On Saturday, January 13, 2029, a spaceplane was perched upon a launchpad at a spaceport in California's Mojave desert. A new Aerospace company called "Future Shock" was entering the commercial space arena with a top-of-the-line spaceplane affectionately known as the Thunderbolt. Four men and two women were going up on the Thunderbolt's maiden voyage from the Mojave desert to Oahu.

Captain Logan Tanner was retired from the United States Air Force, and he was the pilot. The co-pilot was Mason Lewis, an African-American pro racecar driver who parlayed his wealth into learning to be a pilot. The four passengers were made up of a husband and wife and a man and his sister. Tyler Chen was a Chinese-American pro tennis player who became a multi-millionaire before the age of 30. His wife Carmen was Mexican-American and in her mid-20's. Nolan Ward was a part Native-American, part Mexican-American, and part white concert promoter who won two tickets to this maiden flight from a radio station he does business with. He got into an argument with his girlfriend, so he brought his half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. Natalie is half Native-American and half-white. Nolan and Natalie have the same mother, but different fathers.

Logan greeted the four passengers individually as they carried their luggage onto the spaceplane. There were overhead luggage cabinets, and Mason the co-pilot made sure the luggage was secured inside the cabinets. He also made sure the passengers were strapped in correctly. Before long, they were ready for takeoff and the countdown began. When they were cleared for takeoff, Logan activated the thrusters and the spaceplane took off into the sky. It was daytime, but as they gained enough altitude, the sky outside the windows appeared to grow dark as they reached sub-orbital space.

Meanwhile, a universe away, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 21-year-old female college student named Darian Wagner was viewing the Thunderbolt on a scope. Beside her was her 18-year-old assistant Zima Zamora, a Latina with brown hair and brown eyes. Both women were dressed like schoolgirls, complete with white socks and Mary Janes. These were the standard uniforms for their all-female University.

"I found a suitable target, Zima!" said Darian.

Zima began rubbing her hands together with excitement. "How small are they?"

"From our perspective, a man from their reality who stands six feet tall would be exactly two inches tall! They're tiny enough to be easily handled, yet not too large that we couldn't swallow one of them to teach them discipline! They will be perfect subjects for my junior thesis!"

Darian pushed some buttons on the control console beneath the viewing scope, and pulled a lever.

"I'm initiating a spacewarp that should pull their spaceplane into our reality!" said Darian. "I will also control their spaceplane, to ensure that it lands where we want it to, so it can be easily retrieved!"

Back aboard the Thunderbolt, a hazy vortex of bright colors opened up in front of the spaceplane.

"I can't avoid it!" said Logan. "We're being pulled right into it!" Logan slammed his fists into the control panel and shouted, "The controls won't respond!"

The passengers saw all the colors of the rainbow outside their windows as the spaceplane lost altitude, plummeting downward to the planet below.

"You're coming in too steep!" said Mason.

"I can't help it!" Logan shouted. "It's like the spaceplane has a mind of its own!"

"It looks like we're heading for that wooded area!" said Mason as he pointed at a group of trees in the distance.

They came in for a landing, and the spaceplane glided to a stop in a clearing between some giant trees. Logan got on the intercom and said, "I don't understand what just happened, but everyone just stay seated while my co-pilot and I go outside to figure out where we are!"

Logan and Mason opened the door hatch and exited the spaceplane. What they saw astonished them. Trees stretched up into the sky, dozens of times taller than they should have been. The foliage and the rocks and debris on the ground were all on a more massive scale than normal.

"It looks like we've been shrunk down to a couple of inches tall!" said Mason.

Meanwhile, back at the all-female University, Darian and Zima watched the Thunderbolt and her crew on the viewing scope.

"I'm going in my shuttlecruiser to go retrieve them!" said Darian, as she pulled a flashdrive from the viewing console. "Stay here and watch the scope and keep me posted if any of them get away!"

Darian got into her shuttlecruiser and put it on autopilot. She instructed the navigation computer to fly to the coordinates on a flashdrive she pulled from the viewing console where she left Zima. When the shuttlecruiser landed a few minutes later, Darian disembarked.

Logan and Mason looked up to see a giant Mary Jane fall from the sky, attached to a calf that was higher than a two story building. They looked up and saw Darian for the first time. Had she been normal size, she would have stood about five feet five inches tall, but because everything on this massive world was colossal, the young woman stood about 195 feet tall.

"Welcome to Alta-Earth!" said Darian. "You must be the crew. I am Darian Wagner, and I will be your captress from this day forward!"

"Captress?" Logan asked.

"What's the meaning of this?" Mason asked. "Did you bring us here?"

"Yes, and all your questions will be answered shortly when we return to the University!" Darian activated a robotic assistant to lift the spaceplane and carry it to the shuttlecruiser, with the four passengers still inside. Darian collected Logan and Mason and carried them to her shuttlecruiser. She carried them snug in her fists, Logan in her left fist and Mason in her right fist. When she boarded the shuttlecruiser, she dropped Logan into a cupholder that was six inches deep on her scale, then dropped Mason into a second cupholder the same size.

Darian used autopilot and the shuttlecruiser was back at the University within minutes. The robotic assistant carried the spaceplane carefully into the lab where Zima was manning the viewing scope. The Thunderbolt was placed on a table, and Darian deposited Logan and Mason onto that same table.

"You can tell your passengers it is safe to disembark," said Darian.

The passengers heard this, and climbed out of the door hatch without being told. When all six of them were assembled, Darian and Zima stood over them excitedly.

"My family was never wealthy enough to own tiny people," said Zima, "but with the help of this University, I'm able to possess some of them!"

"They're not your tiny people, Zima!" Darian reminded her. "They belong to me! But if they are good on the gameboard on Arcadia, maybe we can win some other captives that you can own!"

"I hate to interrupt you," said Logan, "but can you tell me who the hell you are and what the hell is going on?"

"Gladly!" said Darian. "I am Darian Wagner, and this is my assistant, Zima. You are on the planet Alta-Earth, in a universe that is parallel to your own. Everything here exists on a scale 36 times larger than anything in your universe. For instance, I stand five feet five inches tall by our standard of measurement, but to you, I tower over you at 195 feet tall!"

"How long are we going to be here?" Logan asked.

"Indefinitely!" said Darian. "I need to use the six of you for my junior thesis project."

"Do your laws allow that?" Logan asked. "To just imprison innocent people, without due cause?"

Darian tilted her head back and laughed. "There are no laws on our world that protect people your size! There are a nearly infinite number of alternate realities where we can acquire captives, and most of them are taken to Arcadia!"

"Arcadia?" Logan asked. "What is that?"

"It is a massive space station where tinies are taken to play games of skill. A lot of betting goes on there, our economy relies on the games! Any tiny person who loses a game is won by the owner of the winning tiny person."

"It would really help us if one of you had a skill that could help you win at the games!" said Zima.

"Do any of you possess special athletic skills?" Darian asked.

"No!" said Logan. "All of us are just regular average people! We're a waste of your time!"

"Logan's right!" said Mason. "You should just send us back to Earth!"

"Your little ruse won't work!" said Darian. "The process that brought you here was very expensive, the only way I was even able to do it was because I was using University equipment. You will play in the games, like it or not!"

"You're just game pieces to us!" said Zima. "You can be bought, sold, and traded like toys! And if you don't do as you're told, you might end up in someone's belly!" Zime rubbed her belly to emphasize her point. "Maybe you should do a mind scan and find out if they're lying about having athletic abilites!"

"I don't have time to rent out the mind scanning equipment right now," said Darian. "I'm just going to take them all to Arcadia right now and use the first captive who volunteers!"

Darian went and got a container and set it down on the massive table the captives from Earth were standing on. She activated the outer door, and it slid open. The door was on the same scale as the Earth people.

"Everybody into your habitation module!" said Darian.

"We may as well obey her," said Logan. "It would be futile to resist!"

All six of the captives marched into their habitation module. There were furnishings built into the walls, so the furniture wouldn't move around when the habitation module was moved.

"These couches look old and stained!" said Natalie Red Hawk.

"I agree!" said Carmen Tyler.

Darian peeked through the transparent ceiling and said, "There is food to eat if you're hungry, but while you eat, everyone strap yourselves in! I'm taking you on my shuttlecruiser to Arcadia!"

The six captives did as they were told, and Darian carried the habitation module to her shuttlecruiser, with Zima following her. All six of them ate some of the food that was on their scale: protein bars in metalic wrappers with bottles of water.

Darian strapped herself in, and Zima strapped herself into the passenger seat. The habitation module was on a console between the two giant women. Darian piloted the shuttlecruiser up into space, and on the viewscreen, they could see a massive space station spinning in the distance. It had a central axis, while two spheres on either end of a long shaft spun around in circles to generate artificial gravity.

Darian parked her shuttlecruiser and walked into one of the arenas with Zima, as she carried the habitation module. The two women set themselves up in some seats where owners of game participants were meant to be seated, and Darian opened the top of the habitation module.

"Do I have any volunteers?" Darian asked. "They're having car races right now, are any of you skilled at racing? The loser will be executed in this game!"

"I'll volunteer!" said Mason. "I'm a pro race car driver back on Earth!"

Darian scooped Mason up and set him in a simulator to get him accustomed to the controls of the vehicle he would soon be driving. When he was ready, Darian set him in a racecar next to another driver, and the two cars took off when the light turned green. Mason's car flew around the track, and it soon became obvious to Logan and the other captives that Mason's opponent didn't have any skills or experience with racing; at least, not as much training as Mason had.

Titans who were spectators in the audience placed bets, and the cars completed the necessary number of laps, and Mason was declared the winner.

When the loser was presented to Darian, she lifted him to her mouth, and swallowed him whole. She licked her lips and looked at her captives.

"That could easily be you if you dare to defy me! Understand?"

The captives nodded their ascent, and Darian commanded them to return to their habitation module, and after collecting her winnings, she and Zima returned to the shuttlecruiser and flew back to Alta-Earth.

Once back at the University, Darian and Zima place the habitation module on the massive table and said goodbye for the night.

When the giant women left, Logan looked at their surroundings.

"I think we can escape!"

Logan pushed on the door. "Mason, Tyler, Nolan! Help me push this door open!"

The three men pushed on the door, and it slid open. All six captives exited the habitation module.

"That window is open!" said Logan. He pointed at a device that looked like a telescope, but it was actually the device that had opened the spacewarp that pulled them into this alternate reality.

It took the better part of an hour, but the captives were able to scale the equipment next to the wall and make their way up to the window, and they climbed out and used a power cord to climb down the outside of the building. Soon, they were on the ground on Alta-Earth at night. They were on their own, but they were free!

The group of six former captives made their way along the side of the building to the front, and saw the quad of the University. Huge concrete walkways stretched from a central point and fanned out to form four diagonals. There was a water fountain in the center of the quad.

"You're the boss, Captain Tanner!" said Nolan Ward. "What should we do?"

"Call me Logan! We're all in this crazy mess together, so we might as well be on a first name basis. We need to see if we can get to a secluded wooded area."

"Then going across the quad doesn't make much sense!" said Nolan. "I think we should go to the back of the campus and try to find our way off campus that way!"

"I agree with Nolan," said Mason. "If this campus is anything like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, we might find a stream near campus that should lead us to a rural area. I know when we were descending in the Thunderbolt, this town seemed more medium-sized, not huge like Los Angeles. And I do recall seeing some streams winding through the town."

"I think we should break up into two groups," said Nolan, "because the odds of our capture are higher if we're together!"

"I disagree," said Logan. "We need to stick together! I'm going to find a way to get us back to Earth, even if it means I have to stay behind. When Future Shock hired me, I pledged to look after my passengers under any circumstances, including something as crazy as this!"

"I agree with the Captain," said Nolan's half-sister Natalie Red Hawk. "If we split up, we wouldn't be able to communicate with each other."

"Mason said there's a stream cutting through town," said Logan, "I think if we head South, we should get there and we can follow the stream."

All four of the passengers decided to follow Logan and Mason. It was night time, but Logan and Mason each had a small flashlight they could use.

"I've got an idea," said Logan. "If we set out in one specific direction without knowing where the stream is, we don't know where we could end up. I say the four passengers stay here on campus behind the building we escaped from, and Mason will head west and I'll head south, and we'll meet up here at daybreak. One of us should've found a stream by then."

"Sounds okay to me!" said Nolan, as he sat down and reclined against the school building with his arms behind his back.

"If we're not back within a half hour after daybreak, assume we've been captured and try to evade any giants!" said Logan, and he turned and walked away with Mason. Logan headed south, and Mason headed west.

Mason did his best to stay away from spots where he could be easily seen. He walked in the gutters and under shuttlecruisers. Soon, he came to an area where some college students were having a party. Since he was still close to the University campus where Darian went to school, he had inadvertently stumbled onto a sorority house where the party was in full swing.

"It must be Saturday night here on their world, too!" said Mason to himself.

Meanwhile, Logan found a radio tower that served as a communications nexus for the college radio station. He easily walked through the chain link fence and made his way to the tower.

"If I can climb high enough, I should be able to see where the streams are in this town!" said Logan.

Climbing the tower was easier said than done, however; Logan could see an area about fifty feet off the ground where there was a grid built into the tower that had rungs that were small enough for him to grab onto, but the question was how to scale those first fifty feet.

Back at the sorority party, Mason was trapped. The drunk women in their early 20's stumbled around the front lawn of the sorority mansion carrying their cups of beer, and some of them stumbled into the road as Mason hid in the gutter beneath a shuttlecruiser.

"Damn drunk bitches!" said Mason. "I'm gonna be stuck here all night if this party doesn't die down soon!"

Just then, a drunk college girl stumbled into the area right above the curb where Mason was hiding.

"I think I'm going to puke!" said the young woman, and she bent over to vomit. Mason, seeing that he was right in the path of any vomit that might come down, ran out from under the shuttlecruiser into plain sight.

"Look!" said the drunk college student. "A little person!"

Several of the women approached the curb to see what the first woman was talking about, and a brunette spotted Mason. She thrust her mid-calf boot down on one side of Mason, then stomped down on his other side with her other boot. Before Mason could react, she had bent down and grabbed him.

"We've got another captive for the party game!" said the brunette. "Hello, little man! My name is Stephanie!"

"Stephanie," said a short burly blonde woman, "maybe we shouldn't swallow him, he might belong to someone!"

"I don't care!" said Stephanie. "If he goes to Arcadia it's just a matter of time before he gets swallowed anyways!"

Mason was held firmly in the hands of the mighty giantess, unable to escape. He could still breathe without difficulty, but if she tightened her grip she could easily crush him as if he were a mouse.

"Let me tell you something!" said Stephanie the brunette to the stout blonde, gesturing while waiving her arms,"if someone was stupid enough to let a little person escape, then they had it coming!" With the last few syllables, Stephanie accidentally loosened her grip on Mason, and he went flying through the air and landed on the lawn. Because the sorority girls were drunk, their reaction time was slowed down, giving Mason enough time to flee back into the gutter.

The drunk women looked for him, but they couldn't find him. Mason went back the way he had came, heading back to the University campus in defeat at having not found a stream. Although he had failed in his mission, he was grateful to have escaped the drunken giantess who wanted to use him for a drinking game in which he would've been swallowed.

Meanwhile, Logan was having better luck climbing the radio tower. Because it was dark, he hadn't seen a cable that stretched from a third of the way up the tower to the ground, before disappearing into a pipe. By climbing the cable, Logan was able to make it to the point fifty feet up where the grid started. The grid wasn't designed for human hands, but formed diamond patterns across its entirety. Each diamond shape was about two feet across and one foot high, so it functioned as a ladder for someone from Earth.

Logan climbed several hundred feet, but still wasn't as high as the elevation of a one-story house on Alta-Earth. This wasn't the work for someone who was afraid of heights, but luckily, Logan was born to be a pilot and was completely unafraid. It took the better part of an hour of steady climbing before he was high enough to see the payout of the town. As he looked around, he could see that Mason was correct, there were hills and streams that were visible. He could see the trees that lined the edges of the nearest stream.

Logan memorized the location and approximate distance of the nearest stream, and then began climbing down. He made his way back to the campus, and found the other five escapees before daybreak.

"No luck, Mason?" Logan asked.

"No, I got captured by a drunk sorority girl, but I got away. How about you?"

"I found a stream!" said Logan. "I know how to get there!"

"How do you know where a stream is?" Mason asked. "Did you find a map?"

"No, I climbed a radio tower and I was able to see the layout of the land." Logan motioned to the others. "Everyone, follow me! The distance is close from the perspective of a giant, but at our diminutive size, it will take us a while longer!"

The six escapees made their way along the gutters of the college town, under shuttlecruisers and in the direction that Logan instructed them. They didn't pass by the same street where the sorority girl had captured Mason, but by daybreak they arrived at the stream Logan had spotted from the radio tower. There was an embankment that was five or six feet down from a giant's perspective, but from an Earthling's perspective, it was several hundred feet down. There was a path they could follow that made their trek easier.

"I don't like this!" said Natalie. "There could be wild animals down here!"

"Well, what would you prefer?" Nolan asked. "Being back under Darian's power and forced to be a game piece on Arcadia, or being free but in a little bit of danger?"

"I guess you're right!" said Natalie. "This is such a strange world! They're thousands of years ahead of us technologically, but they have the mentality of the ancient Romans! Forcing little people to play games where the loser is captured or devoured!"

"Well, nobody ever said life made sense!" said Nolan.

"This society relies on slaves, without it, their economy would collapse!" said Tyler. "Darian herself tried to explain that to us."

"I wonder why we haven't heard of a lot more people ending up here!" said Carmen. "It must take a lot of little people our size to fuel the gaming mecca of Arcadia!"

"I think other people from our world have ended up here, but they were never heard from again, so they couldn't come back and talk about it!"

"I guess that's true!" said Carmen.

The little people made their way along the stream, with Logan taking the lead while Mason was in the rear with a branch and leaves brushing their footprints clean.

"We should be walking single file to hide our numbers," said Logan, "even though Mason is wiping our trail clear, just so we get in the habit of walking this way."

After several hours passed, they decided to make a camp.

"It's about noon," said Logan, "we should set up camp here, but in the meantime I'm sending Mason out to find food."

Mason set out as Logan instructed. They hadn't eaten since they had eaten those protein bars Darian had given them the day before. Mason found his way to a park, where he saw some women playing volleyball. He made his way back to the camp to inform the others.

"I found a park where some women are playing volleyball, and there's a blanket with a picnic basket! We should be able to go in and take what we need without their knowing we were there!"

Logan, Mason, Nolan, and Tyler headed toward the park, with Mason in the lead. They are able to climb into the picnic basket because of the rungs on the basket acting as ladder rungs. The giant women were so involved in their game that the little people weren't spotted. After Logan, Mason, and Tyler had enough food, they told Nolan to forget about getting more and to come with them.

"Forget it, I'm not going back empty handed!" said Nolan. "I'll just jump in there and grab some dessert!"

As Nolan climbed into the picnic basket, the giantesses finished their game and headed back toward the blanket.

"Nolan, we have to leave! The giants are coming!" Logan shouted, but Nolan remained inside the picnic basket.

"Forget about Nolan," said Logan, "we have to spare ourselves! Let's get back to the camp!"

The three men were on the edge of the park when they saw the giant women surround the picnic basket. Nolan was easily captured within less than a minute. A blonde giantess held him firmly in her right fist.

"Now where did you come from, tiny one?" the giantess asked.

"I'm from Earth!" said Nolan.

"But aren't you all?" the giantess asked. "At least, from some version of Earth. Who did you escape from?"

Nolan was silent.

"If you won't tell me, then I'll just keep you!" said the blonde giantess.

"Are you going to use him for a sex toy?" one of the other women asked. The other women in their group started laughing.

"I might at some point, who knows?" said the blonde giantess. "I think I'm going to train him to be a game piece on Arcadia!" The giantess smiled at her tiny captive. "Don't worry, little man! I'll only play against other women, so if you lose, you'll end up in the belly of someone beautiful!"

"Thanks for reassuring me!" said Nolan sarcastically.

About one o'clock in the afternoon, Zima Zamora arrived to check on the tinies from Earth. She checked the habitation module and saw that they were missing, so she turned on some of the scanning equipment, to check and see if she could detect the lifesigns of the captives.

"They're not here!" Zima said to herself. She went to a two-way video phone and punched in the number to Darian's cell phone. Darian's face appeared on the screen a few moments later. She was sitting in her shuttlecruiser. "The captives have escaped!" said Zima.

"I'm on my way over!" said Darian.

When Darian arrived a couple of minutes later, Zima showed her the window and the cord hanging out of it where the captives had climbed down to get outside the building.

"Don't worry about the captives," said Darian. "We'll have them back soon enough! Everything is going according to plan!"

Darian gave a mischievous smile to Zima, and Zima gave an evil grin. Zima rubbed her hands together with excitement at the thought of re-capturing the tinies.

Meanwhile, back at the park, Logan Tanner, Mason Lewis, and Tyler Chen were watching as the giantesses who had been playing volleyball packed up their belongings, with Nolan Ward as the new acquisition of one of the giant women.

"I'm going to try to hitch a ride on their vehicle!" said Logan. "I want the two of you to take this food back to the camp. If I don't try to track Nolan down now, I might never get the chance again!"

Mason and Tyler watched Logan take off in the direction the giant women were heading.

"Do you really think we can survive on our own in a world of giants?" Tyler asked Mason. "Maybe we're better off under the care of Darian!"

"I'd rather try to do our best living out a fugitive existence than living as pawns that can be gambled away on a game board! You saw what happened to the guy on that losing team! Darian swallowed him!"

"But I'm a pro tennis player!" said Tyler. "Since this is a parallel world, there must be a sport that's an equivalent of tennis here on this world of titans! And if there is, I might be the best player out there!"

"But what if you're not?" Mason asked. "They might have gotten five or six other tennis champions from worlds that are analogs of our own, and they might be better than you!"

"Yeah, I guess you're right!" said Tyler.

"Let's get this food back to the camp!" said Mason.

Across the park, Logan followed the giantess who had captured Nolan. There was a parking lot with a few shuttlecruisers parked there, and when Logan saw the blonde giantess who had captured Nolan get into one of the shuttlecruisers, he got underneath and climbed into the undercarriage and found a spot above the rear bumper where he would be able to hold onto something when the vehicle made its ascent.

The blonde giantess set Nolan inside a plastic jar that she set in a cup holder, then worked the control console of her shuttlecruiser. In moments, the engines kicked on, and the vehicle took off into the sky, climbing at a gentle angle. Her home wasn't far, so the trip only lasted about twenty seconds. Around the rear bumper, Logan held on for dear life and was rewarded when the vehicle came in for a landing less than a minute after take-off. When he saw the giant woman carry the jar containing Nolan into her house, Logan climbed down and followed her, but hid in the shrubbery, waiting to make his move.

Back at the camp, Mason and Tyler eventually arrived with the food they had stolen from the giantess volleyball players.

"Nolan was captured!" Mason told Natalie. "Logan is trying to track him down to try to set him free!"

Natalie lifted her hands to her face in shock. "No!" she said. "How did it happen?"

"Nolan went back for food when Logan told him it was time for us to leave! I guess he didn't want to be the only one to show up at the camp empty handed."

Tyler began setting the food out, and the four of them sat down for their meal. Before they ate, Carmen said a prayer.

"Lord, please protect Nolan and Logan in this dangerous world, and please bring them back to us! Thank you for this food you have provided for us in this our hour of need!"

Back at the house of the giantess who captured Nolan, Logan was trying to scale the perimeter of the house, looking for openings. He spotted a window that was open slightly, and climbed a bush to the ledge beneath the window. When he saw giant insects, it didn't phase him, because his military training from his time in the Air Force gave him the intestinal fortitude to ignore things like that that woud startle an average man.

Inside, the blonde giantess sat on the carpet and dumped out the jar that had contained Nolan, and he came tumbling out. The blonde giantess was wearing green shorts and an orange tank top, and she was bare-footed. She had taken her shoes and socks off during the time it took for Logan to get to the window ledge. She was sitting Indian style, and as Nolan got to his feet he saw that she had a nice medium tan for a blonde woman. Nolan thought that she must go to tanning salons regularly to achieve that effect.

"My name is Rikki!" said the giantess. "People like you usually only belong to the extremely wealthy, so someone like me doesn't get an opportunity like this very often! What's your name?"

"Nolan Ward!"

"Welcome to Alta-Earth, Nolan! Did you know there's a drinking game involving tinies like you?"

"One of the crew members of the space plane that brought me here was almost captured by a sorority girl who planned on using him in a drinking game. That happened last night!"

"Actually, there are several drinking games involving swallowing tiny people, I've always wanted to try it!"

"Wouldn't you rather use me for a sex toy?" Nolan asked.

"Yes, but only if you survive being swallowed by me. Now, I will vomit you back up if I drink enough alcohol, but you're going to have to conserve your air while you're inside my tummy, okay tiny one?"

"Can't we talk about this?" Nolan asked.

"The discussion is over!" said Rikki the giantess, and she stood up to reach for a bottle of alcohol. As she did, Nolan made a break for it and tried to run across the carpet toward the window. Rikki saw what he was trying to do, and walked over and pressed the button on the control console that activated the window and caused it to shut completely. Logan saw her arm approaching the window as she reached for the control console, and jumped out of the way, landing on a branch of the bush he had climbed up. Luckily, Rikki didn't see him.

Inside the house, Rikki grabbed a champagne glass and a bottle of white wine, and poured some into the glass. She grabbed Nolan, who from her perspective, was around two inches in height. Rikki dangled him over her champagne glass, and dropped him inside. When Nolan splashed down into the cool liquid, he panicked, thinking that he would soon find himself contained within the muscular walls of Rikki's stomach. As he struggled and splashed around inside the glass, Nolan tried to reason with Rikki.

"I'm about two inches tall from your perspective, right? Isn't that a little big to swallow? Maybe you should acquire a captive from a world where the people are one centimeter tall from your point of view! I don't know, you could swallow a midget or something!"

"Trying to reason with me will do you no good!" said the beautiful blonde titaness. "You're going on a journey to my belly!"

She tilted the glass back and began guzzling the contents. Nolan tried to swim in the direction of the bottom of the glass, which was tilted upwards at that point; however, it did him no good. Rikki's mouth was wide open and ready to receive him. Nolan could feel Rikki's hot breath washing over him as she guzzled the wine; there was nothing he could hold onto, the force of gravity was draggin him to exactly the place where Rikki wanted him: her mouth. Nolan found himself dragged down toward her mouth by the pull of the current of the wine. Soon, he splashed down on her tongue, and her teeth clenched down around him and locked into place. With one muscular contraction, Nolan was dispatched down Rikki's esophagus to splash down in the depths of her titanic belly. The fumes were overwhelming and he was covered with chyme, but surprisingly, there was a pocket of air inside Rikki's stomach, with just enough air for Nolan to survive, at least for the time being.

Meanwhile, outside the house, Logan tried to find another window he could climb through. He walked around the house, which was wider in diameter than a football stadium. He wished they had some form of walkie-talkies so he could communicate with his Mason Lewis, his co-pilot, but he knew the advanced technology of these titans would probably be able to track their transmissions, so it would've done them no good any way.

Right at that moment, Rikki chose to open the sliding door of the backyard and step outside. Logan was unaware of the drama that unfolded within her stomach walls, that Nolan was fighting for survival. Logan quickly seized the opportunity to run inside the house, hoping that he would be able to find a way to secure Nolan and bring him back to the camp. Rikki had the wine bottle in her hand, and took swigs from it now and then.

Inside her belly, Nolan was soaking wet, floating in the chyme of Rikki's partially digested food. Every time she took a swig of the wine bottle, wine rained down on Nolan. There was an air pocket with just enough air for him to survive if he took a breath only every fifteen or twenty seconds. Nolan silently prayed that Rikki would vomit as soon as possible.

When Rikki downed the last of the wine in the wine bottle, she felt a familiar sensation that she had felt on occasions when she was sick. She knew she was about to vomit, and what better place to do that then outside? She bent over, and the contents of her stomach erupted onto the grass. Nolan was discharged up through her esophagus and out her mouth, and down onto the grass below. When Rikki recovered, she scooped Nolan up.

"Let's get you inside and get you cleaned up! You just had an adventure! Tomorrow, I'm going to train you for Arcadia!"

The door was still open at that point, but Logan felt that he needed to get back to the camp and inform the others of what happened. They could come back for Nolan, now that he where Rikki the giantess who captured Nolan lived. When he got outside, he memorized the address on the wall near the front door of Rikki's house, and after jumping down into the gutter, he went to the corner and memorized the street name. The trip from the park to Rikki's house only took twenty seconds, so Logan figured he could get back to the camp by nightfall. In the distance, he could see the mountain that was near the edge of the campus they had escaped from.

Logan had a good sense of direction, and he had a compass to guide him, so he made his way from gutter to gutter, avoiding giant people along the way. At sunset he found his way back to the park where Nolan was abducted, and from there he found his way to the camp by the stream just after night fall.

"We saved some food for you, captain!" said Mason.

"I tracked Nolan down, I know where we can find him! We should set out for him immediately!"

"Whoa, hold on!" said Mason. "You look like you just walked thirty miles! I think you need to rest!"

"Maybe you're right! We can go after him first thing in the morning!"

"How is my brother doing?" Natalie asked. "Is he okay?"

"He's doing fine!" said Logan. "He got captured by a giantess named Rikki. I know where she lives. I saw her swallow Nolan while drinking a bottle of wine,"

"Oh my God!" said Natalie.

"It's okay!" said Logan. "She wasn't trying to hurt him, it was a drinking game. She vomited him up. She plans on taking him to Arcadia!"

Earlier that day, after Logan had escaped and was heading back toward the camp, but before he got back, Rikki looked at Tyler as he stood on the dining room table, next to Nolan, Jace and Trevor. "So you're a pro tennis player on your home world?"

"I might be!" said Tyler.

"He is!" said Trevor. "On the version of Earth that I come from, everyone has heard of Tyler Chen! He must've came from a world that is an analog of mine! If he plays for you, it's a guarantee that he'll win some game pieces for you!"

"You're just their little minion, aren't you?" said Nolan.

"I've found it pays to serve the giants well!" said Trevor. "The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be!"

"I still plan on getting back to Earth somehow!" said Nolan.

"It'll never happen!" said Trevor. "No tiny has ever escaped back to their home-world! It hasn't happened in the history of Alta-Earth, and they've been conquering alternate realities for thousands of years!"

"Yeah!" said Jace. "What makes you think you'll be the first?"

The next morning, back at the camp, Logan was sleeping in. He was catching up on some much needed rest. By walking back from Rikki's house and making two round trips there and back again, he had walked ninety miles in one twenty-four hour period, and it had caught up with him.

Mason, Carmen, and Natalie were sitting around contemplating their options.

"I guess I could get back to the campus and try to see if there's some way to refuel the Thunderbolt!" said Mason.

"You'd better wait until Logan wakes up," said Carmen. "He's in charge of our welfare."

"Do you think we really have a chance to ever get back to Earth?" Natalie asked.

"To be honest, it doesn't look good!" said Mason. "But Logan wants to keep trying until we've exhausted all of our possibilities."

Mason snapped a twig in half that he had been holding in his hands and tossed it into the stream. "I think I'd better do some recon and try to spy on Darian and Zima, and try to see if I can find anything out." Mason stood up and began to walk away. "When Logan wakes up, tell him where I went!"

"Mason, I don't think Logan will be happy when he wakes up and finds out that you've left!" said Carmen. "We already lost Nolan because he took action without the consent of the captain, then we lost Tyler on a rescue mission to retrieve Nolan! We don't need to lose you, too!"

"If I don't do anything, we won't be any better off," said Mason. "At least if I go try to spy on Darian, I can find out if there's a chance of refueling the Thunderbolt and using Darian's technology to get us home!"

"Mason, Carmen's right!" said Natalie. "We'd be lost without you! We can't afford to have you get captured!" Natalie tried to use her body to block Mason's path. Mason held her in his arms.

"Don't worry about me!" said Mason. "I won't get caught, I'm not as stupid as your brother Nolan! Trust me, I'll be back!" Mason grabbed Natalie by the shoulders and gently pushed her aside, and stepped around her.

Mason walked toward the trail that led to the road. He remembered how to get back to the University campus, so he followed the procedure and stayed in the gutters and tried to lay low. It took a couple of hours, but he got to the campus without getting caught. Now he just had to make his way to the building where Darian was keeping the Thunderbolt. He saw that the cord they had climbed down had been removed, but the door was open. He his behind the front of the door and tried to listen. Mason could see the Thunderbolt on a table top. Peeking inside, Mason could see Darian and Zima were in between classes and Darian was adjusting some equipment.

"With this interface," said Darian, "we can use the crew and passenger manifest to run the names of the captives through this spacewarp Internet scanning technology; we can check the Internet of their own world to find out who they are and what skills they have!"

Several read-outs appeared on the screen in front of Darian. One of them interested Darian.

"It says here that Tyler Chen is a world renowned tennis champion! If I can get him back, we can't lose on Arcadia!"

"But what if he's already been captured by someone else by now?" Zima asked.

"Then we'll just have to got to Arcadia and claim him if anyone tries to register him as a game piece!"

"Did you register him as your own game piece when you took the captives to Arcadia?" Zima asked.

"Yes, of course!" said Darian. "So if someone tries to register him, I'll find out! There's also something I'm not telling you, Zima! I have a secret plan for getting all the captives back!"

"What did you do?" Zima asked.

"You'll find out later this afternoon!" said Darian.

Mason overheard the entire conversation, and decided that he had heard enough. He made his way off campus and returned to the camp, where Logan was awake sitting with Carmen and Natalie.

"I found something out!" said Mason. "Darian has something up her sleeve, and she plans on capturing us again later this afternoon!"

"How is she going to catch us?" Logan asked.

"I don't know," replied Mason, "I overheard her telling Zima, but she didn't reveal all of her plans to Zima yet. And she also found out that Tyler Chen is a pro tennis player!"

Logan cursed and shook his fist in the air. "Damn! Now he'll be used as a game piece by her for sure!"

"That other giantess already captured him, and she's probably going to use him as a game piece," said Natalie.

"Yes, but as soon as she does, Darian will go to Arcadia and retrieve him because she registered all of us already!" said Mason. "I heard her explaining that to Zima.

Meanwhile, back at Rikki's house, Rikki was planning on taking Tyler to Arcadia. She took Nolan along with her also, and her friend Britney came along with her in Rikki's shuttlecruiser, and she brought her two captives Jace and Trevor.

"We can't lose with Tyler as my game piece!" said Rikki as she piloted the shuttlecruiser up through the clouds and into space. The Arcadia space station could be seen in the distance on the viewscreen. It only took a few minutes to reach Arcadia. Rikki parked her shuttlecruiser, and took Nolan and Tyler in her hands and carried them to the registration office.

"There's a problem," said the woman in the office.

"What's the problem?" Rikki asked.

"This game piece is already registered to Darian Wagner! I'm notifying her now."

"But this game piece escaped from her!" said Rikki. "If I re-captured him, shouldn't I be entitled to a payment of some kind?"

"I'll let you negotiate with her about that!" said the woman.

Meanwhile, back on campus, Darian received a call from Arcadia.

"So they captured him?" Darian asked. "I'll be right there!" Darian put her phone away and turned toward Zima. "They captured Tyler Chen! We're going to Arcadia!"

Darian and Zima got into Darian's shuttlecruiser and took off into the sky, flying at a forty-five degree angle through the clouds. The blue sky soon gave away to the blackness of space, and they closed in on the Arcadia space station. Within minutes, they were parked and Darian, followed by Zima, headed to the registration office.

The office worker introduced Darian to Rikki.

"I captured two of your game pieces!" said Rikki. "Do I get a reward?"

"I'll tell you what," said Darian, "we'll set Tyler up with a match, and you can keep ten percent of the winnings!"

"That sounds good to me!" said Rikki, and the two women shook hands.

Before long, a match was set up, and Darian bet a lot of money on Tyler to win. Tyler was in his element, the game they played was very similar to tennis, and he only needed a brief orientation before he played his match. The racquets were made of an energy field, and the ball was made of an energy that reacted to and was repelled by the energy field on the racquet.

Tyler got busy and smashed his opponent. The opponent was just a guy who had been good at tennis back on his home world, but was no match for a seasoned pro like Tyler. When the game was over, Darian went to retrieve Tyler, but he shouted, "I want to play some more!"

Darian decided to let him keep playing. The next match was played against another man who was considered good, but he also was no pro. Tyler defeated him with ease. After playing three matches and dispatching three opponents with relative ease, Darian decided that he had played enough games for one day.

Darian cashed her game card and gave ten percent of her winnings to Rikki by plugging both cards into a machine and conducting the transfer. As Darian got up to leave with Tyler, Nolan, and her three other captives that she had just won, Rikki stopped her.

"Can I keep one of the captives you just won? After all, I did find your tennis champion and return him to you!"

"Sorry, but I promised them to my assistant Zima!" Darian had the three captives she had just won in her left fist, and Tyler and Nolan in her right fist. She told Zima to hold out her hand, and deposited the three newly won captives into Zima's waiting hand. Zima stuck her tongue out at Rikki as they walked off.

While Zima held her three captives and Darian held Nolan and Tyler, they decided to take in a match. They sat and ordered drinks and watched as tennis players fought to avoid getting defeated. Neither Darian nor Zima placed any bets, they just enjoyed the action. Darian was pleased when the woman who owned the winning player raised the losing opponent to her lips and swallowed him. The stadium erupted in cheers at this action.

"That's what I love about this place!" said Darian. "For the captives, there is no escape from our bellies! They all end up there eventually!"

"We have our presentation tomorrow," said Zima, "and you still don't have all of your captives collected yet!"

"Don't worry about that!" said Darian. "Before tonight, we'll have those tiny fools back in our clutches!"

"Can you tell me your plan?" Zima asked.

"Just wait until we get back to the surface," said Darian. "I'm tracking all of them at all times, I know exactly where they are!" Darian pulled out a small hand-held device. "I low-jacked them with nanobots in the food they ate!" said Darian. "We're going to have fun collecting them!"

Zima smiled. "You've thought of everything! Let's go get them right now!"

"After one more match!" said Darian. "I want to watch another captive get swallowed!"

Darian handed the scanning device to Zima. Zima could see where the captives were, and each of them had a position of latitude and longitude, except for Nolan and Tyler.

"It looks like they're close to the campus!" said Zima.

"They've benn camped out at the creek that winds through town not far from campus. "When we return to Alta-Earth, we'll pounce on them!"

Zima sucked on her drink through a straw as they watched the match, holding her three captives firmly in her other fist.

"Think of how it must seem to the people from Earth who get captured!" said Zima with an evil smirk on her face. "To them, we must seem like a race of gods!"

"We're more than a race of gods to them, Zima!" said Darian. "We're a race of titans!"

"They are so trusting of us," said Zima, "But they don't suspect that each and every one of them will surely end up in the belly of a titan at some point!"

This conversation sent chills up and down Nolan's spine, and gave him resolve to try to help Logan and Mason find a way to get them back to Earth.

Just then, the current match was over, and the loser approached the giantess who owned the winning game piece, and she snatched him up. She lifted him over her mouth, and dropped him in and swallowed him. The crowd went wild, people were cheering and clapping. Darian and Zima rose to leave.

"Let's go capture those escaped captives!" said Darian.

Darian piloted her shuttlecruiser through space, away from the Arcadia space station. Zima sat beside her, and in between them was a habitation chamber that contained Nolan Ward, Tyler Chen, and the other three captives that Darian had won on Arcadia that she had given to Zima. Darian plugged in her device that kept track of the captives through the homing signals given off by the nanobots in their bloodstream that they consumed when they ate those protein bars Darian had given them on the day they were captured.

"I know exactly where they are!" said Darian. "I think I'll use some force-field mines to surround them."

"Do you really need to go through all that trouble?" Zima asked. "Why not just land and grab them?"

"Little people can move faster than you might think," said Darian as the shuttlecruiser pierced the atmosphere of Alta-Earth and descended toward the stream not far from her University campus. "It's really not as much trouble as it would be to try to chase them down through the smaller areas of the creek! It's better to be prepared!"

When they were about a mile above the creek, Darian pushed a sequence of buttons that released about a dozen self propelled mines that surrounded the captives at their campsite. On the ground below, Logan heard the sound of objects hitting the ground very firmly.

"What was that?" Logan asked Mason. Carmen and Natalie approached the men.

"What's happening?" Carmen asked.

"Darian must be coming for us!" said Mason. "She said she had some kind of a plan!"

"Everybody split up!" said Logan. "She can't capture all of us if we're not together, we have a better chance of escape if we're divided!"

The four fugitives split up in four directions. Logan came to a blue energy field that stretched from one large metallic mine to another about a football field away (on Logan's scale). Mason had the same luck when he came to an energy barrier in the direction he travelled. Mason threw a rock and when it hit the energy field, the rock bounced back. Mason tried to touch the energy field with his hand, but recoiled in pain instantly.

"Ouch! That hurt!" shouted Mason.

Darian's shuttlecruiser found a spot to land within a clearing not far from where the captives were. The gullwing door of her shuttlecruiser opened, and she emerged, followed by Zima, who held her three captives in a jar with a lid secured on top, with airholes cut out of it.

"Well, well, well!" said Darian. "What have we here? Four escaped fugitives who need to find themselves back in the loving hands of their mistress!"

Darien held a device in her hand that controlled the force-field mines. She adjusted the controls, and the mines began rolling toward a common center, where the shuttlecruiser was parked. Logan, Mason, Carmen, and Natalie ran toward the shuttlecruiser rather than risk getting burned by the shocking power of the force-fields. Before long, the mines were all less than ten yards (on Darian's scale) from the shuttlecruiser. All four captives were within view and earshot of Darian now.

"Just so you're in the know," said Darian, "I planted nanobots in those protein bars you all ate the day I captured you! They give off a homing signal that allows me to track you wherever you are!"

"We had you under our control all this time!" said Zima with a wicked smile on her face. "You're just a bunch of pathetic pawns!"

"Collect them, Zima!" Darian commanded.

"With pleasure!" said Zima as she unscrewed the lid from the jar with her three captives inside. There was more than enough room for an additional four captives. Carmen and Natalie didn't put up a fight, but Logan and Mason tried to run. Zima quickly stomped her left foot down in front of Logan, and knelt down and grabbed him. She made quick work of capturing Mason, too. Within one minute, she had collected all four former fugitives.

Darian and Zima returned to the shuttlecruiser, and Zima dumped all four former fugitives and the three captives belonging to Zima into the habitation module with Nolan and Tyler. Before the gullwing door to the shuttlecruiser even closed, Natalie ran up and hugged her half-brother Nolan.

"Nolan!" said Natalie. "I thought I'd never see you again!"

Carmen ran up and hugged her husband Tyler.

"Who are these guys?" Logan asked, indicating the three captives Darian had given to Zima.

"Don't trust them," said Nolan. "Any captive who is owned by titans are a bunch of little rats! If you want to keep anything a secret from Darian, they would drop a dime on you!"

Zima had been watching them and listening as Darian piloted the shuttlecruiser back to the campus. "I can take one of them off your hands!" Zima reached down and grabbed one of her three captives, and lifted him to her mouth.

"How does it feel to know you're going to surrender to the belly of a titan?" Zima asked.,

"I'm terrified!" the man answered.

"Well," said Zima, "just remember to struggle when you're inside my belly, that would give me satisfaction if I could feel you squirming around inside me, okay?" Zima's face twisted into an evil smile. When the tiny man failed to respond, Zima repeated more loudly, "Okay?"

The tiny man in Zima's grasp spoke up: "I prefer if you'd call it your tummy!"

"What?" Zima asked.

"I'd like it if you said tummy instead of belly!" said the tiny captive.

"Oh, how sweet!" said Zima. "Do you want to surrender to the tummy of a titan?"

"Yes!" said the captive.

"Do you promise to struggle when you're in my tummy, to give me a feeling of satisfaction?" Zima asked.

"Yes!" said the tiny captive, and Zima dropped him onto her tongue and closed her mouth. Several seconds later, afer positioning him comfortably on her tongue, Zima swallowed him.

"That's so strange!" said Natalie. "It's like he volunteered to be swallowed by Zima!"

Zima heard this, and tilted her face toward the captives in their habitation module.

"That's because he's been on Alta-Earth a lot longer than you! When you've been here as long as he has, you'll realize that your destiny lies within the depths of the belly of a titan, sooner or later!"

They arrived on campus, and Zima carried the habitation module containing the eight captives (it was nine, but Zima had just swallowed one of them, so their number had decreased by one). When they got to the building where the Thunderbolt was kept, Zima placed the habitation module right next to it.

"You can let them out," said Darian, "they can't get anywhere. It's not like they know how to use this equipment and can refuel their spaceplane!" Both giantesses laughed at this, and Zima pushed the button that opened the outer door of the habitation module. The six captives from Earth immediately exited and looked at the Thunderbolt.

"Is it okay if we get our luggage from our spaceplane?" Logan asked.

"By all means!" said Darian. "Make yourselves comfortable!"

Logan and Mason got busy unloading the luggage from the cargo holds. The women were especially happy to get their things back.

"Your habitation modules come equipped with warm showers," said Darian, "so if you want to get cleaned up and changed into nicer clothes, you can!"

Zima brought them some food to eat. "You must be hungry after living a fugitive existence for a few days!"

The food was similar to what they had eaten before, food bars wrapped in metallic wrappers. Zima also gave them water to drink. When Logan and Mason were done unloading the luggage, they all sat down to eat. Zima's two captives also ate with them.

"New arrivals always find it hard to accept their destiny on Alta-Earth!" said one of Zima's two captives. "Once you realize your destiny is to surrender to the belly of a titan, you'll find peace!"

"No tiny person has ever escaped back to their home world!" said Zima's other captive. "Everyone who first gets here thinks they'll be the first, but no one ever does. The titans always win!"

"I don't know about that," said Logan, "I'm a betting man, and I've come up against some pretty bad odds and still came away a winner!"

"Don't try to reason with them," said Nolan. "If they find out you have an escape plan, they'll rat you out to Darian and Zima!"

"There's going to be a presentation tomorrow," said Darian to the captives. "I need the six of you to be well-rested, so don't try to escape again!"

When they were done eating, Zima collected her two captives, and Darian locked the captives in their habitation module for the night. Everyone got a hot shower and changed into clean clothes from their luggage, and their was extra food bars and water in case they were hungry again. There were beds built into the habitation module, and they all went to sleep. Nobody thought about escaping, at least not just yet.


The next morning, Darian and Zima arrived much earlier than they usually did. Darian activated the control console that slid the dome from the top of the habitation module, so she could see them and speak to them face to face, as they had when they were in the shuttlecruiser the day before when Zima had swallowed one of her captives.

"Are you guys ready? I'm taking you to an audience hall where I will present you for my junior thesis! People are going to watch you on stage! My advice to you is don't make me look stupid there! If you try to sabotage my presentation, I will end all of you! Do we have an understanding?"

Logan and the others agreed to Darian's terms. They weren't surprised, they had been expecting something like this.

"Zima, why didn't you bring your captives with you? The contrast between captives who are still defiant and captives who have accepted their fate would've been helpful to my presentation."

Zima broke eye contact with Darian and looked away, toward the floor.

"Zima?" Darian asked. "Where are your two captives?"

"I swallowed them!" said Zima. "I couldn't help it, they were so small and helpless, and I've never owned captives before!"

"You could've used them on Arcadia to win more captives!" said Darian. "Zima, you need to learn to control your animalistic desires!"

Darian closed the dome on the habitation module and carried it to the audience chamber several buildings away. Zima locked the door to the building that housed the Thunderbolt. When they arrived backstage, several other women were there with their projects, mostly of a technical nature. Darian was the only college student with tiny people as part of her presentation.

"Darian Wagner, you will be going first!" said the announcer.

Darian unlocked the outer door of the habitation module, and the six captives filed out.

"My junior thesis project involves how quickly the primitive people from earth adapt to their new environment and learn to accept their fate! As you can see, I have six people whom I acquired with a spacewarp cannon at one of the school laboratories. None of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder!" Darian looked at Zima. "My assistant Zima will now demonstrate something!"

Zima got a string and told the captives to hold on, and when they did, she held them above her mouth.

"People who want to pass laws to protect little people like these are misguided, because there are so many alternate realities to choose from that we have probably only taken less than ten people from any given reality, despite the trillions of captives that have been captured since inter-dimensional space-warp technology was perfected five thousand years ago!"

Zima slowly lowered the string down toward her open mouth. Carmen and Natalie were on the bottom trying to hold on, and they were the first to enter her mouth, followed by Nolan. Darian saw her out of the corner of her eye and said, "Zima, stop it! Don't put them in your mouth!"

People in the audience laughed at this, but there were a vocal group of protesters who booed. Some of them were carrying protest signs.

"Gaming is vitally important to our economy," Darian continued, "protesters don't understand that without tinies, our economy would collapse! We have no choice but to keep conquering tiny people from other realities!" Darian also gave some statistical information and concluded with her presentation by offering people from the audience to come up onstage and hold some of the captives.

A young woman is among the audience members who gets onstage, and unknown to Darian, she is one of the protesters. She stuck something in Logan's hand and said, "Keep this and learn how to use it! It will help you escape!"

Logan slipped it in his jacket pocket before returning to the habitation module, and Darian was completely unaware that he had it.

Darian grabbed the captives and placed them back inside the habitation module. For some reason, she didn't allow them to walk back through the entrance themselves, she wanted to feel them in her hands, to give her a feeling of power. Darian instructed Zima to carry the habitation module back to the lab. The two women walked together while Zima carried the habitation module.

"Do you think the people of earth will ever be as technologically advanced as Alta-Earth?" Zima asked.

"Probably," said Darian, "but when they do, we'll just find alternate realities where they are less sophisticated than us and use those realities to lure victims here for the games on Arcadia!"

"What if they went to war with us?" Zima asked. "I mean, if they became as advanced as us, and they sent warships to attack us in this day and age!"

"They'll probably never know people from their reality were victimized by us!" said Darian. "What you're describing could only happen if little people from Earth returned to their home world to tell them about us. So far, that's never happened, and it's up to people like us to ensure that it never happens!"

By that time, they had gotten back to the lab. Zima set the habitation module on the table next to the Thunderbolt.

"Don't set it there!" said Darian. "I don't want them to have access to their spaceplane while we're gone. I have to go to study hall and write a paper on my presentation that I did today, and you have a class right now. I'm leaving them in here without locking them into their habitation module."

"What if they escape again?" Zima asked.

"They only escaped last time because I allowed it to happen!" said Darian. "I'll discuss it during my second presentation. But for now, I'll just close the window they escaped from!" Darian walked over to the wall where the space-warp cannon was, and activated a control console that closed the window that the Earth captives had escaped out of with an extension cord several nights earlier.

"What are you going to do with the tinies when you're done with your junior thesis?" Zima asked.

"I'm not sure, why?" Darian asked.

"Because I'd like you to turn them over to me!" said Zima.

"Zima, that's not going to happen!" said Darian. "Those three captives I won on Arcadia that I gave you didn't last 24 hours! I'm not stupid enough to turn these captives over to you, they'd just end up in your belly!"

When Darian and Zima left, the lights were on lower than normal, but there was still enough light to see by. Logan was fiddling with the device the protester had given him. Mason saw it, and approached him.

"What did she give you?" Mason asked.

"It's a device that should help us to escape from Darian and get back to Earth!" said Logan. "If I could just figure out how to work it!"

Nolan, Tyler and Mason slid the door open that led outside the habitation module. The Thunderbolt was on the next table over, and there was a gulf of about a hundred feet between their table and the table where the Thunderbolt was perched. The men looked over the edge of the table and tried to find a way down and back up the other table so they could ascend to the Thunderbolt, but there was no way down.

"I don't see anything we can use!" said Mason. "We need to know how much fuel we have left, and once we refuel, someone needs to open the window and operate the space-warp cannon that brought us here!"

"Won't that mean one of us will have to stay behind?" Nolan asked. "Because it sure as hell won't be me!"

"It's going to be either Logan or myself who will have to stay behind," said Mason. "Logan has a device that may help him decipher Titan technology, and as long as Darian doesn't discover it and take it from him, it should be our key to getting home!"

"Well it looks like we can forget about getting to the Thunderbolt," said Nolan. "Let's try to help Logan decipher that gizmo he acquired!" Nolan turned and entered the habitation module.

Tyler, Mason, Carmen and Natalie remained outside.

"So how's it coming?" Nolan asked Logan.

"I'm reading the tutorial right now," said Logan. "It says not to activate the device completely until I've read and understand the tutorial, because it will give off an electromagnetic signature that Darian can track."

"Have you found out anything about Titan technology yet?" Nolan asked.

"It seems that everything we need to get home is in this lab! There is a replicator that we can use to synthesize fuel for the Thunderbolt, and it's showing me how to activate the space-warp cannon that pulled us into this universe!"

"That device that giantess gave you is very important, maybe we should keep watch and warn you when Darian and Zima are coming!"

"Good idea!" said Logan. "Go tell Mason to set up shifts where each of you will keep watch while I try to learn about this technology!"

"Logan?" Nolan asked.

"Yeah?" Logan replied.

"They say nobody from Earth has ever successfully returned to their homeworld from Alta-Earth, do you think we can pull this off? Do you think we have a chance?"

"There's a first time for everything!" said Logan.

Meanwhile, on another part of the campus, Darian was finishing typing up her report. She went to her teacher's office to hand it in. The teacher, a woman in her late 40's, was not unattractive, and Darian hoped to hold herself together as well as her when she got to be that age. The people of Alta-Earth were virtually immmortal, because every illness and disease known to man had been conquered thousands of years prior; however, it was still something to marvel at when a teacher could reach her late 40s and still require nor form of corrective surgery to look magnificent.

"Darian, this is an unusual topic for a junior thesis, but since you're a psyche major, it seems like a reasonable endeavour."

"How did I do?" Darian asked, as she turned in her report.

"I liked most of it, but if you're going to use school technology to acquire captives for your junior thesis project, I would like to see the spoils of your labor. You should've used some of your captives to win more captives on Arcadia! That would really impress the audience, and it would get your point across that when they first get here, they overcome any psychological stress to prevail on the game-boards if they have any athletic skills!"

"I had some captives I won, but I gave them to my assistant Zima, and she swallowed them!"

"I remember how much I loved swallowing captives at that age!" said the teacher. "That's what you get for showing mercy! When Zima becomes a junior and does her own junior thesis project, she can keep her captives and do with them how she pleases! But as long as you're in charge, you should keep any captives you've won as part of this project! Don't let her swallow any more!"

"I'll remember that!" said Darian. "I just felt sorry for Zima because she's become a close friend since we started working on this project!"

"You know what they say on the game-boards about feeling sorry for someone!" said the teacher. "'Those who feel sorry for others and act on it will soon feel sorry they did!'"

"I'm familiar with that expression," said Darian.

"Then out it into action!" said the teacher. "For your next speech, I want you to have won as many captives as possible, while retaining the original set of captives you've already acquired!"

"Yes, ma'am!" said Darian, as she got up to leave. "I'll take them to Arcadia right now! One of my captives is a racecar driver, and another is a pro tennis player."

By this time, Zima got out of her class and Darian met her in the hallway on the way back to the lab.

"My teacher gave me a ton of homework!" said Zima. "There's no class a week from today, so we have a bunch of work today and the day after tomorrow!"

"I can't let you swallow any more captives!" said Darian. "My teacher wants me to acquire as many captives as possible for my next presentation."

"I don't have a problem with that," said Zima. "But can we cut a deal? If you let me have a skilled captive that I can use to win more captives, then I'll have a fully self-sufficient operation!"

"We are friends," said Darian, "If I win five or more captives today, I'll let you have one of them so you can win more captives. But you have to promise not to swallow him until you have more captives!"

"You've got a deal!" said Zima as they shook hands. As the two giant women entered the lab, Nolan and Mason warned Logan and he put his device away.

"Okay," said Darian, "we're going back to Arcadia! I need the racecar driver and the tennis pro!"

Zima collected Mason and Tyler, and put them in a jar with air-holes cut into the lid.

"The rest of you are staying here," said Darian as she grabbed some protein bars from a box and threw them into the habitation module, then closed the dome over the top. "There are water bottles in the kitchen area if you get thirsty!"

Darian and Zima turned and exited the lab, and walked to the parking area and entered Darian's shuttlecruiser. Zima placed the captives (inside their container) in a cup-holder as they blasted off. The shuttlecruiser pierced the cloud layer and hurtled into the stratosphere, then emerged into outer space. Before long, the familiar site of the Arcadia space station appeared on the viewscreen. Darian deftly maneuvered her shuttlecruiser to the parking structure, which was located in one of the armatures that swung around constantly, providing perpetual gravity that matched the gravity on Alta-Earth.

Darian and Zima walked through the crowded hallways and corridors, and came to a turn that divided the racetrack from the tennis arena.

"You take Mason to the racetrack," said Darian, "and I'll take Tyler to play tennis."

The two women split up, and Darian went and registered Tyler for a tennis match. She bet Tyler against the ownership of another captive; if Tyler won, Darian would own that captive. The match began within fifteen minutes, and Tyler won with ease. Darian collected her captive and entered Tyler in another game. Tyler had better competition in the second match, but he still won fairly easily. Darian collected her second captive, and entered Tyler for a third match. Tyler was tired by this time, so Darian told him "This will be your last match of the day!"

Tyler got into the arena and fought hard against his opponent, and dispatched him despite being exhausted. When the match was over, Darian collected her third captive and went to see how Zima was doing. When she got to Zima's seat in the other stadium, she was surprised to see the jar with ten captives stuffed inside.

"We're going to have to get a bigger jar!" said Darian said. "How did you win so many?"

"I bet credits in addition to captives, and every time Mason won, I gave the loser the option of paying me with their captive instead of paying me money!"

"Let's get them back to the lab!" said Darian.

The two women walked back to Darian's shuttlecruiser, and from the perspective of the society they lived in, they looked like a couple of ordinary college-age women walking through a hallway crowded with other people, but the reality of it was they were colossal and the other people were all gigantic in stature; on Earth, most of these people would stand in the vicinity of three-hundred feet tall, some of them taller than that! But within the society they lived in of people who existed on the same scale as them, they appeared to be two ordinary college students conducting normal every day business.

They got into Darian's shuttlecrusier, and returned to the college campus. Zima held onto the captives in her jar, as if holding them empowered her somehow. The two women carried their captives to the lab where the Thunderbolt was. Darian activated the dome on the habitation module, and it opened. Zima dumped the ten captives plus Mason into the habitation module, and Darian dumped Tyler and the three captives she had won into the module.

"You've got some partners!" said Darian. "Get along with each other, because I'm going to need you all for my next presentation!"

Darian and Zima stood looking into the habitation module as the six captives who had arrived on the Thunderbolt mingled with the thirteen new captives who were recently acquired on Arcadia.

"So how many captives do I get to keep out of the captives I won for you, Darian?" Zima asked.

"How many do you want?' Darian asked.

"If you're giving me a choice, I'd like at least five of them," Zima replied.

"I'll let you keep three!" said Darian. "But choose carefully, try to pick three who are skilled enough to win more captives for you."

"Logan!" said Zima. "Try to figure out which captives have the most skill out of the new guys we just put in there, okay?"

"No problem!" said Logan, and the two giantesses left the area so Logan could try to investigate the new captives and find their skill levels. Logan approached a man who was in his twenties.

"What sports are you good at?" Logan asked him.

"I'm not really the athletic type," the man replied, "but I've gotten better at handball since getting stranded on Arcadia."

"Do you know who out of these captives is the most skilled in athletic competitions?" Logan asked.

"Brody Seger," the man replied. "He's not as good as Tyler Chen, but he was a tennis champion on Arcadia for a long time. He was on his way to the semi-finals, until he got beaten by Tyler."

Logan had the man point out Brody to him. Brody was in his late thirties, talking to Natalie Red Hawk, Nolan's half-sister.

"Well, he sure doesn't waste any time! He goes straight to the hottest chick in the room!"

Logan approached Brody. "I'm Logan Tanner, pilot of the Thunderbolt." Brody and Logan shook hands.

"That giantess named Zima put me in charge of finding out which one of you is the most skilled athlete, and you were pointed out to me by another captive. So they say you're good at tennis?"

"What good will it do me if I tell you," said Brody, "just to have you rat me out to that giantess?"

"It will work out in both our favor if I let her know," said Logan. "She's already swallowed three captives that she recently acquired, and if you ended up in her possession and she didn't know you were good at tennis, you could end up being next!"

"Well, since you put it that way," said Brody, "I was a tennis coach back on my version of Earth."

"Since we're all from different versions of Earth," said Logan, "I think most captives just refer to it as their home world."

"Yes, well, on my home world I was a skilled tennis coach. I was able to pay my rent and my bills that way. Of course, I'm not nearly as good as someone like Tyler Chen, that's why I eventually got beaten by him. But I would've made it to the semi-finals if I hadn't gone up against Tyler!"

"How did you end up here on Alta-Earth?" Logan asked.

"I was a passenger on a private jet flying over the Bermuda Triangle about six months ago," said Brody. "I was on my way to an island in the Caribbean for a vacation with my wife and two of my students, when we got pulled through some kind of a space-warp to Alta-Earth! And you?"

"Same scenario," Logan replied, "but we were on a point-to-point suborbital space-plane. We had just briefly left the upper atmosphere when Darian used a space-warp cannon to pull us into this universe. So far, myself and my fellow crew-member and my four passengers are all intact. How is your wife doing?"

"She is with my former mistress," said Brody. "My original mistress used her as bait to keep me in line, so I would keep winning tennis matches. When I lost to Tyler Chen, I went with Darian and my wife stayed with my old mistress."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Logan. "Can you point out two more skilled athletes out of the thirteen of you who just arrived under Darian's power?"

"I have two students whom I personally taught, and they played against Tyler and lost, too. They're really you're best bet, anyone else is just a couch potato who ended up training on a fly-by-night kind of arrangement."

"And they're good?" Logan asked.

"They're not as good as me, but they're highly skilled. They actually trained beginning students back on my home world, and they're probably the best you'll find among captives from Arcadia."

"Can you introduce me to them?" Logan asked.

"Anthony! Johnathan! Come over here! There's someone who wants to meet you!"

Two young men not a day older than 21 approached Logan and Brody.

"This is Logan Tanner," said Brody, "he is going to hook it up for us so we get special treatment from an evil giantess who normally swallows captives left and right! As long as she knows we're real athletes, she'll spare us! As long as we're hand-selected by her, we should be okay. Right Logan?"

"She wants to use you guys to win her more captives," said Logan. "Any captives who are less skilled than you, she'll swallow; but as long as you keep winning tennis matches, you should be okay! I'm going to summon her right now!"

Logan yelled in the direction of the top of the container, and called out Zima's name. Zima approached, and her face could be seen above them.

"Have you found any athletes yet?" Zima asked.

"I've found Brody Seger and his two students, Anthony and Johnathan! They're the best tennis players you're probably going to find!"

"If they're so good, why did they lost to Tyler Chen?" Zima asked.

"Tyler Chen is a tennis champion!" said Logan. "There's no way they could win against him, but if they went up against any average player on the game boards, they're bound to win!"

"You did a good job, Logan!" said Zima as she moved her hand down into the habitation module, palm-side up. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan! I command you to surrender to my hand!"

Brody and his two students stepped onto Zima's palm, and she lifted them into the air. She cupped the three of them with her other hand and spoke to Darian.

"I think we need to go back to Arcadia so I can register them in my name and play them against someone!"

"Then let's go!" said Darian. "I can train the passengers of the Thunderbolt to serve drinks while we're there. Can you carry the habitation module to the shuttlecruiser?"

"No problem!" said Zima, as she shoved her three tennis-playing captives into a pocket of her blouse and zipped it closed. She grabbed the habitation module right after pushing the button that sealed the dome that enclosed the top. Once onboard Darian's shuttlecruiser, they ascended into the sky and headed back to Arcadia for the second time in one day.

The space station was on the viewscreen, and from a great distance they could see a lot of traffic flowing around the station. Darian listened on her headphones to the traffic controller.

"There's going to be a wait," said Darian. "At this time of day, Arcadia is filled to capacity. But we've been given a voucher number, and when more people exit the station, we will be able to park on a first come first served basis."

"We can take this time to get to know the captives," said Zima. She pushed a button on the main control module of the habitation module, and the dome slid open. Zima also unzipped her blouse pocket and produced her three latest conquests. She held her three captives firmly but not hard enough to hurt them.

"Let's get to know each other!" said Zima to the captives in the habitation module. "Do you have anything to share?"

Logan was the first to speak up. "Brody has a wife who is owned by his former mistress. Do you think you can try to win her back?"

Zima and Darian both laughed. Zima replied to Logan: "First of all, Brody's wife is a 'that,' not a 'who,' she's not a person, she's a game piece! All of you are game pieces now! Don't ever forget that!"

"I apologize, mistress!" said Logan.

"Well, don't let it happen again!" said Zima. "Don't forget something, to us, you're no better than inanimate objects! At best, to an owner who has kept you for a number of years and assuming you scored a lot of victories for them on Arcadia, then you would be elevated to the status of a beloved pet! But ninety-nine percent of all Earth people end up in the bellies of their owners, sooner or later! It's just a matter of time!"

"What about the other one percent?" Logan asked.

"Like I said, if they don't get swallowed by their owners, it's because they became beloved pets. You can't count on that happening to you! As far as Brody is concerned, I consider him and his two tennis students to be an investment! He's going to win me a lot of captives, and all of them are going to end up in my belly sooner rather than later! The only reason Brody and his two students are being spared is because they will help me acquire more captives!" Zima sat back in her seat and discontinued looking at the captives, whose habitation module was in the area between the pilot and co-pilot's seats.

Nolan, Logan, Mason, and Tyler all thought Zima was attractive. "I wonder who she would go for if she were our size!" said Nolan.

"Why don't you ask her?" Logan asked.

"Okay, I will!" said Nolan. He looked up at Zima and yelled. "Zima!"

Zima tilted her head to look down at the captives. "What do you want, pawn?"

"If all of us were the same size, which one of us would you go out with?"

"What's your name?" Zima asked.

"I'm Nolan Ward!"

"I'd probably go out with you if you somehow became our size. You're kind of cute!" Zima smiled after finishing her sentence, and Nolan felt like he had scored. "Looks are all that matter to me!"

"Yes! I knew she's go for me!" said Nolan.

"We have clearance to dock!" said Darian. "Our number came up."

Darian piloted the shuttlecruiser and docked with the Arcadia space station. Zima returned her three tennis players to her blouse pocket and zipped them up, then she carried the habitation module as she walked along with Darian. They went straight to the registration office and made an appointment. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and set the three tennis players on the desk in front of her.

"These three belonged to her, she won them in the games," Zima explained, "but she gave them to me, so I want them registered in my name."

The receptionist said it wasn't a problem, and they were out of there within minutes. Darian and Zima got good seats in the stadium where the tennis matches were being played. There was a drink dispenser and Darian set Logan, Nolan, Carmen, and Natalie on top of it and taught them how to serve drinks for people.

"The switch has been designed so someone on your scale can operate it. You just pull back on the switch when people order their drinks, see?"

The four of them quickly caught on and Darian left them to go send Mason and Tyler to the games. Mason had to drive a racecar in another stadium, so she left Tyler with Zima as Zima set her three tennis players against other less experienced players.

"I think I should get my own racquet!" said Tyler. "One I can keep!"

"if you win all your matches today, I'll buy a racquet for you!" said Zima. "How does that sound?"

"Okay!" said Tyler.

Brody and his two students were set in three matches with obviously less skilled opponents, and Tyler Chen was set against someone who was better than Brody's opponent, but not quite a match for Tyler, who was a tennis pro. The games were virtually identical to tennis as played on Earth, with the exception of the racquets, which formed an energy net instead of the being made from plastic like Earth racquets. The ball itself was also made of energy, and it took a lot of skill to stay ahead in the game. When Tyler won his match, Zima went to collect the losing captive for Darian.

"I think that's unfair!" said the giantess who owned the losing captive. "My captive told me your captive was a tennis pro back on his home world!"

"That's the way the dice falls!" said Zima with a smile on her face as she collected the losing captive.

Meanwhile, in the other stadium, Mason Lewis was driving like a bat out of hell in the hovercar he was driving. It functioned much like an ordinary car back on Earth, with the exception of the repulsor fields it used for propulsion instead of wheels or tires. Racing wasn't so much a game of who could drive faster so much as it was a game of skill, involving negotiating the track better than your opponents. Mason had been a successful pro stock race car driver back on Earth, so much so that he had made millions of dollars that he had used to buy his own jet airplanes and learn how to pilot them in his spare time. He had been such a good race car driver that his fans had adopted a slogan about him that had entered the pop culture lexicon: 'Mason Lewis can't lose.'

None of this hype could help him on Arcadia; however, his immense skill from spending most of his life racing proved to be an advantage. When Mason came in first, the only person who wasn't surprised was Mason himself. Many people had been betting on the favorite, a racecar driver from an analog of Mason's universe. This man had been some kind of a champion, but if they had met on a track on Mason's world, Mason would've smoked him easily. In the biggest upset of the night, Darian collected Mason and the supposed champion who had been favored to win, but instead of collecting the other losing racers, Darian let her opponents keep them and collected the cash equivalent on her gaming debit card instead. This way, there would be less captives for them to deal with.

Darian carried Mason and his opponent back to the stadium where Zima was gambling with Tyler and Brody, and Brody's students. When she got there, she was surprised to see Zima with close to ten captives.

"Again?" Darian asked.

"Logan wasn't lying when he said Brody was good!" said Zima. "He won three matches in a row! His students all won three matches each, too!"

"So you've got nine more captives?" Darian asked.

"Yes, and Tyler beat three opponents, so there's three more captives for you, also!"

"How are my drink servers?" Darian asked.

Zima and Darian walked over to the drink dispenser, and Darian ordered a drink.

"I'll take a light beer!" said Darian.

Carmen and Nolan struggled with a lever that was bigger than they were, but they managed to operate the device and a glass was filled with beer. Darian took the beer when it was full and took a swig from it.

"Ahh! The taste of victory! Zima what are you going to do with all of your captives?"

"You don't even need to ask!" Zima replied. "Brody, Anthony, and Johnathan are all safe, they're going to win me more captives, but if I find out any of my captives have no athletic skills to win me more captives," Zima lifted her blouse to reveal her light brown stomach, and pointed at her belly button as she licked her lips. Zima and Darian burst out laughing.

"What about my racquet?" Tyler asked.

"I promised Tyler if he won all his matches tonight that I'd get him his own racquet," said Zima, who turned and walked to the concession stand to buy him one. She returned several minutes later with a tiny (to her) racquet that was built on Tyler's scale.

"It's good that you got him that," said Darian, "because now he can practice back on Alta-Earth!"

Nolan laid back on Zima's bed after some satisfying sex. Zima laid back next to him in her barbarian princess outfit.

"I'm going to have to enlarge you again some time," said Zima. "That was really satisfying. Most of the guys I have sex with are unappreciative of me, but you really seem to want to worship me!"

"What kind of guys have you had sex with?" Nolan asked.

"Mainly guys who were smart and could tutor me in subjects I'm not good at. I guess you could say I used them. When I got a good grade in those classes, I broke up with them. Is that wrong?"

"I don't think so," said Nolan.

"Oh shit, it's almost three o'clock!" said Zima as she got up and changed back into her schoolgirl uniform. "I have a class pretty soon. I'm going to have to shrink you down to size for a while, but when I get home I'll re-enlarge you so we can get it on again."

"No problem," said Nolan. "Is there somewhere you want me to stand while you shrink me?"

"Climb onto the top of that dresser," said Zima as she fished around for her shrink-ray pistol. Nolan did as she commanded, and Zima pointed the pistol and fired, and Nolan was reduced back down to about two inches tall again. Zima unzipped the pocket of her blouse and pulled out Brody Seger and his two tennis students.

"Here, they can keep you company!" said Zima as she set the three of them down next to Nolan and headed out the door. "Don't try to escape!"

Nolan shook hands with Brody Seger and Anthony and Johnathan.

"So you knocked boots with that titaness?" Brody asked.

"Yeah," said Nolan, "I think she likes me."

Meanwhile, Darian was busy with a secret plan. She left the passengers of the Thunderbolt in the lab after she had swallowed Logan, and headed toward the women's bathroom. She went to a dispenser and used her credit card to buy a bottle of Gak, which was a vomiting agent that was popular on Alta-Earth. She took the cap off and drank some, and went to a sink and made sure the drain was plugged. Within a few moments she began to vomit, and sure enough, Logan came up and landed in the sink. Darian used warm water to wash him off.

"It wasn't my intention to kill you!" said Darian. "If I wanted you dead, you would still be squirming around in my belly right now!"

"I understand!" said Logan. "But why did you swallow me to begin with?"

"It's part of my class project," said Darian. "I need the others to think you've been killed, to see how it affects them psychologically. I also need to examine how they react when I re-introduce you to them and they find out you're not dead."

"What are you going to do with me in the meantime?" Logan asked.

"I'm going to keep you in my dorm while I keep the others in the lab, separated from you."

Darian collected Logan and cupped him in her hands, and took him to her dorm room. She put him in a jar that had air-holes cut into the lid.

"I'm keeping you here until I find better quarters for you," said Darian. "You'll be reunited with your friends before too long."

Darian turned and left the dorm, leaving Logan behind. She returned to the lab and collected Tyler.

"I want to see how far you can go in the tennis tournaments!" Darian took him to her shuttlecruiser, but this time, she left the other captives in the lab. She flew her shuttlecruiser to Arcadia once again, and once she docked on the space station she went to the registration booth and asked about getting Tyler signed up for a tennis tournament.

"There is a tournament going on right now," said the receptionist, "but your captive will need to qualify for it first. If he gets beaten, you will lose him!"

"I'm not worried about that!" said Darian. "Sign him up!"

When the paperwork was finished, Darian took Tyler to the area where she had been directed to go, and when it was his turn, he played against an opponent who was one of the better tennis players on Arcadia. Tyler beat him with ease. Darian signed Tyler up for another match, and Tyler won that game, too. As Darian signed up for matches and won them, he moved up in his ranking until he was in line to play against the best tennis players on Arcadia.

The next series of matches would be determined by the best three out of five. Tyler's opponent was supposed to be a champion on Arcadia, but on Earth he would've at best been a tennis coach; he was no match for Tyler Chen. He gave Tyler a run for his money, Tyler won the first two games, but the opponent won the third game. When Tyler lost he looked in Darian's direction, and she lifted her blouse to reveal her belly button and pointed at it, to send a message home to Tyler that her belly would be his grave if he failed her.

Tyler tried extra hard and won the fourth game, then Darian took him home. He stood on the center console as Darian piloted the shuttlecruiser back to Alta-Earth.

"You got sloppy back there!" said Darian. "Don't let that happen again! You're a tennis champion, you shouldn't lose to anyone! Do you know how rare it is to acquire a pro athlete like yourself on Alta-Earth? It almost never happens! There's no excuse for you to not win every single game! You're going up against amateurs!"

"I won't fail you again, mistress!" said Tyler.

Darian slammed her fist down on the central console, rattling Tyler's bones.

"I command you to call me mighty mistress!" said Darian.

"Yes, mighty mistress!" said Tyler.

By that time, early evening, Zima had finished the class she was supposed to go to, and also finished doing her homework in study hall, and returned to her dorm.

"Nolan?" Zima called out. "Brody? Where are you guys?"

Not caring that she couldn't immediately find her captives, Zima went behind her changing screen and slipped out of her schoolgirl uniform and put the barbarian goddess outfit on again. As she fastened her leather sandals that went up her calves, she called out again to Nolan.

"Nolan! I'm ready to conquer you again!"

Nolan came out of his hiding place, followed by Brody and Anthony and Johnathan.

"I almost thought I was going to have to give you an ultimatum!" said Zima, as she finished fastening her sandals. "If you didn't come out within one more minute, I was going to swallow you! If I resorted to that, I wouldn't have puked you up, my belly would be your grave! Now, stand away from Brody and those other two, so I can use the neutrino transfer protocol to enlarge you to giant-size!"

Nolan did as Zima commanded, and she set the pistol to enlarge, and in an instant, Nolan was giant size again. Nolan jumped down from the dresser, and Zima threw her arms around Nolan and kissed him on the lips.

"How would you like to experience Arcadia from the perspective of one of the Titans?" Zima asked. "I could borrow Darian's shuttlecruiser and take you there, and I could make Brody play against someone and bet on him!"

"I wouldn't want to endanger Brody," said Nolan. "I've really gotten to know him during the time you were gone today."

"It's okay, Nolan!" said Brody. "Don't worry about me, I can win!"

Nolan agreed, and Zima took him with her to the parking lot just as Darian's shuttlecruiser was landing. Zima had Brody and his two students in her blouse pocket.

"Can I borrow your shuttlecruiser to go to Arcadia?" Zima asked Darian, as Darian got out of the driver's side.

"Yeah, I guess," said Darian, throwing Zima the keys. "But you have to refuel it!"

"No problem!" said Zima, and she got in, followed by Nolan.

Zima was a good pilot, and she flew them to Arcadia without any incident.

"The Arcadia space station is constantly going, 24 hours a day!" said Zima. "It almost tickles my tummy thinking of all the captives who get swallowed in one day there!" Zima put her right hand on Nolan's lap. "I hope that didn't make you feel funny!"

"No problem!" said Nolan. "I know you're a born predator, and you can't help it! I don't judge you for that!"

"Thank you!" said Zima.

After they arrived on Arcadia and got situated, Brody was set up in a match against another captive, and Zima came with drinks to where Nolan was seated and handed him a drink. It was an ordinary cardboard cup with a lid and a straw. Nolan took a drink.

"This stuff is good!" said Nolan.

"I'm only eighteen, so I'm not old enough to order alcohol, so I got us some soft drinks."

The match started, and Brody hammered his opponent at the beginning of the match.

"I was talking to Brody today," said Nolan, "and he told me to ask you if you could get him his own racquet. He thinks he's good enough to have his own racquet, and he needs to practice when he's away from Arcadia."

"Okay, whatever!" said Zima, and she thrust her arms around Nolan and French-kissed him brutally. The two of them made out during the rest of Brody's match, and when Brody won, they had to be interrupted by a gaming official for Zima to collect Brody and the losing opponent. On the ride back from Arcadia, Zima was in a passionate mood.

"I think I'm going to keep you as my property!" said Zima, as she piloted the shuttlecruiser back to the campus.

"Wasn't that the whole idea of transferring ownership to begin with?" Nolan asked.

"Darian relinquished control of you temporarily, she still needs you for her class project!" said Zima. "But I'm just going to let her borrow you when she needs you, and I'm going to keep you under my power!"

After parking the shuttlecruiser, Zima and Nolan made out passionately on the way to her dorm room. She opened the door while they were French-kissing, and she deposited Brody, his two students, and the captive Brody had beaten on the dresser before collapsing on the bed. Zima had been wearing her barbarian princess outfit this whole time, so Nolan was aroused when it came time for love-making. He surrendered to her passions, and gave in to her violent ways, until they were done making love. Then, as if none of the passion had happened, Zima returned to a normal state of mind.

"Ok, it's time for me to shrink you down to size and return you to the lab!" Zima fingered the shrink-ray pistol in her right hand.

"Are you serious?" Nolan asked. "A few minutes ago it sounded like you wanted to marry me!"

"I'll return you to giant-size when I'm in a sexy mood, but for now, I'm shrinking you and returning you to the lab with the other members of the Thunderbolt."

Nolan did as she commanded, and stood on the dresser. Zima pulled the trigger, and Nolan as returned to around two inches tall.

Zima grabbed him as though he were an inanimate object, and carried him to the lab. When they arrived back at the habitation module where the others were, Mason, Tyler, Carmen and Natalie were surprised to see Zima dressed in an outlandish and sexy outfit. When Zima deposited Nolan and left, the others surrounded Nolan.

"What was going on with that get-up Zima was wearing?" Mason asked. "Did she wear that outfit when you two were having sex?"

"She used a mind scanner to find out exactly what turns me on," said Nolan. "I'm surprised she didn't use it to find out what I know about that device Logan has that could help us escape!"

"Logan is history!" said Natalie. "Darian swallowed him earlier today!"

"You're kidding me!" said Nolan. "Nat, you've got a twisted sense of humor, are you kidding around with me?"

"She's serious!" said Mason. "We all watched Darian swallow Logan!"

"So what was she like?" Tyler asked Nolan. "What was it like scoring with Zima?"

"I think I'm in love with her!" said Nolan. "If she ever lets me stay giant-sized, I'll figure out a way for all of you to return to Earth, but I'm staying here, by Zima's side!"

Logan made his way through the giant town in the middle of the night, following the map that had been transmitted to him by the giant woman who was helping him escape. The distance was five miles on his scale, so it wasn't too far. The giantess who gave him the device that helped him escape had said that the giantess who lived farther away was a better choice, but Logan had chosen to seek out the giantess who lived closer, because he was tired from walking back and forth to and from the campus after he escaped from Darian.

Logan couldn't help wondering if he was making a mistake, the giantess had said that Melina couldn't be trusted one hundred percent, because she was new to the resistance movement. Still, Logan decided to trust her, because how could she have gotten to know the resistance if she was a traitor? It didn't make sense that she would help tinies if she was planning to betray them.

When Logan got to the address he was looking for, a giantess was waiting outside the house in the yard, standing there. There were several normal-size people at her feet, and they saw Logan first. They waved to him.

"So this must be Melina!" said Logan as he walked across the street to introduce himself to the giantess. She had long brown hair and a light brown complexion. She wasn't extremely skinny, but she wasn't overweight, she struck a fine balance between those two extremes. Melina was wearing an ultra-short mini-skirt with pink spandex leggings that disappeared into mid-calf boots. She also wore a tank top. She was extremely cute.

'You must be Logan!" said Melina, as she knelt down. "Welcome to the sanctuary! Follow the other tinies inside and we'll get you a meal!"

Logan followed the other tinies through a secret door that led through a tunnel that led into the giant house. There was a room built to their scale, with a table and chairs. The six other tinies sat down and invited Logan to eat with them. The giantess set down plates of food for the tiny people, because there was no ceiling or roof in the little room that had been built for them. On the table were plates of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and several plates of vegetables. There was a pitcher of water and glasses for them to drink out of.

One of the men served Logan, and he began to eat ravenously. After finishing his meal, Logan sat back satisfied for the first time since his arrival on Alta-Earth.

"That was excellent!" said Logan.

"There is a bedroom where you can retire for the night," said the man who had served Logan his dinner. "A bed has been prepared for you!"

"That sounds perfect!" said Logan. "I'm exhausted!"

The man led Logan to his bed, and Logan collapsed and fell right asleep.

The next morning, in Zima's dorm, Zima woke up and went to her habitation module. She took the dome off, and woke up her captives.

"Are any of you good at art?" said Zima. "I need an artist."

Nolan raised his hand. "I'm a graduate of the Joe Kubert school of art! Class of 2013!"

Zima reached in and grabbed Nolan, then set him on her dresser and used her shrink-ray pistol to enlarge him to giant-size again. Nolan stood there on Zima's scale, and jumped down onto the floor, where Zima hugged him and gave him a kiss.

"I studied sequential art at the Kubert school," said Nolan. "Is that okay?"

"Part of my general education requirement was to take an art class," said Zima, as she led Nolan to a canvas that was set up with paints and art supplies. "I need to do a painting, but I'm not good with a paint brush."

"I was horrible with a brush before I went to art school," said Nolan, "but I got proficient at using a sable hair brush for inking. I can handle a brush pretty well now."

"Do a painting of me at Arcadia," said Zima. "I have to paint something from a day in my life that happened recently."

As Nolan began painting, Zima leaned her head against his shoulder.

"I had a crazy night the other night!" said Zima. "I went to a bar with Darian and I played a drinking game with someone and I swallowed like three or four captives! I won the drinking game, but it left me wondering about something."

"What's that?" Nolan asked.

"Do you think a person should feel guilty for swallowing tiny people?" Zima asked.

"Most people from Earth would feel that it is wrong," said Nolan as he painted.

"I don't even feel like it's wrong," said Zima. "Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me in the afterlife if I'm so evil!"

"What religion do you have here on Alta-Earth?" Nolan asked.

"Octavian Ortega, the guy I told you about who founded our society, was Catholic, and that is the official religion of our society."

"Catholic?" said Nolan. "Then how does your society justify cannibalizing smaller people?"

"People who are into cannibalism make up a slight majority of our society, and it's mostly younger people who are into that. When people get older, they get baptized and stop eating tiny people."

"So this Octavian guy founded this society more than five-thousand years ago?" Nolan asked. "Jesus was alive two-thousand years ago, how could you have a Catholic religion before Christ was even born?"

"It seems ironic," said Zima, "but the people alive before the time of Christ knew about his life and his miracles, even though the life of Christ was a future event at that time. Since Octavian was a time traveler, they knew what would eventually come to pass."

"So when you get baptized, are you going to give up swallowing tiny people?" Nolan asked.

"Yes," said Zima, "I have to get baptized before I can get married, and when you get baptized, you're supposed to give up your sinful life."

"Can you do that?" Nolan asked. "You seem like the more evil of you and Darian. I find it hard to imagine you giving up swallowing tinies!"

"I'm young," said Zima. "I just need to get it out of my system."

"What happens when you're married and you have a daughter of your own who wants to swallow tiny people?" Nolan asked.

"When she's away at college she can do whatever she wants, but while she's at home, she won't be allowed to." said Zima. "That's why college is so popular with women on Alta-Earth, so many women want to break away from the rules of their parents and experience what it's like to dominate tiny people from Earth, and devour them. For most young women, they wouldn't be able to do that at home with their parents."

"Any ideas on who you want to marry?" Nolan asked.

"Darian told me you want to marry me," said Zima. "Is that true?" Zima tilted her head so she could look into Nolan's eyes while her head still leaned on his shoulder. Zima smiled.

"What would it take for you to marry me?" Nolan asked. "Could I ever win your hand?"

"It isn't unheard of for a woman from Alta-Earth to marry a man from Earth," said Zima. "The thing is, if you married me, I would demand that you remain as my slave for as long as you are alive. You would never be a citizen. Would you agree to those terms?"

"I would do whatever it takes to marry you!" said Nolan. "I'm in love with you!"

"There's a problem," said Zima, "there's a guy named Adonis who is pursuing me. He wants to marry me. He's twenty-one and studying to be a cop. If I married him, he would be a full citizen, and I'd rather be married to a slave like you, so I can boss you around!"

"Is he your boyfriend?" Nolan asked.

"Not exactly," said Zima, "but my parents approve of him and they want me to marry him. I'll invite him over here for you to meet him, but don't say anything about me drinking beer at that bar, because I'm underage and he would tell my parents."

After Zima made a phone call on her cell phone, Adonis showed up. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, and he was younger than Nolan and handsome, but not quite as muscular as Nolan.

Zima introduced the two men. "Adonis, this is Nolan, Nolan, this is Adonis!" The two men shook hands.

"Nolan is a captive from Earth that I enlarged," said Zima. "Adonis, guess what the two of you have in common?"

"What?" Adonis asked.

"Both of you want to marry me." said Zima. "My parents want me to marry you Adonis, but I want to marry Nolan, because he's a slave from Earth."

"So how are you going to decide?" Adonis asked.

"I'll give you both a challenge. Whoever makes the greatest sacrifice for me will win my hand!"

"What kind of sacrifice?" Nolan asked.

"It could be anything!" said Zima. "Adonis, for instance, you could shrink yourself down for one day and become one of my game pieces on Arcadia! Nolan, I haven't figured out what you could do yet!"

"Nolan, will you help me?" Adonis asked.

"Why would I help you?" Nolan asked.

"If you helped him, that could be your sacrifice," said Zima.

"Okay, I guess so!" said Nolan. "What do you want me to do?"

"What team sport are you good at?" Adonis asked.

"I used to be good at horse, but that's not really a team sport." said Nolan.

"What's horse?" Adonis asked.

"It's kind of like basketball," said Nolan.

"I'm good at basketball!" said Adonis.

"I can go buy a miniature basketball court for the two of you to practice with!" said Zima. "You two stay here, I'll be back soon!" Zima left, and Nolan and Adonis stayed behind in her dorm.

"Now that Zima is gone," said Adonis, "I want to tell you something. I know Zima likes you, but I've known her longer and her parents approve of me. Our marriage was arranged before you even arrived on Alta-Earth. I'm going to win this challenge and win Zima's hand in marriage. You do realize that, being from Earth, if you lose this challenge and I end up marrying her, you'll end up in her belly?"

"I would die for Zima!" said Nolan. "So if she didn't want to marry me, I would willingly sacrifice myself to her!"

"I would never sacrifice myself to Zima!" said Adonis. "I'm not even in love with her, this is a relationship of convenience for me. And don't think you can win that way, the sacrifice has to be done in a way so you can present it to her, if you die in her belly, you'll still lose the challenge, regardless of whether your sacrifice is greater than mine!"

"And I just want you to know that I plan on winning this challenge," said Nolan, "because my love for Zima is greater than yours!"

At that exact moment, back at Melina's, Logan was just waking up.

"You slept in late today, you must've been tired!" said one of the tiny men who stood the same size as Logan.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name last night!" said Logan as he stood up to shake the man's hand. "I'm Logan Tanner!"

"Jake Bowman!" said the man. "I think you're going to fit in well around here if you managed to escape from the giantess who conquered you. All of us are escapees, too."

Jake introduced Logan to the other men. Each of them told Logan of their narrow escapes, and how they came under the care of Melina. There was a ladder leading up to the dining room table that was built to Logan's scale. Logan followed Jake up the ladder, and saw that Melina was sitting down with her arms on the table.

"Welcome to the resistance, Logan!" said Melina.

"What exactly is it you people do here, Melina?" Logan asked.

"We help other tiny people escape from their mistresses! I'm going to need you guys to break into homes of giantesses and break out other captives for me. Are you willing to do that?"

"Sure!" said Logan, without thinking.

"I know of some tiny people who are trapped in a house not far from here," said Melina. "We can't expect captives to escape and come to us, so we have to go to them. Right after you eat, I'll have Jake look at the plan I have written down on paper, then I'll send you on your mission!"

There was a smaller table built to Logan's scale on the giant table, with chairs around it. Logan and the other six escapees sat down to eat their meal. Logan wondered if their mission would be successful.