Land of the Giants: A Love Story
By JR Thomas
Forward
A number of people have given me inspiration and encouragement in the writing of this most unusual fanfic/science fiction love story, and I felt I just had to take a moment to acknowledge a few of them. First of all I am indebted to the late Irwin Allen for creating Land of the Giants. The show’s special effects, created long before the advent of CGI, were great for the day, unprecedented on television, and still hold up very well after all these years. Additionally, I believe that of all Irwin Allen’s science fiction shows, the LOTG cast was by far the strongest and most memorable. They really worked well together, and indeed, as the show went on the Spindrift crew started exhibiting the same sort of unashamed love for each other that had worked so well in the original Star Trek series. I also really liked the show’s sense of humor and appreciated how the cast and production team didn’t take themselves too, too seriously.
A big thank you to
I would also like
to acknowledge the kind comments and encouragement offered by LOTG fans
Finally, a very
special thank you to
I would also mention that, among other things, this story is meant as something of a tribute to all you lovely and classy mature women out there. The way I see it, far too many romance stories and films (whether on Earth or in the Land of the Giants ;o) feature young twenty-something girls paired with much older guys (can you say The Da Vinci Code? ;o), and I wanted to be different.
Of course I welcome any feedback on this story. Please send any comments you may have to Louise and she will forward them to me. Anyway, I hope you have as much fun reading this story as I did writing it.
Prologue: A Modern
Brobdingnag
Captain Steve Burton and Mark Wilson quickly followed along the base of the wall until finding what they were looking for. It was now well past daybreak, and the light coming through the window above exposed the ventilation shaft opening directly in front of them. As the two men walked up to the entrance they presently heard the unmistakable sound of giant footsteps, barely perceptible at first, but growing louder by the second.
“thump, thump, thump, Thump, Thump, Thump, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!”
Captain Burton peered up in the direction of the footsteps then back at Mark. “Kobick!” he said.
“Who else?” Mark replied. The two Earthmen had given him the slip earlier, but the persistent inspector had evidently picked up their trail.
“Come on Mark,” Steve said excitedly. “Let’s hurry up and get this cover off.”
“I’m with you all the way Steve.”
They presently found the foot-long latch, and thankfully it was at the bottom of the panel and not at the top eight feet above them. Mark tried to dislodge it but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again to no avail. “Damn!” He exclaimed.
“THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!” The giant footsteps were coming perilously close now, and the floor started to shake.
Steve took his makeshift hatchet; a piece of a giant razorblade lashed to a matchstick, and lodged the head against the latch. Mark applied pressure to the head to keep it from slipping, and Steve pushed on the opposite end with all its might. The latch gave way just as a huge shadow appeared hovering over them.
The giant spoke. “So Captain Burton, you thought you could give me the slip, did you?” Sure enough, it was Kobick.
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Ignoring the giant, Mark wedged the covering open at the bottom, hinged as it was at the top, and Steve scrambled up through the portal. Keeping the covering open with his shoulder, Steve grabbed Mark’s arm and helped pull him up and in. No sooner had Mark cleared the opening when the Inspector’s enormous fist banged against the covering, and the force of it pushed the tiny men several feet into the ventilation shaft.
They were momentarily stunned, and after regaining their senses could make out the inspector’s huge, menacing eyes peering in at them through the vent. The giant opened the covering, and before they could bolt his mammoth hand reach in and grabbed Mark’s leg, wedging it between his thumb and index finger. In the split second before Kobick could pull him out, Steve instinctively grabbed his hatchet and swung it at the gigantic finger.
“Eeeeeeeyah!” Kobick jerked his hand from the shaft and let out a blood curdling scream that seemed enough to break the tiny men’s eardrums. They quickly headed down the shaft out of the giant’s reach.
It was now fully light out in the hall, and through the darkness of the shaft they could make out Kobick’s mouth. “Captain Burton!” He yelled. “You can run, but you can’t hide! You’ve not seen the last of me, you little insects!”
Steve turned around to face the inspector. “Up yours Kobick!” He shouted as he raised his middle finger.
The Inspector slammed the opening shut and could be heard uttering colorful metaphors as he stomped on the ground in a fit of pique. The two men smiled at each other and headed down the shaft.
They groped their way through the darkness, keeping their hands on the shaft wall to maintain balance and direction. In any case the shaft was only about five feet wide and not quite high enough to stand erect in. After a few minutes they noticed a barely perceptible increase in the light.
“We must be close to the outside entrance”, Mark noted as he trailed behind Steve.
Captain Burton stopped and looked at Mark, discerning him now as a barely perceptible outline in the dim light. “Yeah, but we should hurry before Kobick finds the exit.”
“Steve, do you smell that?”
Captain Burton looked around. A sickening, putrid smell filled the damp air. “Yes. It smells like death. Let’s get out of here.”
“Lead on captain.”
They resumed their trek through the ventilation shaft, and a few moments later Steve stopped again. “Mark, I just stuck my hand in a sticky, fibrous substance.”
“I don’t like the sound of that Steve.”
They heard a scurrying noise and Steve grabbed for his hatchet, but it was too late. Mark made out a shadowy creature the size of a large dog boil up through the shaft ahead of them and jump on Steve, knocking him to the ground.
“Mark! Help!” Steve cried. “Arrrrgh!”
Mark froze in terror. Ohmygod no! A spider! And it had probably bitten Steve.
It made a slithering, sickly noise as it ground it’s mandibles in Steve’s pants leg. Mark could make out the spider’s luminous multifaceted eyes shimmering in the dark. They were face-to-face with a beast more hideous than any imagined by the darkest purveyors of nightmares back on Earth. Indeed, as five-inch oddities on the giant’s world, this kind of horror was not at all uncommon to the marooned Earthmen.
Steve tried again to grab his hatchet, but the spider seemed to sense this and pinned his free arm with one of its spindly legs. Mark gasped in horror as the hideous beast slowly made its way up Steve’s body to his face, clicking its mandibles in anticipation of its next meal.
Mark shook himself out of his terror and un-slung his giant safety pin. Although they used these primarily for repelling up and down giant structures, the truth was that they were probably the single most useful artifact the Earthmen had pilfered from the giants for their own use. They never left the Spindrift without at least one.
Mark quickly unclasped the pin, stood up, and without thinking of their limited confines hit his head on the low ceiling.
“Shit!” He rubbed his head, feeling slightly stunned.
Realizing he had to act quickly if he was going to save the captain, Mark ignored his bruised head and grabbed the safety pin with both hands. He lunged at the spider straddling Steve, and the pin went right through its bloated abdomen. Glutinous pus spurted out from the spider on to both men.
The spider let out a shriek like the howl of a banshee. Its legs gyrated wildly for a few moments and then went still. It was dead.
Mark looked down at Steve, who was by now coming out of his state of extreme shock.
“Thanks for your timely intervention Mark.”
“One good turn deserves another, I always say”, Mark replied. “Did its bite penetrate your skin?”
“I don’t think so.” Steve looked over at the engineer from his supine position. “Mark, there’s just one thing I would ask.”
“What’s that Steve?”
“For gossakes, help get Shelob off me!”
********************************
The sunlight
seeping through the bedroom window blinds awoke Sylvana Noor. Looking at the alarm clock on the night
stand she could see through her sleepy eyes that it was
After starting the coffee maker Sylvana sat down at the small kitchen table. Still half-asleep, she propped her elbow on the tabletop and rested her head on her hand. She sighed. It had been another perfunctory night of lovemaking with Tor Brazen. Oh sure, he satisfied her as well as any man could, she guessed. He was a powerful, muscular, reasonably handsome man in a dark sort of way, and at 56 was still quite spry for his age. He had a good job with the city fire department, and to her way of thinking she could do a lot worse. Still in all she wished he would take more interest in her interests, and concerning sex, well, Tor was not one for foreplay. He always wanted to get right down to business, so to speak. How she wished he would be a little more circumspect and take his time with her. She would kill for a foot massage, she thought. Subtlety like that however was definitely not Tor’s style. And then there was the subject of marriage; a topic he seemed to shy away from anytime she ever so delicately brought it up. Sylvana had recently turned 43, and even though most men seemed to consider her an attractive ‘woman-next-door’ type, she definitely felt she wasn’t getting any younger.
Tor’s gruff, commanding voice shook her out of her reverie. “Sylvana……….Coffee!”
She shook her head back and forth, and in spite of her cynical mood managed a warm reply. “Just a minute hon.”
Sylvana fixed a couple of coffees and presently returned to the bedroom. Tor was lying in bed with the sheet covering his lower body and his exceedingly hairy chest fully exposed. He eyed her lustfully as she handed him the coffee mug. Taking a sip out of her cup, she set it down on the bedroom vanity. She picked up a brush and starting stroking her shoulder-length auburn hair.
After a moment she heard Tor pat the bed. “Come over here baby.”
Sylvana walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs and exposing her plump but shapely thigh jutting through her gown to Tor’s hungry gaze. She enticingly bobbed her slipper on her toes.
Tor sat up slightly. “So what do you feel like doing today?” With mild annoyance she thought that, as usual, the question was mostly rhetorical and he was not really interested in hearing what she had to say. Tor continued; “I thought we’d go to the car show and then maybe dinner and dancing this evening. What do you say?” He looked at her and assumed she would concur.
“I’m sorry Tor, I’d love to (she lied, at least about the car show), but I have to transcribe Archon Obek’s notes for an interview he’s going to do early next week on Bertha Frye’s talk show.”
His eyes lit up. “Bertha Frye? I love Bertha Frye! She has the best legs in the city.” His big handle-bar moustache twitched, betraying his excitement. Sylvana rolled her eyes at the comment.
He gazed at her inquisitively. “So what will Archon Obek be talking about, pray do tell?”
She pursed her lips and hesitated before replying: “The little people.”
Tor’s eyes widened. “The little people? How so?”
Sylvana sipped her coffee and then looked at Tor. “He thinks we should try negotiating with them.”
He looked even more surprised. “What could those little bugs possibly have that we would want? If you ask me they’re dangerous enemy aliens and we should stomp first and ask questions later.”
Sylvana tutted her tongue. “Tor, don’t you read the newspapers? Their technology is more advanced than ours and we could learn a lot from them. And besides, no one is asking you.” She crossed her arms and looked away feigning annoyance.
Tor responded half-apologetically. “Ah come on sweetie. I didn’t mean to, ahem, step on your feelings.” He smirked. “No pun intended.”
She managed a smile. “Oh Tor, you really are insufferable.”
He reached over and gripped the top of her exposed leg with his strong hand and started inching it towards her pleasure garden. “Sylvana, I’m hungry for something right now, and it’s not breakfast.” He pulled her onto him until she straddled his brawny, hairy, muscled chest. She sighed under her breath. Sylvana felt vaguely marginalized, but how could she resist such a hunk?
In keeping with Tor’s customary fashion of lovemaking, they were spent in under half an hour. Tor was snoring, and Sylvana lay next to him in a state of deep reverie. Her mind was in that mysterious no-man’s land between sleep and conscious thought; not quite awake but not asleep either. In this delicate, ultra-perceptive state, Sylvana’s mind was not dwelling on Tor Brazen, her two children in college, her ex-husband, or her job, but rather the subject of her and Tor’s early conversation…….the little people, or more specifically, the little men. Sylvana’s lips formed a very pleasurable smile.
 |
********************************
After ensuring the coast was clear, Steve and Mark jumped out of the exterior ventilation duct on to the giant sidewalk five feet below. It was now broad daylight and much latter than they liked when traveling through the giant’s city, but the encounter with Inspector Kobick had put them behind schedule. They thought they’d be OK; they just had to be a little more cautious than usual. Making their way slowly along the building wall, they passed behind a mailbox, and in few moments the wall segued into a rather ornate, sculpted stone boundary. The stone relief was made up of a series of repeating Romanesque columns, topped by a slab roughly forty feet off the ground.
They were making their way slowly along the boundary when all at once they heard giant footsteps. Steve and Mark instinctively crouched low against the wall as a giant man and woman stopped barely five yards from them. From their position low on the ground all they could see were a pair of panted legs and another pair of very shapely nude legs.
The giant man spoke. “Altha. Hang loose for a minute. I need to go back to the car to get some more film.” His heavy footsteps receded in the distance.
Steve and Mark’s
eyes slowly panned up the expanse of the girl towering before them, and Steve
thought he felt his heart skip a beat. A least to Steve, this giant
woman, probably a fashion model, was beautiful beyond words. She was wearing very sexy pink sandals
exposing her meticulously manicured toes; never mind that those sandals were
eight feet long! Her slim and sensuous nude legs tapered up in perfect
symmetry, ending at the bottom of a very short white jumper outfit over thirty
feet above them. The sweet scents of perfume and lotions emanating from
her were making Steve’s head swim. She was leaning over the top of the
stone boundary obscuring their view of her face, but Steve thought he detected
strands of sandy blonde hair glinting in the sunlight. He felt like he was
beholding some Greek Goddess on
 |
Mark tugged at Steve’s sleeve and whispered in his ear. “Steve. We’ve got to get out of here. If she looks down or the giant photographer comes back…..”
Steve glanced at Mark and then returned his gaze to the feet and legs of this enormous, but beautiful creature. “Awesome” he uttered under his breath. Mark did in fact hear Steve’s admiring comment and gave him a strange look. Steve couldn’t help himself; it was the most incredible sight he’d ever seen. He could have stayed glued to this spot forever, basking in the woman’s colossal beauty.
A moment later, Mark tugged at him again. “Come on Steve, she’s very attractive, but she’s still a giant!” Mark had inadvertently spoken a bit too loud that time, as all at once they were startled by a voice from above. “Well hello there!” The two men looked up and could see the giant girl looking down on them with a big smile.
This time Mark yanked him so hard that he nearly dislocated Steve’s shoulder. They bolted along the stone boundary, back in the direction from whence they had come. Moments later they could hear the clack, clack, clack of giant high heeled sandals, growing increasingly louder as she followed after them and steadily closed the distance. They came up to the mail box that they had passed earlier and on impulse dived under it.
“Let’s just hope she didn’t see us”, Mark said none too convincingly.
Lying prone and side-by-side under the mail box, sure enough a few seconds later they could see the giant sandaled feet stop in front of them. The girl giggled.
All at once another pair of giant footsteps much heavier than the girl’s could be heard approaching at a fast pace. A pair of huge and vaguely familiar black shoes stopped next to her.
“Good morning miss. I’m Inspector Kobick of the SID.”
The tiny Earthmen exchanged worried glances.
A sassy, happy-sounding young woman’s voice responded. “Good Morning Inspector. What’s up?”
“I’m on the trail of two of the little people; two men. I don’t suppose you’ve seen them?” As Kobick spoke, Steve and Mark held their breath.
“Little men?” She asked. “How little?” The Earthmen noted the slightly facetious tone of her voice.
“About five inches tall”, he replied.
“Why no inspector, but I’d love to see a five inch man!” She gave him a bright, giggly laugh, and Steve and Mark looked at each other wondering what she’d meant by the comment.
Kobick picked up on her flippant and joking manner and figured he was wasting his time. “Well Miss, if you see any little people, make sure you call the SID right away.”
“Oh for sure Inspector, totally. Goodbye.” To Steve, her reply sounded suspiciously like a Valley-girl accent.
Kobick’s giant feet moved away, and shortly his footsteps could no longer be heard.
The girl waited a moment until the SID man was out of sight, and then kneeled down to get a closer look at the two tiny men. Steve and Mark found themselves looking straight into her gigantic but very comely face no more than three or four yards away from them. She remained silent, evidently not wanting to be too obvious to potential passers-by about what she was doing. She gave them a big, warm smile, and much to their surprise put her hand in front of her mouth and blew them a kiss. Steve felt her breath like a warm breeze rush across his face, and his mind reeled at the thought of the giant girl’s amorous gesture. His skin tingled. She giggled and winked, and then wiggled the fingers of a hand at them. She then slowly got up and walked away. The clack, clack, clack of her sandals could be heard tapering off in the distance, and Steve’s eyes remained transfixed on her gorgeous legs until she disappeared around the corner.
The two men breathed a sigh of relief. It had been the third close call they’d had in the space of a little over an hour. Mark gave Steve a sardonic grin. “For a minute there Steve I thought you were going to ask her for a date”, he said half-joking, half-seriously. Steve forced a laugh and returned an incredulous stare, then looked away feeling more than a little embarrassed at his comment. Mark sensed this and wisely let it drop. In a moment they cautiously crawled out from under the mailbox and resumed there journey west out of the city.
They said very little to each other during their hike back to the Spindrift. Mark was thinking intermittently about how their trip had been a bust as they had failed to find anything they could use to repair the ship, but mostly he was thinking about getting back to Valerie. Steve, for his part, could think of little else but the stunningly beautiful giant model; many, many times his size. He also thought rather self-consciously that Mark’s joking about her had hit dangerously close to home. For the first time since crash landing on the giant world, he had actually felt himself attracted to one of the giant women, as absurd as this seemed. He tried unsuccessfully to put the thought out of his mind.