is as strong as a couple
of men, at least." He grinned at Jerry. "Not that you needed me to
deduce that."

Randy Kinkare was staring at the life-scanner screen. Now he beat a
tattoo on the arm of his chair, pointed so that they all looked. The
flecks of light that indicated organic life had thronged in toward the
ship; not so numerous as the stars, they were still too many to count.
One object on the screen was large now, large enough to be identified.
It approached the ship at a slow but steady rate, and they gasped as
they saw it was another of the human-like figures.

"His brothers," said Pinkham. "That must be their natural form, then."

It grew and grew. It seemed it must now be touching the scanner's
outside cell; but no, it grew even greater. At last it could not be seen
in its entirety, then only its face showed. It was a hideous face,
twisted with sardonic malice. The face grew. When it stopped, only one
enormous eye filled the screen.

Jerry cleared his throat. "Do you know what that means?" he asked. "It
means that, at a conservative estimate, the critter is--"

"Go on," said Daley impatiently, when Jerry's silence had lengthened
intolerably.

"It must be at least one thousand feet tall," said the O. O.

There was a long, unbroken stillness, a hush of horror and disbelief in
the control room.

Finally Circe said slowly, "I think I'm going to faint."

And she did.

CHAPTER X

The long-unused armaments room was half the width of the ship away. They
went toward it silently, seven men and a girl, praying that their
visitor would not meet them or spot their furtive advance on the
intercom. They slunk into the gunroom and Pink, coming last, ran the
heavy emergency bolt across the door behind him.

The armaments officer was dead, of course. Pink said quietly, "Who knows
the principles of these weapons?" Daley and Joe Silver raised their
hands. "Activate the viewers, then."

Two walls darkened and became the silver-flecked night of space; it was
as if they had become suddenly transparent. Half a dozen of the
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 v