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Lieutenant Linden Jones gripped the Peregrine's control yoke and squinted at the head's-up through teary eyes. The proximity scanner was clear. In the fight sims there'd always been a dancing constellation of red and green dots to simulate an orbital or near-Earth battle. This was no simulation, she had to remind herself. She was alone in space and the clear scanner meant that there was no pursuit.

"Hello?" She spoke into the shuttle's comm. "Stolen Peregrine calling. Isn't somebody going to shoot me down?"

"Too busy," came the reply from Wing Command. "We've got a war on, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Shoot me down, dammit!" Linden shouted. "I'll defect to the enemy, that's what I'll do. I'll defect and take all my secrets with me!"

"Give them our regards," said Wing Command.

Linden punched the console with her gloves. They didn't care, she realized. They'd already lost the entire West Coast, so what did it matter if they also lost a suicidal first lieutenant in a stolen Peregrine? The thought of war losses welled Linden's eyes with fresh tears. She'd lost her parents and family home when the enemy vaporized Seattle. Her closest friends from the Academy had been wiped out along with Los Angeles. And Rick, the love of her life, had been reduced to atoms in the attack on San Francisco. The massive retaliation hadn't made her feel any better. A billion dead on the enemy's side couldn't bring back the ones she loved.

Stealing the Peregrine had seemed like the quickest and surest way to end her life, but she hadn't counted on Wing Command's indifference. Now, five million miles from Earth, she realized that staying in the Corps would have worked better. The way the war was going, the human race would be extinct within the week. She'd likely survive long enough, in her stolen Peregrine, to witness the last broadcast tower go black. In the end, even her suicide attempt would be a monumental failure.

Linden pulled the yoke and pointed the Peregrine's nose at the Sun. She remembered broadcast footage from her childhood of a scientific mission, back before the war. There'd been an animation on the news showing a probe melt in onion-like layers as it descended into the Sun. She pictured the Peregrine melting around her like that, then the layers of her clothing, then her hair, skin, muscles, and bones. That would be an even better way to die than being blasted by lasers, she decided. It would be a blaze of glory, literally. Icarus, eat your heart out!

The journey sunward took three days and all of her fuel. Linden spent the time sleeping or in a dreamlike state of wakefulness, replaying her best memories on the vidscreen of a family album she'd brought. Thanksgiving with her family, a ski trip with Rick, her graduation ceremony, all of it played in a loop before her teary eyes. It was a while before she noticed that the sun was no longer fixed in her targeting crosshairs, but instead drifted from the forescreen to the aftscreen and back. "Computer?" she asked.

"How may I assist you, pilot?" asked a metallic voice.

"Why are we tumbling?"

"Attitude correction is offline."

"Why?"

"Fuel reserves have been exhausted."

That made sense to Linden. The Peregrine was far beyond its normal operating range, and fuel would be needed for the microthrusters that normally kept the nose pointed in the direction of motion. "Are we still headed into the sun?"

"Calculating orbit," the computer stated.

"Orbit?" she demanded. "No, no, no! I don't want to orbit the sun! I want to burn!"

"Orbit calculated." A graphic filled the head's-up. There was a spot to identify the peregrine's current position and an orbital ellipse that curved inside Mercury's orbit then retreated into the far fringes of the Solar System. The orbital period was calculated at 837 years.

"Adjust!" Linden commanded. "Calculate a crash landing, into the sun."

"Navigational fuel has been exhausted."

"Divert power from life support."

"Life support is already at minimal levels."

Linden nodded and felt her eyelids flutter. Low oxygen levels would explain her light-headedness. "Emergency override! Divert power from life support! Resume original flight path!"

"Life support is already at minimal levels," the computer repeated. "Initiating cryo-sleep."

Linden felt an injection needle prick her neck. A sickly sweet combination of gasses poured from the cockpit ventilator. "No!" she shouted.

"Initiating rescue beacon," stated the computer.

Linden fought to stay awake. Her thumb triggered the comm. "Wing Command? Are you there? This is Lieutenant Linden Jones in stolen Peregrine XP2378. Please disregard the rescue beacon. Please, please, please, just let me sleep. Let me sleep...forever."

There was no response from Wing Command. They were probably already dead. Lucky bastards, thought Linden, as her eyes closed and she drifted into cryo-sleep.

* * *

Rockney felt the tremor in his sleep and his mind incorporated it into his dreaming. He dreamed that he'd found a magic tunnel that brought him back to the Time of Giants. He knew from stories that the Giants had been impossibly large, a thousand millimeters tall or more, and they had invented clever machines that could bend the world to their will.

In his dream, Rockney sat on a Giant's shoulder and watched incredible battles he couldn't begin to understand. It was the familiar story from the Great Book of the People. The Giants were so big that all the land in the world was not enough for them all to share. Some of the Giants waged a terrible war against each other. Their weapons boiled the seas, scorched the earth, and blackened the sky. Large plants died without sunlight. The ones called trees all went extinct. Large animals could not survive either. The remaining Giants had to make themselves smaller in order to stay alive. The ones who succeeded became the People, and the ones who stayed Giants all died.

Rockney opened his eyes. The violent motion of the ground wasn't from his dream. The entire underground complex shook with enough force to tumble him out of his straw bed. Cracks spread across the ceiling and floor, opening a bottomless pit below and a strip of blinding light above.

The tremors stopped. Breathing hard, Rockney shielded his eyes and stared upward. Above his chamber, two earthen walls stretched a hundred millimeters to the surface. He could see the sky and a dark grey stripe that ran through the blue. His sleep-addled brain thought about Giants for a moment, but the black clouds of their war were now hundreds of generations in the past.

A bird circled above and Rockney felt his heart jerk in terror. Could the bird see him through the crack? Could it reach its deadly beak through and snap him up as a tasty snack? Probably not, but he edged toward the corridor just to be safe. Monsters ruled the world above ground--sharp-eyed birds, big-toothed rats, and hungry lizards--while the People huddled for safety in the tunnels. It was the way it had always been, since the aftermath of the Giant Wars.

Rockney gathered all his possessions in a pack and slung it over his back. He'd need to carve out a new sleeping chamber and block this one off for safety. He emerged into the tunnels and found them crammed with other displaced people. The mouse farms were in disarray, he quickly learned from a group of excited farmers. Dozens of the creatures had gotten out of their pens and were trampling people in the tunnels while their keepers tried desperately to round them up. The mushroom farmers were also upset because a cave-in had destroyed an entire silo of their crop.

Rockney followed the crowd, which converged on the meeting chamber of the Ruling Council. Nobody had officially called a community meeting, but the expectation was there. The enormous meeting chamber was thousands of millimeters around with a high ceiling propped up by stone pillars. Rockney noted that some of the pillars had crumbled, and he feared for the integrity of the roof.

The chamber had been built around a Giant skeleton that had been discovered underground and painstakingly restored. Rockney pressed his way into the gallery contained within the ribcage, where he'd have a good view of the propped-up skull. The skeleton lay on its back because, tall as it was, it wouldn't have been able to stand or even sit in the high ceilinged chamber.

The seven members of the Ruling Council stood in a platform atop the Giant skull. Councilor Mucktop spread his arms in a gesture meant to quiet the crowd. The meeting lasted about an hour. There were initial reports from section heads about damages and casualties. A census would be taken, but it was expected that the number of deaths would range into the hundreds. Food would be strictly rationed until further notice, and work details organized to rebuild and recover.

In the "open floor" section of the meeting, Rockney approached the skull and climbed onto the platform. It was the first time he'd been so close to it, and the enormous eye sockets and teeth filled him with awe. When he got to the platform, he was almost too nervous to speak.

"Friends, People, Esteemed Councilors, I must report a strange...thing." Rockney swallowed hard. Public speaking had never been his strength and it didn't help that he was looking out at ten thousand people in and among the yellow Giant bones. "During the tremors, a crack appeared in the ceiling of my sleeping chamber, all the way to the surface. Through it, I could see the sky and--" He struggled for words. "And a strange trail of dark clouds. It may mean nothing or--"

"It's an omen!" somebody shouted, and the assembly erupted in shouts. "The Giants have returned!" screamed a woman. People nearly trampled each other in panic.

Councilor Mucktop quieted them with another gesture. "Settle down, people! The Giants are thousands of years extinct." He stomped to emphasize the ancient Giant skull under his feet. "We will overcome this tragedy like we always have in the past, and it will be no use for us to panic or invent dangers that could not possibly exist."

The crowd grumbled and Rockney felt like he'd been personally rebuked. Maybe he had only imagined the cloud, he decided. Or maybe it really was just an innocent part of the sky--he hadn't seen enough clouds in his life to even know.

The assembly began to scatter back to the tunnels to receive their cleanup assignments. Rockney started toward the ladder down from the platform but Councilor Mucktop took his arm. "A moment please, Citizen Rockney."

"Sir?" asked Rockney.

"We haven't made it known to the general public yet, but we have...an issue that we will need you to keep in confidence."

"Yes, sir. I can keep a secret."

"Very good." The councilor smiled. "Just before the tremor, our surface scouts witnessed a large...something. It tore across the sky, leaving a trail of flame and smoke, just as you described."

Rockney nodded, trying his best to imagine the terrifying sight. He'd seen small cooking flames and their wisps of grey smoke, but nothing big enough to mar the sky itself.

"You don't appear to believe me," Mucktop noted.

Rockney shrugged. "I'm sorry, Councilor. It just seems like a remarkable coincidence that something like this would happen on the same day we had such a deadly tremor."

The councilor frowned. "The tremor started when this thing hit the ground. It caused the tremor. Whatever it is has already caused hundreds of deaths, and the rest of us may still be in danger. That is why we will be sending a scouting party to investigate."

Rockney's jaw froze open at the thought of braving the surface and dodging the surface monsters in search of something that might even be a far greater danger.

The councilor seemed to read his thoughts. "It's been hard to find volunteers for the mission, so we're assigning the members ourselves. The scouting team will be leaving within the hour and I'd like you to be with them."

That was the last thing Rockney heard before fainting away, unconscious.

* * *

Lieutenant Linden Jones groaned and opened her eyes. She'd been dreaming about setting off for a voyage on the Titanic, leaning over the railing to wave goodbye to her friends and family gathered on the dock. Strangely, Linden had been the only person on the entire cruise ship.

She sat up straight in her seat and felt a stiffness in all her muscles. In front of her was the smoldering console from a Peregrine training console. No wait, she thought, straining for her memories. It wasn't a training console. It was an actual Peregrine that she'd stolen in a dramatic suicide attempt. Since she was obviously still alive, the suicide was clearly yet another in her string of personal failures. Her aim was so terrible that she couldn't even hit the broad side of the sun.

Linden popped the cockpit canopy and a fresh breeze swept away the Peregrine's recycled air. Linden removed her helmet and took a deep, overwhelmingly clean breath. Where on Earth had she landed that she couldn't detect even a hint of pollution? She peered over the edge of the cockpit, which was level with the ground, and saw a lush green paradise that stretched as far as she could see. Songbirds and butterflies filled the air, and there was no sign at all of human habitation.

Linden climbed out and felt the springy grass under her boots, although her legs were still unsteady from her cryo-sleep. The underbelly of the Peregrine was buried in the trench caused by her uncontrolled landing. Pieces of wing and tail scattered behind the ship. It would never fly again, but that was all right by Linden. The beautiful landscape stretched out before her like a garden, and she had no desire to ever leave.

She cupped her hands and shouted, "Hello!" Linden assumed that she'd been rescued and guided back to Earth by repulsor fields, but where were her rescuers? And how long had she been asleep? The Peregrine's console was smashed and useless but she figured that it had to be after the end of the war. Maybe her side had won.

She took another deep breath of perfect air. "Or maybe this isn't Earth at all," she said. "Maybe I'm dead and this is Heaven." She threw her crash helmet and gloves into the cockpit and let her hair fall down around the shoulders of her flight suit. The sun felt warm against her face. She removed her boots and socks and felt the cool grass between her toes.

"Hello?" she said again, to make sure nobody else was around. Then she grinned a wicked smile and gave in to an overwhelming desire to strip off her flightsuit and run naked through the meadow.

* * *

There were nine of them who started the miserable mission--Rockney plus eight surface scouts, experienced in all aspects of above-ground survival. The scouts taught Rockney how to hide in the grass to avoid hungry birds, how to fight off swarms of deadly fire ants, and how to start a fire by rubbing dried stems together. They supplemented their supply of dried mushrooms and mouse cheese by digging up grubs and roasting them over a cooking flame. They slept in camouflaged shelters on the low branches of a bush. By day, Rockney felt like he was slowing the others down. But by night, when the four male scouts paired up with the four female scouts, Rockney felt even more out of place.

On the second day, the group lost three members when a snake jumped out at them from behind a rock. It happened so fast, Rockney didn't have time to think before a female scout named Whisper grabbed him by the arm and yanked him into a run. Rockney was jogging by Whisper's side while his brain was still processing the terrible image of the snake with its open jaws hissing and three people-sized lumps already being digested within its body.

The survivors regrouped and continued onward without mentioning their dead comrades, as if nothing had even happened. "I'm sorry about Natcher," Rockney said to Whisper.

Whisper shrugged.

Rockney furrowed his brow at her response. "He was your mate, wasn't he? When you two paired off last night, I thought--"

Whisper shrugged again. "Surface scouts don't take mates. It's too dangerous to form permanent attachments, so we live for the moment with a different mate each night. Sometimes males, sometimes females, it really doesn't matter when you're sharing warmth and closeness."

Rockney blinked. "But...two females? Together? Like mates?"

Whisper laughed. "Sure, why not? I might choose you for my mate tonight, or maybe I'll choose Silken." She nodded ahead at another female scout, whose auburn hair flowed down her back to her waist.

"Or maybe you could choose both," Rockney joked.

"Maybe," said Whisper, seriously.

Rockney decided that being a surface scout might have its benefits after all.

On the third day, Silken was caught by a bird. A second bird arrived and the two fought, tearing Silken to pieces between them and attracting a flock of others. Rockney felt a guilty heart because he and Whisper had slept with Silken the night before, but Whisper didn't seem bothered. On the next night, Whisper slept with Rockney and Tookey, one of the other males.

On the fourth day, Tookey and another male fell into a stream and got swept way. "We've got to save him!" Rockney exclaimed. He jumped onto a rock and tried to catch a glimpse of Tookey downstream.

"Forget it. He's fish food now," said Whisper.

"What's a fish?" asked Rockney.

"A giant monster that breathes water and lives in the rivers."

Rockney shuddered. Why did this awful world have to be so full of monsters?

There were only three of them remaining on the fourth night: Rockney, Whisper, and a dark-skinned female named Shoosk. Shoosk has been one of the scouts who had seen the strange object burn across the sky. "I saw where it hit the ground." She stretched out naked in the shelter she shared with Rockney and Whisper, her butt cushioned by leaves. "It's close now, not more than another day or two."

Whisper ran a seductive finger across Shoosk's breasts. "Hush now," she said. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

"It was like a mountain on fire," said Shoosk. "I'll never forget it for as long as I live. And the sound--"

Whisper pressed her lips against Shoosk's to keep the other female from talking. She pulled Rockney toward her as well, to keep him from feeling left out, and soon the three of them were a writhing mass of tangled limbs.

On the morning of the fifth day, Rockney watched Shoosk wake up and stretch. She put a finger to her lips and worked her legs out from under Whisper's, trying not to wake the other female. Whisper groaned in her sleep but did not wake. "Nature calls," said Shoosk. She walked along the dew-coated branch, not bothering with her cloak.

Rockney fell back asleep. When he woke again, Whisper was shaking him. He could hear Shoosk shouting in the distance. "This way!" said Whisper, leading him along the branch.

"There!" Rockney pointed to Shoosk, whose dark body contrasted against the white strands of a spider web. Shoosk was fighting to free herself from the sticky strands while the spider waited about thirty millimeters away. "We've got to save her!" Rockney exclaimed.

Whisper shook her head. "It's already too late. Look at her leg."

Rockney could see that Shoosk's right leg had two bleeding bite marks and was starting to swell up like an overcooked grub.

"The venom from that kind of spider is always fatal," said Whisper. "She will die and the spider will lay its eggs inside her body. Probably not in that order, come to think of it. Shoosk may still be alive when the baby spiders hatch."

Rockney fell to his knees and heaved up his dinner from the previous night. "That's the most awful thing I've ever heard!"

Whisper shrugged. "Welcome to the surface." She turned away from Shoosk, seeming to not give another thought to her.

Rockney leaned over the branch to say goodbye. Shoosk's voice was giving out as the venom spread. She mouthed something that Rockney could not understand. "What?"

"Knife," she mouthed. "Get my knife!"

"Oh, of course!" Rockney bounded back to their shelter and grabbed the beetle pincer that Shoosk had used to slice her way through the tall grass. He dropped it into the web, where it landed close enough for Shoosk to reach with her left hand.

"Thank you!" Shoosk mouthed.

Rockney watched to see whether she'd try to cut herself free first or attack the spider. He was unprepared for the sight of Shoosk bringing the knife to her own throat. "Oh, no!" exclaimed Rockney, averting his eyes.

Whisper put a hand on his shoulder. "She's dead. By her own hand. It was a nice thing to give her that kind of choice, although now we'll be without our best knife."

Rockney wiped his eyes and let himself be led back to the shelter, where he and Whisper packed for another day of travel. They found the trench around the middle of the day. It carved through the grass like the work of a million voles, and stretched toward the horizon. "This must be where it hit the ground," said Rockney. "No wonder it was able to cause so much damage to our complex, hundreds of meters away--if it struck us directly, we'd all be dead!"

"It must have been very hot, too," said Whisper. "Look how the ground is burned, and those rocks look like they've been melted."

They followed the edge of the trench for the rest of the day. At night, they continued onward without camping. "Is that another piece of metal?" asked Rockney.

Whisper frowned. "Of course it is." This piece was sticking out of the ground by fifty millimeters, about twice as tall as Rockney or Whisper. Rockney put a hand on it and looked up at it. Metal was rare among his people, and sacred because all existing pieces had originated in the Time of Giants. They were the only ones capable of producing it.

"The pieces are getting bigger and more frequent," Rockney noted.

"There is no such thing as Giants," Whisper stated. "They're a myth."

Rockney knocked on the metal fragment with his fist. "This is not a myth. The Giants went away when the sky went black and the rivers ran with blood, but now the sky and water are better again. Maybe they're coming back."

"There are no Giants," Whisper insisted.

"Then what do you think made all this?"

"I don't know." She played with her hair for a moment in thought. "Let's go back to the complex. We'll tell the Council that we looked but couldn't find anything. I'm sure they'll believe us and if they don't, they can come out here themselves!"

"But what about Shoosk and Silken and Tookey and the others? If we turn back now, their deaths would be for nothing!"

Whisper rolled her eyes. "You subterraneans and your overdeveloped sense of honor. Up here in the danger, we have no use for it."

Rockney frowned because he'd started to think of himself as a surface scout and it disappointed him that Whisper still thought of him as a subterranean. "You can go back if you want, but I'm not." He resumed his trek forward.

After a minute, Whisper ran up to him. "Fine, get us both killed."

Ten meters later, something glinted in the moonlight. Something impossibly large that rested in the middle of the trench ahead of them. "It's the size of the meeting chamber," Whisper remarked, as she and Rockney ran toward it.

"Bigger," said Rockney. "A Giant could fit inside that thing, maybe two or three."

Whisper slowed to a walk, no longer in such a hurry. It took another two hours to reach the object, which looked like an enormous block of metal half-buried in the ground. The morning sun glinted off the polished surface of the top portion. They watched it from the shelter of deep grass a whole meter away, not daring to come any closer.

"What is it?" asked Whisper.

"I don't know," said Rockney, still trying to wrap his mind around the size of the thing. "It's big enough for a hundred thousand normal people to live in, or maybe more."

"Maybe we could move in," said Whisper, cuddling up to Rockney. "We could be like Fria and Betar in the old story and start a whole new tribe of our own."

"Not in that thing," said Rockney. "Wait, what's that sound?"

The object was hissing loudly like the biggest snake in the history of the world. Then there was an ear-shattering pop as the entire top of the object flew off and landed with a crash, several meters away. Whisper and Rockney strained forward. They could see a Giant sitting inside the object, easily as big as the skeleton in the meeting chamber.

"He must be sixteen hundred millimeters tall!" Whisper exclaimed.

"He can't be real," said Rockney. "He can't be alive." For a desperate moment, he hoped that he was merely looking at an impossibly life-sized statue of a Giant. It was hard to tell because the figure wore a grey uniform that covered all flesh to the neck and a helmet that covered its head. It might have been a statue, his brain admitted, until the figure began to move. It removed its helmet and took a deep breath.

"It's a female!" Whisper exclaimed. Then she clamped a hand over her mouth, afraid the Giantess would hear her.

The Giantess looked around her vehicle with an expression of pure joy. Rockney wondered if she were seeing the same nightmarish monster-filled landscape that he was because she looked ready to burst into song at any moment. She sprang from the enormous vehicle like a child on Festival morning.

"Whisper! Look out!" cried Rockney, as an enormous boot came down on his companion and mashed her into the ground. Whisper hadn't had a chance to move, and the boot had only missed Rockney by millimeters. "You monster!" Rockney pounded his fists against the thick sole of the boot, which was the only part that he could reach. The Giantess continued her joyful breathing without realizing he was there, and she probably hadn't even noticed that she'd killed Whisper.

The Giantess called out, "Hello!" as if she expected someone else to answer her. Perhaps another Giant? Her voice was loud enough that they must have heard her back home in his underground complex.

Rockney looked around but thankfully could not see a second impossible monster. He then allowed himself, for the first time, to look up and up and up at the Giantess who towered over him. It was hard for him to get his bearings without falling over in dizziness. Was that her leg? Was that her body? Was that her arm? Was that the side of her face? This woman was taller than any bush in the world! Even if there were still such things as trees, they couldn't have been much taller than that.

"Or maybe this isn't Earth at all," the Giantess said. "Maybe I'm dead and this is Heaven." She threw her helmet and gloves an incredible distance, so that they landed back inside her enormous vehicle. Rockney watched her shake her hair out and prayed that she wouldn't shift her feet in the process and stomp him.

Rockney jumped back in shock as the Giantess stepped sideward and removed her boots and socks. The splattered mess on the underside of the Giantess's boot, already unrecognizable as human, went entirely unnoticed by her. The Giantess placed her foot into the grass, her big toe bigger than Rockney's entire body.

"Hello?" she said again. When she got no answer, she stripped off the rest of her clothes. The Giantess ran naked through the wilderness, covering hundreds of millimeters with every step, thankfully not in the direction of the underground complex. Rockney didn't know whether to be frightened, relieved, or aroused.