Cerean n.

This little world measures 160 miles in diameter, and since a man’s height (specific gravity aside) is inversely proportional to the world on which he lives, the people of Ceres must stand 50 times taller than those of the earth. [...] An ordinary Cerean measures nearly 300 feet in height and 75 across the shoulders; he weighs 400,000 lbs., and can lift 500 tons. His voice sounds like thunder and his breath like a storm.

Majority opinion inclined to regard the Cereans as more sheep than wolves. Doubtless the return of the ten prisoners was a propitiatory offering, meant to abate the anger of the Tellurians and Martians.

Now the humans found themselves in a second cavern, smaller than the first. The air throbbed with the smooth vibration of colossal, gleaming engines. Molten metal hissed and cascaded from vast retorts. Cereans were everywhere, engaged in intricate work which only a high order of intelligence could have directed. Each of them wore a harness richly decorated with the mysterious Red Shards.

‘There’s going to be mutiny aboard this hunk of fireworks and Cap Tarrant is going to lose his job. Know why? ’Cause I’m one of Hudderfield’s men, and I’ve been working to seize this ship for eight months.’ Manool shuddered. ‘Huddersfield, the Cerean?’ he asked. ‘The very same! Huddersfield has seized an asteroid and intends to start a fleet of rockets.’

Calls for help were sent out. Then, almost as suddenly as they came, the pirates retreated. When they left, the men of Ceres counted their casualties. Fifteen Cereans were dead and many more hurt in one way or another, as against the bodies of five pirates.

Grasp came out with his arms waving, and shouting ‘Forward! Charge! Kill them all!’ Poor fleas! They had no conception of the vastness of our world and the fantastic density of our microbe population. [...] It was hopeless. To a man, the Cereans were wiped out. The blood transfusions washed out their corpses. Our indigenous bacteria swarmed through Grasp’s body in full, natural possession.

For years my life as Worldkeeper of Ceres was the kind I’d only dreamed about in my Callisto Colony days. With Alterra beside me to the perfunctory disapproval of Belt Station officials, I could tolerate the frequent environmental setbacks and even the night skirling of the unseen Cereans from their chasms. But all that changed once the creatures ventured to the surface and the explosions began.

Unlike most Belters, the man was short and thick, his brow beetling heavily above his eyes. A high-gravity look. How did the story go, again? The Cereans, in a century-long fit of isolationist anger, had increased the spin of their moon-sized asteroid until its gravity reversed, then more-than-reversed. They had continued until the outward centrifugal pull at Ceres’s equator was nearly two gee’s, [sic] making landing on the surface nearly impossible at any point not close to the rotational poles.

Compared to your Jovian appetites we Cereans are simple as the monks of Altamont.