d plane, long unused because those who
had flown it here had grown too big to use it. I waited, hidden in the
lush greenery until the setting sun would hide my movements. It would
only be a few minutes now....

The hangar in which the plane was parked contained several gasoline
drums, the kind with pumps on them that worked with a crank. I got into
the hangar, finally, and before it got too dark to see, checked the
plane's gas gauge. It was about a quarter full. I connected the gas hose
and started pumping. In twenty minutes I had her full, then I climbed
into the plane....

When the motor caught, after I was sure it never would, the thunder of
the prop brought giants running toward me from the far end of the field,
their twenty-foot strides eating up the distance. But I taxied straight
toward them, giving the plane's motors all they would take. The plane
roared down the field, and they fell flat as the prop came at them. The
plane lifted, spun over them, was off. Now slugs from oversize rifles
came buzzing about me, crashing through the fuselage. But it was dark
and I was away. No serious damage had been done.

In Texas it took me four hours to get the brass to listen to me. Finally
they did. They didn't ask me to keep my mouth shut. They just turned me
loose. I went to my editor and told him the truth. He didn't believe me.
When he checked with the army, they said I was obviously trying to
perpetrate a hoax. I nearly got fired.

* * * * *

Months went by, and I waited. I knew I'd have to wait until my chance
came. There'd have to be hellfire before anybody'd believe my story.
Then the storm broke, in sensational headlines. "Gigantic beasts wipe
out town in South America."

My editor sent for me. He showed me the headline. "Maybe I made a
mistake not believing your story about Stegner," he said. "I make a lot
of mistakes."

"You want me to cover this?" I said.

"That's it. And if you can come up with proof of what you told me when
you got back from that crazy trip, I'll print every damned word."

* * * * *

When I got on the scene, I knew they were at last taking it seriously.
The locals had called out the army to fight the strange monsters that
were coming out of the jungle. They were such things as army ants six
feet long; anteaters looking like ambling locomotives with hairy hides
and noses; lumbering sloths vast as a houses on legs, sleepy an