Steve Burton held a meeting of the Spindrift passengers and crew one day, as they all sat outside the ship at their secret base camp.
"This place will eventually be discovered," he said, "It's a miracle that no giant has come across it so far."
"We can't move it unless we can get the ship going," said Dan.
"I've been trying my best for two years, but we just can't get the parts and the chance to work on it, when we're always on the run from the giants," said Mark.
"Maybe we can help," said Valerie.
Everyone looked at her, but Barry was sure that he hadn't seen her lips move, and all of them were sure that the voice seemed to come from somewhere else.
"Up here," said Valerie's voice again.
They turned to see a gigantic Valerie and Barry staring down at them.
"Don't look so surprised," she said, sitting down, "I'll explain everything.
Giant Barry sat down too. Giant Valerie went on to tell them an amazing account of how she had come to be. Several months earlier, Dr Gault had created a number of clones, starting with clones of Barry and Valerie. What nobody, even those two clones had realised, is that they were the second set of Barry and Valerie clones. The first set had instinctively escaped Dr Gault and his giantess assistant, just as the real earthlings would have. They had wandered the forest and run into Jodar, the boy who had invented growth and reduction formulae the previous year.
"Could you help us?" clone Barry had asked, recognizing the boy from his acquired memories that the original Barry had of Jodar.
"Doctor Gault told us that we would eventually deteriorate and die," said Valerie.
"It would be a lot easier to work on a cure for that if you were my size, so that I could study you more closely," said Jodar.
Jodar gave them supplies of his growth and reduction formulae. They had taken the formulae and grown to full size. It was not long before they noticed that they were not deteriorating at all, and the spots that distinguished the clones from the originals had vanished from their skin.
"It must be a side effect of my size changing formulae," said Jodar, "It's cured you. I have to return to Elops now, but I can leave you plenty of doses of both formulae, in case you need them in the future."
Once Giant Valerie had explained it all, Steve took the chance to interrupt.
"I'm amazed to say the least," he said, "But how can the formulae help us with the ship?"
"They can't," said Giant Valerie, "But we can. We managed to spike Dr Galt's and his assistant's food with the reduction formula. It shrank both of them. We kept them in a cage in a small room in the laboratory, where we now live by the way. It's only fair as they planned a similar thing for us. We got them to teach us all their scientific knowledge, which we now use to make plenty of giant money to live here. I adopted Barry, and learned the cloning process. Of course we have your Barry's and Valerie's memories of everything leading up to our creation. So we knew where the space ship was. That's how we found you. I was thinking that we could create another set of clones of all of you, hand them over to the SID and let them think that the clones are the real you. The clones will act accordingly anyway. They'll soon deteriorate and die in SID custody, and Inspector Kobick will probably assume that the instant disintegration process is just the way that earth people's bodies decompose, not knowing any more about 'little people'. Then he'll think he's caught all the little people and seen them die. He'll stop looking for them, cancel the rewards, notify the giant citizens that the little people are no longer alive, and you'll be free to work on the ship using parts and equipment that we can easily supply you from the laboratory."
"That's quite an idea," said Mark.
"We could take you to earth with us if you have the same longing for our home planet," said Steve, "Assuming you take the antidote formula, that is."
"We've made the giant laboratory our home. We both want to stay here," said giant Barry.
"I would like you to take Dr Galt and his assistant though," said giant Valerie, "They won't want to remain here as 'little people' and they're too dangerous to us as giants. So we can't risk restoring their size."
"That's true," said Dan, "They were even prepared to risk 'destroying the little black original' as I recall them saying about me when they had me."
"We'll take them," said Steve, "They can pass themselves off as earthlings. They'd get nothing out of admitting they were once giants on another planet."
"If you all climb into the Spindrift, I'll pick it up and carry you to the laboratory," said giant Valerie, "Barry can bring the lean-to and anything else that's lying around here."
"No more manning the outpost. No more hiding from giants! It sounds perfect already," said Fitzhugh.
Soon the giant clones had set the ship down on the laboratory bench. Valerie put all seven of them through the cloning process and produced a perfect set of copies of the earthlings.
"Is it really humane to hand them over to Kobick?" asked Betty, "They'll feel the same way we do about it."
"They know about the process that would stabilize them, since you told us first and added it to the knowledge in our memories," said Mark, "They'll want the same treatment."
"It can't be helped," said Steve, "We didn't have to make them in the first place. They were only created to be our dopplegangers to fool Kobick. I originally said we should put a stop to the cloning process. Left to their own devices, they'd inevitably develop the same violent tendancies that we saw in the clone of Dan back at the base camp."
"And once they deteriorate, they won't be at the SID's mercy."
"There's just one problem," said Dan, "Who's going to hand them in to Kobick?"
"He's only seen Fitzhugh and Steve as giants," said giant Valerie, "If I changed my make up dramatically and dyed my hair blonde temporarily, I could pass as an unknown giant and turn them in. The money from the supreme council will be a nice nest egg for Barry and myself too."
"What if the clones give you away?" asked Fitzhugh, who in some ways had the most devious calculating mind of all of them.
"We won't," said another voice.
It was the clone of Fitzhugh.
"Huh?" said Steve.
"We've been whispering amongst ourselves while you were talking about us," said the Steve clone, "We can't change our situation, at least not without your help, and we've decided unanimously that we might as well help you. In a way it would be like helping ourselves to get back to earth."
"What about the violence that develops?" asked Mark.
"It won't," said Dr Gault, "Since Valerie shrank us, we've worked on improving the process. They'll remain psychologically stable and retain the characteristics of the originals. Without the size changing formulae, they'll still deteriorate physically in a while though."
"Then it's time to dye," said giant Valerie.
She applied excessive doses of scarlet lipstick, heavy eye shadow and cheek powder, and then put all of the clones into her handbag and went into the city to the hairdressers. Then she went to SID Headquarters and was greeted by the desk Sergeant.
"I would like to see Inspector Kobick," she said, "It's important, about little people."
"Certainly. I'll fetch him immediately," said the Sergeant, and soon came back to say that Kobick would like to see the woman in his office.
Giant Valerie went in and sat down, while Kobick closed the door.
"Thank you for seeing me so soon," said giant Valerie.
"I'm always interested in reports concerning the little people," said the Inspector.
"I can do better than merely giving you reports," said Giant Valerie, "Is the reward still on offer."
"The same price per little person as originally advertised," said Kobick, "Authorised by the Supreme Council and payable from this office in cash on delivery of any little people to this headquarters."
Giant Valerie opened her handbag and took out the clones of Steve and Dan.
"The captain and the co-pilot," said Kobick, "It's been a while since I've had both of them at once."
"Have you ever had all seven?" asked giant Valerie, taking out Fitzhugh and Mark.
"I came close at the zoo once, but a leopard got in the way," said Kobick, "How many did you catch?"
Giant Valerie smiled as she handed Betty and Barry to the Inspector as well, while Kobick continued transferring them to a cage on his desk. There was just one to go, and she hoped that he would see no resemblance between the Valerie clone and her giant cloned self, as she removed normal sized Valerie clone from her handbag and gave her to Kobick.
"Do you have any idea how much work you've saved me?" asked Kobick, "Every time I've had some of them in the past, the others have found a way to release them. This time they'll never get away. I might even get promoted onto the council itself for this… Say, I don't suppose you saw their little dog as well."
Valerie saw an opportunity that she couldn't resist, since Chipper had never been cloned at all, and in fact was able to tell the clones from the originals with his uniquely canine senses during the first encounter with Dr Gault.
"I did see the dog, but it's not here now," she said truthfully, "Do these little creatures disintegrate when they die?"
"I don't know," said Kobick, "I've never seen one die. I'm not about to hurt them either. It's vital that I get them to tell me the location of their space ship. With that technology in our possession, we could have our scientists reverse engineer it and then fly to earth or anywhere in the universe. I guess the dog's not important. I'll have the cashier pay you for all of them now."
Kobick lifted the cage and opened his new wall safe.
"You don't think I'll be taking any chances with any of you this time," he said, and locked the cage in the safe, to keep them doubly secured, while he led giant Valerie to the cashier.
He soon returned to his office, took the cage from the safe and placed it on his desk.
"Your space ship will be no more use to you know. You might as well tell me where it is. Once we have it, I'll do my best to make your stay on our world as hospitable as possible."
"Sure you would," said Mark, "You weren't exactly good at honouring the deal you made with us, when you asked us to track down those counterfeiters."
"This time I have all of you. I don't need to resort to tricks," said Kobick.
"Except to get the space ship," said Steve, "Forget it Kobick. We'll talk about the weather, about earth baseball games, anything, but not about the ship."
"It's going to be a long interrogation," thought Kobick.
Back at the laboratory, giant Valerie and giant Barry did all they could to provide the parts and equipment to Mark and Steve, who worked continuously and effectively, for the first time since the giant cat had damaged the spaceship in 1983. Within a few weeks, the ship was as good as new and ready to fly.
"I don't know what you plan to say on earth," said Steve, "But if you start talking about giants, people will probably think you're a crackpot, Dr Gault. You two can make lives for yourselves, even continue your cloning experiments on small animals with scientists on earth who've already tried that. It's up to you. We'll be alerting only earth's military and intelligence organisations about the existence of the space warp and the giant world. We don't want to cause panic and paranoia on our home planet."
Kobick had found himself desperately trying to save seven little people from sudden deaths and disintegrations. After that he could do nothing. He didn't even have the option of having autopsies performed. There were no corpses. True to giant Valerie's expectations, he appeared on television and radio, announcing to the city that the little people had all died in custody, and that the reward was no longer on offer. He took credit for ending an invasion, as he called it, and advised citizens that they could now feel safe from having their homes broken into or even blown up (in the case of Logar and friends who had once shrunken a giant named Joe, or in the case of the giant who had invented night glasses) by little people.
In the forest, giant Valerie and giant Barry saw the original Spindrift crew take off in the repaired space ship with their passengers and the shrunken giants Dr Gault and his assistant. Up and up they flew into space, and then into the glowing green warp that took them back to a sub orbital flight path above earth.
"We'll also have to warn the airline," said Steve.
"Done," said Mark, and took a series of photographs through the cockpit window with one of Valerie's old modelling cameras that had been in storage in the ship for two years.
They now had photographic evidence of their flight through the warp, which would back up their story of where they'd been for two years.
"I'll also be able to prove the existence of giants," said Mark, "Fitzhugh and Betty took some pictures of giant Valerie picking up Barry and showing him around the giant laboratory and standing beside the Spindrift. They'll have to believe us now."
"I could always take the head of the CIA on a short trip through the warp and back," said Steve, "I'd be sure to keep him above the surface of the giant world, so that we don't get captured."
And so it was that word reached certain exclusive circles on earth, that a whole world of giants existed beyond a space warp. Now people would be ready and prepared.