Then Nona's father stood with her. Frane was obviously aged. His shoulders were square and thin, with an ornate robe draping them. He bore himself with the commanding dignity of his age and rank as leading scientist here.
"I thank you, giant, for what you have done." His voice was thin and high, his words slow, carefully intoned. "For myself, I would trust you. But these men who rule us—" His gaze went to the group with whom Tork was whispering as he added, "have decided against me."
Tork whirled around. "We do not dare give our world into the keeping of this monster."
It brought a babble of agreement from the listening Orites, most of whom quite evidently understood the Earth language.
"Why did you bring me here?" Nixon demanded. "You certainly went to plenty of trouble."
"To be of help to us," Frane said. "There is no reason why I should not tell you."
Frane in his laboratory here, with Tork as his assistant, for years had been working on a momentous chemical discovery. Drugs to cause a size-change of the human body; to alter the size of every tiny cell, without changing its shape.
Frane gestured. "That is my laboratory, off there." He was indicating the cairn-like little building with the oval violet windows, at the base of the cliff.
A growth-drug. A generation ago they had done it with plants to some extent. "Perhaps you know," Frane was saying, "that natural growth is not steady. It comes in spurts, a rapid growth, a resting, then growth again."
And this new drug would greatly accelerate the growing periods—a vast and rapid acceleration into a size far beyond what nature ordinarily would have attained. Frane's growth-drug was now nearing success.