Chapter III

He slept again. And when he awoke the little interior of the Orite spaceship was busy with the activities of landing. Through one of the bullseye ports beside him, Nixon stared down at the strange new world. Beneath them now it was a great, darkly dim expanse of gaunt naked mountains. A place, by the look of it, seemingly of monstrous desolation.

The spaceship settled lower. Now Nixon could see the huge, naked mountain peaks. They were like greenish polished spires of glass, towering up into a queer orange-tinted haze of the Orana night. Beneath the topping spires, the vast gaunt mountains spread out in serrated ranks. The sides of them were polished cliff-ramps, bleak, precipitous slopes dropping down into the great chasms of the valleys where the orange haze was thicker so that the bottoms were an empty blur.

He found Nona standing down on the floor, between him and the bullseye port.

"There--Orana," she said.

He was puzzled. "But Tork told me it was a very small asteroid," he said. "Those mountains, those canyons--so huge--"

A little world, but so monstrously contorted by some great cataclysm of nature in its birth, that everything on it was tremendous. As Nixon stared down, it seemed that there could be easily ten miles, as distance would be measured on Earth, between the tops of these towering spires and the ragged gashes of deeps between them. A vast world, vast with the hugeness of this amazing panorama of utter, bleak desolation. Somehow there was a majesty to it. A brooding landscape, awesome in its sweep of barren immensity. And it was sinister--the monstrous, brittle-looking cliff-faces, smooth and green, with the orange hazes whirling about them, and the shadows in the depths murky with purple mystery.

"It looks large to you?" Nolan said. "Then you can understand how much bigger it looks to us."

He could try to see it from their viewpoint. To them he was a seventy-foot giant--and so to them these immense slashed metal mountains must seem titanic. A harsh world, with nature cruel and relentless, so that on it these tiny creatures had struggled, were struggling, for a bare existence....

Now the little Spaceship had settled lower so that the swirling orange haze was like a veil around it. A thousand feet away, outside this port, Nixon could see a dim blur of smooth almost vertical cliff-face sliding upward as they sank.

"Nona, come." It was Tork, here on the floor with Nona. A line of Gorts went past, dragging a wheeled apparatus. Nixon recognized it as the little electronic gun which had spat its flash at him, back there on the bank of the Florida bayou.

Tork called a command to the Gorts, and then he herded Nona away and stood looking up into Nixon's down-turned face. "You, giant," he said. "You will take orders from me now? You will do what I tell you?"

"Maybe," Nixon said slowly. He had come to dislike Tork's small arrogance. "Are you going to turn me loose?"

"That is impossible," Tork said shortly. "I want you to know, if you are helpful it will be for your good. Can you understand that?"

"You've said it enough so I reckon I should," Nixon retorted.

"When we land, I will direct you," Tork said. "The home--the place where we will keep you--to your size it will be quite close. I will direct you to it."

Then the turmoil of the landing drew Tork away. With the orange mists almost solid outside the little port, presently Nixon felt the spaceship rock and bump, and then settle quiescent. The interior was a babble of the excited, tiny voices of the Orites, and the throbbing grind of mechanisms as the ports were opened. The outer air came in with a swirling rush, heavy wisps of tinted vapour, spreading like a visible gas. Nixon's first breath of it was choking. It had a heavy, chemical smell. He coughed, but after a moment he found that, though it was dankly oppressive, making his lungs tingle and burn and his head feel unsteady, he could breathe it.

For a moment, Nona was here again. "The storm air," she said.

"The storm is coming?" he said. "Or is this the storm, outside there now?"

"No, no, but it is coming."

* * * * *

The grind of the interior mechanisms had ceased, but then they began again. Nixon saw now that the vaulted ceiling of the little Spaceship was slowly being raised. It seemed hinged at about his waist and from the bow beyond his feet it was rising up. And then there past his feet, the bow-section spread apart. The orange mist, danker than ever, swirled in around him. Beside him, lines of Gorts were hurriedly carrying things out of the ship. Presently all the tiny figures had disembarked. Nixon was lying in the narrow, vaulted little cylinder with its top end down by his feet fully opened. Over him, from the waist down, there was the tossed, storm-filled murk of the new world--a blur with only a distant monstrous crag dimly visible. Silence was around him here, but outside there was the weird muttering voice of the oncoming storm.

For that moment a panic struck at Nixon. He was wrapped with metal ropes from head to foot, and still chained to the little lines of metal posts beside him. It was as though he were lying bound, here in a partly opened coffin. Had the Orites abandoned him, scurrying away in their terror of the storm?

"Ready," shouted Tork. And as Nixon shifted his head, he saw his captor standing at the foot of one of the posts that came up past Nixon's ear. Tork was loosening the cable, casting it off. Then he was at each of the others. Presently Nixon's bound body was free from its lashings.

"Careful now, giant!" Tork said. He cast off the last cable, down by Nixon's feet; and then he darted back, turned and ran hurriedly out of the opened bow. His shouted voice came in.

"Come out now," Tork called. "Be careful!"

Nixon could bend at the waist a little, and bend at the knees. His arms could move to get an elbow under him when he turned sidewise. Grimly it occurred to him that he could roll over perhaps, or lunge and wreck this cursed little cylinder.

"Come now!" Tork called sharply. "And surely we will kill you if there is trouble."

Feet first, slowly, laboriously, Nixon inched his way along and out of the spread bow of the spaceship.

The world of Orana. A curious bristling sward was under him. Around him, the acrid orange air swirled and sucked. At first he could see nothing but an orange blur. Then off to one side, on a dim slope some twenty feet away, he saw that a terraced pyramid was standing--a pyramid with its top third sliced off. The Orite city. A community dwelling. It was one of three here. Dimly Nixon could make out the outlines of the other two, further away up the slope. They were all three about of a size--some fifty feet square at the base and twenty feet high up their terraced sides to the flat roof. Tiny lights gleamed like window eyes along the terraces at different levels about a foot apart; and now Nixon could see the little Orite figures moving there on the ramparts, with their thin voices babbling, excited by the return of the Spaceship with its giant from Earth.

"Keep going," Tork was calling. He was off to one side, down by Nixon's feet. A crowd of Gorts stood further back, watching. And from the nearest pyramid, other Orites were coming. Some, the young, were only an inch or so high. Groups of them clustered timidly around a mother. A stiff formation of what seemed the slave Gorts was standing in a double line. Several hundred of them. The little wheeled guns were with them. The guns pointed at Nixon. Alert Gort commanders stood ready to attack the giant if it became necessary.

"Keep going," Tork called again.

* * * * *

He stood cautiously to one side, ten feet from Nixon's lashed ankles. He moved along to keep there, as Nixon moved. Nixon had shifted three or four lengths of his body from the spaceship now. Suddenly, as for a moment he relaxed, panting from the effort, he found Nona walking here on the ground near his face. Of them all, she was the least afraid of him. She was so close now that a flip of his head could have knocked her down.

"Hurry," she urged. "There is a place for you--"

"How far away? What sort of place?" he demanded.

"It is, what you call a--" She suddenly checked herself. "Oh giant, you hear that? The storm--coming now!"

He heard it. The distant, rumbling storm voice had abruptly intensified--a rumble that now was separated into a fusillade of crackling explosions. The orange air was swirling crazily, swirling and crackling.

Then in the full intensity of its fury, the Orana storm burst upon them.