In a flash he had started the roller's motor, sent the speedster tearing headlong and recklessly across the broken desert flooring. Not a moment too soon. For the Colossus, having once shed blood, now swung into a literal orgy of savage destruction. Like a huge, brainless automaton he flailed the hillside about him clean of every moving thing ... beating with gigantic, steel-hard fists at anything and everything he saw, until that thing lay like a flattened pulp upon the ground. And all the while horrendous laughter peeled incessantly from his contorted lips. Laughter which carried to New Boston, miles away; even to the Patrol Base beyond the city. Laughter which struck terror into the hearts of listeners who did not know as yet--happily!--whence it came, or the awful fate which lay in store for them. For Colossus wearied, now, of lingering in his pit. He placed a palm on either side of the chasm he had opened for his escape, and vaulted easily to the surface. The enormous manacles with which his captors had hoped to hold him dangled uselessly. The ground shuddered beneath him. Where his feet met earth they forced depressions. Colossus was drawing sustenance, now, at ever-increasing speed from the soil which fed his odd, unnatural appetite. Already he was taller than New Boston's highest building. More than a quarter mile he towered into the air. And still he grew.... IX Lynn Graham, plodding at long and weary last into the outskirts of the city, wondered again--with the vague, dull incuriosity which was the only emotion of which her exhausted brain was capable--what had been the meaning of those sounds she had heard from the desert wastes behind her a few hours ago. It was all very mysterious ... mysterious and alarming. First had come the wails. Not wails, really, but dreadful, ear-splitting howls like the bellowing of some monstrous beast. Then out of the darkness behind her had come hurtling a small roller. A madly ricocheting vehicle without lights. She had attempted to signal the driver ... but in vain. As well try to hitch a ride on a runaway comet as on that speeding car. And now? Now she was entering a city which ought to be asleep, but, instead, was seething with furious activity. Lights shone from the windows of buildings, shacks, stores. Crowds congregated at corners, huddled groups of frightened figures that looked astonishingly like mobs of refugees. It was as though a mass-panic had seized the entire city. Earthmen gathered their families fearfully about them; Titanians scurried, slithered, hobbled in every direction in helter-skelter confusion. Vainly Lynn accosted passers-by in search of an explanation. Her queries were met with terror-numbed stares, with mumbles, with incomprehensible mouthings. "_We heard.... Danger approaching.... Someone said.... Must leave the city.... They told us.... Giant beast.... Death...._"