"Look north," ordered Bud, "and east ... about thirty thousand
elevation. If you see five black dots in the sky, they ain't
asterisks--they're us. Flight B, keeping an eye on the Mountain that
Walks Like a Man."
"Then he--he's in sight?"
"How can you miss him? He's bigger than the landscape. Can't you see
him yet?"
"No."
"Well, I'm afraid you will. He's heading your way now. Keep an eye on
the horizon and--"
A sudden roar rose from the throngs swarming the safeway. It was a roar
of fear, but deeper even than the note of fear was that of awe. Rocky,
looking up from his vocoder swiftly, beheld two things simultaneously.
First--the dawn of a new day. Saturn-rise, breaking swiftly, suddenly,
over the horizon, brooming all shadows in its path immediately. And the
second phenomenon--
* * * * *
Colossus! Colossus rising over the horizon ... a head, then mighty
neck, broad shoulders, naked torso ... rising from the other side of
the world like a vast, bestial nightmare. A tremendous Colossus whose
head was so far above the veiled cloudlets of Titan that from time to
time he was forced to bob and weave in order to avoid collision with
the "rogues," those tiny bits of cosmic debris escaped from Saturn's
Ring which besprinkle space in the neighborhood of the girdled planet.
"Rocky!" Bud was chattering on the vocoder. "Rocky, what's the matter.
CX, Rocky Russell. CX, Rocky Russell.... Are you all right, Rocky?"
Rocky answered slowly, "I'm all right, Bud. But I just saw him. We all
just saw him. He--he's tremendous!"
"You're telling me? See them manacles? He's grown so big they've split
in half ... right up the back! They look like the only reason they're
hanging on is because they're imbedded in his flesh! And his height....
Whew! The navigator here just shot an estimate! Over six thousand feet,
Rocky! Colossus is more than a mile high!"
Rocky said, "Keep on the beam, Bud, and don't mind if I don't answer
you immediately. I'm fighting my way north on the safeway, hunting for
Lynn. She's in New Boston--"
"New Boston!" Bud's voice was horror-stricken. "My Lord, no! She
mustn't be, Rocky! That's where he's heading for right now. He can see
it ... he's got a glint in his eye ... a blood-lust.... Oh, great gods
of space.... Rocky!"
The voice died in a tiny wail.
Russell needed no explanation of his agonized words. For he, too, saw
the climax of that frightful action. Colossus had climbed completely
over the horizon, now. There was no doubt he had spotted the city.
He seemed fascinated by its twin towers. Like a destructive child
experimenting with some new toy he leaned over, gripped the spire of
the nearest between a massive thumb and forefinger ... and snapped it
off!
From the shard of stone and metal wherein a few desperate fugitives
had taken refuge dropped tiny motes, tumbling hundreds of feet to
certain, dreadful doom! Rocky could not hear their screams ... but he
could imagine them. One of those black fragments _might_ have been ...
_could_ have been....
He shook his head doggedly. No! He must not think of such things! Lynn
still lived. _Must_ live!
Then another sound burst so close to him that for a moment his tense
nerves shrieked in agony. A mighty hissing roar ... the explosive blast
of a rotor-gun going into action. Glancing to his right he found
himself beside the very gun-embrasure wherein yesterday--("_Lord, only
yesterday? Not a hundred thousand centuries ago?_")--a jovial gunner
had told "Dr. Rockingham Roswell" fabulously genial tales of monstrous
beasts. Could either of them have guessed that today....
"Gunner!" he cried.
The old warrior glanced up, identified him amongst the hordes of
refugees. "Oh, you, Puffessor! Come on! I'm short-handed here. Crew
didn't make it afore the attack. If you're still lookin' for fab'lus
monsters, here's y'r chance to git some fust-hand experience--"
Rocky needed no second invitation. A terrible rage was upon him, now.
Futile to attempt to any longer buck the mob to New Boston still more
than three miles away. If Lynn had been in the city, neither he nor
any man could help her now. The only thing he could do was ... avenge
her....
He dropped into the pit, and swung instantly into action. "What do you
need here? Oh--short a prime-loader, eh? All right, Gunner--" He spun
toward the charge-rheo, jazzed its fill to max, slammed home the breech
of the rotor, snapped, "O.Q. Charge set!"
"Range," said Gunner mechanically, "_Fire!_" The beam blasted away.
Then, and only then, did the old fighter seem to realize what had
happened. His leathery old face crinkled, and he stared at Rocky in
bewilderment. "Hey, wait a minute! What's goin' on here? Puffessor,
where did _you_ ever learn to prime-load a Mallory rotor?"
"The same place," grunted Rocky, "you saw a purple bird with six green
wings and a lavender tail! Stop loafing! Let's give that beast another
bellyful. Charge set!"
"Range," said Gunner automatically, "_Fire!_" A slow grin overspread
his face. "Comets! Looks like I pulled the wrong guy's leg, hey?"
* * * * *
But not long did Rocky work with the gun-crew. Came another buzz from
Milligan, aloft. And this time the S.I.D. sergeant's news was worse
than ever before.
"It's no good, Rocky. Neither the groundfire nor our aerial blasts
are having any effect on him. Heat-beams don't even make his muscles
twitch, and as for physical ordnance--the shells don't even penetrate
his hide."
Rocky cried, "But there has to be some way to stop him, Bud! He's
practically on top of New Boston now. After that, he'll turn on the
Patrol Base--"
"And crush us all out," conceded Bud dolefully, "like a bad kid
stamping out an ant-heap. That's all we are to him. Just so many ants.
No, there's only one way left. The Flight Leader has decided we've got
to use ourselves as human shells, Rocky. Bullets won't harm him, but
if we can smash these ships into some vulnerable spot ... his eyes ...
perhaps we can kill him before we ... we...."
"_Wait!_" cried Rocky. "_Ants! That's it!_ Not _ants_--but _Antaeus_!
Bud, listen carefully! Those craft are equipped with repulsor beams?"
"Why--why, yes, but--"
"Then contact your Flight Leader immediately. Tell him these are
orders. As an S.I.D. agent it is your privilege to take over any
command in case of urgency. I want the three ships of your flight to
turn on their repulsor beams to maximum strength--and bear down on the
Colossus!"
"B--but, Rocky--"
"Do as I say!"
"Y--yeah, sure. But if they don't lift him?"
"Don't be an ass! Repulsors are used to move asteroids from
trade-lanes, aren't they? Colossus is huge, but no bigger than
thousands of asteroids! They'll lift him off the face of this world!"
"And--and then?"
"Then we shall see," said Rocky grimly, "if I have saved us, or just
given us a few minutes' grace. If I'm wrong, he'll fight his way free
as soon as the repulsors wear down. But if I'm right--"
"Well?"
"I've got to be right! And now--get going!"
"Y--yessir!" gulped Bud obediently, and disconnected to contact the
Flight Commander of the spacevessels.
Thus it was that a few moments later, as Rocky and Gunner lay in their
pit watching hopefully, as the unceasing throngs continued to block the
safeway, casting fearful looks back over their shoulders as they fled
from one doomed place to another, that the five ships gathered together
momentarily ... then separated ... then converged on the Colossus in
a narrow V--their prows invisibly pouring repulsor radiation at the
gigantic creature.
The reaction of Colossus was the only thing which assured Rocky his
plan was being carried out. For the repulsor radiation was colorless.
But as the ships neared Colossus, he bent, momentarily, at the middle
as if he had suffered a surprise thrust in the belly or groin. Then an
expression of anger crossed his features.
[Illustration: _Anger filled Colossus' face; he flailed with both
arms._]
The ships were coming in beneath the protection of a cloud-bank, but
Colossus spotted them. He flailed a whiplike arm at them as a pettish
child might sweep at bothersome flies ... but to no avail. The speedy
craft swirled away, but kept their prows pointed at his midriff.
Again Colossus struck at them, and smashed one. Then a new idea
struck him. Reaching above his head, by sheer force he tugged from a
satellitic course about Titan a rogue rock of tremendous size. A rock
which must have been every bit of fifteen hundred feet in diameter, a
shard of matter hewn into a perfect sphere by long ages in the Rings of
Saturn.
This he clutched and aimed at the spacecraft. Let it be hurled upon
them, Rocky knew, and in an instant every spark of life would be dashed
from existence as the metal walls of the ships were beaten flat.
* * * * *
But the sphere was not hurled! It was the Colossus who gave way ... not
the ships! The cumulative pressure of the repulsor beams caused him to
yield, bend, stagger! He tried to regain his balance with a lurching
stride forward ... and thus it was that the twin towers, pride of New
Boston, were destroyed. Colossus' left foot descended crushingly upon
the buildings ... and when it withdrew a moment later, a yawning hole
gaped where had been city streets ... a hole partly filled with the
crumbled masonry of the once-proud skyscrapers....
But Colossus staggered back one step ... and another ... and still
another. Then one foot slipped into the air-_and did not descend_!
After it went the other foot. And Colossus _was off the ground_! Off
the ground and being pressed farther and farther out into space with
every passing moment!
A great cheer ... a cheer which had in it half a sob ... rose from
the safeway beside the gunnery-pit. Rocky Russell, glancing up at the
hordes who had turned to behold this last-moment salvation, felt a
moment of pain strike at his heart.
Saved! A world ... and all these ... saved. But the one most important
person in this or any world....
And then he saw her! She had been fighting beside him in this very
pit ... weary, disheveled, eyes haggard ... but still, to him,
beautiful! And it could not have been mere coincidence that she saw him
at the same moment. Their eyes met ... and no longer was there need
for words. Both knew what the other was thinking ... both accepted the
decisions of their hearts gladly. Without a word she turned and fled
into the circle of his arms.
While up above, Bud Mulligan was signaling desperately, "Rocky! CX,
Rocky Russell. Dammittahell, where are you? What do we do now? Our
beams can't hold this mountain up here forever? What do you want us
to--_Great guns of grief!_"
Colossus ... _dwindled_! Like a tinfoil effigy held over a flame, his
tremendous bulk began to slough away. It did not fall off in chunks or
clots. There was no destruction of his flesh, not horrid streams of
blood flowing from open wounds. Colossus simply ... _disappeared_!
A mile-high roaring monster, pinned on invisible repulsor beams ...
then a half-mile creature screaming in panic ... then a massive Thing a
thousand ... five hundred ... fifty ... five ... two feet tall. Then a
small, gray, shapeless wisp hanging like a shredded tatter in space ...
a sudden, silent puff of flame ... then nothing....
_So found its final resting place the Thing which came from afar.
The Thing which, in accordance with the theories of a scientist It
had never heard of, had journeyed through black space to spawn on a
hospitable world._
_So ended another of Nature's blind attempts to convey a life form from
one galaxy to another. So ended--Colossus!_
X
Afterwards, Bud Mulligan said solemnly, "if you didn't see it very
plain from where you was, I ain't going to explain what it looked like.
It was ... well, ugly. That's all. What _I want_ to know is ... how did
you know it would dry up and crumble away if we could lift it off the
ground, Rocky?"
Russell grinned. He said, "I suppose you'd be highly chagrined to learn
it was really you who gave me the idea?"
"Me?"
"Yes. When you mentioned 'ants'. The word reminded me of a dim thought
I had been trying all day to recapture, without success. It reminded me
of--Antaeus."
"Aunty _who_?"
"Antaeus. You'll find his story in the folk-tales of our mother planet,
Earth. Hercules, while engaged on his famous 'Labors' met this giant
in mortal combat. Antaeus was a son of Mother Earth, and from her he
derived his tremendous strength. Each time Hercules felled him, he grew
larger. At last the hero discovered Antaeus' secret, and overcame him
by lifting him completely above his head. Antaeus then dwindled ... as
did our own Colossus...."
"Comets!" gaped Bud. "That's exactly what happened? But why?"
"Because," explained his friend, "Colossus devoured not _food_, as we
do--but _energy_! Raw, radiant energy. Titan not only fed him ... it
gave him a _banquet_! The storage-battery which is this planet--"
"Eh?" interrupted Colonel Graham, startled. "What's that, Captain?
Storage-battery?"
"Yes, Colonel. That is the secret of Titan, the secret Grossman learned
and hoped to capitalize on after he had frightened or forced all other
Earthmen ... including the Space Patrol ... off this globe.
"Titan is not simply a world ... it is a gigantic storage-battery!
Its 'acid seas' and 'metallic mountains' are a parallel of the simple
voltaic cell. The mysterious 'T-radiation' is nothing more nor less
than constantly reversing polarity on a gigantic scale. Humans are
destroyed by it for the same reason they die in an electric chair.
Titanians can endure it because they are endowed with the physical
characteristic of being 'poor conductors.'
"Colossus _fed_ on this steady stream of current, and in him electrical
energy transmuted into matter. How, we do not know ... nor will we
ever, now ... unless some day another of Colossus' race is cast by the
tides of time upon the shores of one of our solar planets...."
"Which," whispered Bud, "God forbid! Well, it just goes to show you,
everything happens for the best, doesn't it? I mean, if you hadn't
masqueraded as a Doctor of Mythology so we could trap Grossman and
shove him into clink, like he now is--"
"I might not have guessed," acknowledged Rocky, "the reason for
Colossus' bulk. Yes, that's right. But speaking of myths--"
He turned to the girl.
"Oh, it's not _you_ I want to ask, but your father. I would like to
know, Colonel Graham ... have I permission to track down one final
'myth' as 'Dr. Roswell' ... and make her become 'Mrs.' Russell?"
Colonel Graham smiled. "Well, Captain--" he began.
But Bud interrupted him, groaning.
"Migawd, what a terrible pun! You had to stretch that one a mile,
Rocky!"
It was then that Lynn Graham proved herself a suitable future wife in
all respects. For she smiled gently, and:
"Well, why not, Bud?" she demanded. "According to the old adage ... 'A
myth is as good as a mile'...."