The Galileo Seven Extra Large
By Rob Morris
Mister Boma watched with satisfaction as the jury-rigged force-shield drove the giant hominids back for the last time. It was a shaky takeoff, but The Galileo made and then broke orbit. As it did, he mused.
"Damned odd thing about those troglodytes."
Mister Spock had, for the moment, done all he could, and so responded to Boma as they ascended.
"By odd, Mister Boma, I will assume you refer to their size and ferocity. But given their isolation, such an evolution is actually quite logical."
Boma shook his head.
"No, Commander. By odd, I mean it brings back a childhood memory. I once read a journal written by a Twentieth Century ancestor of mine. He was a man who disappeared for five years, then came back telling stories straight out of Gulliver's Travels. Said he and a group of his friends had actually found Brobdinang--the opposite of Lilliput."
Spock raised an eyebrow, but it was actually McCoy who raised the obvious.
"Boma--considering that Swift meant all that as an allegorical parody, and that no sapient humanoid could live that large, I think your ancestor was probably just ashamed of deserting his family, and literally told a tall tale. Hell, after The Civil War, there were Yankee boys in Atlanta who wouldn't leave, because they feared disgrace back home. Same thing with some Rebs in Pittsburgh."
Boma did not try to defend the wild story.
"I know, Doctor. But his accounts, they were so thorough, and coherent. They actually became more mundane as time went on--not wilder, like some of them you read. Except for the premise, any one would think he was telling God's own truth."
But then, the orbit began to decay, as the gravity well reclaimed them. If not for Spock's last-minute effort, the truth would have had them all dead.
As it was, the surviving crewmembers were recovered, and The Enterprise left that system safely. All seemed well--but on the asteroid below, a giant transport fetched back two giant wounded bodies.
A giant newsperson, an employee of her state's totalitarian regime, gave her remote live report. It would serve their propaganda ministry well. Most things did.
"The footage is undeniable. These two children, who were dropped off to play 'Caveman' on this distant asteroid, were attacked By 'Little People', a breed of parasitic humanoid not seen for three hundred years. The attack was unprovoked, and it was brutal. We must all be ready, as this threat and menace comes back to our civilization. As the tiny Invaders return to attack what must seem to them like a Land Of The Giants."
But the barbarians never came.
