Part 4

His warning was superfluous. All present had experienced the trembling at the same time, a violent, insistent rocking of the soil beneath their feet. Now gaunt Titanians, panic-stricken, were fleeing in all directions. Grossman had stumbled and fallen to his knees. Rocky bent over him, lifted him by main force and howled into his ear,

"A roller, Grossman! You must have a private roller somewhere around here! Where is it?"

"O-over there!" The Factor pointed uncertainly at a gray bulk dim in the gloom.

"Then come on!" snapped Rocky. "We've got to get to New Boston!"

"N-new Boston? The city? But--but why? We want to get to the Patrol Base--"

"New Boston," Rocky grated, "first. That's where you sent Lynn Graham--remember? Gad! I didn't think he could do it! But he is! Start this roller, Grossman, and let's get out of here--quick! Look! The Colossus--"

* * * * *

The others stared, and a little whimper escaped Grossman's slack lips as he saw the final act of the drama which had begun with the trembling of the earth beneath them.

The thin iridiscence of the hillside was seamed and cracked with a myriad of tiny black veins. The whole hummock quivered and trembled as though stricken with some petrologic ague. And then, suddenly, with a crash like that of rolling doom, the whole crown of the hill seemed to erupt explosively before them. Gigantic boulders ripped loose from ancient bedrock and raced wildly down tattered slopes. A myriad tiny fragments burst skyward, sifted down as a hail of deadly debris. There came the rending, tearing, grating sound of stone grinding against stone ... cacophonous background for the cries of maddened Titanians, the screech of roller motors roaring into action, the moans of injured and dying natives. Then--

Then Colossus burst from the womb of the hampering earth! Rose to stand upright in the prison he had outgrown. He shook himself, and detritus scattered about the terrified watchers. He raised a great palm, and with demoniac deliberation brought it squarely down upon a tiny band of huddled and terrified natives. When he lifted his palm again ... it dripped redly!

Rocky thrust the fumbling Grossman from the controls. "Move over! Let me at the stick--"

In a flash he had started the roller's motor, sent the speedster tearing headlong and recklessly across the broken desert flooring. Not a moment too soon. For the Colossus, having once shed blood, now swung into a literal orgy of savage destruction. Like a huge, brainless automaton he flailed the hillside about him clean of every moving thing ... beating with gigantic, steel-hard fists at anything and everything he saw, until that thing lay like a flattened pulp upon the ground.

And all the while horrendous laughter peeled incessantly from his contorted lips. Laughter which carried to New Boston, miles away; even to the Patrol Base beyond the city. Laughter which struck terror into the hearts of listeners who did not know as yet--happily!--whence it came, or the awful fate which lay in store for them.

For Colossus wearied, now, of lingering in his pit. He placed a palm on either side of the chasm he had opened for his escape, and vaulted easily to the surface. The enormous manacles with which his captors had hoped to hold him dangled uselessly. The ground shuddered beneath him. Where his feet met earth they forced depressions. Colossus was drawing sustenance, now, at ever-increasing speed from the soil which fed his odd, unnatural appetite. Already he was taller than New Boston's highest building. More than a quarter mile he towered into the air. And still he grew....

IX

Lynn Graham, plodding at long and weary last into the outskirts of the city, wondered again--with the vague, dull incuriosity which was the only emotion of which her exhausted brain was capable--what had been the meaning of those sounds she had heard from the desert wastes behind her a few hours ago.

It was all very mysterious ... mysterious and alarming. First had come the wails. Not wails, really, but dreadful, ear-splitting howls like the bellowing of some monstrous beast. Then out of the darkness behind her had come hurtling a small roller. A madly ricocheting vehicle without lights. She had attempted to signal the driver ... but in vain. As well try to hitch a ride on a runaway comet as on that speeding car.

And now? Now she was entering a city which ought to be asleep, but, instead, was seething with furious activity. Lights shone from the windows of buildings, shacks, stores. Crowds congregated at corners, huddled groups of frightened figures that looked astonishingly like mobs of refugees.

It was as though a mass-panic had seized the entire city. Earthmen gathered their families fearfully about them; Titanians scurried, slithered, hobbled in every direction in helter-skelter confusion. Vainly Lynn accosted passers-by in search of an explanation. Her queries were met with terror-numbed stares, with mumbles, with incomprehensible mouthings.

"_We heard.... Danger approaching.... Someone said.... Must leave the city.... They told us.... Giant beast.... Death...._"

Despairing of ever learning the truth from such informants, Lynn fought her way to a public audio booth. After a longer-than-usual wait, her call was put through. Over the selenoplate she stared into the worried eyes of her father.

A prayer of relief and gratitude escaped the Colonel as he recognized his caller.

"Lynn! Thank the Lord you're safe! I've been worried sick about you. And so has that young doctor--"

"Rocky? You mean he and Bud escaped? They're with you at the base?"

"Roswell--I mean _Russell_--is. Mulligan has gone out with the Fleet on scout patrol."

"F-fleet?" stammered Lynn. "Scout patrol? Daddy--what _is_ this all about? I seem to be the only person on this world who doesn't know what's wrong--"

* * * * *

A voice at the other end of the wire said politely, "May I, sir?"--and Colonel Graham's face faded back to be replaced by the grave, sharp-lined features of the young S.I.D. captain. "Lynn--" he began, and even in that tense moment Lynn Graham found time to wonder that he had dropped all pretense of formality--"Lynn, we are all in the gravest peril. Colossus has broken loose!"

"Co-colossus?"

"The _Thing_ for which those manacles were forged. It turned out to be a giant humanoid. Bud and I saw it. It was more than a thousand feet tall when it escaped Grossman. Now it has more than doubled that height!"

Lynn gasped.

"But--but where is it?"

"After it broke from its underground cell it headed west. For almost seven hours it has been roaming the planet wildly and at will. It completely destroyed the mining-town of Hawesbury and the villages of Placer and Dry Ditch."

"But aren't we doing anything to stop it? It must be destroyed--"

"Three flights are out looking for it. Two haven't been able to contact it at all ... the third is unreported. We fear that flight ... found it!" Russell's voice was more sober than ever. "Lynn ... our weapons seem to be useless against it. Its skin is incredibly tough, hard, resistant. Heat does not bother it, and our heaviest HE shells are like pebbles upon a hippo's hide."

"But there must be _some_ way--"

"There has _got_ to be some way," nodded Russell, "for if we don't find it ... and soon ... Titan will be a dead world, peopled by a single, monstrous entity. Now--" He abandoned explanations for a more immediate problem--"you stand tight. I'm coming to New Boston to get you."

"Oh, that's not necessary. I'll hire a transport."

"There's no such thing. The road between here and the city is and has been thronged with refugees for hours. I don't believe there's a commercial roller left in the city. Because, you see--"

"Yes?" pressed Lynn as he hesitated.

"Never mind. I'll be right there for you."

"You were going to tell me something, Rocky. What?"

"Well," said Rocky reluctantly, "I guess you'd better know. According to the seismograph, Colossus has almost completed his circumambulation of Titan ... and is on his way back toward New Boston. You must be very, very careful. And now, good-bye! See you later!"

The circuit faded, and he was gone. Lynn stood for a moment thinking swiftly. Then she decided. Better to _do_ something than to just sit waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... in a city gone mad with fear. She would start toward the Base _now_, meet Rocky on the way.

Having made her decision, she turned quickly and took her place in the jostling throng pressing southward....

* * * * *

Rocky, moving north on the New Boston safeway, as he wormed his roller through the ever-thickening mass of panicky Titanians and terrified Earth colonists rushing to the safety of the Base was once again--for perhaps the hundredth time--trying to grasp that elusive half-thought which had lurked in the back of his brain ever since Colossus had broken free.

Something Grossman had said--Grossman who now cowered in a Patrol cell, far from the haughty, autocratic figure he had pretended to be--had brushed a spark in Rocky's mind. But now that spark had dulled, and Rocky could not recapture it. It had something to do with Colossus ... it suggested some means of combating....

"_Damnation!_"

The hordes of refugees had been parting like a flesh sea before him ever since he left the Fort gates. But now the numbers were becoming so great that he could not move the roller through them except at a crawl. He realized this, and gave up the unequal struggle. He called an Earthman to him.

"Here, you--can you drive a roller?"

"Yes, indeed, sir!"

"Then take this back to Colonel Graham at the Fort. Tell him Captain Russell is going ahead on foot."

The colonist stared at him strikingly. "You--do you mean you're going back toward the city, sir? But you can't do that! It--it's suicide. They say a huge monster, ten miles tall, is coming to smash the city to pieces--"

Rocky said tightly, "Never mind that now. You give my message to the Commandant--_understand_?" And he climbed from the car and forced his way against the tide, northward on foot.

It was as he was pressing along that he thought of Bud Mulligan, who had gone out with "B" flight in an effort to find and destroy--or at least delay--Colossus. Thinking of Bud reminded him that they wore on their persons the means of constant communication. The chances were greatly against Bud's being on the beam, but it was worth a try. He took the miniature vocoder from his breast pocket and activated it on the secret S.I.D. wave-length. Vastly to his surprise, he got an immediate reply.

"O.Q., chief! Where in Tophet have you been? I've been buzzing you for the past hour and a half!"

Rocky signaled back, "Where are you, Bud?"

"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.

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?"