by Don Wilcox
“My Gooyay!” exclaimed Gypsy Brown, dancing around in circles. “Vat good news! As soon as ve fly back to der capital I’ll write a letter to der earth telling all about my leedle Gooyay. Vat you know! I’m an auntie to an angel—the leedle dickens! I vonder if he can get me back my zootcase.”
“Good news,” said the Ambassador. “I already have your suitcase. Some good wingman returned it several days ago.”
“My lands! Dot iss good news.” It was a good thing Gypsy didn’t have wings or she would have taken off in flight.
The good news was coming in bunches. At that moment the heavy stomps on the spiral stairs caused the group to turn.
“Good news,” said a very rotund and weary-faced citizen, puffing through his thick lips. Stupe at once recognized him as his old boss, the Inspector. “The committee of six announces a celebration and banquet in honor of the rise of the city, and you are all invited.”
Amid the cheering Stupe felt Zaleena draw back into the protection of his arms. Was she shrinking from this invitation?
“You needn’t be afraid to go,” he whispered. “You’re not a deity any longer.”
She smiled at him faintly and he knew there was sadness in back of her smile.
“It’s just that they’re used to seeing me with Marble Boy . . . How can I celebrate when my remorse is so heavy?”
The radio operator broke in upon the circle at that moment, bounding across from the space ship to the platform with a message in his hand.
“Some news for you, Zaleena. It’s about Marble Boy. They’ve identified him by the white powder in his mane.”
“His body?”
“He swam up out of the sea. He was half dead, they say, but they’re giving him the best of care somewhere in New York and he’s going to pull through. Mae Krueger identified him for you. She says that everything’s going to be all right, and she also wants you to know she’s sorry if she mistreated you.”
“Oh . . . Oh . . . Marble Boy!” The face of the beautiful Zaleena-Zaleese-Ocella-Dudu was more radiant, Stupe thought, than the face of any goddess he ever hoped to see—on Venus or Mars or Jupiter.
“Yes, Marble Boy,” the operator repeated, “and they’ll take care of him until you have a chance to come for him . . . Good news?”
“Good news!” shouted Hefty and the Stevens sisters and Stupendous Smith simultaneously. And Gypsy Brown out-shouted them all.
“Dot’s efen better news than my zootcase!”
Amazing Stories
November 1947
Volume 21, Number 11
The relationship between men of tremendous stature and ordinary men is peculiar at best—and on the planet Mogo, events dwarfed even the imagination—and brought death!
CHAPTER I
It’s a sad fact that much trouble in this world can be traced to the lazy, no-good fellow who lies around all day with nothing to do but get into mischief. It was one of the laziest giants of Mogo who accidentally started all the grief between the Solar System and the Mogo System. He did it by crunching an earth space ship between his teeth. There was no good reason for it. He just did it.
Faz-O-Faz was the giant’s name. He sank his teeth into the ship thinking it was some kind of flying insect. He was too careless to notice.
Faz-O-Faz was a shaggy reddish-brown fellow about a mile tall—the average height of the Mogo giants—and very dusty. He was dusty from lying across his favorite hilltop. His weight had pulverized the soil into a nice warm couch of dust, and often the ears on his head were as full of dirt as the ears on his ankles.
Today, snoozing in the warmth of the three Mogo suns. Faz-O-Faz had been too lazy to get up and go back to the city for lunch. Sooner or later some fat birds or insects would fly over and he would reach up and snatch a meal out of the air. He folded his upper arms under his head, but kept his lower arms free for action.
Z-z-z-z-z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z . . .
Some sort of insect was coming. Two of them. Flying low. Not more than half a mile high—within easy reach. Faz-O-Faz lay still. His ankle-ears told him the exact position of the foremost insect. The creature was flying directly over him. What luck! Faz-O-Faz opened his eyes just far enough to see. It was a cinch.
Whiz-z-z-z-z! Faz swung. Swift and sure. The buzzing insect snapped into the palm of his hand. His fingers tried not to crumple it. An insect is tastier when the juices aren’t squeezed out. (Pity that some of his Mogo cousins would never touch such food.) Faz-O-Faz slapped the insect into his mouth and crushed it with his teeth before it had time to sting.
Clank! Crunch! Crunch! Cluggg!
“Oooowaukkk!” Faz-O-Faz shouted as if someone had jabbed him with a poison needle. What he said no Mogo could have understood. It was a bitter dose—not the taste so much as the rude surprise. Faz-O-Faz had a mouthful of twisted metal. This was no insect. It was—what?
At the same time Faz was cursing and spitting out the ruined space ship and hurling the twisted wreckage into the river, he was also looking sharp at the other small flying object.
“What kind of insects?” he growled. Then snorting and blowing a cloud of dust from his cheeks, he declared, “Machines, that’s what they are. Midget machines!”
He watched, speechless. The second of the two “insects” had been quick to take warning. It suddenly spurted away with an awful burst of speed. It charged up into the white sky, leaving a thin trail of black smoke in its wake. Faz lost sight of it for a moment. Then it circled back through the white clouds and began to scout along the river as if looking for traces of its sister ship. But it kept well out of Faz’ reach.
“You’ve missed your lunch, Faz-O-Faz,” he heard someone call from the hillside path. It was the voice of Gret-O-Gret, a giant of knowledge. Gret-O-Gret often walked out from the city at midday. The sun shone off his brow, which was wide like the brow of a mountain. His finely combed hair was bright yellow where it waved over the ears of his large, well-shaped head.
“Don’t you ever get hungry, Faz?”
Gret-O-Gret was smiling as he sauntered along. That was his way—always trying to be friendly with everyone, even the idle tramps of the city parks. His friendliness made Faz-O-Faz feel uncomfortable.
“If I get hungry I eat insects,” Faz replied. He folded his upper arms defiantly, expecting Gret-O-Gret to laugh at him.
Gret-O-Gret nodded. “Some insects are quite wholesome, as any man of science will tell you. I have been known to eat insects myself.”
Faz, listening to the thump of Gret-O-Gret’s feet, scoffed inwardly. But as he settled down on his dusty hilltop, he noticed that Gret-O-Gret was also watching for insects.
“He wants to show me,” Faz thought. “He’s straining a point to be friendly.”
A few moments later Faz-O-Faz came up on his elbows with a jerk. Then he rose to his knees so that he could peer down into the river valley.
It had happened. Gret-O-Gret, the man of knowledge, had lashed his hand through the air and caught—not an insect. He had caught the second of the two midget machines. Yes, Faz, was sure, for he heard the faint crunch of metal from Gret-O-Gret’s fingers—just once. Then he saw Gret’s eyes widen and shine.
“Did you get an insect?” Faz shouted down at him.
Perhaps Gret was too far away to hear. He hardly glanced back. He knelt down and took a reading glass from the packet of equipment he wore around his waist and began to examine the object in his hand. He bent over the glass intently. He sat down at the edge of the river and became absorbed in studying his find.
“Anything good to eat?” Faz shouted, dragging the words out loud and long.
“Nothing to eat,” Gret-O-Gret called back without even turning.
Faz yawned. Since there was no food in prospect, he had just as well take another nap. Maybe a fat bird would fly over after awhile. Spitting out a string of metal that had caught in his teeth, he nestled down in the dust and closed his eyes. It would never occur to him that his carelessness might have ruined
a good-will tour from a far-off planet.
CHAPTER II
Gret-O-Gret strode back to the city of Forty Towers. In his hand was a wonderful little treasure. He was eager to examine it in his study. His six hearts were thumping with excitement.
His four feet beat quick steps along the by-path to his home. He preferred not to meet anyone—not until he had had a chance to examine his discovery.
His discovery! All his own! All because he had meant to catch an insect for a hungry tramp!
He only hoped he hadn’t damaged the shell too much. There were little creatures insides. He had glimpsed them through the window. He could hardly wait to see them under the light. Gret-O-Gret smiled as he entered his house.
The early evening light shone over the glass table of his study. The crystal walls of his porch tempered the blaze of the three Mogo suns lowering in the south. He rummaged through his insect-collector’s equipment and found a cubical box with walls of screen. It was smaller than the tips of his huge fingers, but well constructed.
“Just the thing,” he thought. “This will hold you, my little friends. Now if you’ll just step out so I can see . . .”
He struggled with the tiny door in the ship’s side. The craft was stoutly constructed, and its sleek lines convinced him that it was built for space travel. Unfortunately, he had damaged its power mechanism when he had first caught it. But the rest of it was intact. He tried to open the smoothly fitted door but it refused to yield.
There would be an easier way to break into the ship. Carefully he applied a metal knife to the side and cut a tri-angular opening.
He fitted the opening to the door of his cubical cage.
“Sooner or later they’ll come out,” Gret-O-Gret thought. The evening suns began to grow dim. He turned on a soft green light above the glass surface of his table. He focused an electric eye on the triangular opening and attached it to a signal. Then he sat back in an easy chair and, patient giant that he was, he closed his eyes and waited. “Sooner or later . . .”
Inside the crippled space ship Paul Keller and his wife were fighting for their lives. They watched the motionless shadow of the man who had turned killer. Garritt Glasgow! A trusted member of their expedition! Garritt Glasgow a traitor and a murderer!
Glasgow had seized a pistol and gone on a rampage just as the space ship was arriving on the Mogo planet. He must have timed his attacks for the moment when the sights of the new land would capture everyone’s attention.
Of the five persons aboard the ship, Glasgow had shot down two in cold blood. Paul Keller would have been next on the list. But Katherine, his wife, succeeded in snapping closed the steel door to the control room, and the killer had been held at bay. A door separated them—a door and a partition with a window.
Glasgow’s shadow could be seen as he waited, hawklike, for a chance to enter. It was a terrifying situation, and Paul Keller didn’t have a chance to meet it. His job at the controls, air cruising his space craft at low altitude over the strange Mogo lands, demanded every ounce of his energies. The show down with Glasgow would wait until this ship and the other had safely landed.
Then—giants!
Before Keller had had a chance to collect his wits, a new baffling menace from the outside had suddenly loomed. Immense brown men fully five thousand feet tall were walking the paths of this new world. Keller had expected to find people—yes. But not massive, four-legged, mile-high monsters.
Suddenly one of these creatures, lying lazily on a hillside, had reached up and caught the foremost ship (the Paul Keller expedition had consisted of two space ships and ten persons). Tragedy struck with unbelievable cruelty in the minute that followed. Keller saw it all. His blood ran cold as the ruins of the other ship were spewed from the giant’s vast teeth and hurled into a stream.
Many minutes later Paul Keller, stupefied by the horror of this swift fate and strangely fascinated by the power and skill of the Mogo giant who had dealt the blow, dared to cruise down toward the valley of the river that had swallowed up his other ship. His eyes, red-rimmed from too many hours of star-gazing, combed the surface of the green river. No signs of the ruins. Half the expedition had gone down.
And all the while Katherine was urging, “Careful, Paul . . . Find a landing place, Paul . . . Glasgow’s waiting. He’s still at the door. You’ve got to handle him.”
Yes. Keller knew he’d have to shoot it out with Glasgow. The wonder was that the killer hadn’t tried to crash through the partition. Perhaps he, too, had seen the giants. Perhaps the sight of them had stunned him. If so, the immediate fight might be postponed . . .
“We’re the giant’s prisoners, Paul. What are we going to do?”
Katherine had said it a dozen times in the past hour. The blaze of the three setting suns had faded from the glass surface of the giant’s table and now a weird greenish light filled the room. (Such an immense enclosure to be called a room!) Keller half expected clouds to float in through the windows and gather against the ceiling!
“We’d better make our peace with the giant, Paul. Can’t you think of something? You’re so slow.”
Keller winced. His faithful young wife believed in him and was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. But she was always distressed when his wits slowed down to low gear. The double tragedies had fairly paralyzed him. And yet Katherine, cold-blooded and quick-witted, was almost taunting him for his show of weakness.
“We could have handled Glasgow three days ago.”
“I know,” Paul admitted. “You warned me. You read the signs. But I couldn’t believe . . .”
The shadow, formerly visible at the partition window, had retreated out of sight. The huge fingers of the giant were still at work outside the ship, trying to find an opening.
Such enormous brown fingers—and—concealed in their tips, smaller fingers!
The larger fingertips were like huge barrels. But sometimes their ends unknotted to reveal a cluster of intricately fitted members—a semi-circle of smaller fingers like jointed gaspipes. These “fingers of fingers” had unlatched the cubical cage a few minutes ago. Fine work for such a massive creature. Paul had marveled.
“Glasgow’s calling!” Katherine gasped in surprise.
The sounds of scraping metal subsided for a moment and the terrorized voice of Garritt Glasgow came through the partition.
“He’s changed his tune!” Paul muttered. “He’s begging for a truce!”
The frenzied words echoed weirdly into the control room.
“Let me explain, Paul! Listen to me! I won’t shoot you . . . You don’t understand, Paul . . . Let me in!”
Paul didn’t need his wife’s warning look to suggest the answer to such an outrageous bluff. There was a snarl in his voice as he retorted:
“You murdered Lane and Siddell in cold blood, Glasgow. You intend to take over the ship. You’re waiting to murder us.”
“No, No. You’re wrong, Paul.”
“You’re lying like hell.”
“Please believe me. It was a mistake.”
“You’d have had us both!”
“No, you’re wrong there.”
This denial somehow carried more conviction, and Paul’s wits weren’t too slow to catch it.
“Oh. So that’s it!” Paul shot a quick glance at his wife. “He meant to murder me and save you.”
Katherine’s eyes were steely with tension. She caught his arm. “Didn’t you see it before, Paul? I kept trying to tell you I felt trouble brewing every time that man looked at me.”
The scheme was coming clear to Paul Keller now. Glasgow had played a smart game throughout the long space-hop, basking in the warmth of the Kellers’ friendship. But Glasgow’s intention, all along, had been to seize the ship as soon as it reached one of the Mogo planets. The honor of leading the earth’s first expedition to this unexplored realm would never go to Paul Keller. There would only be Glasgow, and Paul Keller’s wife. And no others?
Paul wondered. Was there a
nother half to this dastardly plan? Had someone on the other ship plotted with Glasgow? Paul would probably never know.
“Paul, help me!” Glasgow was in a frenzy of sobbing. “It’s going to get me, Paul. It’ll get all of us. Do you hear me, Paul?”
“I hear you.”
“It’s sliced a hole in the side. What are we going to do?”
“You killed Lane and Siddell.”
“No, Paul. I didn’t mean to. Forgive me. I was out of my head. Give me a chance. This giant—we’ve got to fight it together”
The order that Paul Keller shot back was like a cold steel blade.
“Don’t fight it, you damn fool. Listen to me. I’m going to trust you.”
Katherine clutched his arm. “Paul!”
He motioned her aside. He was gambling on something more than his own slow wits. There was that wild terror in Glasgow’s pleadings. Paul called through the partition.
“Are you ready to take orders, Glasgow?”
“Anything you say, Paul. Anything!”
“All right. Get rid of your pistol. The three of us are going out together to meet the giant.”
CHAPTER III
It was an historic hour. The earth and a far-off planet of the Mogo system were beginning to understand each other.
“What curious little people,” Gret-O-Gret kept saying to himself.
It amazed him that such small creatures could possess enough intelligence to build ships and explore the world of space. What a contrast between Mogo’s race of giants and these almost microscopic visitors, smaller than Gret-O-Gret’s fingertips.
The giant edged closer to his glass table. He adjusted his eye glasses for a magnified view of the little faces. And the’ finely woven goods of their clothing. And the dainty shoes that covered their feet. He was fascinated from the moment they emerged. They stepped cautiously. Three of them.