THE CRASH-June 12th, 1983

This entry is most unlike any I've ever before entered---I can hardly believe it myself. I assumed I was either having an incredible nightmare or my optical nerves were affected by the crash landing we made, but the most horrible thing of all was the realising the others on board were having the same optical problems--proving this was all real. Incredible as it may seem, we are on a land of giants.

When Dan and I emerged from the ship onto this alien world, we narrowly escaped death by a giant car, its sheer size, making us fear the worst. At first, I thought the lights from the car were the lights from a plane or spaceship. We ran back inside the Spindrift and immediately felt the ship being lifted--without power from within. Staring in at us was the face of a giant child and, as one, Dan and I fired the Spindrift back to life and literally tore ourselves from the boy's hold.

I'm not ashamed to say that these incidents left me shaken and it was with misgivings that we took the ship in to land again to re charge. When I learned that Fitzhugh had left the ship, for one fleeting moment, the fear of what I might see or meet outside halted my action. But Barry was gone too and I knew whatever happened, I could not leave the young boy (or even the con man) to wander outside alone.

Miss Scott's insistence on coming with me didn't help matters---especially when we were both trapped in the scientist's box trap but strangely enough, trying to keep Valerie Scott calm helped me overcome my own fears while under the giant's scrutiny. In this lab, there was a male and a female giant.

I was never so pleased to see anyone as I was to see Dan. Valerie and I both owe our lives to his and Mark's ingenuity in effecting our rescue.

Which brings me to reflect on the characters of these people--all from different backgrounds--all thrown together in this bizarre situation.

Dan I've known for a while and trust him with my life and the lives of all, in fact, I already have. I knew him in flight school and a bit before that.

As for the others---Mark Wilson, older than myself, is a pessimistic hothead with ideas of grandeur, yet he had proved himself during the raid to save Miss Scott and myself. At least he didn't join in on Fitzhugh's little mutiny--during which Fitzhugh revealed he had a revolver. If I can keep Mr Wilson in his place, he could become a valuable asset to our group---pretty big "if".

Miss Valerie Ames Scott. Older than Betty, she seems much less mature. She is going to need putting in her place, even more so than Mark or the Commander (as this Mr. Fitzhugh claims to be a Commander). She's sneaky, sly, mischievous, arrogant, pompous, frivolous, and ...extremely beautiful. And she knows it. She is very good at manipulation which may come in handy for us in the future. For now it's a real pain to our group. Providing she doesn't die due to her own stubbornness to have things her own way--she may change because of or in spite of our hardship at being here.

The Commander, Alexander B Fitzhugh. He is a mystery to all of us. Is he a commander? Is he a con artist who stole the money as reported to me and my co pilot by London police? Or is he someone else under cover perhaps? He seems both cowardly and brave, both at avoidance of work and eager to escape. The man is a contradiction to himself.

The boy, Barry Lockridge. I fear the most for his safety. I mean , he is so little---a little person among little people. What kind of a life will he have growing up here in a giant land if we are forced to stay here longer than we dare think about? Certainly he will not have any romantic involvements unless some giant could shrink to our size or if we find some way to grow to their size. Re reading what I just wrote, I realise the complete absurdity of this entire situation. It couldn't happen, shouldn't happen! Another fear where Barry is concerned is that we all, save the boy, perish, leaving him and his shaggy dog, named Chipper, alone.

Betty Hamilton. Although we've only just met, I feel more than a captain-like protection toward her. And if we weren't in such a predicament, perhaps something could develop between us besides just a formal/informal relationship between Captain and stewardess.

Luck also seems to be on our side--we were able to follow Fitzhugh's money back to the Spindrift but I shudder at the thought of not only what we've already seen here----I mean spiders, cars, dogs, cats, nearly being dissected, falling down a drain, and five thousand foot tall buildings are enough to shudder a person to pieces--but from what is ahead on this planet.

In any event I can only hope, pray and believe that we, like the ants on Earth, will make it here.

SPINDRIFT LOG
THE TRAP NOVEL JUNE 15, 1983
STEVE BURTON RECORDING

It has been relatively quiet for the past few weeks, our first few in this giant land. That ended when Valerie, against Barry's warnings, went inside a house--a house that turned out to be a toy, in reality a toy trap for us. As captain, I had to rescue her from a shed of a giant who collected all kinds of insects and animals and put them in cages. While getting her out of their, on my back (not as she is usually on my back metaphorically but this time she was actually, physically on my back), we saw another Earth girl. I was really angered that Fitzhugh, our strange and mysterious con man, wouldn't help make plans to rescue the girl. He seemed too harried by our first few experiences here--the dog, the cat, the bearded giant professor....
As we made plans to do so, that same cat attacked the campsite--this time with us outside. I did it to save Chipper, the dog of the boy Barry BUT I really did it to prove to all the others that we can fight some of these beasts---it would have been a good idea to prove it to myself first.
In the shed, a jar crashed into a snake's cage, causing a chain reaction, freeing many of the specimens in the shed. I must give Dan a special commendation--to his credit, he stood his ground, holding up torches to light my way up to this girl--with so many slithering, crawling animals and insects all around him. Outside, we had the others (except Navy Commander Fitzhugh) setting fires to distract the giant. I didn't like that but it seemed the best way to keep him busy. Soon, a full scale search for us started and many giants, who had helped put out the fire, headed after us toward the ship.
Escaping back to the recharged ship, we lifted off as the giants shot some type of guns at us. Once we were safely away and in flight, the girl told us that her name was Marjorie and she was from a space flight named the Anne which disappeared and crashed here. The others from the Anne were dead--they tried to contact the giants but were met with death at the hands of unknowing babies--children who pulled apart the Earth people as if they were toys--which is what the youngsters thought they were. ADDENDUM: Unfortunately, rough handling by the giant collector caused Marjorie to later die of her wounds but she was with us for a time.
We also found out the hard way--nearly crashing--that the giants use a giant bowl--a kind of push and pull tractor beam as part of their power systems utilizing the larger of the two moons somehow. It interfered with our ship's drive, nearly crashing us again. We found that our communication devices could play havoc with the bowl device. We also flew close to the two moons to examine the device and how it worked. Not being a ship built for total interplanetary flights of long duration, we had to return to the planet of giants.
Having strained so much of our power, we needed to stop and recharge. We did so on a peninsula where we saw giants senselessly shooting giant birds who were just trying to feed their nestlings. Again, proving we could survive here, I killed a titanic rat which attacked Mr. Wilson and myself. I also had to kill a little, baby bird who was also attacked by the rat but which would have starved to death anyhow. It was one of the hardest things I had to do since being here and it sickened me. Anyhow, the meat would be put to good use but I could hardly eat any of it.
I began to realize that the giant puppies that played around and over the ship while we were on a beautiful, desolate beach---were only acting like real puppies back on Earth. And the night time visit by giant bats that Dan witnessed, showed us that they flew like the bats on Earth. Behaving like our bats back home. This meant to me that the giants would act like men---men that we knew on Earth. And that meant they would try to destroy all of us. If a tiny ship landed on Earth and interfered with some of our power, we'd try to destroy it too. While Wilson figured that we traveled through space but not time and that we were 11 light years from Earth, the boy, Barry Lockridge, served up another theory: the space-time warp bypassed the Einstein theory--the reason we did not seem to travel in time was because somehow the ship was driven back in time while traveling to its future. If that were not so, then all the people we knew on Earth were probably dead due to the Einstein theory. If the theory was true, then we were propelled backward to save us the time we would have lost--by the warp which interconnected the Earth and the land of the giants planet--like some time tunnel in space. We would have flown 11 light years in just one day. It's all so confusing but it somehow makes sense to me. Why not? So fifty foot children and towering preying mantis. My question was this: how did this happen? Was it just a time-space warp--some kind of natural phenomena of space as Betty Hamilton, our stewardess believes? Or did some otherworldly aliens devise the warp in order to study us and kidnap us? All of this was just conjecture and theory---stuff I don't like to putty around with. Wilson used a telescope-radar tracking device--a very powerful one to try to find the space-time warp. This device, new in the field was his thirty thousand dollar deal. Compact and small yet powerful enough to see great distances in space.
All of us were figuring at the same time, the giants tracked down our radio signal and bombed us. We only escaped again due to Mr. Fitzhugh, who stunned all of us by venturing outside for the first time---poor guy--he was met with the robot bombers.
The next stop: a high peaked mountain range where only a vulture stirred. I began to put the finishing touches on a plan of mine: using one of our emergency radios to fool the giant bombings. A giant made an error and drew all the projectiles into the bowl device, blowing it to smithereens. To cap this all off I decided to let our own fire bombs out over an ocean to show the giants that we could have fire bombed a city but would not.
We have also traversed the entire planet, most of it, very strange to us. Islands we saw when we did, seemed to be our best bet of recharging, finding food, and making repairs with what we had without interference from any giant people. We hoped that would be the case and presently landed there.
With this on our minds, renewed optimism forced its way into our formerly depressed outlook. We didn't know where the space-time warp was but something told me it was nowhere near the land of the giants or the Earth at this time. Yet somehow we would survive. Even as I write this, Dan has signaled to me that he has spotted the islands. A tropical paradise? Or a terror racked hell? You decide. I have other things to do.

THE WEIRD WORLD
SPECIAL COMMENDATION:
MAJOR KAGAN, NATIONAL AIR RESEARCH TEAM LEADER
JUNE 20TH, 1983

Captain Steve Burton adding to Barry Lockridge's log entry...

Noting Barry's previous log entry, I, as Captain, feel I must add to it. Major Kagan overcame his own suspicions of our group and his own fear of the terror that killed his crew, sacrificing his own life to rescue Barry from the clutches of a horrible spider that snared him in a web. This was a far cry from the seemingly mad man who captured Barry in the thick of the night, threatening to keep him that dark gopher hole---a giant cavern in pitch black darkness to us, and even using his crossbow to try to stop the boy from escaping...no, Kagan was a man turned into an animal, holed up for years (ten?) in the darkness...because of this land of giants, this planet that Fitzhugh hates so much. Yet for all that, Kagan did survive. For note, if anyone finds this log entry, be made aware that we were made aware of Kagan by finding his taped log entries buried in the sand (and unearthed by Master Barry Lockridge's scruffy little dog Chipper). Every night since the Kagan encounters I wonder if there are more taped logs out there somewhere...

It started out as just a normal day in the land of the giants: a fire started at our outpost where we kept supplies...a fire started from a match thrown. Our supplies were being checked when our normal day continued: an attack by a giant crow and a passer by giant boy..who dropped a battery which could come in handy for the Spindrift or any tool that needed power.. A tape recorded log book from a long lost astronaut for instance. Mark was hurt by the crow and needed attention from the only medical expert we had: Stewardess Betty Ann Hamilton. We also discovered some of our supplies missing... Kagan...

In any event, this is supposed to be a commendation and that it will be. Kagan was instrumental in our escape from the gopher which I was forced to kill with his bow and arrow: either it died or the four of us in the hole (myself, Mark Wilson, Commander Alexander Fitzhugh, and Major Kagan) would have. It was a simple matter of survival, as I usually treat wildlife with the greatest respect (at least I did on Earth). This event also preceded a long, private talk I had with Mr. Fitzhugh where he basically agreed never to pull anything so ruthlessly dangerous in the future, while I agreed to conceal knowledge of his past (which is, in reality, a mystery to us all). Is he really a con man and a thief or was he working undercover on a mission of some kind...a mission to guard that money...and a mission which failed? Or was he pretending to be someone else for some other reason? No matter, we are all stranded here together and those pasts have to be aside for now and perhaps forever. Fitzhugh had taken Kagan off to go for the spaceship which Kagan flew here in with his crew, now deceased, either from the giants or that damned spider. It was some kind of orbiting space lab that got sucked up into the green space time warp. Fitzhugh's plan was to lie to Kagan and get him to distrust the rest of us so he can fly back to Earth and keep his secrets safe. As I said, he'll not pull a stunt so viciously against our group again. If not, I can handle him in my own ways...ways neither he nor the others, bar Mark Wilson possibly...would not like.

Miss Valerie Scott, our jet setter heiress, hit the nail on the head when she realized our thief had stolen our astronaut. Val's pessimistic nature can be truthful at times but mostly it just gets on my nerves from time to time, case in point not thinking the others had made it to the Science Center. However, that point of view has its merits in a survival setting.

We owe so much to Kagan. He saved Barry's life and he gave us more information on the giants themselves in the form of the knowledge of their poor night vision, which in this case proved to be our life saver and could prove beneficial to us again in the future. Their science, while for the most part is some 50 years behind our own, can occasionally outshine our own sciences. He told us not to underestimate the giants. The giants at the Science Center knew enough to disassemble Kagan's spacecraft, curtailing any hope we had of an escape back to Earth in it.

The Major was a man brave enough to conquer his most horrible fear and face death for our group...fighting his own memory loss of the terror in the drain. The man, one of the first Earth people on this giant world, was not as mad as we first thought, yet he truly saw things that would have made lesser men insane, including perhaps members of our group, even myself.

Someday we will return to the Science Center, maybe we could salvage some of that equipment if it is still there. His rocket shaped ship was totally taken apart. Dismantled. Thankfully we were able to slip off that giant table just as the scientist began to wake up from his nap. Dropping the lamp to the floor was a good move if I must say so myself and then the ingenuity of Mark Wilson and Dan Erickson in breaking the bulb and blinding the giant and a guard he called in...well, working together we got out of there...just barely.

Let the record show that Kagan was instrumental in our survival on this planet and he will not be forgotten when or if we land back on Earth. And even if that never happens, Major Kagan will always be a reminder to us that we can survive here---more so because unlike Kagan, who lost all his men, we have each other.

THE GOLDEN CAGE
SPINDRIFT LOG
JULY 29TH, 1983
CAPTAIN STEVE BURTON RECORDING
FLIGHT: 612 (703)

In the midst of a food crisis, a shortage, we faced a more serious problem. For Fitzhugh, it was facing down a giant turkey using nothing more than a wooden stick and a giant's suspenders that Barry found for him. A carrot and some peas under a picnic dish helped to fed us but the other problem... an Earth girl on a flight from France with her parents, Charles Whealen and his wife and daughter...her parents were dead but she was very much alive...and I'm afraid brainwashed to trap more of her own kind...

I am sorry Mark couldn't realize sooner what I was trying to do when I forbade him to go to Marna's cage. I take no joy in what I did, nor in our continued non rescue of her. We are here, she is there---it's as simple as that. Still, I do believe someday the memories Mark stirred in Marna will cause more of her original personality to re surface. We just can't take the chance to be with her before something like that happens.

While Fitzhugh tried to sneak food and shove it down his throat, giants almost found Spindrift when he accidentally choked. Still, it was Mark who proved out to be my worst enemy among our group. Still, I am very pig headed when it comes to the group security and didn't even consider the possibility of other reasons Mark had, for one his physical attraction to the girl, for another, he owed her father, who was his friend, or as Mark said, the man was his friend. This implied to me that Mark didn't return the friendship or wasn't that invested in the friendship. Our major fight, was really, mine to start by trying to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. Poor Betty tried to be peacemaker again but this time, it didn't work. Mark was gone. He left us. For her.

At the beginning of this, I can't say I was surprised when we found Mark had sneaked off at daybreak in search of Marna---to free her from what seemed to be a giant jar near a tree under a light no less---a giant trap I was sure of that. Maybe I would have done the same in his situation but it brought home to me the dangers we faced if he did bring her back to our camp. The giants would be sure to look for her and how were we to know her dependance on them wouldn't make her betray us to them.

These giants are just so cold and unrelenting. My euphoria over even one good giant--the camper's daughter--who saved Barry and the rest of us later on (and even the camper father himself proved to be slightly warm hearted)---made me hope we would encounter more--shall we say human hearted---giants.

The giants who held Marna were the worst yet, cold, calculating, lumbering monstrosities set to use us in tests--scientific and otherwise. A cold shiver shook me when I realized they may have even wanted to breed more little people Earthers. Perhaps that is why they baited Mark using Marna as a Judas Goat, which I had to explain to Barry was some goat who lured the other goats to their slaughter.

It was Fitzhugh's problem turkey that provided us with a way to get rid of a diamond the giants who held Marna gave her to give to us as a gift. Of course it was a tracking device. We fed it to the turkey. So much for Fitzhugh's Thanksgiving. Val joked that great big hunter Fitzhugh would make a great snack for some giant wolf. Fortunately, the joviality of our group eased Mark's pain over the sadness called Marna.

MANHUNT
September 13th, 1983

The worst had happened and we are still together, encamped around our tiny fire at the side of our ship. The ship itself was captured along with Betty, Dan, Barry, and Val, who were aboard at the time it was captured. I shudder as I write this. The ship is our salvation to go home, but more than that, it's our link to that hope, and our relative place of safety. It might be a misguided place of safety for it's been attacked by a cat and nearly found in the past by other giants. Still with it missing, its safety and our hope seemed to leave us. But the worst was that we may have lost the other four forever. With no way of communicating with them, that is until our resident genius Mark Wilson converted our astrogator (left out of the ship at the time of its loss) converted it into a radio range finder and an almost- communicator. I would never tell him this but if I could, I would nominate Mark for a medal of valor for all his work and ingenuity or at the very least a Nobel Prize and for Dan a medal of valor too.

The giant fleeing from guards, found the ship and took it with him, carrying it in his jacket! We tracked him as far as we could but lost them during the night and even the next morning. During that fretful night, with Chipper found outside the ship and us using him to track them--the only blood hound we've got---the giant hid at a farm house and fought with the owner there. My fear was that the fight would cause the giants to crush the ship as they rolled over each other.

This event also proves that this land is not so unlike Earth, as we first believed it to be. A convict, a prison guards, and quicksand---though luckily for us, this was really more like slow sand. Maybe it had something to do with the particles being larger than the sand on Earth, I don't know. Anyway it wasn't as fast as quicksand on Earth. The convict, holding the ship, fell into it and Dan must be commended for keeping the others all calm, especially while piloting the ship out of the bog. He showed real courage to try something that wild--shutting off the Beta System to generate enough power to skid them out. For her part, Betty seemed to keep the other two--the boy and Miss Scott--under control (no easy task, especially where Valerie Scott is concerned) as well as supporting Dan when the air began to run out. I wonder if Betty would be able to fly the Spindrift if something happened to Dan, God forbid anything bad ever happened to Dan though, he's my right hand man. Loyal to the end. Whatever that would be. I would have liked to see them in action, especially Dan, for out there in the sand, he was commander. I would not go so far as to say I wanted to be out there with them but Dan, at least had time to gather his thoughts to positive action. With the constant nagging from Fitzhugh (due more this time to nervousness and concern for the others--not just concern himself, for the spaceship and his ticket ride home to Earth--if it ever happens) and the unrelenting pessimism from Mark, I felt swamped myself in a way. It was only Dan's idea that freed the ship. Not that we didn't try. We tried to get the giant to let go of the ship, we built a rope made from his shirt, and then guided Dan via walkie talkie as the giant's jacket was still over the ship's view ports.

I admit to being really worried, when, after having saved the convict, he picked the girls, Barry, and Chipper and deposited them in the ship, which he had picked up again in one arm and took off. Was he, as we believed earlier, going to make a trade--the ship for his freedom or a pardon? What crime did he commit? What form of punishment and justice does the government here in this land on this part of the planet have? I never knew if the convict was guilty of some crime, or even if he was a killer as Mark suggested he might be. But I would not be the executioner--I could not allow him to sink and die right before all our eyes. Yes, I saved him, risking the ship and our possible hope, to get him out. I used the Beta Device to offset the weight of the giant as he pulled himself out---the makeshift rope now attached to the spaceship rather than a giant tree. The rope worked this time (it broke when attached to the tree).

My worry was unfounded--the convict put the ship back in place. But we all still worried when he was overtaken by two guards--would he reveal us to save himself? While Dan wanted to get to Barry and the girls to get them out, the guards were still too close to do this. We helped the convict by taking him a dropped gun---the gun dropped by one of the guards during a fight with the convict. This is what probably swayed him into not turning our position in to the guards---we remained free and so did he. For a time anyway. He didn't turn us in and he escaped. I just can't help hoping some day we will find out what his crime was. Was he a political prisoner? A wrongly accused man? Or some serial killer or wife beater? Who knows? It does nag at me though.

SPINDRIFT LOG
CAPTAIN STEVE BURTON REPORTING
SEPTEMBER 19TH, 1983
FRAMED

I wrestle with my own guilt this day: guilt over losing a much needed lens to re power our solar batteries. If not for me and my idealism, we would have had it. Guilt also over my having endangered all our lives by proving a hobo innocent of a murder for which he was framed by a photographer who accidentally killed his model after she slapped him for his advances. I'm not sure he meant to kill her but he was certainly rough with her and slapping her around when she fell and hit her head on a rock.

The hobo inadvertently but successfully saved Fitzhugh and myself from the same photographer--the same killer--who spotted us--tiny witnesses to his crime--and who chased us to a gopher hole to smoke us out. After that I just had to help the hobo--I couldn't let him die knowing the real killer would go scott free. Here we learned another piece of info--that even here there is capital punishment for murder. The hobo was not guilty of anything except of drinking...maybe of even being an alcoholic, who knows, they seem to have those types of addictions here, too. His drinking, however, saved us, and also made him think, when he saw us, that he was seeing things. For once he saw us, he tossed away his bottle. Perhaps Fitz and I cured him of his "disease".

Sometimes, emotion and the heart take precedence over logic. Certainly my plan was not logical--to hide inside the real killer's own camera after taking photos of his planting incriminating evidence on the poor hobo, the poor slob. Then to develop one in his own studio without even checking for a way out. This could have resulted in the death of myself, Dan, Mark and especially Valerie who rode with me inside the camera. She had the experience of being able to develop film. No, my plan was not a logical well planned plan. Before we were brought to the photographer's home by the photographer himself, Dan was almost stepped on while waiting to find out our fate at the police station. Good thing he wasn't. Apart from being glad for his continued existence as my friend and co pilot, his help was invaluable as he had to climb a garden post to ring the doorbell before the photographer could open the camera Val and I were hiding in. Even Chipper had some part in the plan: distracting the giant long enough for Dan and Mark to get inside the house. Formerly Barry reported that Mark, Betty, Fitzhugh and Dan couldn't find any other way into house, for it was locked-up-as-tight-as-a-drum. Poor Barry. While he waited, with only Chipper for company, I wondered what bravery it took just for him to wait alone there in this night of the land of the giants..a land filled with..well, I digress.

It was thanks to Valerie's expertise at developing that we were able to gain the much needed evidence and, for once, I was glad to have her along. Every member of our group has brought with them some knowledge and skill which has helped us in our struggle for survival--even Fitzhugh--and without any one of them, we might not have made it even this far.

Getting the photograph to the police was aided by a their coming to the photographer's house---called by him in his growing panic over his house being invaded by little people. His guilt was apparent as he used liquor to try to escape his guilt. But OUR escape was, as usual, a hurried chance taken while the giants' attentions were diverted and we had to abandon the camera lens when we fled the house. It seemed that...the police did not fully believe in the photographer's story of "little people" thus our presence on this planet is not yet fully known by all. I doubt that will remain that way for long.

Again, the proof of some giants' humanity shows itself: the hobo, having been freed after being cleared, repaid us by leaving a camera in the woods for us, just not the right type of camera---ironically this, an old fashioned box camera, was one without a lens. Now I have to live with my guilt but unlike the photographer, I can do so, for it was the right thing to do, saving the hobo and avenging the model.

GHOST TOWN

Steve Burton reporting

January 4th, 1984

Well, my worst fear had almost been reality. Barry missing, was presumed dead by Valerie, who by now has become much less of an arrogant jet setter, that she cares with emotions new to her is apparent. Still, as I thought the boy dead, I realised all I had to remember him by was his pocket knife--not even his scraggy little dog remained, for Chipper had vanished with Barry. Thank God, we did find him...in a toy town which fooled all of us---even me for a few brief seconds.

At the time, I was so focused on the threat posed by a murderous little girl---all children kill insects--(or starve them--which she was doing to a giant tarantula which she planned to feed us to) but that's what we were to her, insects, and what I didn't realise Akman was just as heartless, but in another way. This old man, the girl's grandfather and builder of the toy town we were trapped in, saw us only as living dolls for his toy town, which was surrounded by a lethal force field, which killed a giant tramp that had ruthlessly chased Barry, Fitzhugh, Valerie, and Chipper. Val and Fitzhugh told me that this tramp seemed somewhat sadistic so I shudder to think what he would have done had he grabbed any of them. Even so, I find it difficult to be glad of even his death. Akman seemed not to mind or maybe the old man didn't know. A deadly force field in the forest is not something he should have set up. The man was heartless. Suppose some innocent giant wandered into it?

In a way it is a shame Akman's whole scheme could not have worked--we would have had secure homes, regular food and could have tried to build our lives again without the worry of running and hiding and fighting for survival on this giant planet. But the human mind does not conform to complacency and we could not have been happy relying on one giant's kindness. We would always have been searching for a way off this world. And how long could we have hoped to survive with Akman's granddaughter terrorising us the way she did? Using the force field to electrocute Fitzhugh and almost myself, stamping our underground tunnel...with Barry trapped inside (I'm not sure she knew Barry was inside--I don't know if she meant to kill him that way or at all, for she had ample time to kill the boy before we arrived), and tossing lit matches at us, notably me. I lost another jacket to that fire. No, all of our dreams of living happily ever after was not to be found in Akman's town--we have to continue our battle for survival on our own. This included burning down Akman's toy town to distract the little giant girl (or as Val might put it was she a giant little girl instead?) long enough for Mark and I to sabotage the control unit for the force field. Doing this almost cost us our lives as she pursued us, tossing rocks at us and throwing a fire extinguisher at the toy truck Mark and I had to drive right through the main street of Midbury (Biggest Little Town in the States). Of course first she shot the extinguisher at us and emptied it before throwing it at us. Then she stopped the truck by throwing a roof of a building on us! How we survived that I have no idea. Still when Akman returned, Mark and I escaped to the relative safety of the forest where the others had already escaped.

Akman built his miniature town using designs culled from another Earthship that had crashed here, bringing the count to roughly six ships or more that we know from Earth having been stranded here (ours, Kagan's, Marna and her family's, Nick's All American Youth Flight, Captain Hartman, a German flight, and unspecified remarks from Murtrah about Dr. Kalar having had access to captured Earthmen, not to mention a giant that once captured Valerie and Betty who made similar comments about having encounters with others of our kind). We, thankfully, have been much luckier than any of them. We had survived. I guess we'll find even more evidence of other crashed Earth people here, leaving me to believe the space time warp connects Earth and the giant planet. Of note there was the name Dr Webster on the doctor's office in the toy town.

LAND OF THE GIANTS-LOG ENTRY
--BRAINWASH--JAN. 12, 1984--
CAPT. STEVE BURTON REPORTING

The equipment of Shepard Space Center in Brookside Kentucky was found by Fitzhugh and I, being chased, as usual by a giant policeman of Security HQ. The Earth size instrumentation, a computer complex was put in here some three years ago by the members of a missing space exploration team from the space center--designation code of the team was 275 Exploration. Their team was caught in the same space-time warp we were caught in. They had a transmitter installed in this complex which was in a slightly underground cave (the ends of which could be reached from both the forest on one side and the giant city on the other through a drain pipe sewer). The transmitter could reach Earth and did when Fitzhugh and I tried it. But they couldn't hear us. Well, had I allowed Mark five more minutes--five which we didn't have--he would have been able to make contact. We couldn't wait since the giants--Security Captain Ashim and Doctor Kraal were just outside the complex.

I never should have left Fitzhugh alone. First, he continues to call Earth on the radio despite my warning not to. Good old Mark allowed for this by scrambling the message, ordering the others to turn on their walkie talkies after he converted them to portable jammers---which would protect the Spindrift from being found as the scrambling was coming from it. Betty was keen to note that part and Mark was already working on a solution. I really do have quite a team, Fitzhugh aside this time.

Mark and I returned to Fitzhugh, who found a decayed body of one of the astronauts--the last survivor of the top secret flight, a mike still in his hand---which lead to our finding a recording he had made-telling us about the two minute self destruct switch. The giants want the complex to learn about Earth technology some more which will eventually be able to get them to fly to our home planet of Earth. While Mark worked on the system, parts of which were made in his own plants back on Earth, the others scattered the jammers, having to patiently listen to the squealing things---good souls all--since Val admitted to the squealing having her climbing the trees at first. But with the hope of it being our rescue enabler--she began to like it. Betty also looked a bit bored what with hanging around the forest with nothing to do but stand by a squealing radio but Barry kept her spirits up telling her they could stand it.

Checking on Dan, I was caught getting him away from a giant security patrolman--Dan's shoulder had been hurt before this with a brush with another giant---the Security men were all over the park. Captured I was repulsed when Dr. Kraal used a brainwashing spray on a giant convict--a tough killer. After being sprayed, the convict tells the giants the truth about his crimes and his plan to escape prison, killing the guards with a weapon he had fashioned. Just after, the convict collapsed and died from the foam. I had already been sprayed! Captain Ashim didn't seem the evil type. He just wanted the transmitter badly. He also fought with Kraal over the doctor's experimental foam but gave into using it. Three years ago the evil doctor used it on the group of 275, killing just about all of them. One escaped--the one Fitzhugh found dead in the cave. How did he die, I wonder. With all the deaths of the little people, Ashim looked like a fool to his superiors----not so much that he killed Earthlings but that he still was no closer to finding the complex. Ashim lost his temper at one point, yelling he could crush me like a bug in less than a second but then he acted as if he was sorry he lost his temper. All he wanted was the transmitter. His better judgement lost out to accepting Kraal's influence and foam spray--with Kraal telling him it doesn't matter if one or two of the little people die from this---no one else would know. Listening to Kraal would cost Ashim his life---literally making him put his foot in it.

When Ashim left to wipe the foam off of himself, Mark who had already single handedly snuck into Security HQ, now got me out. It was an amazing rescue as Fitzhugh attested to. Mark talked harshly to me and roughly pushed me around, I think actually enjoying giving me orders and mad at not just that I gave away the transmitter area to the giants---I had no choice I was drugged with the truth serum foam---but I suspect Mark's resentment of me had built up for some time about so many things---me being leader for one. However, I owe Mark my life and my freedom and am properly grateful.

I suppose Mark and Dan might have thought I was still under the influence of the drug-docile creating serum foam when I set the switch on the complex for self destruct. The giants used the foam on Fitzhugh whom they found in the forest and zeroed in on the complex. Dan and Mark fought me hard---and it was with great displeasure I had to knock an already hurting Dan down. I couldn't let the installation fall into the giants' hands. The giants filled the caverns with the foam after they blocked us in. The foam chasing us through the caves, began to fill the main room. Desperate, I ordered the other two to start digging a way out, climbing up a small dirt hill to the roof! A rash and futile act but we had to do something---and that was nothing compared to the hasty action of jumping on Ashim's shoe. Yes, you read that right---his shoe---the luckless giant put his foot right into the complex, we jumped on and rode out just as the complex exploded, killing both Kraal (no loss there) and Ashim. Being small, we were unaffected by the blast. See, sometimes it pays to be small. We wiped Fitzhugh off and I was clean since Ashim and later Mark had ordered me to wipe the foam off myself.

LAND OF THE GIANTS-LOG ENTRY
--SABOTAGE--JAN 22, 1984
STEVE BURTON RECORDING--
We have been getting wind of a small group of officials who believe we are the victims of strange accidents that are no fault of our own and apparently, they have strong public support, however, thus far we have not seen evidence of this or the result of any amiable works toward our effort and protection. For all we know, this could be some new elaborate trap to gain our confidence and get us to reveal ourselves to our would be "saviours" and then we'd be in their hands--figuratively as well as literally. Well, I for one, have only one saviour.

CO-PILOT DAN ERICKSON RECORDING-JAN. 31, 1984-
I knew this giant was the worst when he and his aide Zarken chased Mark and I into a blind alley behind a bank and sucked us up into some type of vacuum machine. Luckily, I was able to get a radio message to Steve---since he didn't know where we were and wouldn't have known we were captured and where we'd be taken. Security Chief Boulgar was a full fledged fanatic, a very dangerous giant, the worst I believe we've encountered. I hated to leave Mark behind on that giant stool but he couldn't make it down--we were in Boulgar's Headquarters and Mark had hurt his shoulder when he hit the metal flange on the vacuum. I had to let the others know where we were. It turns out Steve was coming to check out Security HQ anyway and was just near--by a garbage pail that was bigger than our spaceship. Using a clue I heard from Boulgar, ironically, I knew Senator Obeck was one of the leaders of people who helped people like us, well, not to like us--they apparently already like us--just a bit of humour there. Sorry. Boulgar had taken Mark to a superintendent's office but we called Obeck at 23391--remember that number if you ever read this or find this--you may need his help. Just before Boulgar could give Mark a brainwashing truth serum--a painful experience from his own words--Obeck arrived--but Mark was no longer in Boulgar's pocket--but in a tobacco humidor--suffocating from the fumes. When Obeck, Zarken, and Boulgar took their conversation outside, Steve and I rescued Mark but it took such a long time, we just barely missed the return of Zarken and Boulgar. Their plot: to have every giant, man, woman and child hunting for us with a vengeance. With more than a little luck and a lotta stupidity--we hid in a shoe box Zarken carried. He drove to a warehouse and planted evidence to make it look like we broke in---but we didn't! I figured Zarken also left some traps on the inside just to complete the picture--he made it a little too easy for us to get inside. Having to travel back on foot--the warehouse wasn't as far as we first thought, we found out that Boulgar's plan was far reaching: he wanted to rule not only this planet but Earth as well! After they both left, we climbed up to Boulgar's jacket and Mark told us there was a vial with enough ion explosive in it to knock over the Empire State Building. As it turns out, ten hours later, Zarken blew up a bridge--luckily no one was hurt--which was then blamed on us as attested to by a newsboy who was hawking us as tiny saboteurs who were being hunted in the city. People would now step on us first and ask questions later! As Steve said, "This isn't just going to go away," and we couldn't just follow Mark's idea and just hide out for awhile. Propaganda can do a lot of harm. Boulgar was planning to get a prop squad to plant evidence incriminating us in further acts while he also spread rumours and innuendos conversely telling everyone not to panic which in turn does create panic---Boulgar was a master of persuasion as Steve told Zarken. But Steve was a greater one. Getting himself captured, Steve tricked Zarken into incriminating himself and Boulgar while a tape recorder was on--unknown to the giant. Shades of Watergate! Boulgar was making a speech on TV and radio against us, urging the public to take us dead or alive. He had also discredited Senator Obeck so that the giants' Mr. Secretary of the Council wouldn't support him. He was very clever. But Mark was more clever. He gave us the time we needed to phone Obeck again--our last hope. Mark had previously told us he didn't think Obeck was much help before---but he willingly sacrificed himself to go along with Steve's plan. Mark was caught and we were trapped also--all three of us, however we were able to get a call to Obeck, who despite believing that Steve's other calls "lead to nothing but trouble" told us he would think about it. Steve wasn't going to give me odds that Obeck would come. But he did arrive to help his "little friends." Obeck found the recorder, telling them he will play the tape on the floor of the Senate. We got away while the Senate Guards were on their way to arrest Boulgar. We imagined that for awhile the political and military machines would be off our backs.

ADDENDUM: STEVE BURTON REPORTING--- FEB. 1, 1984-
I just had a terrible nightmare. A nightmare found out was shared by Mark, Dan, and Barry somehow. I find that odd. It concerned Obeck, Zarken, and Boulgar. When Obeck found the tape, Boulgar, in the dream anyhow, ordered Zarken to kill him. Zarken, in the nightmare, shot Obeck dead! I realised we were about to be killed for what we had seen and it all felt so real. Zarken panicked and this gave us the chance to ease our way to the phone cord. Conning Zarken as much as he conned everyone in his life, Boulgar got him to turn his back en route to hiding. Then Boulgar dispassionately raised the gun and fired at his back, killing him.

We slid down just as the police arrived. Boulgar's back up plan went into play: he told the police Zarken blew up the bridge, telling them he was driven to hard, dedicated to stopping little people. He also told them his deputy killed Obeck, then attacked him, but they struggled and the gun went off and Zarken was killed. The police heard the tape and believed him. He wormed his way out of it all and was shrewd, clever and dangerous, as previously reported by Dan above. Boulgar would never let up on us--he'd now be on our backs full time--and with this my nightmare ended and I awoke feeling it was all true somehow.

After we left the room, it was possible that it happened and somehow I may have gotten it in my dream---ESP ? I had to listen to the news but they didn't report Obeck's death but the arrest of Boulgar and Zarken----happily.

Barry tried to explain to me his theory on parallel and alternate worlds, the former being universes closely resembling our own with minor differences, the latter being universes with major differences due to time changes and all that jazz---but I didn't fully understand it I must admit. Something to do with the road not taken and the choices made and the inventions of man changing the future---oh well, I guess a young science fiction fan can understand it. In his mind, Barry felt that this dream showed us a darker, parallel world where Boulgar was still free and alive----and had murdered Zarken after Zarken killed Obeck. None of that happened here in our universe.

DEADLY LODESTONE
SPINDRIFT LOG
FEBRUARY 13TH, 1984
CAPT. STEVE BURTON

We have learned more about the government of the giant country we are presently in. We have also learned more about the driven Inspector Kobick, a giant we have previously encountered. Last time it was the whole Zerpant affair, where Fitzhugh found some pills made by the giant boy, the genius Jodar which made Fitzhugh giant sized. Unfortunately he was almost a dead ringer for this Zerpant guy who badly beat a boy who chased a ball onto his land, a farm house I think it might have been. Anyway, even though Kobick knew we were innocent of the crime, he still wanted to capture us...for other reasons, reasons which we found out in this new encounter with the man...for the government of this country we are on.

If Kobick seemed driven before, he was absolutely obsessed with getting us this time. Quite by accident, we discovered Kobick had made devices that could zero in on our Inella metal--including a surgical pin inside Dan's leg. Anyone from Earth who sees this, beware. The giants have devices that can trace all Inella and I suggest burying all Inella Metal you may have. It may be forgotten but Inella was metal developed ten years ago on Earth (February 1974).

Dan broke his leg in the Olympics and a pin made of inella was used to mend it. He and I (I later remembered reading about this in the newspapers) forgot he had the pin in there and we didn't realize it was made of inella. Until we were almost caught at a giant fish market we planned to raid for food. Fitzhugh who had buried our Inella wanted food in return for this.

Yes we had first buried our inella, all of it, but then needed it as a diversion while Dan was operated on. That pin had to come out of his leg. Which brings me to another problem we had to confront. Operations. I always worried that one of us would need an operation. God forbid any one of us gets some serious diease. I mean we already had the appendix thing with Barry but that worked out...well, it did due to Dr Brule which brings me to Dr. Brule again (see entry from September 26th, 1983). I hit upon the best idea I've ever had: contacting Brule again to get us through the operation on Dan's leg. Problem: Brule was still in solitary confinement in a maximum security state prison..for life...for helping us through Barry's operation. He used a nurse he trusted named Helg to do the operation. He had time to instruct her somehow, a near impossibility here where phones are tapped and loyal citizens tell on one another and report to the authorities the smallest infraction against their Supreme Council. In addition we have spotted a number of automatic surveillance cameras in the forest and surrounding areas. A few were found near the house of Joe and his two giant aides. We're not sure but Joe could have planted them along with his two co-horts but the government might have also planted these.

In any event, Val's losing her broach which was made of inella is what lead us to find out about inella in the first place. Before we knew what Kobick's secret weapon was, I ordered everyone to stay put in camp and for three days we did. But the strain even got to the normally patient Betty and she had a fight with Fitzhugh over her cooking. Mark lead Fitzhugh and Val out of camp, claiming there were no signs of giant activity anywhere unless I wanted to include two squirrels but Mark was pretty sure they weren't working for Kobick. I would have checked their necks for collars with hidden cameras! Anyway Val and the other two were chased by Kobick and Sergeant Karf following the inella on Val's cheap broach (she bought it herself, probably before she became an heiress, on Wiltshire Boulevard in Hollywood and it was a matching set with some ear rings).

Before my hair brain scheme (which worked by the way), Dan wanted to separate himself from us, leave camp, and live in the swamp/bog area where giants would sink in quicksand if they came too close to him. Having had a short term duty in Asia, Dan felt he could survive--well, it did help him learn how to shut up the less violent and vile giant insects in the area. I reluctantly brought him there to the sad goodbyes of the others (especially Barry who offered to come with Chipper and watch over Dan when he slept). One giant spider later, I knew Dan couldn't survive here on his own.

During this, I was impressed by the cooperation of our group. We had become a real team --pulling together to help Dan, perhaps the most liked of our group. I shudder when I realize just how close to getting killed by that tarantula Dan was and he was admittedly afraid of insects. Anyhow, Val had prepared the equipment needed for the operation before I asked for it, and the others were invaluable in spreading the inella all over the city to divert the inella sensor devices. Barry used a slingshot and hid inella under a pigeon box in Jablo Park, Val threw some inella into a garbage truck, and Mark put some inella jewelry on a second story building floor. Betty put a key chain high in a tree. Everyone was ready to pitch in as a team.

Fooling Warden Barmac was tough. He was sly. Which is why I knew we had to call him from Kobick's own office!!!! With the phone call we made to Dr Brule (with me posing as a Dr. Zale) tapped and Barmac listening in, we had to do it that way, pretending to be refered by Kobick. The mean Barmac wanted to stop the procedure on Dan in mid operation so that we were pinned (no triple pun intended!) down long enough for capture by them. Brule knew this and he also knew that Helg, if she didn't seem to be a loyal citizen by betraying us to Kobick, she would have been caught. I didn't trust her at first but we had no choice and if Brule trusted her...then I would let Dan trust her too. It was his choice. He chose correctly. Helg didn't really betray us. She did an excellent job on Dan's leg and in doing so saved all of us from capture by the SID and the Supreme Council.

I must admit to being impressed by Nurse Helg's work too. I didn't really trust her after she reported us to Kobick--but as stated this was just a ruse to throw suspicion off her, and I felt ill at ease leaving Dan in her hands---literally in her hands. However her work was more than adequate and we owe her a great deal for removing the pin from Dan's leg.

In all this time we were spared capture and interrogation by Kobick, the SID, and the Supreme Council, but only by an intricate double plan. They are not to be underestimated and Kobick, I am sure, we will tangle with again. He may be stinging from this momentous loss, proving all the funds the Council feeds to him to get his hands on us (again literally) is wasted but he will be even more determined and obsessed to get us.

As for the Council, the nearest thing I can figure is that they are like an oligarchy on Earth: rule by a small group of people rather than many in a democratic form of government. While I think there may at one time, when we first landed here, a type of dictator, I think that he either stepped down or was assassinated or something. Things eased up a bit and it seemed almost a free country. Yet recently this Council seems to have cracked down on things and people and freedoms have been once more pulled back. I don't like it and I don't like them! However since there are many on the Council, I hold out hope that some day someone on the Council or someone who might have the Council's ears so to speak, will be on our side but for now: trust no giant on that Council until further notice !!!! Still, Brule yet again and Helg for the first time, proved that we can trust some giants!

TARGET: EARTH

APRIL 1, 1984

WHEW! A long day and a tense night. Marks' desire to fix a giant scientist's prototype guidance device caused quite a lot of friction between all of us, especially between Mark and myself. Still, I had to admire Mark's willingness and ability to do so..even if I knew it would turn out the way that it did. Not that that gives me any comfort or joy. Mark, Val, and Fitzhugh were almost cooked in the neutralizer of the device--which was the trouble from the beginning. Dan and Mark earlier in the morning were almost exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. I'm amazed that Dan's ribs were not broken in their attempt to get out using the hatchet on the locked door hatch. I think Mark and Dan were talking about using it as a fulcrum (or was it a lever? Reference books are scarce on Spindrift) based on DeMann's teachings. Fitzhugh's hands were burned and this idea of Mark's and the giant scientist, Franzen, to work together on the prototype drew the ever persistent Inspector Kobick and the SID to us. Right to us to be exact.

Mark and I, up until this incident, had grown tolerant of each other--we were almost friends. But although we had our differences in the past, this was probably our biggest disagreement. I felt like a dictator not allowing myself to go along with his scheme and not allowing Fitz and Val to return to the Spindrift. If I had allowed these things, we'd all probably be captured now, in the hands of the SID. When it comes to group security I believe I've proven myself in my decision making. The few times I've left it open to a vote almost lead to disaster or worse than disaster. As it was for Dan and I, the SID, when Mark asked for us to be "brought in" (a move which angered me to no end), tracked us with Doberman pinchers, chased us into a gopher hole, fired a gun with blanks into the hole at us and nearly asphyxiated us with smoke from a flare--which eventually drew Dan and I out into their large waiting hands. Not the way I want to be brought in on a project.

Valerie, too, surprised me by reverting to her former selfishness especially since she has been a great help of late, especially during the incident with Captain Ashem and Dr. Kraal. But now she revealed that underneath all her recent optimism was a deep desire to go home, no matter what the risks to her own life...or others. I am, for the record, also tired of running, and hiding and living like an insect in this giant grotesque world too. I want to go back home just like the rest of them but I'm not about to put everyone on the chopping block (sometimes literally a giant chopping block) to get home.

Betty amazed me too by seeing right through both Dan and myself. Like Dan, I was not sure that Mark wasn't right and I was also unsure how Dan would react and what he was thinking underneath. When he stayed behind with Mark, which was his own choice, I wasn't sure why or if he had been actually captured as I reported to Betty. Betty had seen the quiet tension between Dan and I and was equally quite in getting us to talk to each other about it. My radio call to her seemed to have left something unsaid between she and I. All I knew was that whenever Mark's plan ran in my head, so did a dozen alarm bells, telling me that it was not going to happen. If we get back to Earth, it'll be in one of our own spacecraft. That's my motto.

Mark was right about one thing: the giants are a lot like us. Some of them can be trusted and some of them can't. Kobick was obsessed. Altha Franzen, the wife of Dr Franzen, was envious of our knowledge and worrisome over us stealing her husband's work, so much so that she was willing to trap Val, Mark and Fitz in the prototype during the dangerous bursts of radiation. And then there was financier Logar (the Defense Dept I believe), sneaky and using us for his own needs and gains, even promising us to the good Inspector when his needs were met by us for the prototype, double crossing both us and a promise made to Franzen. Which brings me to Franzen--the apparently honest driven scientist who I hope survived the explosion of the neutralizer which I set to self destruct just after Franzen set us free from the cage Logar put us in. From the look of it, I doubt he did survive and if he did, would the Supreme Council and/or the Defense Department press gang him into building other spaceships for the giants to go to Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth? I shudder to think what Giants can do if they land on Earth...

SPINDRIFT LOG ENTRY
September 26th, 1984
THE INSIDE RAIL

As Chipper so often reminds us of the things we've left behind on Earth (such as pets and our love for them), Ftizhugh occasinally reminds us of the pleasures and comforts which have long since escaped our memories---such as racetrack betting.

Unfortunately, this memory nearly caused all of us to lose our freedom, if not our lives. Just when I thought all giant eyes would be off us and on the horses...just when I felt the giant racetrack was a whole other world apart from the SID and Kobick, they'd never hunt for us at a racetrack...Chief Rivers and his Security Patrol came along. Although not as clever as the SID, they proved to be as much an annoyance and hindrance to our plans. We were there to gather some horse hair for cables, d possibly for use later to make some kind of forcefield using these cables. Or other stuff Mark needed them for.

The levity of our group, even smack in the middle of "just about to be captrued situations", struck me during our racetrack escapade. I mean Mark and the others were quipping puns left and right even as Rivers' hands were upon us. For one hand, literally was almost upon us as we rushed into a rat hole at the end of a table top. Oh well, I guess it does hepl to keep a sense of humor with us at all times. Even if these times included being attacked by a giant rooster or a chicken, running from Rivers who threatened to crush us like bugs (the rooster actually blocked him from us), and me jumping across a cavernous gap between table and small shelf on the wall--for when Rivers moved the table, the shelf and table gap was created...and the others were already on the shelf. We hid in the rat hole hoping no body was home. After the giants left the rat hole, which didn't go on for miles as Rivers sumised, would be our home, camped up here for the winter if not for a paint stirrer. Using it, we managed to cross that chasm, rooster below threatening us. Previously to this, Val promised never to use fly paper again, as that was how she, Mark and Betty were taped down inside a drawer (and nearly eaten by a giant spider which that sadistic Sergeant removed in time---just before Dan removed him by dropping a giant horse shoe from the beam on the ceiling onto his head). Talk about good luck. Dan just before that, told me about a rabbit's foot that never did him any good. The horseshoe did!

The one thing which struck me about Fitzhugh is his undying love of money. Since we crashed on this planet, his fear of contact with giants has been so great that for him to place himself in such a situation where he was relying totally on a giant (and one that was possibly a drunk at that!) not to give him away, he must have been either 100 percent certain of this giant, named Moley, or else completely oblivious to the dangers involved. Moley was bullied into changing clothes with Chief Rivers, who pretended to be Moley to get us in a barn. Luckily for us, at the time, a giant who was caught trying to drug the horse that Fitzhugh loved (Manniken? I think it's name was), had dropped a giant needle/hypo which had slow down juice in it. This helped us drug Rivers but we were not sure it would be enough to stop him before he called his men down on us!

The one good thing is that we did at least get away with some horse hair for the cables..and our lives... Moley did win however and let loose Fitzhugh's share of the giant money Fitz had won. Moley, of course won by not betting on Fitzhugh's choice! Though I don't know how long it will take poor old Fitz to forgive me for not letting him keep the money! I had about had it with him...I was really about to do something rash to him and he knew it. I was going to...well, thanks to the goat we did get away from Chief Rivers. A goat, which Betty agreed with Val looked a little bit like Fitzhugh or reminded us of him anyway, was being picked on by Rivers. So when he leaned over to call his units, the goat gave him a kick from behind in his behind.

Still, I hope we---and especially Fitzhugh (with his seemingly uncontrollable betters' addiction) never see a racetrack on this, or any other planet ever again!

THE MECHANICAL MAN
October 18th, 1984
Captain Steve Burton reporting

Warning about Professor Altoph Gorn of Polk Institute: well, this is more about the man's work than the man himself, since he is dead. He was killed by his own creation---what Fitzhugh now calls a monster--actually a hydraulic man---a robot which seemed to have computers inside him as well as a system of pulleys and levers attached to the hydraulics. I don't know the specifics of the thing--that was Mark's job--and what a job it was. The power inside the thing could light up a small city...one of the giants' cities. Mark offered to find the out surge of power, akin to our adrenal gland, I was told by him. This out surge of power was causing various malfunctions, such as the killing of a policeman (which we were blamed for outright--just think we broke a giant's neck, sure we did, we did not! I mean how would we do that? Val and Dan overheard a Capt. Ray claim it was the little people who did this and he didn't mean leprechauns). It was this new giant, the giant shook off bullets like they were fleas!

In return for Mark's repairs, Gorn was to give us a ride back to Earth through contacts at the Supreme Council, one in particular, a Councilman named Mek. Mark is truly amazing, give him some tools and he can fix almost anything, Spindrift not withstanding. He could also make things no one would have thought. He made this special telescopic lens device which when pressed could reach the dizzying heights of giant windows (such as the one at Gorn's lab, where I peeked in at the biggest giant I ever saw working out on exercise machinery). Gorn's lab was three blocks due west of the forest where our ship was encamped.

Gorn, however, was only interested in using us and had no intention of keeping his word. I'm not even sure he mentioned us to the Supreme Council. I think he just wanted to get the credit for himself. He menaced Fitz when he had to test Mark's adrenalin theory, by dropping a giant animal, a possum I think it was, into a cage with Fitzhugh. Gorn cared not for our lives and even cared none too much for Mark when the robot accidentally stepped on the cage Mark was in. Other than his valuable scientific knowledge, Mark meant nothing to Gorn. I felt no remorse when Fitz and Val, in a clever ruse made up by the two of them, conned him to distraction while Dan, Mark, and myself sabotaged the robot. To do this we had to climb up into the chest cavity. While there, Mark built a new control unit which we could use to control the robot.

Fitz's ruse included telling Gorn that the leader of the little people was the vicious Betty, the worst of the lot. She was the most ruthless of them all. He also told the giants that Dan was not able to be executed for his many crimes on Earth because no one could catch him. He told Gorn and assistant Zoral that they left Fitz behind because he was not a scientist or a murderer and that they left Val behind because she pleaded for his life. It was good to see Fitzhugh's skills working for us for a change instead of against us. Fitzhugh may have overdone it though: he told Gorn that Betty was responsible for the destruction of a munitions dump near the airport (this was blamed on the Forces for Freedom, who probably did do it to bring about the more democratic aspects of this oligarchy government).

SPECIAL LOG ENTRY: BARRY LOCKRIDGE RECORDING I have looked at Captain Burton's log as I often do. Whether or not he knows how often I do is another story. I have added to it in the past as have the others, when they or Steve feels we can add something important from another perspective or when we encounter something that he had not.

All I know about the mechanical man is that it--no, he---saved Chipper when he fell into one of the quicksand pits. He saved my dog, and although I was afraid of the tallest giant I have ever seen, he had something in him---about him---that was human. Even though Mr Fitzhugh called him a monster, he also admitted he probably didn't know what he was talking about (which amuses me most of the time). This giant, he was gentle with a helpless animal and saved Chipper's life. The robot could not help it if there was something wrong with his programming or his programmers, and I commend the giant robot for saving one of our party. Although many giants have touched me, this one---one not of flesh and blood--has touched me in the greatest way.

Unfortunately, it did pain me that the robot, going berserk, killed Gorn in the process, something I fear the SID and the authorities will blame us for and use as propaganda against us. I did not want Gorn dead, but I rest easier knowing the mechanical man is not being worked on. Or will Gorn's work continue through is assistant Zoral, who did escape?

SPINDRIFT LOG--THE CLONES----MARCH 2, 1985

Co-pilot Dan Erickson recording---
This is Dan Erickson reporting this time...or am I? As I try to gather my feelings while scrounging around the ship for scrap metal, other thoughts, thoughts that are my own yet aren't, crop up. Am I losing my mind? Why did Chipper really stay upset with me? Certainly he wasn't still upset at the explosion that Val copy made fly at Mark but the dog was not upset with Mark and Steve at all. The dog always seemed to like me better--and those others of Valerie and Barry--dare I day it...clones...exact copies...what did Mark call it...exact reproductions like cuttings..copies over and over again. How many? How many were made of me? And are they part of me? Can they be allied with us or must they all be deadly enemies? That Valerie and Barry seemed intent on killing Chipper and then Steve and most likely Mark and myself. Good thing that agitation-fear-stress factor makes the clones vanish. That is a good thing--isn't it? Look at me--wasting valuable time writing in the log---a log that is not really supplying any information to anyone...any one who reads it, that is. I am also wasting paper with this. To anyone who reads this, a certain Dr. Arno and his female assistant Dr. Greta Gault have used Valerie, Barry, myself and Fitzhugh as guinea pigs in an experiment which using our bodies resulted in the "birth" of exact copies---with our memories and knowledge---and what is the most scariest to me...is that they thought they themselves were the originals. I suppose I should have listened to Steve, my buddy--as he calls me, and waited to go into the lab when I heard Fitzhugh on the table. I didn't and got myself captured, cloned, and now confused. The memory was copied as well and on the skin of Val and Barry's clones there were dark spots on their foreheads and the back of their hands. As I told Steve, on my skin, you may not be able to see those spots. Perhaps, I am the clone, or one of many that were made. All the evidence points to that. Perhaps I can't tell which is which. That is the scariest part of it--not being able to tell your friends from their clones is bad enough but man, not being able to tell yourself from your copy, it is just too freaky to think about. Arno and Gault used a wind suction device which dragged us back from the escaping vents and back to the end of the tunnel--where the giants could open a door and grab all of us. Fortunately Mark, Steve and myself got away---but there had been two of myself in that vent. Steve, foolishly on his part, as far as he is concerned considers me his copilot. He should only know....I mean he said he needs my help. He will need help if he trusts so easily this man Dan...I mean me.

Anyway aggression, violence, and strain cause the clones to deteriorate as we saw with the first copies of Barry and Valerie. Somehow I must protect Steve and the others, the real ones, if I can, even if...even if...I am not the real Dan. I won't let the imperfections Arno talked about in the clone...if I am he...I won't let it stop me from protecting them...the real Earth people. If I can. There is an overwhelming tirade at times for me to jump to strange conclusions and somehow....I feel bits of anger and hatred for Steve and the real ones........

ADDENDUM: CAPTAIN STEVE BURTON, THE REAL ONE...I think
I must commend Dan's nature and two of Dan's clones. The first chained himself up, knowing as soon as Chipper barked at him that he was the clone and that eventually he would turn on us without warning. I thought that foolish and felt he was being silly. But when I turned to free him, he attacked me. Then he fell and vanished. It was like watching the friend I had die before me...it was the same with Val and Barry. I actually felt sorry for the clones...their lives were so short....so misguided....and they were so deceived into thinking they were the real ones...at least for a bit...until a murderous rage took them over.

We had stopped the vent wind machine with tiny bits of metal we had. After getting all the real others down from the table, the second Dan clone tried to stop me from going over the side of the tabletop via the ropes to the curtains. The real Dan, in a weird state himself, fought me to stop me from going back to the clone to get him free. I really thought after he jumped me that he was the clone but Chipper, in Mark's arms, made up his mind about which Dan was the real one. The one that was left on the table was the clone and while he wanted me to fight him, I had had enough. He was pointing one of our flare guns at me but when I wouldn't fight him, he let me go, shooting at the controls of the lab. I bade him to come with us, we'd accept him. But he wouldn't. He let me go and ended the experiment...I hope. At least, the explosion seemed to finish the lab, the equipment, and hopefully--and I know this is cruel....Arno and Gault too. I couldn't imagine if they continued this horrible experiment...yes, I could--it would mean more trouble for us telling who was who. In the end, while I looked at our Dan curiously wondering if he was the right one, I knew instinctively a moment later, that he was indeed our Dan. I also believe that Dan's very nature fought against the clones. I was also glad Chipper could tell the difference--but once in the lab, he sure took his time while "great big giant" was waking up.

SPINDRIFT LOG--NIGHTMARE---MARCH 25, 1985
Steve Burton reporting

Another hope to return home dashed. I try not to show my disappointment in it around the others, even Dan, but I'm as upset as Fitzhugh. In any event, there needs to be a Special Warning Entry on the Delta Device which uses some of the elements of this planet--and it uses elements not found on Earth--which are modified and used in the device. This device was given to us by one of the giant scientists from the Science Center--named Andre. Mark Wilson knows more about this device and its installation than I and Andre knows more about the elements it uses than both of us. Somehow it converts the elements to radiation. In any event, it cannot be used as a possible converter to get power to return to Earth or to fix any ship's engines and reactors. Andre was a young, nice man but I would not allow him to see our camp---Mark kept insisting I was using this as some kind of excuse--throwing up roadblocks to his trying to get us back to Earth. But my rule: of no giants stood. Not that it would've mattered--the device cannot run normally in Earth designed ships. The radiation released from the device caused all types of hallucinations to both the giants and ourselves.

First of all--Barry, followed by Valerie, Fitzhugh, Dan, and myself seemed to vanish from the land somehow. Mark also may have--he doesn't recall much about his time away from the rest of us. At times, we were not seen by the giants even though they were looking right at us. Dr. Berger, a patriotic scientist, older than Andre, found Andre's notes and followed him--if Andre had come to the ship---Berger would have seen it. Or would he have? Berger, investigating himself, saw the Spindrift--but to his eyes, it vanished. He still managed to hurt Dan with his cane---unknowingly--he couldn't see Dan either. Valerie later told us she escaped Kobick since none of the giants could see her when she was brought into the office. Val was caught---when the giants--Kobick and Berger---came into the forest and we saw them---and then we didn't! The idea of the giants being invisible to us sends shivers up and down my spine. We're vulnerable as it is without them---and their giant cars--being invisible. A giant could have been reaching down for us and we'd never know it.

Kobick seemed tired this time out. I think he was tired of looking for us. He sure must have better things to do than hunt down a group that he knows deep down are not harmful to the civilians of this planet. He must also have been losing face with his superiors and the Supreme Council. We probably are an embarrassment to him and he'd rather just forget us and our spaceship. Still, nagging at him----is the fact that he is always so damned close to grabbing us each and every time. Warning about the Delta Radiation: not only does it create the above hallucinations but terrible illusions. When I vanished, I seemed to be in another world---stuck in some membrane between here and there---it was a dark world of constant night, bright lights from the city, loud sounds with no visible source....in many ways it was a twisted, sick Salvador Dali-like version of our world. I saw giant train tracks, a traffic island (but still couldn't see the giant cars), giant steps, skyscrapers all around....Berger, Andre, Kobick, and Mark appeared to me to be enemies bent on killing me. Mark forced me off a skyscraper where Dan found the lab we were trying to reach. Or did he? He later told me it was twisted, Earth size version of itself. Dan tried to reach out of the window for me but missed as I flew past--and landed back in the street of the planet to see a shadowy form--a form I figured would be some other terrible sight but was only ----Fitzhugh. A Fitzhugh who thought he was the only living thing on the planet---he thought he was totally alone. It was good to see him, I must admit. Even if he was almost the cause of the destruction of the Spindrift. Just before the radiation bath affected him, Fitz reactivated the machine---and it was about to explode---with a returned Barry inside! As Val warned him, the other men and I ran for the ship to deactivate the device in the nick of time. It is hard to mad at Fitz even when he bragged to Barry that he deactivated the device and saved the day. He brightens our predicament--entertaining us with his strange ways and odd sayings and all. He even apologised to me for exaggerating the story.

Another illusion was the seeming slowing down of time or movement. When Mark was seemingly attacking me, I could only move very slowly. Barry and Valerie related to me that when Chipper and Barry vanished--they were running from a giant lizard--but moving very slow--while the lizard moved fast. Mark, attacking me, seemed also to move very fast. This is similar to some very horrible nightmares I and others may have had--you always seem never to be able to run away---and in slow motion--while your chaser---moves at you at normal or faster speed. With device gone we can't rely on Andre's help anymore as Fitz wished we could. I also want to warn anyone else about fooling in any way with these unknown elements: DON'T. I have asked the others to put their comments about their own personal nightmares here so as to gather information on the effects of this radiation.

By Co-pilot Dan Erickson:
I can only recall flying the ship--a dream I guess but it turned into a real nightmare when it crashed for good. I also seem to recall the quicksand event relived---and this time none of us lived through it. As Steve mentioned, I was in the lab but I can't remember much about that. Only that everyone else seemed to be in some terrible predicament--attacked by insects, run down by cars, animals attacking them....and I was totally helpless to help them....that is my nightmare...not able to do something to save my friends. All I know, like the rest, I was never so happy to see giants...seeing them is better than not being able to see them.

From Stewardess Betty Hamilton:
Some of it was very personal. I do remember I seemed to be getting married. And at another time, I seemed to be having a baby...a baby of..well, a baby that wasn't all Earthling....let's leave it at that shall we. Recalling nightmares aren't my strong point.

By Mark Wilson:
I can't really tell much of it. I think somehow I was in command, in Steve's place, even down to wearing his clothes and he wore mine. In command, I really wasn't equipped to deal with the others in anyway. I have more respect for Steve now--even though he is slightly younger than me, he is really the better choice to lead--but I'd never admit that to his face. As leader, I really messed up---the girls and Barry and Fitz were captured or...or killed....due to my messing up. Something with Marna was in the dream...perhaps I tried to rescue her or maybe I brought her to the ship...I don't know. Marna. I haven't had time to think of her in a long time. There was more but thankfully I've repressed it.

From Valerie: I refuse to discuss any of it.

From Fitzhugh:
It's private. All I will say was that at one point I thought I was the only living thing on the planet of giants. Not even giants were around to talk to. To me, not having anyone around to listen to me is like a living death. The rest, I won't divulge.

From Val: He can't.

Master Barry Lockridge log entry:
I seemed to be attacked by giant insects, all of them lit up like a carnival or a Christmas tree. I also recall Chipper being giant. Kobick was involved somehow and I know when I tell the others--especially Valerie and Betty---that he was involved in their nightmares also. I relived my operation at the hands of Steve and this time also Betty--both intent on stabbing me. I was somehow in different clothes--the clothes I wore when we first crashed here. Then when I awoke, I was back in the right clothes of here and now. It was very personal, as Betty, Valerie, and Mr. Fitzhugh have pointed out. I believe I saw my parents, alive again, on their way to their deaths. This was a twisted version--as they did not die together. My dad a few years before my mom. That was the worst part. It was good to see them but to see them and then have to lose them all over again...that was really sad and depressing but you know, you can come through it...anyone can come through anything if they want to. If you really set your mind on wanting to be happy, no one or nothing can really stop you. After all, I am happy here with my friends.

HOME SWEET HOME
April 15th, 1985
Steve Burton Recording

I guess we are all tired; depressed over the slow realization that we'll be here longer than we expected, especially after the failure of Andre's Delta Device. We were all acting out of sorts: Val, Barry, and Dan were all captured by the patrol Rangers much too easily. In addition, Fitzhugh reverted to his old scheming ways and conned both Dan and Barry---both of whom should have been smart enough to his con-artistry ways by now. Fitz conned them both too easily. Fitz's plan was to get Dan to fix up a space time capsule that Chipper found and get Dan to fly him back to Earth (Fitzhugh himself, not the dog). On the other hand (a giant hand?), Val was very nice to Barry, getting a way to have Barry show us where the time space pod was located without Barry having to betray his implied promise to Mr. Fitzhugh. The way she "got" was Chipper, who didn't make any promises to the fat man: implied or otherwise.

Val is almost like a mother to the boy now, now especially that Betty, almost having a nervous breakdown, is spending some time alone away from the campsite a great deal of the time, and me, like a ...dare I say like a father. Stuck here and with Betty away a lot of the time now, I doubt that I will ever become a father. Mark too was keeping his head about him. He knew Barry knew something but I wouldn't let him badger the boy too much. Mark also guessed Fitzhugh's plan right away: the plan being the pod could only hold two people and the con man making sure he would be one of them. Dan was fooled much too easily and Fitzhugh used a fake promise to Dan: that it would be Barry's birthday in a day after tomorrow. Let him try that on me: I know when Barry's birthday is: it's way off from now. Dan should have known too. Dan also kept the secret from Val, calling her nosey. A quick check on the engine room parts revealed to Mark and myself that what Dan took (replacements for burned out diodes) could only be used on the power plant of a spaceship. And that lunch Val was preparing looked so good too...

We, at least, thought it was a space capsule. However my suspicions about it proved to be true---it did belong to Fielder and Olos--the time traveler murderers from Earth's future (see special warning entry earlier in the logs). Dan repaired it and to escape a ranger, Fitz and I took off in it. We plunged through a meteor swarm and the space time warp back to Earth on some kind of a pre programmed flight. Olos and Fielder must have either left it on the giant planet or in orbit, set to land if they didn't return to it after a certain a length of time. I wonder why Olos and Fielder would have second set their pod to go to Earth circa 1900--because that was where Fitz and I ended up! From almost being literally in the hand of the ranger called Wilson (no relation to Mark but more on that later). With the hand, Wilson's came right up to the window of the ship but I managed to close the view shutters. Fitzhugh was badgering me the whole trip and almost choked to death due to his nervousness and near inability to calm down. We also had a fire on board. Once we landed I noticed several antique things: a horse or hand drawn fire engine.. A cart really. And an old fashioned street lamp. A typical old fashioned New England town. Sure, for 1900.

Luckily, Mark kept his head and gathered some info from the time ship manual--which was written in some type of futuristic English. He told us about an ignition type key marked KK, which could prevent someone from stealing the time space pod.

As it was, the townspeople believed we were devils or liars or both, while the Constable disbelieved we could fly in a ship, let alone having escaped from a land of giants. I myself still find the land an impossibility, yet I know it's true! A witch named Mrs Perkins (well she wasn't a real witch but in our past encounters it's not impossible is it?) lead a mob in fear of us, wanting to burn us at the stake or hang us. Luckily the circuit judge was out of town or they would have killed the "foreigners" right there on the spot.

Fitzhugh seemed to be losing it. He felt there were many advantages to being in 1900. No one knew him and he would know what would happen for the next 75 years or so. Was he losing it? He should have meant the next 83 or 84 years, surely?). I told him maybe that trip did something to his head. Still he was correct: there were some advantages. Using an old trick like the "being sick" trick on the guard to our prison cell in the sheriff's office, we were able to beat up the guard and get out. Short lived because the guard, Winslow, rang the fire bells and called a mob out to burn us out of the Pod.

Mark seemed to be losing it too. While Val told him that she sent Barry out after Dan (something she should NOT have done) and that neither Dan or Barry were back yet and were gone an awfully long time, Mark remained by the console of the radio room. We did need him there but he should have made sure Val didn't try to go rescue or find them on her own...which she did and promptly got herself netted under the weighted nets of Rangers Jack and Wilson.

Still, our Wilson, Mark, came through for us again because, just as they were all about to burn the ship with us in it, he told us about a lever which could freeze everyone outside between one second and the next. When I opened the viewport shutters, the townspeople and the Constable's men were frozen in time. Mark later informed me that 15 minutes after setting the device, we had to take off or Fitz and I would burn up like film caught in a projector. I had to find not only the key which the Constable Homer took from me and put in his pocket, but also Fitzhugh, who seemed none too eager to part with some new stolen money. It seemed he found his way to an old bank and finding everyone stiff in time, he "helped" himself to a load of money while also smoking a cigar! I had to force him to return with me and we blasted off just in time. I can tell you here, I was none too gentle in pushing and prodding him back to the time space pod. I almost wanted to punch him out and carry him! I'm still not sure if Olos and Fielder were all there, for one thing, their pod time machine had some major faults about it: either it wasn't fully perfected yet or it was damaged in some way and needed repairs. Sigh. What ship these days doesn't need fixing?

To save Dan, Val, and Barry, I froze time, moved them from one spot to another, then sent the ship up again--empty. The effect to the rangers was that the trio vanished. I still wonder if there was another way I could have saved them AND the time space ship. I guess I wasn't thinking clearly either. Still, we have each other and we have our freedom. I always hypothesized we'll get back to Earth in the Spindrift, certainly not some time space machine that was used by killers from the far future...

SPINDRIFT LOG
PAY THE PIPER
May 27th, 1985
Captain Steve Burton logging
SPECIAL EXTRA TERRESTRIAL WARNING

We have just encountered an extra terrestrial entity known as the Piper, his actual form unknown to us. As revealed in his conning of Fitzhugh, he is a master of persuasion, double talk, outright lies and conniving contracts, not to mention double bluffs and trickery of words. I mean, to con Fitzhugh, one has to be good but as I think of this, I smile knowing Fitzhugh out conned this alien Piper in the end.

The Piper has visited other solar systems and galaxies, including Earth and possibly Alpha Centaurai. On his visit to our home planet, I believe he was the Pied Piper who rid the town of Hamelin on the river Vassar of a plague of rats. When the council of that Earth town refused to pay him the thousand gold pieces, he used his pipe to lure away the children of the town. This incursion took place in the past, 1673, and was immortalized in a poem by Robert Browning, among other things. This piper claimed to get rid of vermin such as rats, mice, starlings, locust, termites, and...us!!!! As for the children of Hamelin, I believe the Piper to have taken them to another planet or even another dimension. He made mention of such a place to Barry. Of course much of what he said was stretching the truth and outright lies, things that sounded too good to be true...and as Val pointed out...probably weren't. The children of Hamelin were taken to a planet on the edge of the universe with fields, streams, toys, ice cream, and bicycles. He also made allusion to a planet for dogs, at a moment when he thought he would be taking Chipper away from us after winning the dog in a game of shells and find the little people underneath..or in this case the little Earth dog. A planet overrun with dog biscuits and bones. But again, our Val pointed out it was more likely overrun by dog catchers. It touched me that Barry, if given a chance to go to some paradise, would remain here in this hellhole of a giant planet (which is not without some beauty I might say) just because he wants to be with his friends. In a way we are his family that he never really got a chance to grow up with and he the son we all wish we could have if we ever get out of this nightmare of planet. And I know Barry defends me against Fitzhugh's tirades against me...at times blaming me for us being stuck here and remaining here.

The Piper had some strange powers that we could not totally understand. Because he is not strictly from this planet nor from our own Earth, he was able to be both giant size or Earth human size. We never saw his true form and doubt he even has a corporeal existence as both we and the giants do. He, more than once, alluded to the fact that his being our size or giant size was some kind of illusion. Piper had some kind of strange dimensional office within a slightly off skew dimension within a tree...bigger on the inside than the outside. He also could live seemingly forever. He told us he was in his "profession" from beyond recorded time and would arrive at Earth only after stopping at Andromeda, the Crab Nebula, and Alpha Centauri..putting a crimp in Fitzhugh's plans to go with him since the year would be 2743 AD. Thus we found out the Piper could live forever and travel in space and most likely he could travel or manipulate time to some small degree.

In my opinion, the Piper is not totally evil--just amoral. He cannot force anyone to do anything unless it involves a binding contract--legal to the Piper's own code of rules. He only held us because of his contract with the Senator. We were the equivalent of this land's "rats" and Timmy, the Senator's son, was the "child of Hamelin". When the Senator refused to give the Piper the 1000 apiece for us...in money or gold that the giant promised Piper, Piper had power over the boy, using his Pipe to hypnotize or control the giant boy. It may even be Piper's influence which allowed Fitzhugh to con Barry so easily, for Barry, these days is certainly a match for Fitzhugh's line of bull and I doubt Barry would have been fooled so easily by Fitzhugh when the con man wanted to use the boy to guard the house...in order to get Timmy for the Piper!!! Perhaps Fitzhugh was somehow taken over too. He never did anything this callous in the past that I can recall but then again, maybe my memory is just poor.

I also believe the Pipe itself to be the key to much of the Piper's power, and Dan figures that the pipe produces some combination of notes which effects the brain waves. It enabled Piper to hypnotically control us and Timmy but again, only when bound by the contract.

The Piper is extremely devious and tricky, with a compulsive need for acquiring things---especially money and gold. In one way or another, he always collects for his services...and usually it is the collection and paying up that involves something the purchaser did not expect.

All of this makes him a very dangerous alien to encounter and I hope he never returns to his land or to Earth again. Of course, once Piper finds out that Fitzhugh cheated...he made a slight mark on the shell that Barry was hiding under so that he could find which shell the boy was under and thus, winning the game, and Barry but also getting Betty and Chipper, both of whom were already won by the Piper, back. Betty was won when I played the game when Fitzhugh refused. Dan previously lost Chipper. I hope Betty doesn't hold it against me. Chipper certainly didn't hold it against Dan. In any event, if Piper does return, I have Betty's can of pepper to put in his Pipe but on second thought, maybe I'll try to get it right in his mouth this time. Funny, if Piper didn't get that giant white badger to attack the ship, Betty would never have gotten out that pepper and I wouldn't have had it in my pocket to place in his Pipe. In a way Piper still owns Betty, Barry, and Chipper and can claim them from Fitzhugh I know where I'd really like to put it if Piper ever returned to make good his claims against Fitzhugh.

LAND OF THE GIANTS LOG
--THE WHITMAN COLORING BOOK aka THE REUNION
BARRY LOCKRIDGE RECORDING--SEPT. 20-SEPT. 24

I was trying to fake happiness. I was trying to put it out of my mind that my birthday was in seven days--one day for each of us to....I know that was pretty depressing but in truth all seemed normal for once in and around Spindrift. Miss Hamiltion was serving the leftover remains of coffee to Miss Scott, trying to make Miss Scott's own depressed mood go away. Mr. Wilson worked on the ship's stuffing and the Captain was checking out the workings of the walkie talkies. Mr. Fitzhugh and I were on guard duty at the outpost but it was still light outside, with a few hours of daylight left to us.
Then, it all began. Mr. Erickson came running to warn us that a fire had started beyond some huge treetops (yes, those were huge trees I had seen on our first day here--I still cannot believe it--they are so huge!). The fire made raccoons, rabbits, and other giant animals flee it, endangering us as they ran. We tried to dig a hole to halt the fire--imagine tiny us trying to stop a giants' fire. We too had to flee when giant fire fighters arrived in the jungle-forest. While Captain Burton herded the women into the spaceship, I saw huge boots passing the windows of the control room. While Captain covered Miss Scott's usually big mouth, I also spotted movement on the radar and dashed out of the control room. Outside, I saw Mr. Erickson, who insists I call him Dan, and pointed out to him the movement from the radar--a giant dog running alongside the Spindrift. The fire fighters felled huge trees which tumbled dangerously close to the ship and that dog. Dan huddled me inside where we all saw the rainstorm coming up through the shutters in the control area. That made us rejoice: it put the fire out. Equally dangerous to the fire though, were huge lightning bolts. After the storm and the next morning, we awoke to see the rainwater not only put the fire out but filled the ditch the giants dug to halt the fire. We and the Spindrift were stranded on an island surrounded by a full fledged sea. We tried to have a normal cookout around the campfire. Miss Scott went beyond it, outside to be alone for a bit and to powder her nose. She saw a huge snake like mass. She screamed and fainted, thinking it a snake--the one type of creature she hates most of all. When Steve ran to her with smelling sauce to awaken her, he realized the snake was really the tail of the giant dog--who was caught part way under one of the trees. This was one of the trees that was hit by lightning and that fell near the ship.
Having compassion for most animals due to being the master and friend of Chipper, I begged that we help the creature. Mr. Fitzhugh didn't agree, I know he didn't--us risking our lives for some stray. But he kept unusually silent, not wanting to go against my wishes. It is for this, I respect him. The others didn't need much coaxing to get the dog out of the tree he was trapped under. While the others prepared ropes, which Miss Scott almost fell over (gosh--hasn't she ever done work in her life?), I found an abandoned water well which would perfect for us to use to link the rope to the tree and around so we could pull it off the canine. We used it for this. Next we built a wooden raft to get the dog across the water. He cooperated with us wonderfully, sensing we were friends--especially when Mr. Fitzhugh talked to him about that, a bit afraid I guess but wonderfully brave too, to do that. I don't think he likes dogs much--or maybe its since we've been here that he doesn't like them. Chipper has sure warmed up to him though.
In any event, we sailed the dog over the sea on the wooden raft and on the other side, he was reunited with his master--a giant boy who was friendly to us all. When we were about to begin our trip back to the ship, we told him about our predicament. Grateful to us for returning his happy dog, he crossed the water using one of the fallen trees (I guess all things do work together....) and picked up our ship, our campsite materials, even our outpost stuff, and brought them over the water to a safer part of the forest.
It was a happy adventure that we had this time. I try now to think of that but memory of my forgotten birthday--I'm sure the others don't know when it is--come flooding back in. I will soon be eleven and who knows how many more birthdays I'll have here in the land of the giants---but I don't mind that much. It's really the memories of Earth that hurt most--past birthdays including my parents, the last few only my mother. We'll see what happens next I guess. After all, I'm on an adventure now--me and my dog.

SPINDRIFT LOG
DOOMSDAY
OCTOBER 2ND, 1985

CAPTAIN STEVE BURTON REPORTING

The past four hours have been truly hectic but I can now afford myself a breather--and some thoughts and reflections on what just happened. Penned up emotions flood over me as I allow thoughts of Betty to surface. I knew that she and Fitzhugh had been captured but with the entire city in danger and the possibility of a future war, I forced those feelings to the back of my mind, necessity making me cold to the situation Betty and Fitzhugh were in.

We pulled if off though--somehow. I wonder if we will always be so lucky. But I feel it was more than lady luck smiling down on us--no, I feel a higher source of safety is even now watching over us---God if you like. That is really the only explanation for our all having survived for so long and I pray it will continue; we have a purpose for being here though what it is I have no idea. Clearly Earth and this planet have some kind of resonance, a corresponding, maybe through the space time warp. For while there are many differences, this planet has an Earth like time system, flying planes and boats, more than one nation, electric power, and Earth type money and names for their streets. Maybe, just maybe giants have visited Earth in the past via the space time warp too as so many Earthers seem to have come here.

This is not the first time I have force down my thoughts of Betty, of even acting cold towards her. Sometimes I hate to. There seems to be no time; we're always busy either running, hiding, escaping, searching, formulating plans and solving unforseen problems among the giants or other Earth people crashed here, even alien interference from outer space or inner time---there is no time for other stuff. Hell, even Dan acts more sentimental and caring towards Betty than I do. Maybe he and Betty will...no, that won't, can't happen. Dan is a good friend...the best. He knows how I feel about her and would never do anything to endanger that. And Betty---I hope she knows how I feel about her--I guess she does.

A mention on Kobick. I have never seen him so hot headed and menacing than during recent events. Still, at Betty's urging, he did manage to get Fitzhugh's leg fixed up by his own surgeons, whom Betty revealed did an excellent job. Betty, for her part, seems to accept Inspector Kobick. It could be her religious background that makes that so. Forgiveness and all that. But to trust him to let us go? No way. I knew from our contacts, especially when we were duped into helping him catch counterfeiters and he continued to have plans for us and our prolonged captivity. Conversely, Valerie knew the true danger of Kobick's arrival at an abandoned apartment at 15th and Barlow. Kobick's entrance linked us to a conspiracy of titanic proportions: one Dr. North, a female doctor (something Kobick could hardly believe so I guess female doctors are not so common here although I seem to recall seeing some female scientists and Dr Arno's assistant Greta Gault). Trouble is: as bad as Kobick is North was worse. More on that later, for the female lead a group of saboteurs and terrorist bombers, hoping to start a war. As for Kobick, I can only hope that this will be our last contact with Kobick, we just seem to rub him up the wrong way. Or perhaps the Supreme Council is demanding results and proof of our existence so they can exhibit us to a curious populace.

Either way, we saved the city. North and her aide Warkins, who was killed by her for failing to bomb Kobick's office and kill off Betty, Fitzhugh, and Kobick. Thankfully I saw that bomb placed and hurled it out the window. I may not have Dan's reach when it comes to throwing but I was inspired to save Betty and Fitz...and even Kobick. North was the worst. As mentioned before, behind the Midtown Bank, she shot her own man, Warkins in cold blood for failing to kill Betty, Fitz and Kobick. She had bombs planted around the city at various points. She finished off her own electrician, Kamber, a man who worked for 15 years as an electrician and was from Cedersville over 200 miles away. And North then planted a bomb in the mouse hole we were hiding in...which resulted in Fitz's leg getting severely wounded.

Saving the city: what repercussions this will have I currently have no idea. Perhaps Kobick and Grayson will ease up on us knowing of our involvement in saving the city.

In any event, doomsday, has, for now, been averted.

Note: Hopefully, this is the last we will see of Dr North, who's real name is Dr Greer. Just in case anyone else is unfortunate to encounter her, she lived at 190 West 14th Street, Apartment 7. She loved to use animals and pets to do some dirty work and this included a dove and a chimp named Pedro.

Also of note on the drugs in this land: ACRAMYCYCLINE is a drug that is not found on Earth. It can stop infection and is marked for wide use. It seems to cause a quick fever and unconsciousness and a sort of "fake" death. When we used it on Fitzhugh, Betty could not even find a pulse. But he recovered. We found this came into use when fooling Dr North into believing she had been asleep a great longer than she was. Using Val as a fake phone operator, we confirmed a false time and made her believe she would miss her Internationals Flight 104 at 10am. This way she told us where all the bombs were planted...including one in Kobick's own SID basement. Other points included the International Building on the corner of Midline and 9th and The Electric Company at 19th and Chestnut. We no longer needed the map that was hidden in the coin that the shot Kamber dropped. Kamber, by the way was shot by Kobick's men, not us. Yet he still blamed us. I knew I had to hold information over Kobick so he would let me go. And he did. Of course he took the "blame" for saving the city, the liar.

SPINDRIFT LOG
---THE DEADLY DART---OCT. 3, 1985
Steve Burton reporting

SPECIAL LOG ENTRY WARNING: Lt. Inspector Swann of the SID is the worst yet. He is more ruthless than even Boulgar of the Secret Police was. Swann wears clothes of civilians and a funny hat that looks like he was going to go fishing. He also has a hard, cold face, marked by hardship of some kind. That he is disturbed is no secret. Swann likes to use bows and arrows on us but he has also used any number of devices on us to gain information. He has captured Mark in the past but we were able to get him out. Mark told us most of the info: Swann has various sprays which can kill us or change our personalities, he uses various animals and venomous insects some of which are illegal in this part of the planet, he hung Mark upside down on elastic stretch bands from the ceiling--stretching him down and threatening to bounce him into the ceiling, he used piranhas in a tank, a deadly traction belt of knives and other tools such as hammers which would bang down at us as we were taped onto the conveyor belt and driven past it, he also had us on toy trains and toy racing cars, put us in a cage filled with birds, we spotted a maze of animals and insects....He is a giant to be avoided.....

SPINDRIFT LOG
---OCTOBER 4, 1985--
I've just had another odd dream. It concerned the parallel world-universe that Barry is always talking about where another group of our counterparts crashed landed in some kind of ship called 703. But the most major difference in that universe is Inspector Kobick doesn't exist or is a minor policeman or a crooked politician who was caught and jailed--what Kobick is in that universe didn't matter to those little people---since Kobick was never involved with them in any way at all.

Security Chief Boulgar was their Kobick, sort of speaking. It was he who constantly chased them. It was he who blamed and continued to blame Fitzhugh for the injuring of a young boy who was really hurt by Zerphant. It was Boulgar who killed Nurse Helg, realising the truth that she operated on Dan, and he also had Dr. Brule executed, as if life imprisonment was not enough. He also had the zoo keeper custodian executed as a helper of little people. He allowed Franzig to use us in an experimental rocket project whose target was Earth---because he still had plans to somehow get his military there and go himself to use Earth, plunder and rule it for his own needs and wealth. He loved power. He also blamed us for the insanity of Zarken which lead to the death of Obeck.

Another plan of his backfired: he was in league with the counterfeiters whom he made Mark and I track in return for freeing Betty whom he had in his forcefield. His plan: to have the counterfeiters capture us, then he would move in and double cross the counterfeiters, capturing everyone. Boulgar didn't count on our radio which revealed his true plan to the counterfeiters and they in turn helped us get Betty and the captured Dan, Val, and Fitzhugh out. While we stayed one step ahead of him--just--he was sharper than Kobick. When I was effected by the mushrooms, he didn't care if I killed the others and gave him their bodies---for this is what he ordered. Boulgar also knew that the Delta Device was effecting all of us and tried to use it as a way to capture all of us. He didn't think he would be effected though. He was. He had poor Andre, who had helped us, put in jail when Andre wouldn't reveal our secrets, mostly where our spaceship was. He conspired with Carl to have Ben killed by a stray car at night. When he found out Carl knew very little about the little people---he realised Carl had double crossed him--and promptly had one of his goons murder Carl. While Kobick would stoop to get us, he wouldn't have stooped to this level to get us. My last meeting with Kobick was somewhat more calm than my last meeting with Boulgar, who, despite not getting the real name and address of Dr. North-Greer, killed me in his hand! Lucky this was just a dream----for me. He had been in league with Dr. North the entire time and his plan to disarm the bombs was only to capture us when we were inadvertently at the scene of Kamber's death. So that was how that Steve Burton died. I shudder to think if Boulgar was ever freed what would happen to me. Zarken was executed some time ago but Boulgar's stay of execution persisted. He remained in jail with pressure groups of his calling for is release--after all, he didn't do anything. If he ever came out, would he hunt me down for revenge? I could give you odds on that one.

LAND OF THE GIANTS
--LOG ENTRY--WILD JOURNEY-OCT. 14, 1985
CAPT. STEVE BURTON RECORDING

I guess I had better write down what facts I could remember while I can remember them at all. Dan just relayed information to me about a dream he had---a dream we both had. While this isn't the first time this has happened to us here--perhaps an effect of the being on a strange planet---this time it was more jarring. The reason: we had active involvement in the time change or time rift or whatever you want to call it.

Here's the "facts" as I recall them: As usual the SID was on our backs when suddenly a man who looked like Mark from afar, came running up to us in an alley. He used some device to help us get away---to teleport away using some kind of smoke screen bursts. This man was our size and his device was an STM--short for Space Time Manipulator. It could also show us, using a rock as a backdrop, London and New York and probably anywhere else Thorg, this odd man, wanted us to see. He and his lovely brunette aide, Byrna, were here testing the IQ of the locals--the Giants.

Thorg and she seemed interested in us as study specimen. Dan and I had no idea who these two strangers were but they certainly weren't from our time and space--maybe not even from Earth and definitely not from Earth in 1985. I suspected them as being more time travellers from our future as Fieldar and Owells were. Only these two were not dressed in silver suits. Perhaps these two were not from Earth at all but from another planet. Either way, they were definitely humanoid looking and were similar to our species---or they were made to look that way. Perhaps they were from another planet some time in the far future or in the far past, we have no way of knowing. Also some of the things they said to each other and to us made me think a higher power, a not too kind ruler or rulers of some kind, had jurisdiction over them, for later on, they feared what would happen to them if they did not straighten out a time mess they caused. Thorg asked us what the most memorable experience we ever had was and that had to be the crash that landed us here, in the land of the giants. I gave him the coordinates of LA International Airport--how ingrained in my memory those are: Lat 34 degrees, three minutes 15 seconds---Longitude 118 degrees, 14 minutes, 28 seconds. Thorg wouldn't let us see the STM so we wouldn't let him come back to our camp, even though and his "friend" followed us. In the event of a giant security dog taking Thorg up into its maw, I acquired the use of his STM. Byrna used her STM to get Thorg out of the mouth of the dog, scaring the giant SID man who was with the dog. Dan and I escaped using Thorg's STM. We went back to where the STM was set for: to LA Airport, September 25, 1983. Back to before the Spindrift took off. But I guess we changed time somehow, I could have sworn the Spindrift took off on this ill fated flight on June 12th, 1983. It is as if someone rewrote the script of our lives. Anyhow, we tried all we could, in vain, I'm afraid, to stop the flight from taking off.

First, we tried formally signing a 10-6 form--a refusal to obey orders--to not take out the flight. There was a flu epidemic going around and many other pilots to call in. Miss Collier (who I thought before the time change was a man--or perhaps we worked for her husband--(?)), the woman in charge of us, would have to call all of Flight 6-12's passengers---which originally was to be 45 passengers--to cancel. After Thorg used the STM to shrink us down to tiny size (us being little people on our own planet now) we decided as a team to stay that way so the others wouldn't land on the planet of the giants. We also tried to outrun the two aliens or whomever they were. We did but the two planned to get another two pilots to take out the flight---which changed things in that we couldn't just hide out. We revealed ourselves to the two after a few merry chases and fights in and around the airport, notably destroying Collier's office window. Doing this, the pill Thorg gave us made us grow back to our regular size right in the VIP room. Thorg had set the STM to freeze time, freezing those that were in the room that were of this time. We, Dan and me, couldn't be time frozen since we didn't belong in this time at all. I'm not sure if we reinhabited our bodies from 1983 or if we changed places or if there were two Dans and two of me walking around. It's all so confusing. But Thorg's pill did more to us than we thought: it would make us forget so that our minds would be back on the day in 1983 that we took the flight out. I wrote a note on the 10-6 receipt form to help me remember. The passengers were to be contacted and the pilots from the Calcutta run would take our flight out using the spaceship Shamrock. Our next plan was to warn the passengers that were contacted: Mr. Alexander Fitzhugh, who arrived in full Navy regalia suitcase of money and all; Mark Wilson, business suited and wearing a tie and threatening to buy up the airport to fire Betty, and acting superior; and the then more unlikeable Valerie Ames Scott--who seemed too snobby to listen to us but she did tell me she prefers to be called Valerie. Great, that and an old shoestring could get us a rope to climb down a giant's table. She also told me that no body tells her what she and cannot do. Mark commented that if we knew him at all we wouldn't have tried to get him to not take the flight out. He had a point. Do we know him even now? Really know him. I also wonder if Mark, Val and Fitzhugh, if we ever did get back to Earth, if they would ever return to their former ways---arrogant, bossy, snobby, shifty, and sneaky, pushing, conning, conceited. This plan wouldn't have worked at all: Byrna came back and told us Thorg told her that if any one of the passengers, the dog included, were not on the ship, it would crash again anyway--but this time with no survivors! Time changing sure is a dangerous job. Our next plan: to put copper in the fuel oil--when the ground crew spot that they would cancel all the flights--we couldn't find the Spindrift so this would stop it and all the ships from taking off. So we thought. When Collier found out about this she then switched the flight to the much smaller Spindrift flight---which was at Hanger C, the repair hanger. Of the 45 only four passengers would go---and the dog Chipper (who ate a sandwich Fitz gave him in order for the con man to retrieve some of his money the dog mouthed---Fitz once told me about this when we were both sharing a moment about complaining about Chipper's antics--a 5000 dollar sandwich). All the rest were either sick from the flu or were contacted about the flight being cancelled. When this occurred, we moved to go inside Spindrift, ready to sever the fuel induction line. Just as we were about to, we forgot and my note didn't help. I couldn't recall why I wrote it. Thus, we took the ship out, making Collier very happy: the Calcutta pilots were delayed somewhere by rocket failure. But cheery Dan and I took the ship up and out---and into the space-time warp, no choice there, it sucked us in as it did the first time, but wait, wasn't this the first time? In any event, this morning was the morning we were supposed to have encountered Thorg and Bryna in the first place but I knew they would never show. The whole thing would never happen. We would never go back and change things---they really did change time--at least they changed the present--while we were trying to change the past. We failed in a big way and they succeeded in a small way. They didn't want to kill us, they just couldn't allow us to change time. They said it would cause untold damage and chaos to the universe. They weren't allowed to kill us and they couldn't change the past and allow us to either which is why they wanted us to take the flight just as it was in the first place.

Back to the present. So here we are again, surrounded by the vast forests of a park and picnic grounds, living on the edge day by day, night by night. In a world of giants. Forever trapped here, our fate to live out our lives, the seven of us with just us for company. And 70 foot men and women, 50 foot dogs, and 12 foot insects. One thing, I can say, it'll never get boring.

OCTOBER 30, 1985
----UPDATE:
Inspector Swann is dead. So too, is Carlos, a carnival operator who once held us captive---and we escaped from him in a balloon. He is dead. And the one suspect the giants have is Mark Wilson. Mark has disappeared, angry at Fitzhugh having blamed him for the murders (which lead to me having to fight Mark to protect him from a physically abusive Mark). He hasn't given us any explanation as to what is going on and if he did do it. I can't believe he has..if he has--he's gone out of his mind (as he so often blames Valerie of doing--and oddly enough it is Valerie who is his most steadfast defender--the two of them have grown very close recently--I wonder how close). Mark has taken with him a box of explosives and a flare gun. The gun was found at the scene of another incident--the attack on Zoral, the assistant of Dr. Gorn, the man who made the giant robot mechanical man. Apparently Zoral saw someone there before the lab was blown up. He named Mark to the SID and as the killer of the Doctor (but it was the uncontrolled robot that killed the Professor), this time personified by Lt. Grayson, his Sergeant Barker, and Dr. Jelko (a kindly type of guy--but I always had a fondness for doctors here ever since Brule operated on Barry and set up Dan's operation too). The incriminating evidence continued to mount up against Mark--his heel mark was found at the scene of Swann's murder--and Mark did hate him. He also was not fond of Carlos since Carlos once played horse shoes with Mark tied to the stake. I have spent hours helping the others pack up camp: our plan: to move to an abandoned storm drain north of here. We have thought of moving camp before but this time we have to. A rebel rouser named Bertha Frye of all things wants to fry us in the media. She is a TV and radio news woman who hates us and believes we are murderers here to invade her planet and kill anyone who gets in our way. I've just come from an unplanned meeting with her and Grayson from which Dan and I just escaped--just in time to witness the murder of Zoral--killed the same way as the others--with a tiny blow dart fired at his ankle--a dart laced with distilled curare. Curare can be used for medicinal purposes, as Betty has explained but distilled it become deadly. The blow gun was a tube Mark fashioned to hold his fishing rods together. Now we plan to face an uncertain future as the giants may all turn against us--a mob may be raised to burn us out of the park as Fitzhugh as eloquently put it. He also insists on blaming Mark. After we get to the new spot, I may go find out more if I can, at SID HQ.

It is later that night--actually it is now October 31, 1985. Mark is cleared. It seems Swann shot him on an arrow and he landed in soft sand--losing his blow tube and rods. This gave the murderer--the Sergeant Barker by the way--the opportunity to kill Swann and the others using Mark. His plan: to kill all the top SID men and get to the top. Kobick had been sent on Special Assignment--away from where we were---obviously (for a number of reasons--to give him a break from losing against us I guess and also so as not to botch up anyone else's investigations--personally I'd take Kobick over Swann any day--but that's no longer a choice. Barker killed the others-Carlos and Zoral--as patsies to throw the suspicion on Mark. It almost worked. He almost killed Grayson--who I like despite myself--I saved his life and he returned the favour by letting us go and getting Miss Frye off our backs. Barker got the idea from her and this gave Grayson the upper hand. Previously, using her scare tactics and propaganda, not to mention Barker's killings, Frye was going to get the military to clean us up---and this was authorised by the Supreme Council: flame throwers, tanks, bombs, and guns would have been used. This could have wiped us all out. Oh well, all well it ends well. Mark is free and so are we--I wouldn't have left Mark there no matter what happened. Dan knew he wasn't guilty and I wish I could have believed it 100 percent. I guess in a way I did--well at least 98 percent.

SPINDRIFT LOG ENTRY
---DEADLY DART--NOV. 1, 1985--
ADDITION:

Mark Wilson reporting, eh, make that spouting. This silly idea, that I write in this book, this dopey journal has been goaded onto me by Steve and Valerie, and then Betty and Dan. They say it will make me feel better. It isn't so much that Fitzhugh thought I was the killer and put them all in jeopardy...Fitzhugh just makes me so damned mad sometimes.... I always had trouble controlling my temper and who knows what Steve thought. I do know he wasn't going to leave me and his insistence not to leave, saved me and found out the real killer. Well, if I could guess, Dan didn't think I was guilty but he had other things on his mind--like protecting the girls and Barry. And moving our base camp as we've discussed so many times in the past. We are reluctant to leave this wreck of a ship though. A wreck I am supposed to fix to take us back to Earth through a space time warp I am supposed to locate in the sky...or space. Yeah, right. Steve, if it were my say, would probably have been somewhere in between Dan and Fitzhugh in thought. I would have liked to see him like that: for once not knowing what to think. Is he guilty or isn't he? Steve is always so damned opinionated about it all...about everything. But he wasn't about this. So what did I expect--everyone to think I am not capable of murdering Swann. I wouldn't want that much credit. I am not sure I can kill someone. Maybe. Of any of the others, including Fitzhugh, I would probably be the only one, who would be the most likely to kill. I can see their point. Of course Val was most likely on my defence but this time, she was ineffective. From what I've heard, Betty was quite vocal against Fitzhugh's accusations. And it was thanks to her continued efforts trying to get me on and off all night that made Steve and the others begin their search for me. That she kept trying to get me, told me that she didn't think I was guilty. Betty was correct when she later told me to tell them the whole truth. But I didn't like the sound of the interrogate...eh...the questions from the others. I never could communicate with groups quite well---well, at least groups not under business circumstances. I am a loner or rather was two years ago when we crashed here. I don't get my feelings out enough to those I don't have to. And I don't like having to defend myself to people I thought were my friends, not just my companions--who, I might add, need me a great deal to get back to Earth. No, that's not fair. They do care about me, not just my know how. At least the girls, Dan, and Steve do (though at times, I'm not sure Steve does or does he just consider me part of the gang or just the ticket back to Earth?). No matter what Steve's thoughts on me--I shudder to think that due to searching for me, he, Betty and Barry were almost killed in yet another one of that slime ball (I don't mind speaking ill of the dead especially when they are ill and you can't get any more ill than Swann) Swann's traps. This one was some kind of electromagnetic trap set into a cave, triggered to hold them.

I hate to admit this but Fitzhugh's arguments had some logic behind them this time--I just wish he had stuck up for me more--as I once did when Gorn asked what Fitzhugh did. I told him he fights for survival like the rest of us. At least at this point in our being here, that statement is very true. Despite it all, I like Fitzhugh. Even with his hogwash about the Roman nobleman Cicero. Well, with some friends you don't need enemies. But Fitz was right there on the front line with Steve and Dan trying to prove my innocence--no matter what he said. He was there so he must have thought I was innocent despite what that big mouth of his said. So I had Dan, Betty, and Val completely on my side with the girls quite vocal about it. And not so little anymore Barry. His mention of me in the log while Steve, Fitz, and Dan searched the SID HQ told me what he thought. "He couldn't have done it. I know he didn't. Besides, even if he did, I like him and will stand by him. And I know the others will too." Thanks kid and I'm sorry about the sprained ankle. Too tired to write more but....they were right. I do feel better. Thanks...friends.

THE MARIONETTES

December 23rd, 1985

We have come to the pleasant end of a long and harrowing night. Somehow I felt confident that this night would work out all right. Somehow. I don't know why--perhaps the joviality of a traveling carnival made me feel that way. It certainly affected Betty and Fitzhugh because they posed as dancing, signing marionettes for a puppeteer named Goalby. They had to be admired; they were, to all intents and purposes, putting their lives on the line, exposing themselves to help a friend in trouble. I guess their motives at least were similar to my own, only acted out in a very different way! For the record, they were not too bad as singers...but their dancing...well Betty was a great dancer. As for Fitzhugh...the less I write about that the better. Although I doubt they would appreciate my saying so, they wouldn't really make it in Hollywood but perhaps Broadway? It was most unlike Betty to disobey my orders and not return to camp and I suspected she was urged by Fitzhugh to do this however later she told me that it was she, not Fitzhugh, who came up with the idea and she who connived Fitzhugh into singing and dancing for Goalby, who could not perform his puppet act without the use of his hands.

Goalby saved Valerie from an escaped gorilla that captured her earlier in the night. I must tell you there have been times since crash-landing here that I have felt helpless but never as much as when I saw one of my passengers, well Val at this point was way past being just one of my passengers and charges, she was indeed my friend, but when I saw her in the grasp of that giant leviathan, the giant gorilla, I couldn't have felt more helpless. Yes, we did do some things to get her away but we needed help. Goalby's help. A nice giant, thank goodness. He caught Val from a incredibly dangerous fall from the gorilla's hand...I didn't think the giant furry ape meant to drop her, he was just afraid when Goalby blew the whistle for the trainer of the ape to come. But Val dropped a huge drop. That alone could have killed her. Lucky for us she, like most of the rest of us (Fitzhugh are you reading this?) were. The whole image of the giant ape capturing and falling for Val reminded me of the old black and white monster movie classic KING KONG from 1933! Here it was live and real and in color!!!!

No sooner had the giant, Goalby, rescued Valerie from the gorilla, then he had to also pull Betty free from a bear trap and broke his hands. Thus, Betty and Fitz became his stand ins. I hate animal traps, always have, even on Earth. They just seem cruel, especially the type that nearly snapped Betty in half. Those ankle breakers. I think they should be banned if they aren't already on Earth. I'd also settle for them being banned here...it would save a number of animals and be a lot less headaches for a band of seven humans as well.

While we were scouring the carnival for explosives, Val was again captured by Bobo---the name of the gorilla. He just reached out and grabbed her as she and Dan were moving past his cage. Good thing he had a thing for Valerie...he wouldn't have hurt her it seemed. If he had gotten Dan instead...and he almost did a few times as Dan tried to find out where Val was in his giant gorilla cage. I don't want to think about it if Dan was in the gorilla's palm. This time Val was saved by the unscrupulous Brady, owner of the carnival, who then realized Goalby's secret and he had the knife thrower Carlos toss a knife to capture Dan. With such precision, the thrower was able to spear Dan's jacket but not Dan himself! Not only was Carlos mean but Brady, he was the worst. He would have thought nothing of putting a pencil right through Valerie in order to keep Fitzhugh and Betty performing for him for his money making scheme. He was also incredibly mean to Goalby and Lisa as well as even being mean and chasing a little girl. Well she was not too little by Earth standards but she was young. You get the idea.

Goalby and Lisa were nice people and had some talent. They deserved a better boss than Brady. In the end, I bargained for my people's lives with Goalby and Lisa, through I was not really sure I could deliver my end of the bargain--to give them a really good act but with help from Fitzhugh we put together hand controls and with help from Mark their were mini tape recorders that go inside his new puppets--recordings of Betty and Fitzhugh singing. Unfortunately our plan required our using the explosives (which is why were in this mess to begin with--trying to acquire these) to free Bobo, who earlier had gotten loose on his own. Setting him free was a risky venture but it provided the needed decoy for everyone so that Lisa and Goalby could free the others. I also had to toss explosives at Carlos who was directed by Brady to throw a knife or two at Goalby. One pinned Goalby and the other...if I hadn't stopped Carlos with the blast, who knows. Carlos, I hoped wasn't hurt too bad but he had it coming. As for Brady, the gorilla went after him and the last we saw he was running...out of a giant tent. I normally wouldn't advocate violence but...there seemed no other way out. Hopefully the gorilla wore himself out chasing Brady and didn't kill him. Then again, hopefully Brady was taken by the authorities for attempting murder.

This rather bizarre episode has shown the fondness Fitzhugh has for Betty. For him to risk his life in this way to help her repay the giant's kindness was truly amazing. I don't believe it was just bravado or his incredible desire to be the center of attention. No, our con man is mellowing and he has shown himself a valuable asset to this group many times. Though, of course, this fact does get overlooked when he is being cantankerous and stubborn. Good old Fitz, we can always rely on him for shaking up our group in one way or another! Usually in a bad way, however, he's changed to the point of never being a negative to our gang or a liability.

Despite our success in escaping, I now feel a change in the air. An unease makes me feel we may again have to move to a new part of this giant, unpredictable planet. It never will stop surprising me, this land so like ours, yet so different. Yes, change is coming.

What this change holds for our tiny band of seven very different people, shaggy dog, and a weathered spaceship, is hard to tell. But we face the future with realistic optimism and together we will be better for it. If we never get back to Earth, so be it, we will have as good a life here as we can. But we will continue to push to try to get home. If we do, we do. If we don't, we don't. I feel that just by being together and having survived this long in such a strange, new world, we have that to be thankful for. We have made valuable allies, seen some beautiful sights that human eyes have never seen before and probably never will again, and lived through horrible events that would drive isolated men insane. Impossible events, impossible escapes. It's the story of our lives and we will enjoy it, whether reaching our goal to get back to Earth or not, sometimes it's the quest or the mission rather than the goal itself. Still, it would be nice to get back sooner or later...

SPINDRIFT LOG
--unmade script THE SLAVE MAKERS--JAN. 1, 1986

SPECIAL WARNING TO ALL TRAVELLERS: Do not eat any small cakes or candies you may find or which may be given to you by any giants unless you have thoroughly tested them. They may make you an enemy of your best friends and companions. ANOTHER WARNING: this giant land is not the only planet where a race of giants exists. We have just come from an encounter with a gigantic spaceship, a craft of unbelievable size and power. It was from another planet, not Earth and not here. We know from our encounters with Thorg and Bryna that there is life somewhere else in our galaxy (but time travellers Thorg and Bryna may have been from some future time on Earth--we're not sure). In any event, this encounter with the giant spaceship and two giant aliens from outer space proves that there is another planet with life just like our own and the giants--humans but giant ones. We learned very little about them. The male was called Torg and the female was Mora. They had the machinery to make their ship invisible. Their ship also used a sonic feeler to find a suitable landing site. It also had a forcefield around it. One which knocked me out for a bit. The aliens used zygo elements three and seven, one and four, putting them in small cakes and candies that they passed out to men at Bonnie's Boutiques. The men, pals, then fought each other and collapsed and died. The aliens also had a Commander of some Space Fleet awaiting the results of the tests of the zygo elements on the inhabitants of the planet until they could land and take it over, using the inhabitants as slaves. Torg could cause explosions at SID HQ from his spaceship and he used an immbolizer on two SID men, then made them invisible so that SID would not find them in the forest. Mora used a device to disguise herself as one of the giants from the planet we were on. I overheard Torg say that he thought the metabolism of the giants was the same as our own. While the aliens grabbed everyone else, Val and I went to the residing Inspector Bidor--whom we've had some amiable meetings with before---to enlist his help. At first he took some convincing but by the time he believed our story, we had escaped him and found a way inside the spaceship while the forcefield was off--under it through a gopher hole. I used the thermal gun to get in and sabotage a few of their wiring. Val and I overheard that the Fleet had to land in one hour or leave to go back to their planet (the name of which I never learned). The aliens wanted to find at what point subservience occurs just short of death in us and the giants--and then stabilize the elements at that point. They used the food on the others. When Val and I performed a rescue, we found Betty, Mark, and Barry having a war with Dan and Fitzhugh. They wanted to kill each other! The alien giants put them all in a model set of a street between draped off areas: there were tables, chairs, seats, columns, arches, potted plants, bridges, and giant items. Torg faked that he arrived to free us and take us back to Earth. We had to take them all one by one, make them stop eating those cakes, which the giants were perfecting all along--making them less deadly but still dangerous since death would still the end result only not as soon as the two men giants outside. In the long run, Torg meant to kill all of us anyhow. We won over Dan and Fitzhugh first (Fitzhugh calling Barry a traitor). They came out of withdrawal quicker than I had imagined. Val subdued Barry and I took Betty. As usual, Mark was a real problem. It took all of us to trick him and get him under our control. Dan took him out in the long run. We also managed to get a hold of Torg's invisible gun and make us all invisible for our getaway. I sabotaged the ship somewhat to allow us to escape. I also called the Commander and made believe I was Torg, telling him some baloney about the giants' super weapon. He destroyed the spaceship once it was in flight. This time, time was on our side, time and luck. We were very lucky to have escaped with our lives. Giants are bad enough--but giants that are intellectually and technologically advanced---are almost impossible to fight. Invisible, Fitzhugh was enjoying being brave and speaking up to Inspector Bidor, until the effect wore off. As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now we have giants that could land from space on top of our heads. We will now have to keep watching the skies.

On a brighter note we have come to the beginning of our third year on this planet, proving we can survive longer. We are all still together and happy with each other. We have grown into that part of the relationship thing. We function more as a team than I would have thought we could. Even Mark, Val, and Fitzhugh. And by now, they listen to me and the others more often than they would have two years ago. They don't start fights and trouble as much. And they are valued members of the team. I wouldn't want anything to separate us. But soon, something may. For instance, I keep seeing how Val and Mark are acting around each other and I realize they may want to get married--a silly notion here, I know but they might approach me on it one day. What would I say? How could I react? I could of course perform those duties. Then, there might be a honeymoon....hmmmmmm That would bring along with it a lot of other problems...and those we don't need...it is the reason I haven't even come close to acting that way around Betty, nor her with me. Maybe she and Dan...no, I can't think that. Dan knows how I feel around Betty. Of course I couldn't turn Val and Mark down---they probably wouldn't let me. It is within my jurisdiction to marry them---I never thought I'd ever put that power granted me to use but then, cocky and arrogant a bit, I never thought my crew, passengers and I would be stranded anywhere. I mean space flights were so safe these days. Sure they were. By the end of this year, Barry will be 14. I can hardly believe that. But it is true. He's starting to grow fast and soon, I imagine he will be as tall as myself and Dan and Mark. Son to all, father to none. I hope that won't be his fate. And what if Val and Mark want children...I don't dare think of the responsibility to me...and them. I imagine if we are still here and the ship can fly to somewhere isolated...we would try to set up a community. On a mountainside maybe or near a series of caves. Or in some secluded jungle somewhere. Fitzhugh is showing his age these days. I wonder how long he will last. Will it be long enough to see Earth again? Or will it be long enough for us to start our own viable Earth community on this world, fighting for our lives all the time, every moment. I imagine, if Val and Mark do marry, I will eventually marry Betty--if we are still here. I suppose too it might be time to change our swan song: maybe a return to Earth will be possible but we should also plan for our being here a longer term than we once thought. A community would not be a bad thing. If survival were all it took....what kind of life can we and our children have here? Will others from Earth come? What about giants? We know some of them are friendly to us and some of them have the ability to shrink to our size. Would they help us? Would they join our "town"? There are growing rumors that the SID want to discredit Kobick entirely, making the civilians believe the little people were all a hoax to begin with. I'd like to know how they plan on going about that one. I've also heard that Kobick may go on trial. For what, I have no idea. I hope he is not found guilty. I rather seem to like the old guy now--he's hardly a threat anymore, more like an old acquaintance. He, Grayson, Bidor, and Turner realize on some level that we have helped them on a number of occasions and are not threats to them or their planet. Perhaps they will work with us on cases. Whatever the future holds, I look forward to it with anticipation, eagerness, excitement, hope, faith and bravery. I am with the seven that I swore to protect, dog and all. And they with me. They seem to think that it is I that keep them going. But they have it all wrong, it is they that keep me going. Until next time......this is...Captain Steve Burton....signing off...