his head was clearing. The shock of the violet bolt had knocked him into temporary unconsciousness. But now the poison, or the drug, was wearing off. If he could stall this for a time—
It was a vague, formless thought that he knew was hopeless. "Frane," he said again. "Get Frane."
"He is not needed," Tork's suave voice said.
From the ground beside Nixon, Frane's voice sounded. He was talking in his own language, angrily expostulating. Then he called, in English, "I tell them this is not necessary."
"But your success with the drug is postponed too long," one of the Orite leaders said. "Tork says you are doing your best, but—"
"I will succeed within another night," Frane desperately promised. "One more experiment—" Surely the aged scientist was doing what he could to stall this. But they had lost confidence in him. He should have used the panther, and then this giant man long ago. Frane was a brilliant chemist, but he had no qualities of dominating leadership.
"Only this can help you," the leader said. His voice carried finality. He gestured, added a command in the Orite language to the surgeons.
Nixon could feel the figures on his neck moving to begin their gruesome work on the prone, half-conscious giant. But Nixon was more conscious, stronger now than they realized. He strained at the cables, but found that he could move far less than when he had been bound on the Spaceship. His head could shift a little so that he could glance sidewise, but that was all.
"Stop it!" he gasped suddenly. "You damn little butchers—" He'd frighten them with his voice. Roaring, bellowing and twisting his head. That was all he could think of to do.... The end of Allen Nixon.... A vision of the rippleless Florida bayou, his brother Ralph, their cabin under the grey oaks and cedars came to him....
Then suddenly, out in the moonlit distance of the rock-slope between the pyramid-cities, cries were sounding. The surgeons on Nixon's neck stood tense, peering, listening. A turmoil of wild cries sounded off there. It spread to the cities. Cries, then Orites screaming. And in another moment a huge tawny shape came leaping from the shadows. The panther!
Nixon gasped. Then his roar held his mingled horror and a queer sort of triumph. "So now you've got something else to worry about!" he shouted. "There it is—mean and hungry. Take a look at that critter, you damn butchers, and see what you're going to do about it!"
The panther was loose. Nixon remembered now, how Loto had said it was in a cave with a purple barrage barring the entrance. Loto and Nixon had never thought of it—that when Loto pulled the barrage-switch, for that moment the panther's barrage had blacked out the same as Nixon's!
Tork was stammering, "Why I—I sent men to verify that it was still there! The darkness of the cave—the barrage was only off for a moment—they must have thought—"
"Well, it isn't there, it's here!" Nixon roared. "Go ahead—carve me up, if that panther gives you time!"
It was the supreme catastrophe, that raging tawny beast loose among the scurrying, tiny human figures. The screams were horrible as it pounced on a group of them who were trying to reach the shelter of one of the pyramids. With sunken sides showing its ribs and madly lashing tail, the panther gobbled up the tiny figures. Orite humans, each of them hardly a mouth. Then with another leap, the great amber-eyed cat was pouncing again. A line of Gorts with suicidal willingness to attack, stood their ground as it came at them. A sweep of its huge paw knocked them away.
Around Nixon, for those few horrible seconds, the Orites stood stricken. "Go ahead," Nixon said. "Kill it. Why don't you folks kill it? If you don't it sure as shooting will kill you."
Now the beast seemed to see the giant figure lying here in the orange glare. It stood with bared fangs and red-rimmed eyes. Then a rush of Gorts distracted it, so that it turned and leaped over them. Down on the ground beside Nixon, the crowd of Orites were milling around in terror. The surgeons and their assistants were trying to get down the little ladder at his side.
"You can't kill it!" Nixon roared. "ButIcan. Turn me loose, you little fools!"
He strained at his bonds. Life or death now, for himself as well as hundreds of them. Nixon knew it. That panther would be here any minute, ripping him apart.
"You can kill it?" Frane gasped from the ground beside him.
"I'll damn sure try!"
Frane shouted at the panic-stricken Orite leaders. And suddenly in their emergency they trusted him. Gorts came rushing, casting loose the chains so that in a moment Nixon was staggering up. The chains fell from him with a thin clatter. For a moment dizziness swept him, but then it passed. He was free. And to Nixon of the bayous freedom was strength.
Off across the moonlit slope, strewn with dead and dying Orites, the panther was crouching. Its purring snarl mingled with the lashing of its tail as it saw Nixon rise up. Then with a roar it leaped at him.
Nixon made no move to jump aside. He had ripped off his jacket and shirt, wound them around his left forearm. There was an instant when the moonlight gleamed on the beast's wild eyes and opened jaws as it leaped. Then Nixon thrust his padded, crooked arm outward and up as the jaws came at his throat. The impact of the huge tawny body knocked him backward. He felt the jaws closing on his arm as he fell with the beast on top of him. In a moment they were rolling, with Nixon desperately squirming and lunging, trying to get a grip on the great cat's throat. He could feel the claws ripping his clothing, his flesh, with his blood spurting and white streaks of hot pain shooting into him.
Nixon's fingers gripped the loose skin of the panther's neck. But at once he knew it was no use. The beast's strength was too great. He felt the rippling muscles under the loose skin resisting his clutch. Then the great jerking body tore loose; the jaws relaxed their grip, dropped his arm, came again at his throat....
As the giant went down, a horror-stricken cry had gone up from the crowds of watching Orites. Now the great antagonists were rolling. In a moment they had crossed from the edge of the rock-slope almost to the sward where the Spaceship cylinder had landed. Nixon could feel the crackling sward under him. Hot blood in his eyes blurred everything. He managed to wipe it away, and thrust out his padded arm again for the brute's jaws to grip.
Then Nixon's right hand, brushing the bristling sward, came upon a jagged sliver of rock in that very fragment blasted from the cliff by that first storm upon his arrival. Both heavy and sharp, it made a terrible weapon. With a whirling lunge he jammed that clumsy spear of rock into the panther's slavering jaws—on down into its hot and roaring gullet. In a moment the beast's snarls were choked with blood. With its human antagonist momentarily ignored, the puzzled, choking brute was staggering, flinging its head from side to side. Then it was rolling on the ground, with paws frantically fumbling at its mouth.
It was Nixon's chance now. He flung himself on the beast. His frantic fingers closed about its windpipe. The panther screamed and writhed, but Nixon's grip was inexorable. The screams died to slobbering gasps. At last the tawny shape was lying on its side. For a moment the paws convulsively jerked. Then it was motionless.
VII
A day had passed since the giant had been released, and night had come again. The Earth-giant now had become a hero to the awed Orite people. Or at least, whatever terror of him they had was submerged in their cheering when the monstrous panther was dead.
Nixon had found himself a cave-like recess off at the base of the green cliff a few hundred yards from Frane's laboratory. Soon he would fix it up to be comfortable. He brought himself food and water now. This morning he had explored the nearby valley which opened into this one through a mile-wide defile. Thousands of the Orites lived in the other valley; their mound-dwellings dotted the slopes at the base of the enclosing cliffs. A stream of orange water babbled along one side of the valley floor, and there were strips of vegetation near the water. Strangely shaped bluish trees about the height of Nixon bore fruits and pods of several kinds which were edible.
It was a day of exultation to Nixon, this freedom to roam around and do things for himself after his long imprisonment. Towering master of this miniature world. There was another valley where a hundred or so tiny factories glowed and hummed. Everything stopped when the Earth-giant appeared, with the workers thronging the little doors and windows, peering up in awed silence at him.... An exultation to it. And then suddenly Nixon had felt the sense of responsibility. There was so much that he would have to learn, and plan, and then put into action.
Last night, when the panther was dead and the panting, bleeding giant had stood with crowds of tiny figures cheering him, suddenly Nixon had found himself making a speech. It was halting, certainly, anything but fluent. Nixon was always a fellow sparse of words. He tried to tell them that just because he was so gigantic, no one need fear him. That now he would live among them for a time, and try to help them in every way he could. His naive, youthful grin accompanied his words. Then the Orite leaders had arranged to meet with him presently; and whatever now he needed for his comfort, he need only ask for it....
"The people all want you for our leader," Nona was saying enthusiastically. "Everyone talks of it. The Gorts look to you for commands."
It was mid-evening now as Nixon sat in the mouth of his cave, with Nona and Loto on his upraised knee. A leader. Fair enough, Nixon thought. No one can argue with a man seventy feet tall! But Frane's growth-drug soon would change everything. The Orites would be as big as Nixon. A whole new civilization to be built in the giant size.
"I'll do my best," Nixon said earnestly. He added suddenly, "Where is Tork?"
In the tumultuous events of the past night and day—the joy of his release—there had been no time to worry about Tork.
"WhereisTork?" Nixon demanded.
Loto and Nona did not know. "Maybe the panther chewed him some," Nixon said. "I wouldn't mourn none."
Nona shook her head. "He was with my father, there where you had been lying."
"Besides, I saw him an hour after that," Loto said.
Nixon's eyes flashed. "You can be sure of one thing," he said grimly. "As soon as I get my bearings around here, we'll get to the bottom of Tork's monkey-shines."
Tork's followers, however many of them there might have been, now certainly seemed to have evaporated. Nixon knew that was natural enough. Whoever had listened to him, now would probably never admit it.
And Tork now had vanished. Perhaps he feared that he would be blamed for having so strongly urged the vivisection of the giant. "He's not at his job in the laboratory, working with your father?" Nixon suggested.
"No, father has not seen him," Nona said. "Father sent to his home, but Tork has not been there."
Frane had promised that his experiment with the growth-drug this evening would be the last, his triumph, the final success. It could come any moment now. And all the little Orite colony knew it, was waiting with excited expectancy for the waving shaft of violet light which Frane had said would show from the top of the laboratory building when the growth-drug was completed.
Down the length of the glass-like cliff-base, Nixon could see the little laboratory building about a hundred feet away. It was humming with activity.
"Well," Nixon said, "nothing to do but wait and see. I sure hope he gets it."
Tensely they waited; the giant hunched at the mouth of his cave with the two tiny figures perched on his bent knee. The hours passed. The moon rose. Then Nixon sucked in his breath, and Nona and Loto gave their little cries. From the top of the laboratory the little light-beam was waving. Success! Frane had accomplished it.
"He did it!" Nixon exulted.
"Yes, he did it," Nona echoed. "My father, I'm so proud of him."
"Let's go over there," Nixon said. "I'll carry you."
He raised them to his shoulder and they clung to the collar of his shirt. They were halfway there when a tiny scream sounded. Then another.
"That came from the laboratory!" Loto exclaimed.
Nixon started running. "Not so fast!" Nona gasped. "The wind up here—"
He went slower, stopped at the waist-high laboratory building. As he stooped to put Loto and Nona on the ground, a tiny figure came scurrying from a side door. Nixon had no chance to seize it. In an instant it had disappeared into the shadows.
"Run inside!" Nixon said. "See what happened."
There was a turmoil in the little building; tiny running footsteps and the horrified voices of the Orite chemists who had been working there. Then in a moment a group of them came out. They were carrying Frane. The sobbing Nona was with them; Loto came, solemn and grim. Silently the giant Nixon stepped back, then knelt, gazing down in awe at the miniature tragedy here at his feet.
He knelt down in amazement.
He knelt down in amazement.
He knelt down in amazement.
Loto explained what had happened. Frane had taken the completed drug into his office. Tork evidently had been lurking, waiting for this moment. He had killed one of Frane's men who got in his way, darted in and stabbed the unsuspecting Frane....
"Then that was Tork I saw running out," Nixon said. He checked his impulse to jump up and rush away to seize the damned murderer. How could you find a tiny, scurrying, six-inch figure in this expanse of moonlit crags?
Frane was not dead, but he obviously was dying. They had laid him on the ground. He saw Nixon's face so high above him, and he called faintly.
"Come closer, giant. Tork was triumphant—he told me what he had planned. I was so stupid—I would never believe ill of him—"
Tork had planned to organize an expedition to go to Earth. With the growth-drug, they would go in their normal small size. Then on Earth, they would use the drugs and get large. There was no real limit to growth through Frane's drug. Frane had meant it to be governed by environmental needs but the more one took the larger he would grow. Giants on Earth! They could make themselves what on Earth would be men a hundred feet tall.
"Tork always said your Earth is so much better a world than Orana could ever be," Frane was saying. "With fighter-Gorts a hundred feet tall on Earth, he felt surely that your world could be conquered."
And many of the Orites here, and the Gorts they controlled, had felt the lure of it. The Orite Government would oppose it. They would have no desire to embark upon the murderous conquest of a neighboring world. Then Tork and his followers would have seized the Government. And more of the Orites would have rallied around him, of course. It is instinct to follow a successful leader.
But with the Earth-giant dominating Orana now, Tork's fellow plotters had melted away.
"Well," Nixon murmured grimly, "what does he think he can do now?"
The answer came almost with Nixon's grim question. "Look!" Loto gasped. "Off there!"
Then Nixon saw it. In the notch between the towering rocks where the pass led into the broad adjoining valley, a figure had appeared, not a tiny six-inch figure but an upright man-shape that seemed about as high as Nixon's waist. It was Tork, and he was half as big as the Earth-giant now! Long since, Tork's clothes had burst with tiny shreds that had dropped away so that his bluish flesh glistened in the moonlight.
For an instant Nixon stood transfixed. And as he stared he saw that Tork was almost visibly growing! Already he seemed a little taller. The moonlight showed his face; he was leering with triumph. Another giant to challenge Nixon's mastery of the Orite world! Soon he would be as big as Nixon ... then larger....
With the shock of realization, Nixon tensed, bounded forward. Instantly Tork disappeared, ducking back into the pass. Almost at once Nixon stopped his pursuits. This could be a fatal error, chasing the growing Tork who might elude him long enough to become so large that he could kill Nixon easily!
"Get me some of the drug!" Nixon called. "Run in there, Loto—get it quick! He'll be larger than I am in a few minutes, by the look of him!"
"In my office," the dying Frane gasped faintly. "There were three cylinders."
Loto and several of the chemists ran in. It seemed an eternity of waiting, with Nixon's mind picturing his enlarging adversary out there in the other valley. But it was only a moment before Loto and the chemists came back. The drug-cylinders were gone! Tork had made away with them all!
Nixon turned and ran for the pass. That damnable delay! He cursed himself for having waited to try and get the drug! Tork by now might already be too big to handle....
The broad valley beyond the pass lay shining in the moonlight. The lines of trees and the little orange river were off to the left. For a moment Nixon stood peering. Was Tork here? Evidently the Orites who lived here had seen him. Their tiny cries sounded. Nixon could see terrified groups of them running.
Then the figure of Tork suddenly rose up from a rock-cluster on the other side of the little river. He had been crouching behind a line of trees. Now with a cry of triumph he straightened, bounded over the river. He was about Nixon's size. He shouted,
"Not a giant any more, are you? Well, this is the end of you, Earthman!"
Tork was holding a dripping chunk of rock which he had seized from the river bank. He flung it, but Nixon ducked. The rock went thudding out across the valley. Then as Nixon held his ground, crouching, Tork's body struck him. The impact knocked Nixon backward, so that he fell with Tork on top of him. It startled him; he had not realized that Tork's body would be so solid, far heavier now than Nixon's.
Then they were rolling, locked together, jabbing, pummeling. In a rough and tumble, Nixon had always been very handy. He was exceedingly agile, and now the heavier Tork could not hold him. In a moment Nixon was up. He found himself at the edge of the babbling little stream. He seized a tree. It was thick, half as big as himself. Desperately he wrenched it up. The knob of heavy roots made it like a maul, a bludgeon. Tork was scrambling up. Nixon hit him with a swing of the tree root. He staggered, went down, this time with Nixon on top of him.
He wrenched up a tree and swung it.
He wrenched up a tree and swung it.
He wrenched up a tree and swung it.
But now Nixon realized that Tork was a full head taller. As they struggled, with Tork heaving up, trying to ward off Nixon's blows, Nixon could feel his antagonist's body expanding. It was gruesome. It shot a fear through Nixon. If he didn't kill Tork now in a moment or two, he never would! And Tork knew it. He was fighting on the defensive, just waiting until Nixon would be only a stripling in his grip.
Then they were rolling again on the ground. They were close beside the stream, with the brittle underbrush crackling under their plunging bodies. Several times Nixon had gotten a grip on Tork's throat, but always the strength of Tork's big hands had broken it. Now Nixon was desperately trying to roll Tork into the water. Evidently the Orite didn't realize it. He lunged, and as Nixon twisted and heaved, Tork went backward with his head and shoulders splashing. The stream was a foot or two deep here, babbling over stones. Tork's head went down; the water splashed over his face. And then again Nixon gripped him by the throat. In Nixon was the grim thought that this was the way one gripped 'gators under water. His hands pressed down; his body was sprawled, braced and taut to hold the lunging Tork.
The orange water was lashed into turgid green foam. Tork was coughing, choking. It was easier to hold his head down now. His hands tore at Nixon's wrists but could not break the hold. Then Nixon could feel the plucking hands and the lunges of Tork's huge body growing weaker. Through an interval Nixon clung, and then he released his grip and staggered panting to his feet. In the babbling stream the big body of Tork lay motionless; a horrible, goggling, staring face blue with the orange water lapping over it....
An Orana year went by, a succession of brief days and nights while Nixon worked and planned to help the Orites build their little world into something safer, more comfortable than it had been before. Frane had died. The Orite doctors and surgeons could not save him. The growth-drug was gone. Tork had hidden the tiny cylinders somewhere, but they had never been found, and no more of the drug could be made. Certainly not now; Frane and Tork were the only ones who knew the full details of the process. Nixon felt that was just as well. A thing diabolic. Like atomic fission, in evil hands it could wreck its world.
Now, with the year passed, it had been agreed that they were to take the giant back to Earth. Loto and Nona set out with Nixon along with a group of the Orite scientists and leaders and a few hundred of the Gorts, most of whom had been on the trip before.
It was the same little spaceship. Now the giant need not lie bound, he could crouch carefully on one elbow, or shift a little if he was wary of his movements. The trip seemed far quicker than before, with Loto and Nona to talk to and all his tiny friends here in the humming interior around him. Then through the bow-port the mellow, crescent Earth swung into view, a great cloud-mottled disc.
Then one Earth-night they were sliding down through the stratosphere, skimming an ocean and over the land ... Florida. Nixon's heart pounded as he gazed down at it. The Florida moon was brilliant in the sky as the gleaming little cylinder slid silently into a patch of wire-grass and rested on the ground. Only a marsh-hen was disturbed, rising with its discordant cry and winging away.
The cylinder opened and Nixon rose up and out of it. The top closed again, and from a lower tiny doorway of the glistening ten-foot shape, a few of the little Orite figures came out, gazed upward. His friends.
"Goodbye, my giant," Nona called. They were all waving.
What was there to say?
"Goodbye," Nixon spoke softly. "I sure wish you well."
They turned, went back inside. The port closed. The sleek, tiny ship slid upward and away into the moonlight. It was a shining little streak for a moment; then a glistening dot, small as a firefly. Then it was gone.
For a moment Nixon stood with a strange sense of loss upon him. But here was Earth. Home. A light was burning in the cabin across the sandspit. The bayou glistened in the moonlight.
Silently Nixon turned and walked up the oyster-shell beach toward his home.