Velocity

2

The landscape was definitely alien. Our viewpoint was perhaps fifty feet above the ground, just over the treetops. In the distance, hidden somewhat by the haze in the air, mountains loomed. Closer were green carpeted hills with great flapping pink and white birds flying lazily over them. The hills and the jungle that covered them marched right down to the pebble and shell strewn beach in front of us. The trees weren’t like trees at all, they were more like giant ferns. Huge green fronds swayed and tossed about in the wind like green-haired dancers at a neo-punk concert.

“I did it!” shouted Jason. “I twisted the right dial and there are the trees!”

He whooped and stood suddenly, still aiming an index finger at the screen like a bird dog in pheasant farm. His fingernail had a black crescent of grime around it. I gave him a dark look, remembering the well-deserved slugging. But then I softened.

“Yes, you did it, all right,” I admitted.

“So…” He said distantly. He turned to me and looked troubled.

“What should we do now, Steve?”

The elation of what had just happened overwhelmed me again. I had trouble focusing my thoughts for a few moments.

“Hell if I know.”

“Well, should we tell someone?”

“No. Absolutely not. Haven’t you seen enough movies man? We want to keep this to ourselves. I’ve always wanted something like this to happen to me.”

“Me too,” said Jason, his voice falling away to a near whisper. “But now I don’t know what to do with it.” Then he spotted something. He went into a point again.

“Holy crap, Batman! Would you look at those little dudes! ”

For the next full minute we gaped at the screen like a couple of specials. Everything was fairly normal, Earth-like that is, except for the green people in the fern-trees. I could see seed pods, up under the fronds, like coconuts on a palm. I could also see a lot of skinny little green guys in the fronds with the coconuts. Jason broke our stunned silence. Nothing could stun him into silence for long.

“Jeez. They seem to be looking at us.”

“You’re right,” I said. For the first time, I felt a cold hand grip my bowels and give a gentle squeeze of fearful excitement. I shifted in my chair and rubbed my fingers against one another nervously.

“Those little green bastards…” Jason muttered wonderingly. “They’re goblins!” he stated with sudden decision. “That’s what they are.”

“Goblins, huh?” I chuckled. Then I spotted a glint of metal and straightened up. “They have weapons too,” I said. “See there? That one has a knife of some kind, and the three in the tree next to him have bows!”

“Maybe they’ll shoot at us!”

“Maybe you should shut up.” But I was worried. Just what, I wondered, did we look like to them? It was clear that they could see us. Just thinking about what we were seeing was enough to scare the spit out of my mouth and to start the sweat running out of my relatively cool armpits.

Then one of the skinny little farts fired an arrow at us.

“Duck!” Jason all but screamed. And though I didn’t see any real danger, and the arrow looked like it would probably fall short anyway, I ducked. When we looked back, we saw that the arrow had indeed fallen short and that we were apparently out of their range. They shot several more arrows which dropped into the sea below us before they finally gave up.

“Come on Jason, they can’t hit anything. It’s just a picture.” I was a bit pissed that Jason had gotten me to duck.

“I don’t know…”

“Here, let’s just give them something to shoot at.” I reached forward to the fine tuning knob and brushed it.

The image zoomed in and we found ourselves in the middle of one of the big fern-trees. We stared into the startled faces of three goblins. Up close they looked kind of nasty. They were about three feet tall. They might have been a little taller but they seemed to move about in a crouch all of the time, as if their knees were permanently bent. Their hands were long with thin fingers and large bony joints. Their facial features were sharp and pinched into a perpetual snarl. Surprised by our sudden move, they produced thin screeching sounds and displayed mouthfuls of protruding yellow teeth that glistened wetly. We were right there in the middle of their fern-tree and it was like shoving a torch into a snake pit. They squirmed away and hissed excitedly.

“There now…” I began.

“Are you CRAZY?” Jason screamed at me.

I turned to him, startled. Jason was reaching for the fine tuning knob, doubtless about to pull another move that would throw us into the ionosphere. I reacted by reaching for his wrist, but before either of us achieved our objectives, the goblins got into the act.

A thin knife-blade, perhaps eighteen inches long, stabbed out of the picture on the console and opened up a deep gash on Jason’s forearm. Jason screamed like a girl, his voice cracking and going high. Blood surged out of the wound, wetting the goblin’s blade, which was instantly withdrawn. Red drops spattered the control knobs.

For a moment I was paralyzed by this. Jason, squealing like a stuck pig, tripped backward over his folding chair and went sprawling. His fingers gripped his forearm to staunch the flow of blood. The chair clanged against the floor and neatly collapsed into its folded position.

The clang seemed to bring me back to life. My eyes went to the goblin, who crouched directly in front of the screen. His lips were drawn tight and his slitted eyes slid back and forth between Jason and myself. About four inches of his knife protruded onto our side of the screen. I slid out of my chair and to one side, out of his reach. He made a lunge, his arm coming through right up to the bicep and his knife jabbing at my midsection.

I managed to dodge and get out of his reach. I circled the room to Jason and helped him up and over to my uncle’s bed. I eyeballed the tuning knobs. If I could get to the console, I could send the goblins a thousand miles away. I wondered briefly if the goblin’s arm and blade would come with us.

The one knife-wielding bastard was so far the only one brave enough to come up to the screen, but he was jabbering over his shoulder to his more cautious companions. His speech reminded me of the ringing and clacking of castanet’s. I realized that if the ones with the bows got their peckers up, we would be peppered with their arrows. I had to fight not to panic. I needed a weapon.

“Jason!” I yelled. He was sagging on the bed, he was losing it, maybe due to shock, maybe fear. “JASON!”

He didn’t answer, he just bled on the sheets. The goblins were getting increasingly brave. I could see a few moving up cautiously through the fronds. There was no more time. I had to act and I couldn’t get to the console without getting cut. I ran for the stairs and ran up them, three at a time, something I am quite good at and practice whenever I get a chance. At the bottom I turned at break-neck speed, grabbing the doorjamb to swing myself around the corner. I guided my wild progress by slamming hands against the walls of the hallway. I hung a left at the bathroom, bounded across my brother’s snarled bed in one step and thrust a desperate hand into his closet.

My fingers wrapped around a slim cold metal tube. A rifle barrel. I yanked out my brother’s. 22 caliber semi-automatic Ruger, my heart thrilling to the feel of it. I put my hand on the wood-grain stock and instantly I felt some of my usual self-confidence flow back into my limbs. We had always had guns around the house and I have done quite a bit of hunting on our ranch. I’m a good shot, and having a gun in my hands always gave me a boost of courage. I dug ammo out of the dresser. In the top drawer I managed to find a box of. 22 caliber hollow-points, just what I needed.

I trotted back down the hall and up the stairs, madly cramming bullets into the clip. I snapped the bolt as I came to the top of the stairs and had the gun to my shoulder as I entered the workshop. The goblins had not been idle during my brief absence. Three of them were now completely in the room. The ballsy one that had cut Jason was standing on my chair, watching for my return. Another was at his side, with his bow drawn.

Fortunately, the bowman faced toward the console. The third was actually standing on the console, his feet carefully planted so as to avoid touching the control knobs. As I entered, he was in the act of handing something through. Of Jason there was no sign, other than the bloodstains on the sheets and the carpet. The goblin with the bow turned my way and I put the rifle’s bead on his breastbone. That was when I realized what the goblin standing on the console was handing through to the other side. It had been Jason’s legs. Even now his Reebok sneakers were disappearing into the screen. His left one was untied, and the laces trailed lightly across the console.

The goblin with the bow swung to shoot me, but I beat him and put two slugs into his chest. His arrow went wild and thudded into the plaster a yard to my left. He fell back, knocked on his can, squealing and grabbing at the wound.

This appeared to enrage the green knife-wielding guy on my chair. He gave a ragged shout that shot spittle from his yellow teeth and threw himself at me. He charged in low (naturally) and I wasn’t able to bring him into my sights at such close range. So I hit him with the butt of the rifle and threw him back. His head opened across his bald scalp. Red blood welled up, contrasting sharply with his bell pepper-green skin.

“If you little suckers killed Jason, I’ll gut-shoot your whole tribe!” I shouted. A momentary look of fear passed over the goblin’s features as the volume and power of a human’s voice assaulted his ears. Then he slashed at me once and took a bullet in the teeth. He fell back and rolled in gargling convulsions. The third in the raiding party had disappeared back into his fern-tree. I moved to the console and looked through, breathing hard and feeling elated. My hands and stomach shivered a bit with the adrenalin of the moment. Pinpricks of salty sweat popped out on my forehead.

The fern-tree was empty of goblins. Jason wasn’t in sight either, but I was sure that they couldn’t have carried him off too far. Then I heard his yelling. A sickening feeling swept through my gut. My mind numbed as a dozen horrible tortures came to mind at the knobby green hands of these aliens. I knew that I had to go through and find him, but my mind balked. It is not every day that you take your first step into an entirely unknown and decidedly hostile world. Especially when such a step went through a touchy device that your psycho uncle had invented.

I stalled by reloading the rifle, even though its magazine held fifteen rounds. I fumbled with the box and dropped a few rounds onto the console. They clattered and rolled around between the knobs.

I looked at those knobs. I looked at them hard. All I had to do was reach out and twist one, any of them, and Jason and the goblins would be history. I would be safe. My eyes focused on a seed pod nestled up against a waving frond. A second later my vision shifted back to the tuning knobs.

Then Jason screamed again, that cracking, high-pitched womanish scream like before. “Steve! Steve! Oh shit, STEVE! ” he cried.

My eyes rested on the blood drops that Jason had lost from his forearm when the goblins had first attacked. It was still wet. It was too much. I climbed onto my folding chair and placed my foot on the top of the console. The dark metal barrel of my brother’s. 22 Ruger preceded me into the new world.