Babs laughed softly. It must have seemed to her, after being alone in
here, that now our plight was far less desperate. She had told me how
she was captured. A man accosted her on the Terrace, saying he wanted to
speak to her about Alan. Then a weapon threatened her. Amid all those
people she was held up in old-fashioned style, hurried to a taxicar and
whirled away.
She was saying now, "When Polter moves, it is dizzying. You'll see."
"I have already, Babs. Heavens, what a swoop!"
The room was more level now. We carefully drew ourselves to the front
lattice. Polter was standing, and we had the white sheen from his shirt
front. A sheer drop was outside the bars, but looking down I could see
the outlines of his body with the huge spread of the boat's cockpit
underneath us.
A confusion of rumbling voices sounded. Blurred giant shapes were
outside. The room jolted and swayed as the boat landed and Polter
disembarked.
Babs stood clinging to me. We, at least, were normal in this metal
barred room, Babs and I. But outside was the abnormality of largeness. I
think that in relation to us, the men were of over two hundred-foot
stature, and the hunched Polter a trifle less. It seemed as he walked
that we were lurching at least a hundred and fifty feet above ground.
"You had better hide," Babs urged. "He might stop and speak to someone.
If anyone looked in here you would be seen; no chance then, even to get
across the room."
It was true. But for a few moments I lingered. I could distinguish
vegetation on their flat roof-tops, as though flower gardens were laid
there.
We passed a house with its hundred-foot oval windows all aglow with
light. Music floated out--a distant blare of sounds, and the ribald
laughter of giant voices. I had seen no women among these giants of the
island. But now a huge face was at one of the ovals. A dissolute,
painted woman of Earth, staring out at Polter as he passed. It was like
the enormous close-up image on a large motion picture screen. She
shouted ribald jest as he went by.
"George, please go back. Suppose she had seen you?"
We were ascending a hill. A distance ahead a great oblong building
loomed like a giant's palace, which indeed it was. We headed for it,
passed through a vast arching doorway into the greater dimness of an
echoing interior. I scurried back across the lurching room and again
wedged myself under the couch. Babs stood at the lattice ten feet away.
We dared to talk in low tones; the rumbling voices and footsteps outside
would make our tiny voices inaudible to Polter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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