easts were constantly
lunging. She was near naked, and half mad with pain from the giant
insects plaguing her. No one fired on her as she stood with uplifted
arms, waiting for the soldiers to kill her as she expected. Beautiful as
a goddess out of an ancient myth she came forward toward the soldiers,
her face lighting with hope, her hair streaming golden in the sun. She
spoke to us then, and the silence that came over the field of carnage
was complete.

"Look at me! Look at me and believe! There are others like me, back in
the jungle; mad giants who plan to conquer your world. They are ready to
do it. I have escaped to warn you. They are mad, these giants my master
has created. They are monsters...."

I recognized her now. My senses leaped and my blood pounded in my veins.
Here was my opportunity to convince the world. This was Tilda, Stegner's
maid! I snapped several pictures of her as she went on talking.

"These men, who were once your own leaders are plotting to destroy you
and take the world for themselves. You do not know what they are
preparing for you, but I come to tell you. Make ready, for they are on
their way to destroy you. They bring huge guns, monster tanks that they
have built, machines never before seen on earth."

What more she might have told we were never to know, for she fell then,
at the end of her strength. Whatever she had dared, whatever she had
gone through to break out of that monstrous circle and come to us, had
been too much even for her giant's strength. She fell, like a tower
crashing down, and lay there, a great lax pile of pink and red flesh,
torn by thorns, the claws of animals, the stingers of terrible giant
insects.

Then the monsters came again, and we could not go to her. She lay there
as darkness came, and in the morning only her skeleton remained,
stripped of flesh in the night by the myriad devouring giant ants and
beetles.

* * * * *

My story went in, with photos of Tilda. My editor printed the whole
story, printed my formulae, printed every word of the history of Stegner
and his creations, and the secret menace he had unwittingly loosed on
the world from his second hidden Eden in the jungle. I was called home.

They came to me then, those moral ones Stegner had said existed. Men
high in government and army circles who had the peace and welfare of the
world at heart. Selfless ones whose records were above reproach. And
they proved to be