void-giants showed near the Elephant's Child, hovering or slowly drifting around the bow of the ship.

"Now," said the captain, "if only our friend in the bottle has left us our guns—train 'em on those monstrosities and fire every forward battery simultaneously."

The lieutenants, seated in foam-chairs behind the double banks of the gun controls, manipulated instruments that were very like the sights on common atom-pistols. Thin blue lines moved across the reflected picture of the space beyond the ship's nose, steadied and centered on the nearest giants. Silver glanced at Daley, who said, "Count o' three, Joe."

Every man leaned forward, scowling at the screens. The nearest space-soarer squinted full in their faces, as though he could actually see them as they were scanning him. Coincidence, but—Pink shuddered.

"One," said Daley. "Two."

The Elephant's Child rocked wildly up and back as thirty platinum guns, the heaviest type in the known universe, fired their hell-projectiles—great shells whose inconceivable destructive power was released by the splitting of the curium atom. In flight, the ship would have absorbed the tremendous recoil automatically; stationary as she was, it bucked her over like a blown leaf.

The shells, set to explode at the very closest range that safety permitted, flashed upon the twin screens like bursting suns. Human eyes looking directly at such a bombardment would have crisped in their sockets; even on the screens their glare was too bright for comfort.

The men blinked, peered sharply for signs of the effect on the giants.

Pink felt disappointment, so biting and gut-curdling that he nearly vomited. For at first the shells seemed to have had little effect except to hurl the giants back a mile or so from the ship. Then, as they slowly surged forward toward it again, he saw that they had not escaped whole.

One lacked an arm; another had, half his head blown away; a third drifted in without the lower half of his torso. The expressions of their bronze-yellow faces were not of pain, however, but only of rage.

"Hey!" bellowed Calico. "We nicked 'em up, anyway!"

"Look again," said Daley morosely, standing from his foam-chair. "Look at the head of the far left skunk."

He who had lost half his cranium was slowly regenerating it, the brow and cheek pressing outward to form new firm outlines, a missing eye gradually emerging from the bloodless tatters of the old socket. Pink said, "Well." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's that. Let's all get out and plink at them with bean-shooters. It'll do as much harm." All the giants were reconstituting their lost parts.

Now one monster, floating right up to the ship, wrapped his five-hundred-feet-long arms around it and gave it a shake. It was as if a man had rattled a box full of beetles. The officers of the Elephant's Child, who had ridden through the bucking of the tremendous explosion, were unprepared for this movement, for they had risen from their deep seats. They sprawled across the room, smashing up against the wall with bone-jarring thumps. Pinkham found himself entangled with Circe Smith in a pretzel of arms and legs that would under other circumstances have been ridiculous but pleasurable. Fearing for her safety, he grasped her around the waist; she yielded to him a moment, then struggled back and stood up. Was her face flushed with indignation, fright, or—? He got to his own feet. The giant had released the ship.

"We are chastened," murmured Jerry, feeling a bruised shin.

"And now what?" asked Joe Silver. "Ordinary weapons are as much use to us as spitballs." He sat down. "Let's figure out what else to try. Somewhere there's an answer."

They all sat down, Pink said, "Remember Wolf 864?"

"Sure," said Daley, who had been on that expedition with Pinkham when they were young cubs out of jetschool. "Friendly natives, kind of vegetable-animal life, and we murdered half of them unintentionally. We had to get out and never go back."

"How?" asked Circe. "How did you kill them?"

"Germs. The common ordinary non-toxic germs we carry in our systems all the time. It was a massacre—and of a queer, sweet kind of beast. They had no tolerance for our microbes."

"I volunteer to find the alien and breathe in his face," said Jerry. "Somebody hand me an onion," he added.

The conversation went on. It grew aimless to Pink, a bunch of boys whistling by a graveyard, eight prisoners speculating on their escape when they had no real knowledge of their jailer. He fiddled with the intercom, saw that the crew had gathered by the mutiny gates and were waiting tensely, puny weapons in their hands. He spoke a few words of encouragement to them. 57 men—whom he hated to see die. Somehow he had to save them.

It was about half an hour afterwards that he first discovered he was breathing too shallowly.