CHAPTER VIII

_Death of the Giants_

We returned to our normal size; and found Drake, father and Ahlma together. Father was shaken by his encounter with Togaro, but unharmed. Drake was bruised, battered and bleeding; but with his youth and strength he soon recovered.

The afternoon wore away. We had decided to start for the island as soon as it was dark. There was no sign of Togaro.

I talked that afternoon for more than an hour with Dianne. She told me many things of her strange world. Drake talked with Ahlma. I heard him say once, "You saved my life--he would have stamped upon me."

I recall with what a singular mixture of emotion I touched Dianne's hand. My adored little sister? A strange foreign princess? The two ideas, so wholly different, mingled in my heart. I recall, too, the flush on Drake's face, his low eager voice as he talked with Ahlma.

The darkness closed in around King's Cove. We were ready to start. Father, with an automatic in his hand, followed us down to the boathouse. We had tried to have him summon a car and go to the village earlier in the afternoon. Or summon help.

"Nonsense, lads--I can take care of myself. We've got to keep this secret. Why, suppose the authorities were to order that atom destroyed!"

The channel was black. The sea was calm, with a sullen, oily calmness. No giants had been reported. The lights of occasional patrol planes passed overhead; out at sea the lights of the waiting battleship were plainly visible.

Drake and I rowed swiftly, with the two girls huddled in the stern. I was tense, my mind roving upon a thousand weird unnatural dangers which at any moment might come upon us. But there seemed nothing.

The island loomed black and silent ahead of us. What was there?

I shipped my oar. We grounded on the beach. No sign of anything.

We prowled through the dark trees, with automatics ready. Drake had a small flash light. We came upon the embers of Dianne's signal fire of the morning.

Tiny figures stirred in the grass under Drake's light.

"Careful, Drake."

Dianne bent down cautiously. A microscopic voice called up to her. She said to us:

"They have not seen Togaro."

She led us a few feet to one side of the embers. "Drake, give me your light."

There was a patch of soft loam here, with grass and ferns growing in it. A small rock projected up in the grass. No one would ever have noticed it. Drake and I knelt down carefully over it. Dianne held the light.

It was the top of what seemed a bowlder buried here. Only a few jagged inches showed. Rock, scarred and pitted; coppery-looking. Metallic.

Drake murmured, "Why, this is a meteorite buried here."

It seemed so. We dug with our fingers in the soil around the projection. The thing bulged out underground. A meteorite that might have weighed a ton. Metallic rock, scarred and pitted and fused by the heat of its falling through the atmosphere to earth. Centuries ago it might have fallen, a visitor from the realms of space. It had buried itself here; or been buried since by the drifting silt of the passing years.

Dianne had known nothing of its being a meteorite. She showed us now the top projection. Made us understand carefully the exact point within which her atom was contained. It was easy to remember. A tiny crater--a pit into which a pin-point might go.

"We descend into that," she said.

We studied the configurations of the projection. With my hunting knife I could break off the top fragment easily.

She added, "Guard it somewhere--with that little crater held upward as it is now."

Ahlma said abruptly, "There is a storm coming."

Rain was beginning to fall. The clouds overhead were black. Thunder rumbled in the distance. And then there was a lightning flash nearer at hand. It brightened all the island for an instant.

Ahlma cried, "Look there! Did you see him?"

The darkness was already again like a wall around us. But we had all seen a giant figure looming into the blackness. A giant, here on the island beach!

Another lightning flash. The storm burst over us, with a surge of wind and rain. Upon the circular island beach, stationed at intervals, giant figures had grown into the sky. Six of them so huge that by leaning forward they might have touched hands across the island.

Dianne whispered, "We must get smaller! They can trample the island."

We were surrounded by them, trapped here--but even in our normal size we were so small that they evidently had not yet seen us.

In the glare of lightning as we crouched, we saw one of the giants lift our dory in his hand, crush it like a bug, and fling it out to sea. Another stooped and fumbled with his fingers over the island underbrush. He plucked up trees, as one would pull up stalks of fern.

But the section where we crouched, hiding now in a near-by bush, was undisturbed. Why, we never knew. Perhaps because Togaro was near here. Or expected here.

Already the presence of the giants was discovered. A war plane circled overhead, swooping through the storm. Its bomb dropped with a hiss into the near-by water. Then a shot screamed past from the advancing battleship.

Dianne gave us just a taste of the drug to diminish our stature. The island expanded. We crouched in a great jungle of forest growth which had been the thicket. Pebbles strewn here grew to great bowlders. We found a cavelike recess and squeezed into it. Miles of jungle and strange, dark land spread around us. Up in the sky, where the lightning flashed and a great torrent of water was pouring down, the bombardment of the island began.

The world knows of that night's events, that soon after nightfall six giants appeared upon Bird's Nest Island off the coast of Maine. They were attacked by the patrol planes.

The giants seemed great stupid brutes. Confused, perhaps. They plucked at the island's trees. They waded out into the water and back. They reached into the sea and flung huge dripping bowlders at the attacking planes.

The hovering battleship advanced. Its shots screamed at the island. One of the giants went down. He floundered in the water, with the others clustering in frightened amazement about him. Then his great body lay still. It sank, but rose again and drifted out to sea.

The planes dropped bombs. One of the giants, wounded, bellowed with cries that were heard all down the coast. He waded frantically out toward the warship which was some three miles off. But the ocean was too deep for him. He swam back. A shot struck him. He crumpled.

An upflung bowlder hit one of the planes and brought it down. The planes flew higher after that.

The coast was lashed with the waves of the giants' threshing bodies. Another fell; his head and shoulders sprawled across half of Bird's Nest Island.

The brief unseasonable electrical storm swept past. In half an hour of the battle but one giant was left. He tried to escape. He reached the mainland, staggering south. He fell, ten miles down the coast.

We crouched in the silence and darkness which had again fallen upon the island.

Drake murmured: "It's over."

Dianne took us back to our normal size. Sea planes were landing in the water of the channel. Clusters of lights showed where boats were heading swiftly for the floating bodies of the fallen giants.

Launches were putting out from the battleships. Other boats coming out from the mainland. A destroyer dashed up and anchored in the channel. Planes circled overhead. Activity everywhere. A dozen boats were advancing upon the island.

We had regained normal size. We stood in a group in the darkness of the island glade.

"We must hurry," Dianne whispered. "Frank, you understand--you chip off the fragment of rock. Wait a few minutes--ten minutes--after we are gone. Then you can't harm us. Take the rock home, guard it. Oh, Frank, keep it secret--and we'll come back some time."

Why all these directions only to me? I might have realized then, but I did not.

Dianne kissed me; Ahlma pressed my hand. The girls were already dwindling. The little figures of their escort lurked at our feet. I turned to Drake.

"We'll wait ten minutes and--"

I gasped. He too was dwindling. He said hurriedly: "I'm going, Frank. You explain to father."

I stood stricken. I recall his last words of instructions: "Togaro may have gone into the atom; or he may be here in our world. Watch out for him, Frank! These few giants mean nothing. Stupid brutes he has sacrificed--a test only of what he plans."

"But Drake--stop!"

I stood frozen. I was suddenly horribly frightened. Confused. A step, and I might kill them. I called, but there was only silence. I had the flash light, but if I lighted it I might blind them.

I sat down by the dead fire. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I heard boats landing upon the beach, and the shouts of arriving men.

But they must not find me until I had done what I had to do! I stood up hastily. With the flash light I located the projecting top of the meteorite. My fingers were trembling as I opened my claspknife. I recall that I was mumbling to myself:

"Steady, Frank! Don't do it wrong."

I knelt. I chipped at the rock. My pounding heart nearly smothered me. The tramp of advancing men sounded near at hand.

I hacked desperately. The rock fragment came off--a chunk a few inches in diameter. I laid it carefully in my pocket. I snapped off my flash. I huddled, shaking, by the wet embers of the dead fire. My brother!

Men surrounded me.

"What the hell?"

"Who is he?"

I stammered: "Let me go."

A turmoil of rough questions. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Ferrule. My name is Frank Ferrule. I live over there--King's Cove."

Other men from another boat came up.

"I've heard of the Ferrules. House across there at King's Cove."

"Yes. That's where I live. My father's there now. I was here--got trapped here when the fighting started."

Somebody said: "He's scared stiff."

"Let go of me," I insisted. "Take me home."

They shoved me into one of their boats.

In the babble of excited voices I was soon ignored. I sat with my hand in my pocket, gently holding the precious chunk of rock.