Then in the full intensity of its fury, the Orana storm burst upon them.
IV
The orange rain came down in a pelting deluge, with a steady blast of the wind. Under the impact of it Nixon stopped his hitching movement along the ground and lay motionless. Overhead the clouds were turning green. Great masses of smoking, turgid vapour swung majestically like the slow-motion image of a cyclone.
In the orange-green murk Nixon could see the crowds of little figures running frantically for the shelter of the pyramid-cities. The nearer pyramid was dimly visible through the blur. Tiny lights were glowing there now, seemingly all over it. Not the lights of the windows. He could still see the little spaced rows of them at the foot-high levels. This was a purple glow—a sheen of light-fire. It seemed something to protect the city from the storm. Up at the flat-top roof, fifty feet above the ground, the purple light-fire stood up in little crossed beams.
The heavy orange rain increased. They were queerly solid raindrops. They stung Nixon's face like hail so that he tried to shield himself by twisting around. The cries of the running Orites were faint little screams in the roar. He saw a sucking whirl of wind knock a group of them down. Then they rose, struggled on, trying to get to the sheltering doorways of the city. The raindrops were like hail, of different sizes. He saw an Orite struck by one that to the little six-inch figure was monstrous. The Orite fell and lay motionless.
Now the rain-water was coming in rills down the rocky slope. The rills were rivers to the fleeing Orites. A group of them were cut off. They milled around in panic, then they came running back toward Nixon. Suddenly as they neared him, he saw that Nona was among them. She was running, staggering. A blob of raindrop barely missed felling her.
He called, "Nona! Nona!"
The voice of the giant. It rumbled with a roar, mingling with the roar of the storm. Through the swirling murk, with the haven of the purple-glowing pyramid blurred in the distance, Nixon could see that the slope was dotted by fallen figures. Some of them lay with the cascading rivulets of water tumbling over them; others were being washed away down the slope. Half of the Orite crowd perhaps had reached the city. The others were caught out here, surging back in a panic toward the giant, momentarily more in terror of the storm than of him. And Nixon knew now what he could do to give them at least partial shelter.
"Nona!" he called. "Come over here by me! Tell them—all of them come here!"