Land of the Giants: Earth Probe

The giant ship soared low over the buildings of central Los Angeles, having descended through the upper atmosphere and flown westwards across the continent, triggering military alarms across a dozen states. Radar operators were on the phone to their commanding officers. Those bases that had been fast enough to respond before the spaceship had passed out of range had immediately scrambled all available fighter jets, only to have them scattered like autumn leaves in the mighty shockwave of air around the objective. They had not even been able to get close. A single surface-to-air missile, launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, was deflected by the sheer force of the ship’s passage through the air and spiralled out of control to crash harmlessly into the ocean.

In the city, ten thousand heads jerked upwards in fear and surprise as the huge machine thundered overhead, then crowds flooded out into clearings and intersections to get a better view of the passing UFO. Twin blue-white rocket exhausts against dirty metallic brown engine mounts, barely diminished by distance, showed toward the west. The thing was truly enormous - some pilots estimated that it was easily three football fields in length – and shaped like a blunt, winged cylinder capped with a nose cone oddly resembling an old-style capsule from project Gemini. In fact, apart from its monumental size, it looked surprisingly familiar, immediately recognisable as a crew-carrying space vehicle. And what was clear to the NORAD tracking radars was now also beginning to bother the surging Los Angelenos – that the ship was slowing as if it had arrived at its destination.

Passing over the beaches and evidently unwilling to travel far out to sea, the spaceship banked around lazily to the south, losing speed and altitude all the while. Several news helicopters, now reassigned into following the action, also banked sharply, trying to keep up.The alien crew had evidently picked out someplace for landing in south-central quadrant of the city, though there was little by way of open ground there. The ship slowed dramatically over the Watts area. Then, to the horror of onlookers, it fired four flaming retrorockets in its belly to support it in near vertical decent. The towers of flame immediately ignited houses, apartment buildings, vehicles, gas stations and supermarkets over ten city blocks. Cars and buses desperately swerved and altered course in all directions, many colliding into the nucleus of a traffic jam. Witnesses near the Will Rogers Memorial Park saw landing legs like railway bridges unfolding from the belly of the craft, as the descent continued, undeterred by the presence of cyclists, picnickers and a playground filled with children. Even before the massive metal feet had slammed down onto the grass, one simply crushing a small log cabin which may or may not have been occupied,the retrorockets had been replaced by a fierce downwash of smoking exhaust gasses, so that even though the wet grass was not completely set afire, a swirling tornado carrying paper, sticks, leaves, and fumes had blasted across the park, blinding and snatching at the clothing of the fleeing citizenry. The roar of the motors lessened slightly, so that a loud creaking of settling hydraulics could be heard. The blizzard of smoke and garbage continued for a few seconds, then abated as the motors began to wind down and the landing sequence was finalised.

Eventually the motor noise died away completely, leaving relative silence, except for the cries of pedestrians, news-copters whipping the air and a distant wail of emergency sirens. Outside the park, a pair of police cruisers flashing red and blue lights tried to enter a parking lot, which was jammed by drivers attempting to escape the scene. Responding to the lessening sound, a few of the braver runners slowed and turned to look back the monstrosity. It just sat there, in a shimmering heat haze, appearing even more ominous and fantastic on the ground than it had been in flight, backed now by ordinary high-rise tenement buildings. There was no sign of movement at the vast picture windows, but nobody doubted that there was someone on board who would emerge sooner or later, probably through ladders or elevators extended from beneath the bulk of the craft, high above ground level. Whoever they were, they had a lot of explaining to do. There was what looked like a titanic door curving up one side of the fuselage, probably used for unshipping large items of cargo. It was only to be hoped that the cargo would not include armoured tanks or planes in support of an invasion force.

The ship remained still and silent. Eventually the police gained entry to the park. Most busied themselves with the task of trying to round up the few stragglers in the park and move them to safety; in a few cases they had to prohibit incautious youngsters who wanted to climb the fence into the park. They began putting crime scene tape across the entrances and directing traffic. But two experienced cops, obeying orders to investigate and report, advanced carefully across the grass, eyes fixed on the spaceship, one hand on their walkie-talkies, the other on the holsters of their guns.They were used to dealing with all kinds of crazy trouble, but nothing in their training had prepared them for examining a giant alien spaceship. As they moved, they were aware of a growing crowd of onlookers around the far perimeter of the park, which a few officers there were struggling to manage. Orders to keep back boomed from a police megaphone. Behind them, multiple plumes of black smoke rose, towards which fire trucks could now be heard racing.

The two cops continued their slow advance, keeping up a running commentary on their radios. Rather than getting in too close, and possibly risk burns or exposure to radiation (not to say provoking a reaction from within) it was decided that they should begin making a large circle around the ship, describing it as well as possible. This they began doing. One of them, concerned about the crushed cabin and possible casualties within, asked for permission to move in for a closer look at that part of the circle, but this was denied.Overhead, the news helicopters also circled slowly, no doubt already flashing live coverage of the unfolding drama to every television set in the country.

The policemen had completed about a quarter of the circle when a movement caused them to freeze. Both men drew their guns in an instinctive protective reaction, staring. A dark cavity had appeared along the seam of the cargo door, showing that it was slowly opening. Rotating on a hinge at the bottom, it swung outward so as to form a mighty bridge between the door and the ground, yards below. But as more of the door became visible, the two cops saw that its inner surface was not flat but formed instead what looked for all the world like a staircase, except that it was a dozen times larger. Which was puzzling, because that made rolling cargo pallets or vehicles off the ship impossible. It was dark inside the cavernous interior of the ship even though there was a row of large round lights visible on the roof within. Thick cables attached to either side of the massive curvature of metal lowered the structure to the ground with a sound like an oil tanker being dropped.

Then the cops temporarily lost the power to report into their radios, because the reason for the odd shape of the door became apparent. It was a staircase – for what looked like a human being over 70 feet tall. Impossibly, incredibly, it was a giant human being. Dressed in a military-looking spacesuit, but without a helmet, the monster’s boots clumped down the stairway with the practiced confidence of a business executive leaving a Lear jet. There was no storybook slowness or clumsiness about him. He reached the ground and turned around. Looked about with an expression that combined curiosity and contemptuous amusement.

Then his eyes fixed on the two policemen.

He called out once to unseen companions with a booming voice, and took a step toward the two policemen, which reduced the distance between them by half. The two cops stopped staring and ran immediately, but not before one had squeezed off a single shot from his pistol. The bullet evidently found its target, because the giant growled and he stooped to grab his leg with one hand. His eyes darkened as he examined the injury. Then he stood up and frowned angrily, and started off in pursuit of the fleeing cops, each step of his covering ten of theirs.

A police car on the road outside a fence began pushing through the crowd, moving toward that part of the fence where the two running men would cross it. At first the driver had to order people aside, but as they drew closer to the pursuit, most pedestrians had already fled and the car was able to increase speed. The two cops, sprinting at full speed, saw the car and immediately changed direction, trying to close the gap more quickly. Although they had a good head start, the giant astronaut was gaining on them fast, and it wasn’t clear they were going to make it.

Judging the best place to make the rendezvous, the police driver pulled the car off the road behind the fence. A civilian with a camera stood near the car, shooting picture after picture of the astonishing spectacle. Yelling at him to get away, the police driver climbed out and drew his weapon. His partner opened the rear door, shouting encouragement to the two runners, but by then it looked hopeless. The giant was already crouching over them. His massive hand reached down before the two had made the fence and, travelling horizontally across the grass, it caught one of the cops and lifted him off the ground like a doll. The other man, unable to respond, scrambled over the fence before turning and shouting abuse at the enormous humanoid.

At that point, the cops all began firing their weapons. Whether it was fear, or a hope that the wounded giant would put down their fellow officer, they let the alien astronaut have it. But instead of repelling him, the fusillade simply made him angrier. Using his free hand, he tore up yards of fencing and whipped it across the ground, sending the photographer and two other civilians hurtling across the park. The two cops dodged the first sweep of the fence, then the second. But when the giant’s mighty boot stamped downwards, the police driver and companions were crushed in an instant. His foot drew back and kicked the police car, causing it to sail through the air a full thirty yards before crashing into the side of house across the road.

Then he turned his furious gaze on the remainder of the crowd…

Steve Burton opened his eyes and exhaled sharply. He sat up on the crude wooden cot on one arm and rubbed his eyes. Except for a steady heartbeat of red light from their spaceship, it was dark in the lean-to, but he could hear Fitzhugh’s snoring nearby, a reminder of their rough sleeping arrangements that had, by gentlemanly agreement, committed the male members of the party to bunk outside, allowing Valerie and Betty the privacy of the Spindrift’s cabin, on nights when no hungry animals were prowling anyway. It was quiet tonight though so he, Alexander Fitzhugh, Mark Wilson and young Barry Lockridge were all sleeping here, while Dan Erickson, his copilot, was at the outpost on watch for any approaching danger.

Sometimes Steve, unable to sleep because of worry, or because of recurring dreams like the one that had just woken him, would sit alone on the flight deck in his pilot’s chair, staring for hours out at the dim jungle of outsized plants beyond the viewports, musing over every aspect of their fantastic predicament and wondering how they could possibly continue to survive in such difficult circumstances. Over and again he had relived their terrifying passage through the storm-like space phenomenon, the ship lit up with a million sparks of St. Elmo’s fire, to emerge apparently unharmed high above a city which turned out not to be London. Not to be England.

Not to be Earth, though it sure looked a lot like a scaled-up Earth.

At first they’d thought that they had been changed, reduced to a twelfth of their normal size by some mysterious physics of the space warp and which, after they had crashed into a foreign city on Earth, had created the illusion of a land of giants. He and Mark had argued about it. Mark had then tried to settle the matter by careful observation of the night sky. When he had reported similar but not identical constellations to those known to astronomy, Steve believed the question to be answered. Different stars meant that this was not Earth, but a giant planet peopled by giant alien people, with themselves as Lilliputians. But Mark wasn’t satisfied. He’d said that logically it didn’t prove they hadn’t shrunk, only that they had not stayed in the same part of the galaxy.

Steve hadn’t had the time or the inclination to argue after that. He was too busy trying to keep them all alive. That was more than a full-time job. As captain of the Spindrift, he felt a terrible burden of responsibility for his passengers and crew. Foremost among his nightmares was the grim certainty that most of the giants here regarded them as nothing more than six-inch oddities. Having lived all their lives under a brutal, totalitarian government, that treated its own citizens ruthlessly, most of them clearly felt no particular obligation to extend any special rights or decency toward what they had come to believe were dangerous enemy aliens, if not supernatural fairy folk. Consequently, despite their apparent civilisation, capture by giants was a usually a humiliating, not to say physically dangerous, ordeal. So far, they had managed to evade capture, or rescue any of their party that had been captured, but their luck couldn’t hold indefinitely. All it would take would be, say, for a giant to take one of them some distance away from Spindrift, beyond radio range and without someone able to follow, and that person would be beyond hope of rescue. It had nearly happened, once or twice.

At least the giants could be reasoned with, though. What bothered Steve the most were the giant animals. This planet seemed to have its fair share of what looked like oversized but otherwise ordinary insects, spiders, birds, rats, gophers, dogs, cats, and what have you. Here, hidden under bushes in the woods they were at constant risk of attack. Even relatively small insects like ants were a problem, especially when there were a lot of them. They could be killed or driven off fairly easily, but they could overwhelm the camp by sheer numbers, and they scared the hell out of the passengers. They had all had to learn never to leave out any food or drink that might attract unwanted visitors into the campsite. Mark and Dan had tackled this problem by purloining a huge supply of insect repellent from a local supermarket and spraying a wide circular barrier around the ship. You could smell it every time you entered or left the campsite area.

But that didn’t work on other, larger kinds of pests. Animals were pragmatic. They classified any living thing they came across as either a potential threat, or food.What tipped the balance, for most, was their own size relative to the creature before them. You didn’t notice this when you were bigger than most animals you encountered, but you noticed when you were smaller, all right. Although this woodland area close to the city had proven an excellent hiding place, it was as full of animals as any such area on Earth. Here they were, camping out in a toy spaceship in the middle of it all. Nightmares, for him, recalled real memories of fighting off a crow twenty feet high with a matchstick-and-razorblade hatchet, being trapped in drainpipe by a snarling dog, and trying to kill a gopher the size of an elephant using a bow and arrow. None of it made for a restful night.

And, of course, there was the damned car. The first clue to their fate after the initial landing. Oh, that came back to try and run Dan and he over again on many a night. And he knew he would never, ever, as long as he lived, get over the shock of having the thing emerge from the fog and rush over the top of them.

He reached down and took a long drink from his canteen, then looked at the glowing numerals of his watch. It was another hour and a half before he was due to relieve Dan on night watch, but he knew he would never get back to sleep after his nightmare. He threw off a blanket and got up, pulling on his boots and jacket quietly to avoid waking the others. He might as well head over to the outpost and let Dan get the extra sleep, not that Dan ever seemed to need it.The guy was so amazingly fit and energetic. As Steve moved out of the lean-to, Barry’s terrier, curled up at the boy’s feet, raised its head and growled softly. “Shhh, Chipper. It’s me,” he whispered. The dog wagged its tail and obediently put its head down, but continued watching Steve with doleful eyes as he started down the trail towards the outpost.

Soon after they arrived, Steve had decided that the risk of being surprised by giants coming into woods towards the camp was so great that they needed an early warning system. Despite the hardship it imposed on them, he’d insisted that an outpost on the main route into the woods from the city be manned whenever possible, but especially at night, the idea being that if any giant came too close to the spaceship, the sentry would first alert Spindrift by walkie-talkie and then try to draw the giant into a chase which would lead them away from the spaceship. As usual, Mark had opposed his idea, claiming that the ship’s radar would do a better job of alerting them to approaching danger. In the end though, Steve had won that round, pointing out that running the radar continually drew too much of the ship’s limited power, and because it could be detected easily, would itself draw unwanted attention to them. After that, they had all taken turns on watch, even Barry, though Steve always insisted on an adult being with him. It was an imperfect system. Sentry duty was a weird combination of nerve wracking and boring experiences for the most part, and Steve suspected that not all of them were fit for it. He knew for a fact that Fitzhugh sometimes fell asleep when by himself out there. He and Dan often ended up doing twice the duty of the others.Still, it had twice saved them from being discovered, and Steve tried hard to keep the arrangement working.

Steve made good time along the well-remembered path to the outpost. This planet had a moon like Earth’s and even at a quarter full and low on the horizon, it offered plenty enough light to find his way. He had made the trip in total darkness on occasion. It would be unwise to use a flashlight too freely out here in the open, even if they’d still had a working one. As he moved down the track, he adopted an Earthling’s habitual cautious upward gaze, and past the colossal trunks of trees he caught random glimpses of stars through canopies of leaves that looked as far overhead as clouds.

The outpost itself was nothing more than another, smaller lean-to, shelter for two people, but covered with leaves and forest litter in such a way as to be all but invisible from above. Inside was food and water, a couple of makeshift chairs, one of Dan’s matchstick axes, the ship’s flare gun and a portable all-band radio receiver belonging to Valerie. To make the hours to pass a little more pleasantly, the others had insisted on allowing sentries to listen in on giant broadcasts, which included news and rather old-fashioned music if one avoided the government propaganda stations. And, Steve had to admit, the sentries might even learn something useful during their vigils by monitoring giant news announcements.

There being no obvious danger nearby, to avoid startling Dan, Steve deliberately made noise as he approached the outpost. He called out as he arrived and climbed into the entrance. Dan was in a chair facing the entrance, wearing a headset connected to the radio.

“Steve! You’re early – is everything okay?” Dan removed the headset, looking concerned.

“Everything’s fine,” Steve reassured him. “Just couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d spell you early.”

“Well, okay, I guess I could use some sleep. But listen: I’ve been getting some news reports from the giant space research centre.”

“The one south of here, down near the coast?”

“Yeah. Their astronomers have spotted something close by this planet, maybe a hundred miles up. And Steve – get this – they describe it as a shimmering green ball of light! Sound familiar?”

“You think our space warp is back on the scene?”

“It sounds like it. I’ve been tuning around, trying to get more details, but they aren’t covering it much. It’s mostly football.”

Steve considered the news. “Dan, we ought to tell Mark about this. It could be important.” In assessing their chances, the Earthlings had soon realised that they were evidently not near Earth, not even in their own solar system. Since their spacecraft could not travel interplanetary distances, it followed that the reappearance of the space warp phenomenon was their only chance of escaping from this planet and returning to their own world. That was assuming Mark, with their help, could succeed in his efforts to repair the ship so it could lift off and travel in space at all. And even then it would be a gamble, since there was no guarantee that the cosmic doorway, whatever it was, would operate in the reverse direction.

“Mark’s doing his best, but the ship’s just not ready. Even if the thing is out there, we couldn’t reach it,” Dan said.

Steve sighed. “I know. Still, Mark and the others will want to know what’s going on.Why don’t you go back to camp and tell them in the morning? I’ll keep listening here, see if there’s any more news.”

Dan nodded. He understood that even though it would be frustrating for their party to know that the warp was out there, but unreachable, it would at least offer a sliver of hope. That would boost morale, and maybe lead to a renewed effort to get Spindrift space-worthy. He relinquished the chair and the headphones to Steve, and giving him a quick pat on the shoulder, quit the outpost. Steve sat back and began turning dials on the radio.

During his hike back to camp, Dan couldn’t help searching the sky, imagining almost every star he saw to be in fact a tiny green smudge of light, signalling the way back to Earth.