The Giants of Mogo

The relationship between men of tremendous stature and ordinary men is peculiar at best --and on the planet Mogo, events dwarfed even the imagination --and brought death! 


excerpt

It's a sad fact that much trouble in this world can be traced to the lazy, no-good fellow who lies around all day with nothing to do but get into mischief. It was one of the laziest giants of Mogo who accidentally started all the grief between the Solar System and the Mogo System. He did it by crunching an earth space ship between his teeth. There was no good reason for it. He just did it. 


Faz-O-Faz was the giant's name. He sank his teeth into the ship thinking it was some kind of flying insect. He was too careless to notice. 


Faz-O-Faz was a shaggy reddish-brown fellow about a mile tall--the average height of the Mogo giants--and very dusty. He was dusty from lying across his favorite hilltop. His weight had pulverized the soil into a nice warm couch of dust, and often the ears on his head were as full of dirt as the ears on his ankles. 


Today, snoozing in the warmth of the three Mogo suns. Faz-O-Faz had been too lazy to get up and go back to the city for lunch. Sooner or later some fat birds or insects would fly over and he would reach up and snatch a meal out of the air. He folded his upper arms under his head, but kept his lower arms free for action. 


Z-z-z-z-z-ZrZ-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z . . . 


Some sort of insect was coming. Two of them. Flying low. Not more than half a mile high --within easy reach. Faz-O-Faz lay still. His ankle-ears told him the exact position of the foremost insect. The creature was flying directly over him. What luck! Faz-O-Faz opened his eyes just far enough to see. It was a cinch. 


Whiz-z-z-z-z! Faz swung. Swift and sure. The buzzing insect snapped into the palm of his hand. His fingers tried not to crumple it. An insect is tastier when the juices aren't squeezed out. (Pity that some of his Mogo cousins would never touch such food.) Faz-O-Faz slapped the insect into his mouth and crushed it with his teeth before it had time to sting. 


Clank! Crunch! Crunch! Cluggg! 


"Oooowaukkk!" Faz-O-Faz shouted as if someone had jabbed him with a poison needle. What he said no Mogo could have understood. It was a bitter dose--not the taste so much as the rude surprise. Faz-O-Faz had a mouthful of twisted metal. This was no insect. It was--what? 


At the same time Faz was cursing and spitting out the ruined space ship and hurling the twisted wreckage into the river, he was also looking sharp at the other small flying object. 


"What kind of insects?" he growled. Then snorting and blowing a cloud of dust from his cheeks, he declared, "Machines, that's what they are. Midget machines!" 


He watched, speechless. The second of the two "insects" had been quick to take warning. It suddenly spurted away with an awful burst of speed. It charged up into the white sky, leaving a thin trail of black smoke in its wake. Faz lost sight of it for a moment. Then it circled back through the white clouds and began to scout along the river as if looking for traces of its sister ship. But it kept well out of Faz' reach. 


"You've missed your lunch, Faz-O-Faz," he heard someone call from the hillside path. It was the voice of Gret-O-Gret, a giant of knowledge. Gret-O-Gret often walked out from the city at midday. The sun shone off his brow, which was wide like the brow of a mountain. His finely combed hair was bright yellow where it waved over the ears of his large, well-shaped head.