17. Odds and Freedom

6:50 PM day 3

The Skipper sagged against the bamboo pole, the sound of breaking glass echoing in his ears. This was his fault. He was the captain. These people, all of them, were his passengers and crew. It was his duty to watch out for them. He had failed both. He had been completely useless, only able to stand by and watch as his first mate was trapped, the Professor injured, all of them harshly restrained and now… He didn't even want to think of what had happened to Gilligan. None of them had been able to see what had occured but the sound had been unmistakable. A fall from that height, a thousand shards of razor sharp glass, he squeezed his eyes shut not even trying to push the graphic picture from his mind. The Skipper couldn't imagine a worse way to lose a friend.

"Oooh, poor Gilligan!" Mary Ann squeaked before bursting into tears. She was quickly joined by Ginger and Mrs. Howell.

"The dear lad was so young!" The heiress said between cultured sniffles.

The Professor interrupted this sudden display of emotion. "Hold on now! We can't give up hope."

Mary Ann managed to sniff back the tears long enough to reply. "But you said that if he was in the jar when it broke he would…" She simply couldn't finish the sentence.

"I know what I said." The shock of what had been happening caused him to speak before truly evaluating his words. He now regretted it. "But we can't give up on him! It's conceivable that he survived. If he escaped the sharp edges…" He knew that the odds of Gilligan missing every piece of glass were astronomical. But that didn't keep him from hoping. He had observed over their four-year exile that mathematical probabilities had nothing on Gilligan. The young man had been through many a death-dealing situation and come out relatively unscathed.

"The fall alone would have killed him!" The Skipper shot back feeling that his friend was grasping at straws. The last thing he wanted was false hope.

The Professor shook his head. "Not necessarily. Height and size are relative but gravity is constant. An object's weight directly influences the effect of gravity. Gilligan's significantly reduced mass would lessen the pull of the earth's gravimetric forces thus diminishing the severity of impact. You see?"

Five faces stared blankly at him.

"How reassuring." Mr. Howell quipped, obviously not having understood a word.

Mary Ann's dark brows furrowed in thought. "I think I understand what he's trying to say." She said cautiously. "I've seen a mouse jump off a bookshelf and not be hurt at all. Since it's so small it's not as heavy and doesn't hit the ground very hard."

"Exactly!"

"You…you mean there really is a chance?" The Skipper felt a bit of hope beginning to overshadow the grief and despair he had been wallowing in only a moment ago.

"A chance. And if he did survive he is most likely injured. Which is why it is still essential for us to escape before our captors return for him." If circumstances had been different it would have been wiser to wait until Seigfried and Starker had left the island before attempting escape. But Gilligan needed their help, most likely medically as well as to liberate him from an unpleasant future as a guinea pig.

"That's all well and good, Professor." Mr. Howell said, not even attempting to fight the ropes that tied his hands. "But any potential venture is useless without a plan of action. You do have one don't you?"

The helpless look on the Professor's face revealed plainly that he did not. His eyebrows came together intensely as he surveyed the room. Their hands were bound but their feet were not. "If we could reach something sharp…"

Consciousness gradually worked itself into Gilligan's mind and he let out a low pained moan. He had been hit by a train. That was the only possible explanation he could come up with for the way he felt. No…first he was hit by a train then run over by a bulldozer and finally trampled by a herd of angry elephants. He wondered vaguely how a freight train had come to the island. Probably washed up in the lagoon, he decided.

His eyes slowly flickered open to see a patch of clear blue sky rimmed by palm trees. Mr. Howell's building-sized suitcases and the underside of the table took up the upper corner of his vision. He blinked a couple times, trying to make the slightly warped image solidify. It didn't work.

With a grunt of effort he tried to sit up but only managed to get halfway.

Klunk

"Ow!" He leaned back on his elbow and rubbed his forehead where it had come into contact with a solid surface. He reached a hand up and touched a cool, smooth arch. The large, curved piece of glass lay over him like an oblong bubble. With a grunt and a firm kick it flipped over into the sand beside him. All around him lay huge pieces of glass. Curved shards sparkled in the evening light, looking like bones from a giant crystalline rib cage.

He looked up at the suitcases and the table, everything flooding back into his mind. As he stared at the dizzying height he couldn't believe that he had been crazy enough to try that jump. Now he recalled the sickening feeling as the table disappeared from beneath his feet and the horrible realization that he was too far to the right. The last thing he remembered was the hard corner of the suitcase flying up at him and then the world splintering into a million pieces.

He began to stand, putting a hand on the ground to lever himself up, but the instant he put pressure on it fire exploded inside his wrist. With a yelp he grabbed it with his other hand and it close to his chest. The pain quickly subsided to a dull throb. He was startled to see that his wrist was much thicker than it should have been and slightly discolored. It was broken, he realized with shock. How would he ever tie another knot? Much to his relief he found that all his fingers still worked, although the last two moved with some difficulty.

Two heavily accented voices snapped his head up.

"Dumkoff, I said 'don't let go'! Don't!"

"I'm sorry, Seigfried. It slipped. Everybody's allowed a mistake now and zen."

"Not in KAOS! Zat machine is so heavy I'm lucky I still have all my fingers."

They were coming back for him! He leaped to his feet, taking in a small gasp as he realized he had pulled something in his foot too, although it wasn't bad enough that he couldn't dismiss it out of hand. His head whipped around, his body following in a full spin, his mind screaming run and hide, run and hide. One of Mr. Howell's suitcases leaned against the other, creating a triangular tunnel between them. Instantly he bolted toward the opening, all but diving into the dark space. Crouching back against the wall he watched through the gap as two pairs of black leather boots came into view.

The castaways inside the hut had made no significant progress toward escape when they heard the two Germans enter the clearing outside.

"Oh, no! They're back already!" The Skipper felt his heart sink. He had fought the ropes fiercely, hoping to snap them. But even with his great strength and effort the cord was simply too thick.

"The fiends!" Mr. Howell spat contemptuously.

"Seigfried, look! Ze jar!" Starker exclaimed. Mary Ann could see him hurry to the far side of the table and crouch down, but the doorframe still blocked her view of where the jar had actually fallen.

"Vell zat's just peachy!" Seigfried let out an irritated huff and shoved his black-gloved fists on his hips.

"Do you think ve should…?"

"Forget it. He's not worth ze trouble." He did a crisp about face and marched back towards the jungle with Starker following at his heels. "Ve'll just tell ze lab about it. Now let's get zis assignment over with!"

There was a poignant hush in the hut as the words of the two departing men settled on the six castaways. It sounded bad the Professor knew. But the discussion could be taken two ways. He hated to even consider the first and most likely possibility, that Gilligan was dead and in that condition would not help to prove the machine's ability to safely shrink personnel. The second, that their young friend had been unharmed enough to get up and hide making the search for him not worth while, unfortunately struck the Professor as highly improbable considering the fall he had taken. Either way once the six of them discovered some way to get loose they would find out.

Once he was sure the two Germans were gone Gilligan blew out the breath he had been holding. He had been sure they would start turning things over to look for him. "I never thought they were gonna leave." He said to himself as he crept out of his hiding place. His ankle gave him a slight limp and he was certain that if he took his clothes off he would discover that his entire body was one big bruise but the only real sharp pain was in his right wrist and it only hurt if he moved it. But at the moment none of the pain mattered. He was finally out of that dumb jar!

He tried to hold his hand still as he hurried across the clearing, carefully avoiding the field of broken glass. Without having to duck he slipped under the bamboo door and into the hut. His six restrained friends towered over him and he had to hold his hat and crane his neck to look up them. They were too deep in conversation to look down and notice him standing there.

"But there is a chance!" The Professor was saying with conviction "And we have to hold onto that until…"

"The Professor's right!" Mary Ann gave an emphatic nod, bouncing her ponytails. "We've got to believe he's alive."

Ginger mumbled something about Pollyanna that wasn't quite intelligible.

"Couldn't we liberate ourselves first and continue this debate over a glass of bubbly?"

Gilligan let out a small chuckle then raised his voice a bit so they could all hear him. "Y'know I was gonna invite you all to a party now that those guys are gone. But that's okay. I can see that you're all tied up."