While up above, Bud Mulligan was signaling desperately, "Rocky! CX, Rocky Russell. Dammittahell, where are you? What do we do now? Our beams can't hold this mountain up here forever? What do you want us to—Great guns of grief!"
Colossus ... dwindled! Like a tinfoil effigy held over a flame, his tremendous bulk began to slough away. It did not fall off in chunks or clots. There was no destruction of his flesh, not horrid streams of blood flowing from open wounds. Colossus simply ... disappeared!
A mile-high roaring monster, pinned on invisible repulsor beams ... then a half-mile creature screaming in panic ... then a massive Thing a thousand ... five hundred ... fifty ... five ... two feet tall. Then a small, gray, shapeless wisp hanging like a shredded tatter in space ... a sudden, silent puff of flame ... then nothing....
So found its final resting place the Thing which came from afar. The Thing which, in accordance with the theories of a scientist It had never heard of, had journeyed through black space to spawn on a hospitable world.
So ended another of Nature's blind attempts to convey a life form from one galaxy to another. So ended—Colossus!
X
Afterwards, Bud Mulligan said solemnly, "if you didn't see it very plain from where you was, I ain't going to explain what it looked like. It was ... well, ugly. That's all. What I want to know is ... how did you know it would dry up and crumble away if we could lift it off the ground, Rocky?"
Russell grinned. He said, "I suppose you'd be highly chagrined to learn it was really you who gave me the idea?"
"Me?"