Campbell did not come. That was according to plan. He kept in touch with me by radio through the final hours of the twenty-mile crossing. "... Do you read me, Captain? I've drawn them to the north with fire bombs from the ship's guns.... They've never guessed your course."
"No signs of Gravgak? Or Leeger?"
"Not a sign. The city's empty."
"Keep on the radio, Campbell."
"Right, Captain. By the way, how is Omosla?"
"Expecting. I'll let you know. She still talks about the bravest man on the planet, someone named Campbell."
"H-m-m. You'll sort of look after her, won't you?"
It was two hours before dawn when the last of the tribe (Leeger excepted) gathered at the mountainside station to board Kao-Wagwattl. We waited for daylight. Strange smells filled our nostrils. Smells of wood fires, sparked to life by friction under the pressures of the crawling monster. Smells of rocks being ground to powder. Smells of the saccharine-sweet breathing from the pores of the thing itself, the giant Kao-Wagwattl.
The faint gray of dawn gradually changed to pink. In the growing light we could make out the contour of the vast misty creeping form. Its rounded sides moved along only yards from where we stood. As the light of morning came on we could distinguish the immense box-shaped scales that covered its sides. Clouds of sponge-trees rose and fell around it. Unrooted vegetation would sift downward, to be bumped into the air again, or to be rolled under. Small fires were continually being ignited by friction, and often smothered before they were well started. Sometimes the burning would creep up around the curved sides, only to be snuffed out by the surface-breathing of the massive thing.
I was relieved to note that the curved top—the "spine", so to speak—was so gradually rounded that there could be no danger of anyone's falling off. Its immensity had to be seen to be appreciated.