The Princess of the Atom by Ray Cummings

I can give only a broad picture of those events which followed during May. They are history today. I saw them, as presently I will explain, from an inside viewpoint; a narrow viewpoint indeed. But as the world saw them, so were they now unfolded to father.

The dawn of May 21 showed giants rising from King's Cove. The first reports were contradictory and confused. But the giants were there! They were apparently about two hundred feet tall. A score of them at first. Then more -- a hundred or so.

The few people who lived in the vicinity of King's Cove took instant flight. There were at first no casualties except a woman who fainted and an aged man who died of heart failure running with his family along the road toward Elton.

The giants did nothing menacing. They seemed busy moving about the neighborhood. They trampled it. Cleared it. Spreading out over a mile or so of territory along the water front. A plane passed overhead and reported that they appeared to be occupying the territory, not in haphazard fashion, but with a rational, methodical planning.

By noon the reports were coming in with more coherency. There had been a few ships in the channel. They had seen the giants, and had hastily steamed away. The passing planes brought the most detailed news. By noon, no airplane passed King's Cove at its accustomed level. They all were bending aside and flying high. But one or two of the passengerless mail planes flew low enough for close observation, and within a few hours both the American and Canadian governments were sending out official flyers to observe and report.

There was chaos that morning. No official orders were given to attack the giants -- indeed there was no force available which dared attack them. By noon, it was father's opinion that any organized attack, until more was known of the conditions, would be a mistake.

The Togarites quite evidently were proceeding with definite purpose. By noon, a line of two-hundred-foot giants were stationed at intervals along the shore front. They stood, or sat calmly upon the cliffs. They were half a mile apart -- ten of them over a five-mile length.

Then their line turned inward. At half mile intervals they took up their posts. A curving line, embracing the town of Elton and several others. There had been an encounter at Elton. All the towns were within a few hours abandoned. The whole of this five-mile area -- and ten or fifteen miles shoreward -- was abandoned. But at Elton some stray group of people had been trapped. A giant ahead of his fellows, had come wandering up. He was shot at by rifles and shot-guns. And hit, evidently, for he raised his leg, and he let out a cry of pain. He kicked at a house and demolished it. But he made no effort to fight. He stood nursing his leg where the bullets had stung it, and watched the people as they fled away.

There was a giant stationed up every road where it entered the Togarite territory. For a few hours, automobiles with panic-stricken refugees occasionally dashed out. The giants let them pass unmolested.

Such were the reports that first morning. The observation planes told that the captured area was bustling with activity. The giants seemed unarmed, and without belts of drugs. There were not many of them. But around King's Cove were throngs of Togarites in a smaller size -- a size, it was said, about normal to earth. They occupied our house and all the other houses of the neighborhood. By evening they had marched to the deserted towns.

A rational occupation of this captured territory. And it was said that they seemed moving, and installing equipment, erecting their own dwellings. What seemed brown, conical tents were appearing. Firewood was being gathered. An encampment of war; with families of men, women and children -- noncombatants making themselves comfortable for a permanent stay.

A thousand people. But soon it was obvious that they were far more numerous than that. All day they were appearing -- growing from a tiny size. Hordes of them. By nightfall it was said that there were several thousand. Presently it was identified that the source of them was the Ferrule boathouse on the shore of King's Cove.

The night of May 21-22 would have been moonlit, but the moon and stars were obscured by clouds. But the Togarites' territory was not dark. Floodlights of some unknown current brightened it with spots of yellow from wire grids which the giants set up at intervals. The lighting systems of the captured towns were out of commission, but the Togarites quite evidently had their own power.

A weird scene of activity by night. There were camp fires everywhere. The area was thronged with the arriving enemy. Unearthly, fantastic scene! It was an encampment of little people, patrolled by watchful giants.

By the morning of the twenty-second, the Togarite lines had spread. A single giant -- five hundred feet tall perhaps -- made a rush southward. As though to clear the territory, he ran toward Portland -- came to its outskirts, stopped and strode back. There had been an exodus from Portland the day before, and few were left in the city. The giant did not enter. He went back the way he had come -- along the coast -- leaving a trail of devastated towns in his wake.

I think that this giant may have been Togaro himself, for the reports said that he wore a belt of drugs -- and several times was observed to change his size. His foray was doubtless to make sure that the territory southward was clear of inhabitants. Then his lines came down. The giants marched calmly along the coast -- with a similar line of them some ten miles inland.

The city of Portland was occupied by the Togarites on the 23rd of May. It was an orderly advance, made during the night.

The next day, the lines again moved southward.