The dual desire was gone now, truly gone. He knew that. For his will had
been threatened, more by his own foolish desire than by this innocent
girl. He had to think. Clearly. More clearly than he had ever thought
before. He needed the girl as an ally. Not as a slave. She had to be
willing. She had to co-operate. Give her a warped picture of the rest of
the galaxy? Convince her its governments were evil, totalitarian, when
in reality they were democratic? Convince her that he alone, given
unlimited power, could right the wrongs of a thousand worlds? She was
naive enough for that sort of approach, he thought. Besides, it would
strike her as something like creation--moral creation, perhaps. And
creation she would understand. Then, with her as his partner, he could
quickly build a war machine which the combined might of the galaxy
couldn't stand against. And that, he suddenly realized, would even
include an unlimited number of soldiers for occupation and policing
duties. This power would be unparalleled.
"I have something I want to tell you about," he said. "It will take a
long time and we must be undisturbed, which is why I asked you to bring
me here."
"What is it you want to tell me?"
Before Glaudot could answer, they heard a crashing, rending sound not
too far off in the woods. It sounded to Glaudot exactly as if trees were
being uprooted, boulders strewn carelessly.
"Cyclopes!" Robin screamed in terror, and began to run.
Glaudot ran after her, stumbling, picking himself up, hurtling in
pursuit. He couldn't let her get away. He had to follow her ...
Nothing living, he told himself as he ran, could uproot those huge
trees. Of course, there were the saplings, but even the saplings were
the size of full-grown oaks and maples on far Earth.
Something roared behind him. The sound was pitched almost too low for
human ears. He whirled. The earth shook, great clods of it flying. Bare
tree roots suddenly appeared, and a young tree the size of a towering
oak was lifted skyward.
Behind it, brandishing it and then hurling it away, was a naked man
whose head towered impossibly a hundred and fifty feet into the air.
Trembling, awestruck, Glaudot looked up at the great savage face. Wild
hair streaming, filthy beard matted with dirt and tree-branches, it was
the most ferocious face Glaudot had ever seen.
And it had only one eye, one enormous eye in the middle of its head. But
an eye three feet across!
"A Cyclops!" Robin screamed again.
A moment later the creature stooped and with a scooping motion of its
great right hand picked up the two tiny creatures on the forest floor
beneath it. Then it ran, uprooting oak-sized saplings, back toward the
rocky hillside where it dwelled, after the Cyclopes of old on which
Robin and Charlie had naively patterned it, in a cave overlooking the
sea.
* * * * *
"Where, man? Where?" Captain Purcell demanded.
"I don't know," Charlie said. "I really don't think she would. You see,
she always threatened she'd go there if we ever had a fight, but she was
usually half-joking. She knows it's dangerous--"
"But where? Don't you know a drowning man has to grasp at straws?
Haven't I gotten it across to you--the whole galaxy may be in danger!"
Charlie sighed. "I don't understand much of your galaxy. Robin knows the
encyclopedia--she would understand. And I--I only want to know Robin is
safe." He took a deep breath and said: "She always threatened to go to
the Land of the Cyclopes."
"Then take us there at once," Captain Purcell said....
* * * * *
If he shouted and cried now, he would go insane. He knew that. He tried
to hold his fear in check. He was being swung pendulum-like in an
enormous hand as the one-eyed giant loped along. Robin shared the
clenched-fist prison with him. Her hair streamed in the wind as the huge
arm swung the huge hand in time with the giant's enormous strides.
"Does it eat people?" he managed to ask Robin. He had to shout because
the wind created by the creature's movement was considerable. The ground
spun giddily far, far below them, whirling patches of green, of yellow,
of brown.
"We made them to eat people. Like in the book. We were just children.
It seemed--it seemed so thrilling."
The Cyclops loped along, uprooting saplings. After a while it began to
climb a rocky slope and from the heights Glaudot could see the shores of
an unknown sea. Then the Cyclops reached a cave entrance and rolled
aside a huge boulder and took his prisoners within.
Glaudot heard the bleating of sheep.
* * * * *
"Why, it's a fortune in jewels!" Captain Purcell exclaimed. They had
found the glade in the forest, where Robin had created a king's ransom
for Glaudot. The men gathered around, many of them struck dumb by the
sight of all this wealth.