'Oh, for heaven's sake!' said the Earthworm. 'Can't you ever stop thinking about -'
But he never finished his sentence. For suddenly... WHOOOSH!... and they looked up and saw a huge four-engined plane come shooting out of a near-by cloud and go whizzing past them not more than twenty feet over their heads. This was actually the regular early morning passenger plane coming in to New York from Chicago, and as it went by, it sliced right through every single one of the silken strings, and immediately the seagulls broke away, and the enormous peach, having nothing to hold it up in the air any longer, went tumbling down towards the earth like a lump of lead.
'Help!' cried the Centipede.
'Save us!' cried Miss Spider.
'We are lost!' cried the Ladybird.
'This is the end!' cried the Old-Green-Grasshopper.
'James!' cried the Earthworm. 'Do something, James! Quickly, do something!'
'I can't!' cried James. 'I'm sorry! Good-bye! Shut your eyes everybody! It won't be long now!'
Thirty-five
Round and round and upside down went the peach as it plummeted towards the earth, and they were all clinging desperately to the stem to save themselves from being flung into space.
Faster and faster it fell. Down and down and down, racing closer and closer to the houses and streets below, where it would surely smash into a million pieces when it hit. And all the way along Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and along all the other streets in the City, people who had not yet reached the underground shelters looked up and saw it coming, and they stopped running and stood there staring in a sort of stupor at what they thought was the biggest bomb in all the world falling out of the sky on to their heads. A few women screamed. Others knelt down on the sidewalks and began praying aloud. Strong men turned to one another and said things like, 'I guess this is it, Joe,' and 'Good-bye, everybody, good-bye.' And for the next thirty seconds the whole City held its breath, wait
ing for the end to come.
Thirty-six
'Good-bye, Ladybird!' gasped James, clinging to the stem of the falling peach. 'Good-bye, Centipede. Good-bye, everybody!' There were only a few seconds to go now and it looked as though they were going to fall right in among all the tallest buildings. James could see the skyscrapers rushing up to meet them at the most awful speed, and most of them had square flat tops, but the very tallest of them all had a top that tapered off into a long sharp point - like an enormous silver needle sticking up into the sky.
And it was precisely on to the top of this needle that the peach fell!
There was a squelch. The needle went in deep. And suddenly - there was the giant peach, caught and spiked upon the very pinnacle of the Empire State Building.
Thirty-seven
It was really an amazing sight, and in two or three minutes, as soon as the people below realized that this now couldn't possibly be a bomb, they came pouring out of the shelters and the subways to gape at the marvel. The streets for half a mile around the building were jammed with men and women, and when the word spread that there were actually living things moving about on the top of the great round ball, then everyone went wild with excitement.
'It's a flying saucer!' they shouted.
'They are from Outer Space!'
'They are men from Mars!'
'Or maybe they came from the Moon!'
And a man who had a pair of binoculars to his eyes said, 'They look pritt-ty peculiar to me, I'll tell you that.'
Police cars and fire engines came screaming in from all over the city and pulled up outside the Empire State Building. Two hundred firemen and six hundred policemen swarmed into the building and went up in the elevators as high as they could go. Then they poured out on to the observation roof - which is the place where tourists stand - just at the bottom of the big spike.
All the policemen were holding their guns at the ready, with their fingers on the triggers, and the firemen were clutching their hatchets. But from where they stood, almost directly underneath the peach, they couldn't actually see the travellers up on top.
'Ahoy there!' shouted the Chief of Police. 'Come out and show yourselves!'
Suddenly, the great brown head of the Centipede appeared over the side of the peach. His black eyes, as large and round as two marbles, glared down at the policemen and the firemen below. Then his monstrous ugly face broke into a wide grin.
The policemen and the firemen all started shouting at once. 'Look out!' they cried. 'It's a Dragon!'
'It's not a Dragon! It's a Wampus!'
'It's a Gorgon!'