ery 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 _Elepha