beside a
neat array of what looked like conduit pipes, electromagnets, and coiled
cable. He picked up an armload. One of the giants put a hand down before
him. He pushed it aside and strode back to the group. Gutty, thought
Watkins, or just hungry? Or is it his sense of kismet?

"I'll cut some kindling from the trees in our room," said Calvin. "Who
has a knife?"

Summersby handed him a large pocket knife, and set about making a grill
over two of the plastic slabs. It was a workmanlike job when he had
finished. He held his lighter under one of the rods, which was
apparently impervious to fire. He nodded to himself. Looks more human,
thought Watkins, than he has yet.

Villa was plucking one of the chickens, humming to himself. Mrs. Full
was working on another, Adam on the third. Watkins felt useless, and sat
down, running his fingers along the smooth side of his briefcase.

Cal made a heap of chips and pieces of wood and bark under the grill.
Summersby lit it. The giants, who were grouped around them at a few
yards' distance, mumbled among themselves as the shavings took flame.
The plucked and drawn fowls were laid on the grill. Watkins' mouth began
to water.

"Now if we only had some coffee," he said to Adam. "One lousy pot of
greasy-spoon coffee!"

VI

"I have seen you," said Villa to Adam, who was gnawing on a drumstick.
"You wear the wig and a bone in the nose, and a tigerskin around you."

"Sure," said Adam. "I'm the Wild Man from Zululand. It's one job where
my color's an advantage."

"A fine job!" said Villa. "You should have come down to my stand. The
best chili in New York."

"I had a bowl there last week. Without my make-up, I mean."

"I will give you a bowl free when we go home. With tacos," added Villa
generously.

"It's good stuff," said the boy.

Calvin Full wiped his fingers and his lips on a handkerchief. He looked
about at the hall, through which the giants had now scattered; some of
them were tinkering with the machines, others were simply loitering, as
if bored by the whole matter of scientific research. They had lost their
early wariness of the humans, and did not carry the green goads, but
kept them tucked into holsters at the back of their swishing skirts.

One of them removed the blond man, Watkins, and set him to doing
something with a pipe-and-block apparatus. The processes they went
through with their strange mechanical and electrical gadgets, the end
results they achieved,