humbed hands.

Leaning against a pink plastic maze wall, puffing, he thought, I've
almost grown to like them. Why?

Because for the first time since he was sixteen, John Summersby had to
bend his neck back to look up at someone. These grotesque humanoidal
beings were the only living things which did not make him feel
overgrown, uncouthly out of proportion, a hulking lout. If a chair was
too narrow for him, it would be like the head of a pin to one of these
kids: if a fork felt uncomfortably small in his own hand, it would be a
minikin indeed in one of those vast paws.

In their shadows, Summersby was a very small man. It was an unwonted
sensation, the most satisfying he had ever experienced.

He looked at them out there, as they lay watching Mrs. Full and Adam
mowing down Cal and Villa with imaginary Brownings. He grinned, felt his
lips curve in the unaccustomed grimace, and thought with no particular
bitterness that he was getting mellow in his last days. "Hello,
High-pockets," he said softly to the kid that owned him. "How's the
weather up there?"

At five to noon the door opened. Summersby, seeing its silent motion,
left off the mimic gunplay and started for the wall, where he could
intercept Watkins and find out whether he'd been successful. But the
safe-cracker came running down the middle of the room, yelling.

"Come on, everybody!"

"Come on?"

The two giant children were on their feet, uncertain of what was
happening. Obviously they didn't realize Watkins had been out of the
room at all.

"The adults spotted me!" roared the blond man, swinging his briefcase
wildly; where had he found that? "They're after me!"

Summersby let out an involuntary grunt when through the twenty-foot door
came an eighteen-foot creature, a thing so mind-shakingly huge that even
the ranger's size complex wasn't pleased by it. This was an adult:
leaner in the body, broader of hand and thicker of limb, wearing
trouserlike garments and a flaring jacket of royal purple caught by a
ruby bar, it advanced calmly into the hall, clumping flat-footed in
three yard strides. From its heavy-lipped gash of a mouth came noises
like a whole orchestra badly in need of tuning.

"Hwhrangg!" it cried, waving its hands in the air. "Breemingg!" It
appeared to be soothing the children, telling them that Daddy was here.

* * * * *

Mrs. Full, on the control platform, screamed. Her husband ran to her,
Summersby ste