The Iron Man Read Online Free Page A

the earth trembled and wept and prayed to God to save them, the space-bat-angel-dragon lay resting, its chin sunk in the Indian Ocean, the sea coming not quite up to its bottom lip.
    But the next morning, early, its giant voice came rumbling round the world. The space-bat- angel-dragon was speaking. It wanted to be fed. And what it wanted to eat was – living things. People, animals, forests, it didn’t care which, so long as the food was alive. But it had better be fed quickly, otherwise it would roll out its tongue longer than the Trans-Siberian railway, and lick huge swathes of life off the surface of the earth – cities, forests, farmlands, whatever there was. It would leave the world looking like a charred pebble – unless it were fed and fed quickly.
    Its voice shook and rumbled around the earth for a whole hour as it delivered its message. Finally it ended, and lay waiting.
    The peoples of the world got together. If they fed it, how could they ever satisfy it? It would never be full, and every new day it would be as hungry as ever. How can you feed a beast the size of Australia? Australia is a vast land, all the countries of Europe will fit easily into Australia. The monster’s stomach alone must be the size of Germany.
    No, they would not feed it. The people of the world decided they would not feed this space- bat-angel -dragon or whatever it was – they would fight it. They would declare war on it, and all get together to blast it off the face of the earth. And so it was that all the peoples of earth declared war on the monster, and sent out their armed forces in a grand combined operation.
    What a terrific attack!
    Rockets, projectiles of all sorts, missiles and bombs, shells and flame-throwers – everything was tried. The smoke of the explosions drifted out over the Pacific like a black, crawling continent. The noise of the battle shook the world almost as much as the landing of the dragon had done, and for much longer.

    Then the noise died down and the smoke cleared. And the peoples of the world cried in dismay. The dragon was actually smiling. Smiling! Aircraft flying daringly near photographed the vast face smiling, and the picture was in all the papers.
    It was smiling as if it had been well tickled.
    Now the peoples of the world were worried. They were all great fighters. All spent their spare money on preparing for wars, always making bigger and better weapons, and now they had all tried theirutmost to blast this thing off the earth, and what was the result?
    The dragon merely smiled, and not a scratch could be seen anywhere on its body.
    Human weapons had no effect on it.
    But that wasn’t surprising. This creature had come from the depths of space, out of the heart of a star. Nobody knew what it was made of. Perhaps it could not be destroyed by any means whatsoever.
    And now the space-bat-angel-dragon spoke again.
    It gave the peoples of the world one week in which to prepare its first meal. They could prepare what they liked, said the dragon. But if the meal was not ready in a week, then he would start on the cities and the towns.
    The peoples of the earth, the kings, the Presidents and Ministers, the farmers and the factory workers and the office workers began to lament. Now what would happen to them? They would like to say the monster didn’t exist, but how could they? There it was, covering Australia, staring out over all the countries of the world.
    Now the little boy Hogarth heard all about this.Everybody in the world was talking about it, worrying about it.
    He was sure the Iron Man could do something. Compared to the space-bat-angel-dragon the Iron Man wasn’t very big, of course. The Iron Man was only the size of a tall tree. Nevertheless, Hogarth had faith in the Iron Man.
    He visited the Iron Man in his scrap-yard, and talked to him about this great monster that was threatening the earth.
    “Please,” he asked, “please can’t you think of some way of getting rid of it? If you