THE DREAM-TIME WARRIORS (2025 Edit)

Garbarla & his friends race thru a reality-window in the desert & end up in different wars

Late April 1983
Ernie Singleton was in the dog yard, a hundred metres behind the farmhouse when he heard the tooter-tooter-tooter of the small Ute used by the Merridale Print-Shop to deliver the Merridale Morning Mirror.
Looking at his watch, Ernie saw that it was only 6:00 a.m. and said, “Gee, they’re early today!”
He finished feeding the dogs, which were all ravenous, except for the black Barb-Kelpie, Gordo, who lay listless in his kennel.
“Gotta eat something, Gordo mate,” said Ernie, dismayed to see the once sleek dog reduced to a bag of bones, having barely eaten anything in the six weeks since the death of Tanya, his bitch.
The large dog whump-whump-whumped his tail on his steel kennel at the sound of his master’s voice, but was too close to death to even look around at Ernie.
Ernie sighed heavily in dismay, then moved past the pining Kelpie to feed the rest of the station’s dogs. Knowing in his heart that Gordo would soon be dead; Ernie understood the animal’s grief. Eighteen months ago Ernie had been on the brink of proposing to a beautiful blonde, Rowena Frankland. But then he had stated to go through a painful transformation. Literally painful, since in early February 1983 Ernie (who had hardly had a day’s illness in his life up until then) had been overwhelmed by horrendous aches and pains in his limbs and his back; agony that seemed to penetrate right through to his bones. At their worst, the pangs felt as though every bone in his body had been shattered -- although he knew that this wasn’t the case, because even at their worst he was able to move around, though, at first uncertain whether movement helped or made things worse.
By the middle of February, Ernie had almost despaired (along with his family doctor) of ever finding the cause of his near-debilitating illness. Then one evening, unable to face lying around the house any longer, he had wandered out onto the back porch. The hot summer night air seemed to strangely revive him and almost immediately the aches began to vanish from his body. Exhilarated by his new-found vigour, he had started to run across the farmhouse-yard, easily bounding over the metre-high, chain-link fence to start toward the forest three quarters of a kilometre away. The further he ran, the faster he seemed to run, and the better he felt. It was only when he stopped to drink at a narrow tributary of the Yannan River that his euphoria had been shattered: looking up at him had not been the reflexion of a human being, but rather that of a large, black wolf!
Ernie had realised then that the reason for his aches and pains had been supernatural not natural: a sort of change-of-life process whereby his body had to adjust itself to the requirements of physically changing two or three nights each month from man to wolf, then back again. For the last eighteen months Ernie had struggled to come to grips with the fact that he was a werewolf!
Throughout March and April Ernie had done his best to forget Rowena Frankland, to give up any thought of ever marrying her. But his resolve had been hard to keep. Firstly, because he had been unable to explain to Rowena the reason for his sudden cooling off toward her so that she had kept after him in the hope that his ardour would eventually return. Secondly, because the thought of spending the rest of his life without her was almost too painful for Ernie to contemplate.

After he had finished feeding the last of the dogs, Ernie strode across to the barn-cum-garage. He dropped the large sack of grey-brown dog-pellets just inside of the garage door, then walked across to his brown Range-Rover. He got into the Rover and started down the dirt track to Donaldson’s Road to pick up the morning paper to read with his own breakfast.
“Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology is having an open day,” Ernie said, reading from the lead story of the six-page newspaper.
Ernie thought, “No way will they get me to go to any open-day.” Then as he read the article, he started to think, “Maybe it’d help me get my mind off Rowena for a while. And Gordo!”

Twelve hours later, Ernie was dressed in his best clothes and on the way to Glen Hartwell.
He parked the Range-Rover in the car park at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology, between Wentworth and Blackland Streets running from Dirk Hartog Place to Howard Street. Following the “crowd” of eight or ten people, he headed across the gravel path toward the concrete steps leading into the school.
“Young Master Ernest?” greeted Glenda Pettyjohn. Old Glenda had worked at the Glen Hartwell City Library for as long as anyone in the Glen could remember. Barely 150 centimetres tall, she was grey-haired and wrinkle-skinned. She wore her snowy hair in a tight bun high atop her head and looked to be in her late eighties. Though she never seemed to grow any older, no one could remember her ever looking any younger either. She had looked to be in her late eighties for as long as anyone could recall, and some pundits had been cruel enough to suggest that when the library first opened its doors on January 17, 1842 Glenda Pettyjohn had already been installed as Head Librarian.
“Hello, Miss Pettyjohn,” said Ernie, embarrassed as though his former library-class teacher had caught him in some illicit act.
He stood back to allow her through the glass doors, hoping that she would walk on ahead of him. However, as the old lady tottered down the lino-clad floor, he realised that he would have to walk with her.
“Come along, Master Ernest,” chided Old Glenda, as though he were the octogenarian, not she.
Blushing from the indignity, Ernie started into the wide corridor after her, almost colliding with a tall row of book lockers in his haste to catch up with his former teacher.
As they walked down the corridor, Ernie could see adults sitting at the benches in some classrooms as teachers lectured them about the various courses:
“Woodworking is both a handy way to pass the time and a way to save ....”
“Embroidery isn’t just for women, these days. Even men can ....”
“A handy way to save big dollars, is to do your own motor repairs ....”
“Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson are both reported to have stayed in Glen Hartwell toward the end ....”
“The term ‘Yowie’ is just the Australian name for what in the United States they call ....”
“Painting is no longer done on canvas as most people think ... But rather on ....”
“‘Koori’ is the Victorian and New South Wales Aboriginal name for the Australian Aborigines,” said the tall, handsome chocolate-coloured man lecturing in the last room in that block.
Finding himself fascinated by the pleasant sounding voice of the man, Ernie stopped, and on a whim knocked on the glass door, grateful that Glenda Pettyjohn continued down the corridor toward the next block.
The tall, half-breed Aborigine walked across to the glass door and pulled it open with a broad smile. “Please come in,” he greeted Ernie. “My name is Joseph Garbarla, but please call me by my last name.”
“Ernie Singleton,” said Ernie holding out his right hand to shake as the handsome tutor proffered his hand.
“Please take a seat,” said Garbarla waving toward the front row. Although intended for at least forty students, only six adults now sat scattered around the room.
As Ernie sat in the front row, looking a little uncomfortable, Garbarla handed him half a dozen printed sheets outlining the course and said, “My TAFE course in Aboriginal studies starts next Monday, and there is only a nominal entrance fee.”
“How nominal?” asked lanky Mark Blythe sitting in the back row with his older brother, Don.
“Thirty-five dollars per semester,” answered Garbarla.
“Man, I’m outta here,” said Don. The two brothers rose and strode from the class, slamming the door behind them loud enough to rattle the glass.
“Well, I suppose that just leaves six of us,” said Garbarla with a wry grin.
As the remaining enrolees snickered, Garbarla returned to the front of the class and said; “My name is Joseph Garbarla. I was been born thirty years ago, in 1957, as Garbarla Bulilka, the son of a tribal Gin, Debbie Bulilka, and a travelling State Electricity Commission linesman, Edward Hunt ....”

October 1986
The four hunters set out straight after a breakfast of cold nail-tail kangaroo, berries, and witchetty grubs. Although food had not been scarce over the summer, it would take all day for the four of them to hunt down enough meat for the small tribe’s dinner.
“How much further?” demanded Tom ‘Tubby’ Budjiwa, one of the tribe’s most experienced hunters despite his great pot-belly, when they had barely set out into the brown dirt desert beyond the village.
“Only gone ten metres so far,” chided Alex Jalburgul Gul, whose buck-toothed countenance seemed perpetually smiling, as though he had learnt to see the funny side of everything. In truth, they had journeyed about half a kilometre.
“Feels more like ten kilometres,” insisted Tubby. Panting as though about to die from shortage of breath, he trotted a few paces to catch up with the others.
Seeing him trotting, Terry Yudbunji, who at sixteen had only been going on hunting trips a few months, teased, “Good idea, let’s all jog the next few Kays to get there faster.”
“Sounds good to me,” said John Mardi. He threw the teenager a sly wink.
“I’m game,” said Alex. He furiously jogged on the spot for a few seconds.
“Go on then,” said Tubby, refusing to be baited. “I’ll meet you on your way back.”
“What do you do with a bloke too lazy even to be teased?” asked Mardi. He looked at Alex Jalburgul Gul, whose mouth had burst into a wide, buck-toothed grin.
“Keep up, old man!” called back Terry as Tubby began to fall behind again.
“It’s all right for you young blokes,” complained Tubby. He broke into a jog to catch up again.
Mardi could not help laughing at Tubby’s ungainly half-run, half-waddle. Even Alex broke into another broad grin.
“What ... are you ... grinning at ... you bastard?” demanded Tubby between panting breaths.
“Just thought of a joke,” said Alex tactfully. However, when Mardi and Terry both broke up into laughter, Alex eventually joined in.

They seemed to be melting in the mid afternoon sun when finally they spotted game: a small herd of emus.
“Here we go!” thought Mardi, wondering how they would ever run down any of the blue-grey, flightless birds.
“Rub dirt to hide the man smells,” said Tubby. The stocky native picked up a handful of brown dirt and began rubbing down his chest as he spoke.
“Phew, good idea,” teased Mardi, “we’re all a bit rank after that march in the hot sun.” Almost gagging on his own B.O., he thought, ‘If I smell this bad to me, an emu would pick me up a kilometre off.’ Bending, he picked up a handful of dirt and began rubbing it over himself as the others were doing.
Five minutes later, they were ready to begin the hunt.
Tubby Budjiwa and John Mardi waited in the long Native Australian grass, as Alex and Terry slowly crept round behind the flock of emus. The two hunters took a few steps, then stopped statue-still for seconds, even minutes before they dared take the next step. They took a wide arc of nearly two kilometres in more than an hour to circle around behind the emus.
Mardi had initially crouched to watch the creeping natives. Then as his knees began to ache, he followed Budjiwa’s example and sat down on a patch of native grass -- cooler on the behind than the sun-heated dirt.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Alex and Terry reached their objective.
“Time to move,” said Tubby, sounding reluctant. He slowly pulled himself to his feet.
Crouching in a bid to keep their heads below the top of the native Australian grass, Tubby and Mardi started slowly forward.
The normal procedure for a hunt meant that Alex and Terry would make some sound to frighten the emus into flight toward Tubby and Mardi, then run after them. Instead, to Mardi’s astonishment, Terry and Alex both leapt to their feet screaming, scattering the emus in all directions -- while they were still too far off for Mardi and Tubby to spear. Then the two native hunters came running lightning-fast toward them.
“What the hell ...?” said Mardi, staring as the two hunters rapidly approached.
“Tassie tiger on their tails,” said Tubby equally perplexed.
“What’s going on?” demanded Mardi as the two young hunters ran up to them.
“Window in sky!” said Alex Jalburgul Gul. The broad grin long gone from his features.
“Window in sky?” asked Mardi, sceptically. Although he felt the short hairs prickle on the nape of his neck.
“Window in sky? Sound like they bin sniffin’ glue again,” said Tubby. He stood watching the retreating natives for a moment, then turned back to where they had run from.
“Maybe we’d better go too?” suggested Mardi. Although his mouth was dry from fear, he stood his ground, not wanting to abandon his colleague.
“Because Yudbunji and Jalburgul Gul having day-mare? No way, we got hunting to do.”
Mardi looked at the chubby hunter in surprise. He had expected Tubby to be glad of any excuse to return to the village. ‘Maybe he thinks there’s less work involved in following the emus, than in returning to the village.’ Mardi thought.
Turning to look after the flightless birds, he decided, ‘Not that there’s any real hope of catching them now.’ The emus were already only tiny specks on the shimmering horizon.
“Come on,” insisted Tubby. He set off across the brown dirt desert at a leisurely pace.
Mardi hesitated for a second, then started after Budjiwa.
They had only gone a few hundred metres when they found what had terrified Alex Jalburgul Gul and Terry Yudbunji. Indeed, a small ‘window’, hovering a few feet above the ground.
From a distance, the window looked like a strange, shimmering band of air. Like hot air seen in the distance in the desert, except that the shimmering did not recede as they approached and seemed to emit a strong light; so that it was clearly visible when Mardi and Budjiwa reached it, although dark had begun to fall.
‘What the Hell is it?’ John Mardi wondered. He approached to within a few metres.
Up close, the shimmering seemed like a lightly misted or dirty window, which you could see through, but with difficulty.
Peering through the ‘window’ Mardi saw what looked like sun-lit forestlands. ‘My God, what is it?’ Mardi wondered. He reached out one hand toward it, then drew back, afraid to touch the window.
Hearing splashing, he peered to the left and could just make out a small billabong. He could see the backs of creatures with long, green, scaly, crocodile-like tails diving into the billabong. Yet, peer as he might, Mardi could not quite make out what the creatures were. ‘Some kind of cayman or alligator, perhaps?’ he wondered. Yet he knew there supposedly was no species of crocodile or alligator in Victoria.
For nearly fifteen minutes, Mardi and Tubby Budjiwa strained to see what the diving creatures were. Finally, one of the beasts turned and started back toward them. As the animal climbed out of the billabong, Mardi gasped. Seeing it’s bull-Terrier-like head, he thought, ‘Tasmanian tiger!’ Then, as it came ashore, they saw its large golden, kangaroo-like torso; powerful emu-like coiled steel legs, long crocodilian tail, and huge, feathered, eagle-like wings.
“Holy shit, what the Hell?” John Mardi said. He turned toward Tubby Budjiwa, but the chubby warrior only shrugged.
For a second or two the creature stood sunning itself dry. Then, there was a loud “grrrrrup” of frogs croaking in the nearby forest. The creature’s long ears shot up and it span round toward the direction of the sound. Then, in an instant, the creature vanished.
‘My God, I’ve never seen anything move that fast!’ Mardi thought. He looked toward Tubby Budjiwa; however, the sight of the hunting creature had transfixed the thirty-four-year-old warrior, who did not even look toward the teenager.

Joseph Garbarla stood at the front of the classroom, lecturing his TAFE class on Aboriginal studies at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.
“Since this is the last class until the seventh of February next year, I would just like to take the opportunity to remind you of the basic tenet of Aboriginal Dream-Time belief ....”

Brian Horne sat by the window listening to the unseasonable rain pelting upon the windows and the bitumen outside. A strong salt breeze blew in from the nearby Yannan River, telling Brian that the rains were here to stay for a while.
Sighing from boredom, Brian looked around to the front of the classroom, where Garbarla stood scratching away upon the blackboard with orange chalk as he lectured. Brian felt silly sitting at the long, vinyl-topped benches listening to the lecturer. Although, at twenty-four, it was only half a dozen years since he had left high school, he felt that he was too old to be going to school.
‘Why did I ever let Ernie talk me into this?’ wondered Brian. He turned his head to his left to look at the tall, Celtically dark man sitting beside him. ‘Ernie might find all this hocus-pocus interesting, but not me.’
Two nights a week, since February, Ernie and Brian had been attending the Aboriginal Studies classes. They had been read various Dream-Time legends: Mamaragan: the Great Rainbow Snake; Gurugadji, the Emu-Man; and many more, and most of the class had seemed to lap it all up. However, Brian prided himself on his straightforward down-to-earth approach to life.
When Ernie had first suggested that he come along to the TAFE classes, Brian had been willing enough. Unlike many country-dwellers, Brian was not afraid of knowledge. He prided himself on being one of the more literate people in the Glen Hartwell-to-Merridale area. However, he had not planned to join up for Garbarla’s class.
Brian and Joe Garbarla were close friends -- Garbarla often stayed overnight with the Hornes at Cherrytree Farm, rather than drive all the way back to his mother’s reservation outside Pettiwood. However, Brian was an agnostic by nature and could not get interested in religious fantasies: either Western or Dream-Time legends. Also, although an avid reader, Brian rarely read novels or short stories, preferring non-fiction. He often infuriated normally easy-going Ernie by saying, “What’s the point in reading a book if it isn’t even true?”
Brian considered himself well read in many fields. However, his greatest interest was military history. He had been all ready to sign up for the ‘Australians at War’ course (although his main interest was the United States Army and Marines), when Ernie had dragged him across to join Garbarla’s course.
So for the last eight and a half months Brian had been dutifully coming along to his friend’s TAFE class, but wishing he were in the militaria class instead.

Common reality
“So to sum up,” said Garbarla, glancing across toward Brian, he realised his friend was bored to tears again, “the over-riding tenet of the Dream-Time mythology is that the Aborigines do not believe in absolute reality. That is how modern Aborigines can believe in the Dream-Time legends, yet still be Christians. They believe that there are a great number of equally true co-existing realities, running parallel to each other. In one reality, the Dream-Time myths exist, but Jesus Christ does not. In another reality, Jesus exists but the Dream-Time legends do not. But since both realities are equally real, the Aborigines believe in them both simultaneously, so that there is no conflict.”
Garbarla sighed inwardly again noticing the bored look on the face of Brian Horne and half the other class members. “Class dismissed, have a merry Christmas and see you all in the New Year,” Garbarla said, thinking; ‘Well, some of you, hopefully.’
As he turned back toward the blackboard to erase his notes, he added, “Could Brian and Ernie please stay behind for a moment.”
“Detention again,” joked Ernie Singleton, as he and Brian stood aside to allow the other students to file out into the yellow-walled corridor.
“Well, what is it this time, Teach,” joked Brian, “the strap or two-thousand lines?”
Laughing and shaking his head slightly, Garbarla continued to erase the chalk scrawling for a moment. Then turning back to the class, he said, “No, I just wanted to invite you both around to Bateman’s for a couple of beers.”
“I won’t say no to that,” said Brian Horne finding the idea of a couple of quick drinks more interesting than Aboriginal Dream-Time legends.

Ten minutes later they sat at a large round table at Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street, drinking cold beer and making small talk.
For half an hour, Garbarla hummed and hawed, making Brian wonder if something had happened to Weari-Wyingga. The tribal Elder had been one of the first to accept Garbarla back at the tribe thirteen years ago and Brian knew that the old man was well past eighty now. His health had been failing for the last few years and it could be only a short time before the old man died.
“What I ... what I really wanted ...” began Garbarla at last.
However, before he could finish his sentence, a tall blonde man strode across the smoke-filled bar toward them.
“Look out, it’s the fuzz,” said Brian Horne, eliciting smiles from Ernie and Garbarla, but a rueful shake of the head from the uniformed constable striding toward them.
“Very funny,” said Terry Blewett in a voice that said that it was not, “I laughed the first ten thousand times I heard that from you three.”
“What can I do for you copper?” joked Brian, reducing Garbarla and Ernie to belly laughs.
“If you’re gonna be rude about it, I’ll buy someone else a drink,” said Terry in faux anger.
“Sit down, copper,” teased Brian.
“I hope you’re not drinking on duty?” demanded Ernie, joining in the joke.
“No, I’m just off duty,” explained Terry sitting. “Now what is everybody drinking? And if you all say triple-Scotches, I’m outta here pronto.”
“I think we musta used that one on him once too often,” said Brian.
After Terry bought the round of drinks the four men settled down to drink and chat for a while. Then, as they were getting ready to leave Garbarla took the others by surprise, by saying, “Actually the real reason that I asked you here was to invite you both to spend a few days on the reservation. None of you has been out there for a while.”
“I haven’t been out there at all,” pointed out Terry.
“Well, here’s your chance,” said Garbarla. He downed the last of his Fosters Lager, then ran a wrist across his mouth to wipe away the foam moustache.
Terry and Ernie exchanged a look, both puzzled. Finally, they nodded their consent.
“Yeah, sure,” said Brian.
“When?” asked Ernie. He sounded a little reluctant, although he had visited the Aboriginal reserve more times than any of them, except Garbarla, and usually jumped at any invitation to go out there.
“From tomorrow or Saturday, if possible,” suggested Garbarla. He looked toward Ernie, then Terry, neither of whom had answered yet.

Ernie’s reality
Although Garbarla had done his best to sound casual in making the invitation to his friends, Ernie hesitated to answer. He wondered if the half-breed had some ulterior motive in inviting them to the reservation. Ernie had been attending Garbarla’s classes in Aboriginal studies since early 1983. Although at first their relationship had been on a strictly teacher-student basis, over the next nine months the two men quickly recognised each other as like souls. One night in late November 1984 Garbarla had come to Ernie for advice when a disaster had struck at the reservation where the half-breed lived with his mother, Debbie Bulilka. Ernie had listened in astonishment as Garbarla told of Mamaragan a Dream-Time legend having physically appeared in the Australian outback to attack a hunting party that Garbarla had been on, devouring two full-blood hunters.
Most whites would have rejected the story of a gigantic, winged serpent out of hand. Having spent so much of his early life in white society, Garbarla knew that unlike the Aborigines who had unquestioning faith in both religion and the supernatural, the white man had little faith in his religion and none at all in the supernatural. So, he had expected Ernie to scoff at his tale of a Dream-Time demon attacking a hunting party.
Instead Ernie had sat in silence, staring at his friend, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to believe. Eighteen months earlier he would certainly have rejected Garbarla’s story out-of-hand. Like most whites he would have been simply unable to believe in Dream-Time monsters. However, eighteen months ago his attitude toward the supernatural had undergone a painful transformation.
Apart from the devastating shock in itself, there was also the effect that it had on his love-life. Since late 1982 Ernie had been dating a local woman Rowena Frankland. Their romance had quickly blossomed to the point where in January 1983 Ernie had purchased an expensive engagement ring to give to Rowena. However, before he got the chance his werewolf taint had revealed itself and so he still had not proffered the ring to her.
Although there was no doubt in Ernie’s heart that he loved Rowena and nothing could please him more than to spend the rest of his life with her, at the same time he was afraid for her. Afraid of placing her in danger by marriage to him. After his initial metamorphosis he had done research into the legend of the werewolf and had been horrified to learn that tradition claimed that the werewolf was an insane killer that (for reasons never explained) always attacked first those who were closest to it in its human life. Therefore, afraid that as the black wolf he might be a danger to Rowena, Ernie had resolved to spend the rest of his life a bachelor.
Therefore, he had thrown himself into his TAFE classes two or three nights a week and had soon become the top student. Ernie and Garbarla had quickly become friends until Garbarla had come to ask for his help in defeating the Dream-Time monster terrorising the Aboriginal village outside Pettiwood.
Ernie had agreed to help Garbarla, and over the next few months they had tackled and defeated the Dream-Time demon. Yet not until it had killed nearly half of Garbarla’s tribe including virtually all of the grown men below the age of eighty, including Garbarla's half-brother, Gunbuk. However, they had been unable to kill the Dream-Time demon, only put it into a trance, buried beneath the corroboree ground in a circle of sweet-smelling blue gum trees near the reservation.
So now, seeing Garbarla’s obvious nervousness, Ernie wondered if the monster had somehow awakened from its coma to terrorise the Aboriginal village again.

Common reality
Like Ernie, Brian had spent many happy days with Garbarla at the reservation outside Pettiwood. So there was no reason to feel suspicious at the invitation now. Yet, still he hesitated.
‘What’s he really up to?’ wondered Brian. Then, as his friends continued to stare in his direction, he realised they were waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” he said at last.

Ernie considered the proposition for a moment. There was no real problem getting someone to look after the station -- he had helped Morrie Blewett and Tony Frankland on occasions when they had needed extra shearers for their sheep, or people to help pick fruit in their orchards, so he knew that he could rely on one of them to repay the favour.
He hesitated because he knew that tonight he was due to metamorphose into the black wolf. Yet, on the other hand (still not really knowing what his werewolf taint involved), he could not help wondering whether his werewolf senses might somehow allow him to help Garbarla as the black wolf in ways that he never could help as plain Ernie Singleton if indeed the Dream-Time demon had returned to the reservation.
‘Besides it’ll help me to clear my head a bit!’ he decided, actually meaning that it might give him a chance to stop pining for Rowena. Aloud he said, “Yes, all right. But I’ll have to arrange for Rowena or someone else to look after the farm for a few days.”
“All right, then how about the day after tomorrow?” asked Garbarla.
Ernie and Brian both agreed.

Ernie’s reality
Early Saturday morning, Ernie set out to feed the farm dogs that were yelping for their breakfast. Ernie supplemented his farm earnings by breeding and selling dogs to neighbouring sheep and cattle stations. Even so the farm was nowhere near big enough to justify the forty to fifty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies, Alsatians, and Great Danes kennelled there. The dogs, housed in upturned two-hundred-litre drums a hundred metres behind the farmhouse, were mainly a hobby for Ernie.
“How’s it going, girl?” asked Ernie as he topped up the water bowl of Maggie-May a small red Kelpie bitch. He received a yelp and Whump-Whump-Whump of the tail against the cast-iron kennel by way of greeting.
After topping up her food bowl from the Hessian bag of hexagonal grey-brown dog pellets, he moved on to the next dog, a long-haired Great Dane, Kong. But seeing Kong reminded Ernie of Rowena who was due to arrive soon to take over the feeding and watering of the animals over the next few days. A long-time fan of early horror and SF-movies, Rowena had name the Great Dane after King Kong.
Ernie smiled ruefully. He recalled the double black-and-white feature that she had dragged him to at the Odeon in BeauLarkin to see last night: “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and “The Giant Claw”. Although not really sharing Rowena’s taste in movies, he had like the first film all right. However, he smiled and shook his head as he recalled the second film. The silliest film he had ever seen, despite Rowena’s insistence that it was a classic.

Ernie had just finished feeding the station dogs and had started scattering grain in the wire chook enclosure near the house, when he heard the sound of tyres crunching on gravel. Looking round he saw a yellow Morris Minor driving up the path from Donaldson’s Road to the farmhouse yard.
He watched the car’s approach a little nervously, knowing that it was Rowena Frankland driving her cousin Gloria’s car, which she borrowed from time to time. As Ernie watched, the car drove up to the woodpile near the metre-high chain-link fence circling the farmhouse yard.
Then, a little nervous still at seeing her, Ernie walked across to greet her.
As they made small talk, Ernie could not help thinking how beautiful she was: a tall, leggy, honey-blonde with pale grey-blue eyes, Rowena looked as though she would be more at home on the catwalk or in a beauty pageant than mucking out the pigs. However, he knew that she carried her weight on her father’s cattle station outside nearby LePage.
“Cuppa tea?” asked Ernie by way of casual greeting.
Rowena shook her head, “No, I’d better get straight to work.”
They had almost finished the most urgent farm chores when they heard the crunching of car tyres again on the gravel road. Looking round Ernie saw Brian Horne and Joseph Garbarla in Brian’s aquamarine HR-Holden Premier.

Common reality
“Rowie, Ern,” said Garbarla and Brian, climbing from the Premier.
“Garbarla, Brian,” said Rowena giving them the perfunctory peck on the check as Ernie shook hands with each of the men.
“Ready to go?” asked Brian.
“Yeah,” agreed Ernie.
Brian walked across to the wooden porch to pick up the large leather suitcase and asked, “This to go?”
“Yes,” agreed Ernie. Brian started across the farmhouse yard followed by Garbarla, heading toward the small corrugated-iron shed, beside the dog yard, to set out for the reservation in Ernie’s Range-Rover, which was more suited to cross-country driving than Brian’s Holden, which they would leave at the sheep station.
“See you in a few days’ time,” said Ernie. He leant down to give Rowena a quick kiss on the lips, then almost guiltily set off after Brian and Garbarla.
“I’ll leave my keys in the Premier,” Brian called to Rowena. He knew that in the Victorian countryside no one was likely to steal the car. “Feel free to use it till we get back.”
“Thanks,” called back Rowena waving to the three men as they drove off.

They set out across country from Merridale to East Merridale, then on toward Pettiwood. Within an hour of starting out, they were approaching the Aboriginal village beyond the township. This time Ernie was careful to park the Range-Rover outside the reservation. On his first visit in October 1984, he had been so engrossed in thought that he had almost driven straight into the settlement.
“We’re here,” said Garbarla, stating the obvious as they pulled up.
The ‘village’ was actually much larger than the nearby townships; with nearly a hundred lean-toes and one-, two-, or three-room corrugated-iron huts. The first time that he had been there Ernie had been relieved to see that, despite how they always depicted them on TV, the tribal Aborigines did not go around the reservation half-naked, but wore jeans, shorts, T-shirts, or simple skirts and shoes.
Ernie smiled as he recalled his naiveté two years ago. Then realising how many of the huts were now empty, their owners killed by Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake, he stopped smiling, and hoping that his friend Garbarla would not have seen and been offended.
As they climbed from the Range-Rover, it seemed that the entire inhabitants of the village came running up to meet them. However, looking closely, Ernie saw that the Aborigines were almost entirely women and children, with just a smattering of teenage boys and older men.
Among the older males, Ernie spotted a tiny, grey-skinned old man who looked well over a hundred but was actually only in his eighties: Weari-Wyingga by name, elected temporary leader of the village in Christmas 1984. With just a few wisps of white hair on his otherwise bald pate, and grey, wrinkled skin, the old man looked close to death and must surely die soon. Ernie wondered, ‘Who will replace him as leader then?’
Weari-Wyingga hugged Ernie then Brian with a strength that belied his frail appearance. Then the old man used his walking stick -- a blue-gum sapling whittled into a cane -- to clear a path among the chattering women and children. Then, taking Brian and Ernie by one arm each, he led them toward his two-room corrugated-iron hut at the other end of the village.
As they approached the hut, Ernie figured that Weari-Wyingga could have taken any of a number of three-room huts left vacant after the Great Rainbow Snake had slaughtered their owners. But he decided, ‘The old man has lived over seventy years in this two-room hut, I guess he’s not about to leave now.’
As the old man hugged him a little harder to him, Ernie blushed a little, embarrassed by the old man’s warm reception. However, he realised that Weari-Wyingga was genuinely pleased to see them, and, unlike many whites, was unafraid to show his feelings openly.
Weari-Wyingga released Ernie from his bear-like grip just long enough to pull open the squeaky iron door and lead them into the front room of his hut.
As they sat on the grass mats before the knee-height red gum table, the only piece of furniture in the front room, Ernie asked Weari-Wyingga, “How are you adapting to your new role of unofficial headman of the village.”
Normally Aboriginal tribes do not have any form of chief or leader. Instead, a council of all the men over sixty-five have equal say in the running of things. The council of Elders meets regularly at all-male corroborees, to discuss day-to-day events and any special situations arising. However, after the Dream-Time monster had wiped out most of the tribe’s men, there were no other surviving males old enough to sit on the Council of Elders. Therefore, Weari-Wyingga had adopted the role of temporary chief. With the next oldest male in the village nearly fifty years Weari-Wyingga’s junior, Ernie knew it would be a long time before another all-male council of Elders could be appointed.
Looking a little nervous, Garbarla explained, “It has been suggested lately that we should allow Suzie Wanjimari and a few of the female Elders to sit in at all male corroborees.”
“Over my dead body,” shrieked Weari-Wyingga waving his blue gum stick around over his head as though he intended to strike down Garbarla for suggesting such a thing. “No one would even suggest such a thing in the days before the white invasion of this continent.”
Garbarla, Brian and Ernie exchanged bemused looks, knowing that in the days before the slaughter of the other Elders, Weari-Wyingga had been famous (or infamous) for his five hour-plus harangues at corroborees about the evils of the white society. Even other traditionalist Elders had been frustrated by the duration and regularity of the old man’s lengthy diatribes about the white man.
Since Ernie and the local police chief, Danny Ross, had helped defeat Mamaragan, Weari-Wyingga’s hard line against whites had softened a little. But at the mere suggestion of women on the council of Elders, the old man quickly set aside his recent soft line. So, afraid they’d have to listen to one of Weari-Wyingga’s five-hour harangues, Garbarla interrupted the old man:
“Perhaps I’d better take them both to Debbie’s hut to settle in,” he suggested.
“Yes, of course,” agreed Weari-Wyingga, looking a little put out by the interruption.

Unlike Weari-Wyingga, after the slaughter of most of the village men two years earlier, Debbie Bulilka had been quick to abandon her two-room hut for a larger three-room building near the centre of the village.
As they approached the hut, the three men saw Debbie, a tall, willowy woman in her late forties standing by her front door sweeping out dust. Seeing the three men, she dropped her broom with a crash against the side of the hut and raced to try to hug them all at once.
“Ernie, Brian,” she called by way of greeting, embarrassing them even more than they had been by old Weari-Wyingga’s effusive greeting. For a moment the tall woman ignored the stares of the gaping crowd standing round watching, then waving a hand at the crowd to shoo them away, she grabbed Brian and Ernie’s right hands to half drag, half lead them in through the small doorway into the corrugated iron hut.
Ernie and Brian both winced as their eyes struggled to adjust from the bright sunshine outside to the darkness in the front room. But without giving them time to acclimatise their eyes Debbie dragged them straight through the front room to one of the two back rooms, which the two new-comers would be sharing with her son, Garbarla.
Grabbing their suitcases off them, Debbie began hurriedly unpacking their things into two unvarnished wooden cabinets which looked new as though purchased, or more likely built by one of the village craftsmen for the arrival of Brian and Ernie.
“Here, let me do that,” offered Ernie.
“No, no, go talk with Garbarla,” suggested Debbie hurriedly unpacking his things into one of the cabinets, before he could offer again.
“Let’s leave her to it,” suggested Garbarla, knowing his mother did not take to new-fangled ideas, such as men knowing how to pack and unpack their own clothing.
“Guests go sit in living room, go talk,” agreed Debbie. And without further argument Brian and Ernie followed Garbarla back to the shady front room.
“So what do you want to talk about?” asked Brian as he and Ernie sat on grass mats on the hard dirt floor.
“I’m afraid you two will have to talk among yourselves for a while,” said Garbarla heading toward the front door. “I have to help out with the cook fire. We have to get it ready for whatever meat the hunters bring home tonight.
“With most of the more experienced hunters of the village gone, things have been a little lean the last couple of years,” explained Garbarla before stepping back out into the bright sunlight.
Ernie and Brian both knew what he meant. Since the attack of the Great Rainbow Snake upon the village, most of the hunters and warriors were now mere teenagers. The most experienced hunter the tribe had left, a close friend of Ernie, Nambidjimba, had only recently turned nineteen.
Ernie looked forward to seeing young ‘Jimba’ who was out with the day’s hunting party. But in the meantime, he decided to take advantage of Garbarla’s absence to take a walk through the village.
Stretching to relieve a nagging crick in his back, Ernie tried to sound casual as he said to Brian, “I feel like stretching my legs. Feel like a walk?”
“Sure, why not?” agreed Brian.
Trying to act as though he had picked a direction at random, Ernie set out through the corrugated-iron village, toward the corroboree ground.
Although Brian Horne knew that some great disaster had decimated the Aboriginal village two years earlier, Garbarla and Ernie had never dared tell him of their battle with Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake. So, as they approached the corroboree ground Ernie could not tell Brian why he had brought him there.
Far away from the iron huts, the corroboree ground was merely a small dirt-paved area ringed by a circle of towering blue-gum trees. In the centre of the corroboree ground were a number of round stones within which ceremonial fires of blue-, red-, and ghost-gum logs were laid. The original ceremonial fire was fifty metres closer toward the village than the new one.
Approaching the old fire site Ernie breathed deeply, enjoying the eucalyptus sweetness of the blue-gum trees, which also wafted like incense from a recently used ceremonial fire. He trotted tentatively, not knowing what to expect, half thinking that there would only be a gaping hole showing where Mamaragan had escaped. Ernie sighed audibly in relief as he saw the hole where Mamaragan lay was still covered with hard-packed brown soil.
“My God, what is that?” asked Brian, staring down at where the soil had settled down nearly a metre in a circular patch by the old ceremonial fire. Unlike Ernie, Brian had never been inside the corroboree ground before. “Looks like a grave site.”
“In a way it is,” thought Ernie. Although he knew that the gigantic varicoloured, diamond-headed serpent that lay beneath the soil was only sleeping; in a coma held fast by the mystical Dark Stone which Ernie, Garbarla, Jimba, and Weari-Wyingga had used to ‘lay’ the serpent two years earlier.
“Mamaragan still in the ground,” said a frail voice behind them. Startled, Ernie looked around and saw Weari-Wyingga smiling at him and he realised that the old man had guessed what Ernie had thought when asked to spend a few days at the village. “No danger from there.”
“What is it?” asked Brian, not having a clue what Weari-Wyingga was talking about.
“A ceremonial burial site,” explained Ernie.
“A human burial site?” asked Brian staring wide-eyed at Ernie.
“No,” said Ernie, unsure how to answer.
“Only snake buried there,” said Weari-Wyingga truthfully. The old man grinned wide at Ernie as though sharing an old joke with his friend.
“Then why ... why did Garbarla ask us here?” asked Ernie.
Weari-Wyingga smiled again, not giving anything away. “Garbarla explain on hunt tomorrow.”
“Oh great,” said Brian with a broad grin. He enjoyed going on the hunting trips, although he and Ernie only went as observers, while Jimba, Garbarla and the other Aborigines hunted with traditional spears, woomeras, and large, hunting boomerangs.

Ernie awakened at break of dawn the next morning, squinting against the sunlight blasting in from a centimetre gap beneath the thick black curtains. He sat up on the lumpy mattress upon the hard dirt floor, yawned widely and looked around himself in astonishment, for a moment not knowing where he was.
“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” teased Brian Horne, standing in the doorway, and Ernie suddenly remembered that he was sleeping in the back room of Debbie Bulilka’s three-room corrugated iron hut.
Ernie started to get up and fell against the metal wall, crying, “Jesus,” and leaping aside as the sun-drenched metal stung him. Careful to avoid touching the corrugated-iron walls of the hut again, he climbed to his feet again and said, “Sorry, I must have overslept.”
“You certainly did,” said Brian with a Cheshire cat-like grin, it’s nearly five o’clock.”
For one mad second Ernie thought he had slept the day away. Then reality hit him like a brick, “In the morning?”
“That’s right,” agreed Brian, “we have to set out early to get good hunting.”
“Oh God,” said Ernie ignoring Brian’s laughter as he fumbled his way across to the dressing cabinet for his clothing. He realised that to Brian the hunt was an exciting adventure. But to Ernie it only meant trouble. He knew that Garbarla had to have some more important reason to invite them to the village than just to go on a hunting trip.

After a quick breakfast of cold nail-tail kangaroo meat, left over from dinner the night before, the hunting party set out. It was composed of Ernie, Brian, Garbarla, Jimba, a tall, handsome youth who was in charge of the party, plus three other teenage full bloods: Tubby Budjiwa, Neal Judawali, and Larry Mutapina.
Stalking through the sun-dried brush, they came upon an open plain where they saw a small band of great red kangaroos feeding. There were six adult females, three or four Joeys and one solitary Old Man roo, standing nearly two metres tall upon his haunches.
Budjiwa and Judawali began covering themselves from head to foot in brown dirt, “To keep in the man-smells,” Garbarla whispered to Brian and Ernie. “Kangaroos have weak eyesight and can’t easily distinguish between stationary objects, but they have a very powerful sense of smell.”
Ernie, Brian, and Garbarla remained behind as instructed and watched as the two hunters slowly began to circle around the small herd. Crawling along on their bellies upon the brown earth, Budjiwa and Judawali crept forward, dragging their hunting spears behind them. Every few metres they paused and waited a few seconds, or even minutes, before moving on again. In this way it took them almost an hour to crawl from over a hundred metres away, to less than ten metres away from where the kangaroo herd grazed.
On the other hand it took Jimba and Mutapina little more than ten minutes to circle around the back of the herd, moving stealthily, head down, through the brush outside the clearing. They were able to move more confidently than the other two, being outside the range of vision of the herd, behind the tall grass and shrubs. When at last the other two were in place, the two warriors began to close in upon the herd until they were only twenty metres away. Then Jimba deliberately trod on a small twig to make it snap.
The adult kangaroos instantly stiffened to attention, their dog-like heads held high in the air, listening; the head of the Old Man roo went quickly round to Jimba and Mutapina’s direction. Leaning backward slightly, balancing upon his powerful tail, the roo surveyed the terrain, sniffing lightly at the air, while his harem continued to listen and their Joeys continued nipping unconcernedly at tender sprouts of grass.
Catching the young warriors’ scent, the roo shrieked a warning to his harem. Quickly the Joeys dived headfirst into their mothers’ pouches and the herd leapt into flight, heading straight toward where Budjiwa and Judawali lay in wait.
Leaping to their feet the two hunters loaded their three-metre-long spears into their woomeras and launched the spears almost in the same action.
Judawali’s spear felled a fleeing kangaroo but Budjiwa’s weapon narrowly missed its mark. Before the two hunters could reload their spear-launchers, the herd had moved past them and was bounding toward where Ernie, Brian and Garbarla lay concealed in the tall grass a hundred metres behind the others.
Jumping to his feet Garbarla raised his own weapon, a large hunting boomerang, swung his right arm back and at the same time collided with an onrushing kangaroo. His aim was knocked off by the collision so that his weapon went astray and narrowly missed decapitating Judawali. However, the warrior ducked under the large boomerang and without missing a step launched a spear from his loaded woomera and felled the roo Garbarla had collided with.
Judawali’s spear passed clean through the young kangaroo and through a small Joey in her pouch, pinning mother and baby alike to the ground. The Joey was killed instantly, but the mother struggled valiantly against the thick spear, tugging at it with her small front paws, biting at it with her strong teeth, while her powerful back feet kicked furiously at the ground, until Judawali rushed across to slit her throat with his hunting knife.
The Old Man roo stopped and turned back toward the men, anger flashed in his steely grey eyes, his nostrils quivered in rage. He obviously planned to make a bid to rescue his mates, but seeing that it was already too late, he turned and fled, to the relief of Ernie and the others, leaving them to begin preparing the two carcases for the long trip home. Budjiwa and Mutapina each took one end of the spear with which Judawali had pinned the kangaroo to the ground, then, with Mutapina in the lead, they set off back to camp, each holding one end of the spear over his left shoulder. They travelled slowly to conserve energy as they had many kilometres to travel.
Judawali pulled the spear from the flank of the second roo, then speared it from backside to neck so that he and Garbarla could carry it home in tandem fashion also.
They had hardly started back though when young Jimba and Judawali suddenly came to a halt half a dozen metres ahead of Ernie and the others.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ernie. As soon as he spoke, he expected to be hushed by the Aborigines. Instead they acted as though no one had even heard him speak.
Receiving no answer, Ernie walked as quietly as possible to the front of the procession, closely followed by Garbarla and Brian. In the desert, twenty metres ahead of Jimba, they saw a band of shimmering light. Like hot air shimmering in the distance in summer. Yet the sky was overcast, the day cool if not actually cold, so that there was no reason for the air to heat-shimmer.
“Do you remember in class when I said that the Aborigines believe in parallel realities?” asked Garbarla. He received nods from Brian and Ernie who were both too shocked to speak. “Well, we believe this ‘shimmer’ is a reality slip.”
The two white men stared toward the handsome half-breed, clearly not understanding, so Garbarla explained: “We believe this is a flaw in reality. A portal if you like between two or more realities.”
“So we could step between our reality and another?” asked Ernie.
“Perhaps,” said Garbarla, sounding dubious. “But strange things have been going on here lately. Strange animals sighted. And not just by my people. Two months ago a white farmer in the LePage area claimed to have shot a Tasmanian tiger. And there have been at least two reported bunyip sightings.”
“Bunyips?” asked Brian sounding sceptical. “Tassie tigers I can believe. They once existed, so there’s a chance at least a few might still be around. But bunyips are pure fiction.”
“In our reality, yes,” agreed Garbarla. “But if this is a gap between two realities, it might lead to another reality in which bunyips do exist. In which Tasmanian tigers weren’t driven to extinction in the 1930s.”
Garbarla paused for a moment, then added, “If it’s just a doorway between realities, that would be bad enough. But my people believe it could be a reality leak.”
“A reality leak,” asked Ernie. He looked back toward the cold shimmering air in the distance.
“We believe that one of the realities is gradually leaking into the other,” explained Garbarla. “If the other reality is leaking into ours, releasing Tassie tigers and bunyips, that’s bad enough. But if our reality is the one leaking away, it could be that it will eventually leak away completely and cease to exist.”
“Then what?” asked Brian, not sure if he could believe what his friend was telling him.
“Then either the whole world will just pop out of existence, along with the human species. Or perhaps the entire human race will find itself transported to another reality. Where bunyips and other Dream-Time monsters proliferate.”
“But ... that’s not possible!” protested Brian.
Garbarla started to argue the point, then quickly fell silent.
Puzzled by his friend’s sudden silence, Ernie looked back. He saw Garbarla staring glassy-eyed past him toward the reality leak.
At first all Ernie could see was the shimmering air, then it began to clear like a de-misting mirror and Ernie realised, “My God, something is coming through from the other side!”
The young warriors quickly dropped their catches and raised their spears, chattering excitedly in their native tongue and Ernie realised that they expected a bunyip, Tasmanian tiger, or some other lethal creature, real or fantasy, to step through from the leak.
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” asked Brian Horne, echoing the thoughts of Ernie.
“Perhaps you’re ...?” began Garbarla. But before they could take to flight, they saw the creature coming through the leak was a man. A tall, handsome Aborigine, a few years younger than Garbarla, almost pitch-black, however; clearly a full-blood.
“Gunbuk!” cried Garbarla as Ernie also recognised the black man.
“But it can’t be Gunbuk!” rationalised Ernie. He knew that Garbarla’s half-brother, Gunbuk, had been killed two years earlier by the Great Rainbow Snake.
The black man walked slowly toward them until he was only metres away. And no one could doubt that it was Garbarla’s dead half-brother.
The ‘ghost’ flashed a broad toothy grin at his half-brother then said, “Still got to look after the white man, keep him out of trouble.”
Ernie saw Garbarla’s face pale and wondered if he was embarrassed at the teasing, knowing that it had really hurt him when his full-blood brother called him the white man. “Or is he just as shocked as I am at the sight of Gunbuk back from the grave?”
However, Gunbuk had never been buried, having been devoured by the diamond-headed Great Rainbow Snake. And he did not look like an animated corpse now. But a normal, flesh and blood human being.
Holding out his right hand, Gunbuk said, “Come, brother.”
And, to Ernie and Brian’s surprise, Garbarla took his brother’s hand and started to walk with him. ‘Back toward the reality leak!’ Ernie realised.
“No, stop!” shouted Ernie. However, his courage failed him and he could only watch as Garbarla and Gunbuk approached the reality leak.
“Stop!” shouted Brian Horne from behind Ernie.
“They’re going to go back into ...” began Ernie. But he stopped as Brian raced past him toward the two Aborigines.
“No, stop!” shouted Ernie again. But as he stood petrified, watching, Garbarla and Gunbuk stepped into the reality leak and flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds like a flickering fluorescent light about to fail, then flickered out altogether.
Then a second later Brian Horne ran into the reality leak, flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds, then flickered out of existence altogether.
“Oh Jesus!” cried Ernie. Although still terrified of what if anything awaited him beyond the reality leak, Ernie reluctantly started toward the shimmering air. He had almost reached the reality leak when he was suddenly grabbed from behind by strong hands.
Almost lifted off his feet, Ernie looked back and saw young Jimba holding him.
“They dead now,” insisted Jimba.
“No!” insisted Ernie, not wanting to believe it. “No, they’re not dead. We’ve got to go after them.”
For a moment the teenager looked as though he were going to argue with Ernie. Then he released the white man and together Jimba and Ernie stepped through the reality leak.
Like the others before them they flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds, then flickered out completely.

Ernie’s reality
Expecting to be sucked into some kind of vortex or black hole, Ernie was almost disappointed by the lack of effect as they walked into the reality leak. One second the air was shimmering around them like distant air in a heat wave, the next it was not. But otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. Ernie had half expected to find himself in some kind of 1960’s LSD-trip movie-world with a green sky and purple dirt beneath their feet. But when he looked up, the sky was still azure blue streaked with balls of fluffy white, and the ground beneath his feet was still hard-baked brown dirt with the occasional tufts of green or sun-yellowed Native-Australian grasses.
Looking round Ernie saw three Aboriginal hunters behind him and wrinkled his brow. “Nothing at all has changed!”
He looked toward young Jimba, but the teenage hunter shrugged and Ernie realised, ‘He doesn’t know why nothing has changed either!’
“Nothing changed,” said Jimba, and this time Ernie shrugged.
After a moment they started walking across toward the three hunters and Ernie realised that they had been mistaken, they were in another reality after all! Instead of Budjiwa, Judawali, and Mutapina, who they had been hunting with, these were three other young hunters.
“Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga,” said Ernie, recognising the three young hunters. Three full-bloods who had been killed and eaten by Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake two years earlier.
The three dead Aborigines smiled toothily for a moment, then Wururuma said, “Time to go.”
“Go where?” asked Ernie.
“Go hunting,” explained Wururuma. “Got to hunt or village no eat.”
Jimba and Ernie exchanged a bemused look. Finally they both shrugged and started after Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga.
Ernie and Jimba followed the three ‘dead’ hunters for more than an hour, before locating a small band of red kangaroos.
Ernie and Jimba stood back, perplexed, not knowing what role they were expected to play in the hunt. Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga began to rub their bodies from head to foot in dirt to cover their human aroma.
Then, Ernie and Jimba stayed crouching in the tall grass watching as the three teenagers crept up on the kangaroo herd. Three flyers (females) and their Joeys were feeding on the tall grass, while the boomer (dominant male) stood watch. Propped up on his thick tail, the boomer stood erect, scanning the horizon, sniffing at the air, searching for the scent of danger.
Wururuma circled quickly round behind the herd, while the other two natives crept forward centimetre by centimetre. It was a slow process, with up to five minutes between each step. But finally they were in place.
Just as had happened earlier, at a given signal from the others, Wururuma broke a twig deliberately.
At the sound, the adult roos stiffened to attention, their dog-like heads high in the air, listening, sniffing. Catching Wururuma’s scent, the boomer shrieked a warning and the Joeys dived headfirst into their mothers’ pouches. Then the boomer took off -- straight toward where Nanguru and Marbungga were waiting hidden in the tall grass -- with his harem not far behind.
Leaping to their feet Nanguru and Marbungga launched their spears toward the onrushing roos. Nanguru’s spear went wide of the mark, but Marbungga’s weapon lanced through an approaching roo, which shrieked an almost human scream as it died in agony. Ernie almost passed out in shock at the sight of the roo thrashing about wildly, shrieking like a dying woman. ‘Oh God!’ he thought, fighting the bile that threatened to rise. Tugging at the spear with its tiny front paws, the kangaroo tried desperately to extract the wooden pole from its chest, shrilling its pain and terror as the spear held fast.
To Ernie’s relief, Nanguru rushed forward and slit the flyer’s throat with his hunting knife.
“Mmm mmmm,” said Nanguru, throwing Ernie a teasing smile, “good eatin’ tonight boss.”
The four Aborigines began to laugh at his expense, even Jimba joining in. And despite his shock at what he had just seen, Ernie could not help grinning back at the joke. He knew that the village Aborigines could not resist teasing white visitors with an occasional use of Jedda-style patois.”
Wururuma went across to the speared roo. He and Nanguru each took one end of the spear to carry the roo between them as they started back toward the Aboriginal village.
They had hardly set out for home though, when the sky began to darken rapidly as though a huge black cloud had suddenly blown across the sun. At first black, the sky quickly turned to deep blue, then purple.
“The Great Rainbow Snake!” said Ernie. He was convinced now that Weari-Wyingga had been wrong. That Mamaragan had somehow awakened from his coma ... at least in this reality.
At Ernie’s words, Wururuma, Nanguru, and Marbungga took off into the desert at high speed. Still carrying the speared kangaroo between them. Ernie and Jimba stood their ground though, staring up at the ever deepening blue-purple, until gradually the colour began to separate out into a dozen or more coloured disks, flashing blue, purple, red, green, orange, or yellow like a swarm of varicoloured moons descending.
As the ‘moons’ approached, the sky was filled with an angry hum, like the buzz of a billion bumble bees. Which soon turned into a louder whir-whir-whir-whir.
“Mamaragan?” said Jimba sounding doubtful as he looked toward Ernie.
At first Ernie had assumed that the lights were the sun reflecting off the scales of the gigantic diamond-headed rainbow serpent. But now he was not so sure. Then as the ‘Great Rainbow Snake’ continued to descend from the sky, its rattlesnake-like hiss began to sound less like the hiss of a snake, and more like the roar of jet engines.
Gradually the multi-coloured scales of the serpent began to break off to descend to Earth, like a hundred shining discs. Discs which began to look less like serpent scales and more like gigantic aircraft the closer they came to Earth.
“Flying saucers!” said Ernie, recognising the varicoloured flashes as fluorescent landing lights.

Brian’s reality
Brian Horne charged into the reality leak only a second or two after Garbarla and Gunbuk. But that second or two made all the difference. When he stepped through the reality leak, there was no sign of the two Aborigines.
Instead, he found himself in the middle of a battlefield. Instead of the even dirt plains that he had been on before, the ground was a muddy, pitted quagmire. Mutilated bodies lay upon the ground or lying half in dugouts or bomb craters. The stink of gunpowder, blood and rotting human flesh filled the air. Abandoned weapons and machinery of war dotted the landscape. Overhead planes and missiles whizzed past. Occasionally a missile or bomb exploded, lighting the sky for a brief moment before darkness descended again ... until the next explosion lit up the sky again.
At first Brian struggled to see in the dim light. But soon his eyes adjusted, and he wished that they had not. ‘My God, where the hell am I?’ he wondered. Looking round at the battle-scarred terrain he decided that it could not be Australia. ‘The Middle-East or Palestine maybe?’
Realising that he was in danger standing out in the open, Brian crouched and started toward the nearest bomb-crater a few metres away. “Lightning never strikes place in the same place!” he recalled, only hoping that the same applied to bombs and missiles. But even as he thought it, Brian heard a whistling from the sky just overhead and a missile exploded seemingly right behind him.
Blown through the air, his last thought before slipping away into darkness was, ‘I’m dead!’

Garbarla’s reality
Like Ernie and Jimba, when Garbarla followed his half-brother through the reality leak, his first thought was that nothing had changed. Looking around the brown dirt desert he decided, ‘We could be just where we started!’ Except that there was no sign of Jimba, Ernie, Brian, Budjiwa, Judawali, or Mutapina.
Garbarla knew that it was a white man’s myth that one piece of brown dirt looked the same as another. The tribal Aborigines possess an almost preternatural ability to distinguish one clump of Native-Australian grass from another. One smattering of rocks or gravel from another. One small depression or hillock from another. A habit which Garbarla had always envied and for a long time had been unable to emulate.
Born January 1957, he had been Christened Garbarla by his mother, Debbie Bulilka, who had borne him to a travelling State Electricity Commission linesman, Edward Hunt. For a year or so they had all lived together near the settlement outside Pettiwood. Then forced to move North, but unable to take Debbie and baby Garbarla with him, Edward Hunt had departed, promising to return for them as soon as possible. But they had heard nothing more for over ten years. Until at age eleven Garbarla had been given to his white grandmother, Bettina Hunt, after his father had been electrocuted to death at work. Against his will Garbarla had been taken from his black mother, Debbie, to be raised as Joseph Hunt. Garbarla had been won by his grandmother in a lengthy court case. So he remained in white society to be educated to HSC level, then had earnt a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Economics and Sociology. Which he had hoped to put to good use by returning to his tribe.
Garbarla had struggled to fit into with his black relatives after returning to the tribe in the early 1980s. But he had gradually started to relearn many of the hunting and tracking skills that he had possessed as a child. Yet looking around himself now, he realised, ‘I don’t recognise any of it! I might just as well be in another state or country, or on another planet for all I can tell!’

Ernie’s reality
The whining buzz soon gave way to the more insistent whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of what Ernie knew to be powerful rocket motors.
“Flying saucers!” said Ernie again. But his mind rejected the notion as soon as he formed it. Although science had never been his strongest subject at school, Ernie prided himself on being a logical, rational thinker. He had always concluded that UFOs were some kind of pseudo-religious fantasy, a need to make some kind of sense out of life. To believe there is something more than just eighty years of random existence, followed by death and an eternity of non-existence.
Yet, by the time the craft were two kilometres from the ground, they had taken on the unmistakable shape of aircraft or space shuttles of some kind.
“Come on,” said Ernie. He and Jimba set off on foot toward where the craft were going to land three or four kilometres away.

When they reached the location, they saw that the craft had landed in a deep ravine. Ernie and Jimba stayed crouching behind a large, twisted, grey-white ghost gum at the top of the ravine.
“Do you think they’re still inside?” asked Ernie. There was no sight of any creatures, alien or otherwise, however, the craft must have landed ten or fifteen minutes before Ernie and Jimba arrived.
Jimba merely shrugged.
Up close the craft looked like traditional aerocraft or shuttles. Except for being half a dozen times larger than any planes or shuttles that the Russians or Americans had yet produced.
But there was nothing traditional about the creatures which came out of the craft. They were approximately three metres tall, vaguely resembling the mythical North American Big Foot, half man, half ape, with five ten-centimetre (four inch) long talons, a yellowish-bone shade, on each of their four limbs; a thick plush, woolly coat, similar in texture and appearance to the coat of a long-haired bear -- which on reflexion the creatures resembled more than ape-men. Their lush coats ranged from pale yellow to a dark brown and deep henna. Their faces were also bear-like, apart from the long incisors which stuck up from the side of the mouth, like the fangs of the long-extinct sabre-tooth cat.
As Ernie and Jimba watched from their hiding place, a hundred metres or so away behind the gum tree, about sixty of the creatures disembarked from five craft which had landed. The creatures assembled themselves in military ranks in front of their craft, carrying in their massive paws what appeared to Ernie to be extremely advanced surveying equipment. After a quick check of their packs, one of the creatures gave a growling bark and they marched off into the brown dirt desert.
Ernie and Jimba continued watching the craft for ten minutes after the creatures marched off, to assure themselves that they had not left a cordon of guards to protect the vessels. Then, satisfied at last, they set out to examine one of the flying saucers.
“Come on,” said Ernie. He started down the sloping side of the ravine with Jimba closely behind.
“Don’t worry,” said Ernie seeing the teenager’s wide-eyed look of fear as they approached the gigantic aircraft-shaped craft, “they’ve all gone off surveying and won’t be back for hours.” He thought, ‘I hope!’
At close range, the craft seemed to be made out of some highly luminous metallic substance, which slowly changed through the colours of the spectrum, flashing red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet in turn. As they approached, the craft seemed to soar almost infinitely overhead, but a large folding staircase had been lowered from the belly of each of the craft, so they were able to ascend into one of the spacecraft, only slightly handicapped by the oversized stairs, built for creatures much taller than themselves.
“Ugh!” said Jimba touching one wall of the craft as they went inside.
“What is it?” asked Ernie. He touched the pulsing wall and shuddered at the touch, Although the walls looked to be built of some kind of Plexiglas, it had a moist, clammy feel and was cold to the touch.
“Plastic should be warm and dry to the touch,” said Ernie thinking aloud. He saw Jimba nod in agreement.
Inside they found a long, black-walled corridor, which at first glance did not seem to go anywhere, seemingly fully enclosed.
“There must be doors of some kind,” said Ernie perplexed as they looked up and down the corridor. “Or else how do they get to the cockpit to pilot the damn thing?” As they looked about, Ernie sniffed at the air, trying to define the slightly cloying smell that filled the compartment. Finally, thinking of the dog yard at his sheep station, he decided, ‘Like the smell of a shaggy dog drenched in rain.’
“Maybe the pilots can’t leave the craft,” suggested Jimba.
“You mean that there’s no connection between the cockpit and the inner section?” asked Ernie. He received a nod from Jimba. “But in that case there should be some form of seats or cubicles out here for those ... soldiers or whatever they are. Surely they don’t just all pile in here and bunch up together?”
Jimba shrugged again.
“That would mean that they’d have nothing to hold onto or hold them down during lift-off and landing,” said Ernie. ‘They’d be smashed about the sides of the thing!’ he thought. “No, there has to be some way to get into the cockpit from here!”
“Come on,” Ernie said. He started down to one end of the corridor and stopped at a dead-end.
“Well, I don’t know ...” began Ernie. But even as he spoke, a large section of the wall simply disappeared into thin air, allowing access to a large room, laden with switches, knobs, dials, and varicoloured flashing lights.
“Cockpit,” said Jimba, mirroring Ernie’s look of surprise as they entered the large room.
Inside the cockpit was hot and humid. The wet-shaggy-dog smell was overpowering when they first entered, however, it quickly began to fade away when the ‘door’ was opened.
Although there was no obvious steering wheel or joystick, there were two heavily padded, giant-sized chairs, facing toward one of the instrument panels. Since the craft had been built for giants, the switches and knobs were too high up upon the wall for Ernie and Jimba to examine properly from the ground.
“Well, here goes,” said Ernie climbing up to sit in one of the two seats.
The moment that his backside touched the seat, the craft began to hum wildly, and poor Jimba was thrown violently to the floor, as the craft began to rise into the air.

Brian’s reality
Brian’s slip into unconsciousness was only brief. A few minutes later he awakened, lying on his back, looking up at the night sky being continually lit up by great bursts of yellow light. ‘Cracker night!’ he thought at first. But then as his head began to clear and he almost gagged on the smell of gunpowder and sulphur, he recalled that he was lost in some war zone.
He slowly rolled up onto his hands and knees, afraid of any sudden movement in case he had damaged his spine. But feeling nothing worse than minor bruises, he began to crawl toward the nearest bomb crater.
As he reached the edge of the crater he hesitated, seeing two soldiers lying with their backs toward him, facedown. ‘They could be both dead!’ he realised. ‘Or simply waiting out the bombing!’
Brian did not want to dive into the crater unannounced, only to be shot. But as the shells continued to whoosh overhead and bombs exploded all around him, he decided that being shot by the unknown soldiers was not as big a danger as staying outside in the open.
‘Coming ready or not!’ he thought as he scampered into the bomb crater.
“Don’t shoot!” Brian shrieked to make himself heard above the bombing, as he dived into the crater. However, the metallic smell of blood and sharp pong of faeces where one of the soldiers had fouled himself, told Brian that they were both dead. A fact which he quickly confirmed by examining them.
‘Both dead!’ he realised. Seeing the blond, sun-bronzed features he decided, ‘Aussies by the looks of them!’ However, their deep blue uniforms were completely unfamiliar to him, looking more like track suits than any military uniform that he had ever seen. ‘Some kind of Middle-East Peace-Keeping forces?’ he wondered. Although he puzzled over the strange uniforms. Brian prided himself on having a good working knowledge of 1970s and 1980s armed services uniforms from most major countries in the world.
Seeing the machine-guns and a bag of hand grenades lying beside the fallen soldiers, Brian wondered if he should take them. ‘They’ll be some protection!’ he thought. But as a missile exploded high overhead turning night into day for a few seconds, he realised, ‘But not much!’
Brian hesitated a moment longer, then finally grabbed one of the machine-guns -- which were a make that he failed to recognise. After experimenting to test the firing, he grabbed all of the extra clips that he could find in the crater. Then, feeling like a grave robber, he checked over the two dead soldiers and took any extra magazines that he could find on them.
He also checked over the ‘grenades’. However, they turned out to be a type that he had never seen before either. ‘What in the hell are they?’ he wondered. They were black plastic, two centimetres thick, equilateral-triangle-shaped with two ovoid buttons on one flat edge -- one red button, the other white.
‘Without knowing the order to push the buttons, these things are too dangerous to use!’ he decided. So, hoping that he was not making a mistake, he tossed the bag of grenades as far from the crater as he could, then lay down in the crater to rest, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with fatigued.

Brian lay in the crater for what seemed like hours. The overhead shelling and electric-light show display of whizzing-whooshing missiles seemed at first to be endless. But finally, to his relief, the noise began to die down and the flashes became less frequent.
‘It’ll be light in less than an hour!’ Brian realised. Tentatively he crawled to the rim of the crater and looked out. In the emerging twilight he could make out the forms of dozens of other soldiers lying dead on the ground, or crouching in other craters or dugouts. ‘How many of them are corpses? How many are living?’ he wondered.
He started to fear that he might be worse off in daylight than at night. ‘’ ‘’ ‘’ ‘When the soldiers can see, they’ll be able to charge across the mud toward each other’s dugouts!’ And almost as soon as he thought it, Brian saw half a dozen large figures racing across the landscape toward him.
Brian’s first inclination was to aim his machine-gun at them. ‘No, I can’t get them all!’ he realised, seeing how far they had spread themselves out as they started toward him. ‘And they might be allies!’
He did his best to sink back into the dark of the bomb crater. However, the approaching soldiers were still at least six metres away when they saw him.
“Gook!” shouted one of the men and they all dropped face down in the cold mud.
“Friend or foe?” called one of the soldiers in a strong Brooklyn accent.
‘Thank God, they’re Americans!’ thought Brian. “Friend!” he called back to them.
Despite his claim, the soldiers crept their way through the mud on their bellies toward the crater.
“Keep your hands in plain sight, away from your weapons,” ordered a tall, anorexically thin man dressed in a strange looking jet-black track-suit-style uniform, which had the insignia of a U.S. lieutenant.
Brian did as instructed, hoping to soon be out of the danger zone.
“What battalion are you in, soldier?” asked the lieutenant.
“I’m not a soldier,” explained Brian.
“You’re not a Yank!” said a soldier in sergeant’s stripes; a huge, barrel-chested ox of a man.
“That’s right, I’m an Australian,” said Brian.
“An Aussie!” said the lieutenant, sounding shocked. The six soldiers all went rigid to attention.
“That’s right.”
To Brian’s horror the sergeant stepped forward and pointed his machine-gun at him. He cocked the weapon and said, “This is what we do to you Aussie scum!”

Garbarla’s reality
Garbarla looked around the brown-dirt desert, futilely trying to recognise where he was. ‘Maybe I’m not near the village anymore?’ he decided. Although he had never believed in such things himself, he had heard of time-space warps that people supposedly fell into and got instantly transported to other lands, continents, planets, even ages.
‘Maybe I’ve been transported into the future?’ he considered. Then looking around the barren, seemingly lifeless brown plains, ‘Or perhaps into the distant past!’
Before he could ponder for long, however, his full-blood companion began to gesture for him to follow:
“Come!” said Gunbuk. Standing on a small rise ten metres ahead of his half-brother.
“Come where?” asked Garbarla. Although he had trusted his brother implicitly two years ago, he decided, ‘You can’t be Gunbuk! Gunbuk died two years ago!’
“Come!” repeated Gunbuk. He held up a large hunting boomerang and gestured with it for Garbarla to follow him.
“Come where?” repeated Garbarla, refusing to budge until he knew where they were going. ‘How do I know it isn’t a trap?’ he wondered. ‘Maybe you aren’t Gunbuk at all, but some malignant spirit that took his shape to trick me for some reason, to lure me into danger!’
“Come!” repeated Gunbuk, waving the boomerang again.
‘Or maybe you really are Gunbuk?’ wondered Garbarla. ‘Maybe in this reality Mamaragan is nothing but a legend?’ He remembered his own teaching earlier that week about parallel realities to his TAFE class at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology. ‘In which case Gunbuk, Bindul, Marbungga, Mayuldjumbajum, and all the others might all still be alive in this reality?’
When Garbarla continued to hesitate, Gunbuk trotted across the brown-dirt toward him. Taking his half-brother by one arm, he began to gently pull at him, saying, “Come!”
Garbarla resisted for a moment longer, but then shrugged and started to follow. ‘What else can I do?’ he wondered. He realised that there was no sign of the reality leak on this side, so that if he did not follow his half-brother, there was no way for him to return to his own reality.
‘Besides, what can it hurt?’ Garbarla thought as he started out across the brown desert after Gunbuk. As he set out, Garbarla knew that he secretly hoped that by following Gunbuk in this reality, he might be able to bring his brother Gunbuk back to life in his own reality somehow.

For a long time as they travelled along, there was no change to the brown-dirt plains. But finally the brown dirt gave way to yellow desert sands.
Sand which was hot underfoot.
“Jesus!” cried Garbarla trying his best to look for cool spots in the sands.
Although he had been fully dressed when he had set out, Garbarla realised that he was now dressed like his half-brother: almost naked apart from a loin-cloth, barefoot, and carrying a spear and woomera in one hand. A large hunting boomerang in the other.
Overhead the sun beat down mercilessly, as though late spring had turned to midsummer. The further they travelled, the hotter the sand became. However, after awhile they saw a small oasis a few hundred metres ahead of them.
‘Thank God!’ thought Garbarla. Doing his best to ignore the sweat running down his forehead into his eyes, Garbarla took off toward the oasis. Which was nothing more than half a dozen gum trees around a small waterhole.
It was only as Garbarla got within twenty metres of the oasis, that he realised that he could not hear his half-brother’s running footsteps behind him. Stopping, he looked back and saw Gunbuk standing in the yellow sandy desert ten metres away, staring across toward him.
“What’s wrong?” Garbarla called back to his half-brother.
Instead of answering, Gunbuk started toward him, but more cautiously than before. Slowly, as though they were headed toward danger.
‘What can be ahead?’ wondered Garbarla. Although keen to get off the hot, yellow sand, he followed his half-brother’s example and trod cautiously toward the oasis.
As soon as they entered the small clearing the temperature seemed to drop 20 Degrees Celsius.
‘Thank God!’ said Garbarla. He started to walk down the slightly sloping grassy bank toward the water for a drink, when Gunbuk suddenly raced across to grab his arm to stop him.
“What’s wrong?” Garbarla asked.
By way of answer his half-brother pointed across the waterhole to a small group of blue gum trees.
“What is it?” asked Garbarla, peering across the water. After a few seconds he could discern a human figure standing in the shadows thrown by the eucalyptus trees.
“Hello!” Garbarla called across to the figure. He stepped forward to show his intention was friendly and held his spears and boomerangs downwards in a (he hoped) non-aggressive manner. “We mean you no harm,” he called. “We just want to drink from the water.”
At Garbarla’s call, the figure stepped forward out of the shadows.
Garbarla gasped in shock. Although basically human in shape, the ‘man’ was covered from head to toe in red, yellow, and blue snakelike scales. His face had a snakelike, almost chiselled look, and from between his lips flicked a long, thin, forked tongue.
“Liru,” whispered Gunbuk.

Ernie’s reality
“Get down! Get down!” shouted Jimba, clawing his way back to his feet.
Ernie hurried to comply and the hum, which had begun to gear up, immediately geared back down again. The spacecraft slowly settled back down to Earth, pitching both Ernie and Jimba to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here!” Ernie shouted. He turned to run back toward the ‘doorway’ which had now disappeared. Although upon his approach the section of wall vanished into thin air once again, allowing access to the corridor beyond.
“Don’t panic,” called Jimba, grabbing hold of Ernie by one arm to stop him in mid-flight. Having faced the Great Rainbow Snake two years earlier and been one of the few warriors to survive, there was almost nothing that would faze the plucky young hunter now. “Your fault.”
“But how ...?” began Ernie. Then he realised, “Obviously these craft are so advanced that they fly themselves automatically, even landing and taking off automatically. All you have to do is sit in the driver’s seat and the craft takes off,” explained Ernie, “stand up again and it lands.”
“Obviously,” Jimba said caustically.
Ernie laughed good-humouredly at his sarcasm, then said, “All of this is fascinating; far more advanced than anything they could build on this planet.”
“So we can rule out the idea of the U.S. or Russians being involved?”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed Ernie. “Wherever these craft come from, it isn’t from this galaxy.”

They examined the cockpit as best as they could for nearly an hour, before returning to the corridor. Not knowing where the ‘doors’ were placed, they tested the wall on both sides of the corridor by stopping every few paces. They found a half a dozen rooms on each side of the corridor, most of which were store rooms or else sleeping quarters for the space creatures.
In one room they found a collection of thin, metallic, silvery rune-like tablets, which Ernie suggested were probably the aliens equivalent of CDs and floppy disks. On the spur of the moment Ernie slipped half a dozen of the runes into his pockets.
“It’s a pity Elvis isn’t here,” said Ernie. Referring to Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green the coroner of Glen Hartwell and the closest thing the area had to a scientist. He was also the only person in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area with a personal computer. But looking at the strange, thin, rectangular discs Ernie wondered if Jerry’s PC could access them.
‘I doubt if any computer on Earth could access these,’ he decided as they continued searching the spacecraft.
Toward the opposite end of the corridor to the cockpit, they found a huge, pale pink room which was obviously a vast food storage and freezing area. Dark brown carcases hung on hooks from the ceiling, like at a butcher’s shop. Confirming that the creatures were carnivorous.
As they entered the cold storage room Ernie felt his face flushing pink at the cold. Looking across at the teenager, he saw Jimba shivering at the icy cold. “My God, it’s cold in here!” thought Ernie. He began blowing into his hands in a bid to warm them.
Although they had been protected from the desert heat by the cool temperature aboard the spacecraft, nevertheless the biting cold in the storage room came as a great shock to their systems.
Jimba led the way into the cold storage room, then to Ernie’s surprise the teenager stopped after only a couple of paces and tried to shepherd him back out into the corridor, saying, “Come on, it’s much too cold in here.” He followed Ernie’s example of blowing into his hands for emphasis. Then, taking Ernie roughly by one arm, tried to pull him back out into the corridor.
“What is it?” asked Ernie. At first he allowed himself to be led back toward the corridor, accepting Jimba’s explanation for the sudden retreat on face value. But then, seeing the look of stark horror upon the teenager’s face, Ernie broke free from Jimba’s grasp and ran back into the room.
“Judawali!” cried Ernie, surprised to suddenly find himself face to face with the young hunter, who they had left behind when stepping through the reality leak. “How did you get here? We didn’t even know you followed us here.”
“Not Judawali!” corrected Jimba.
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ernie, astonished by the claim. He had been to Jimba and Garbarla’s village fifteen or so times over the last two years and certainly knew what young Judawali looked like.
“Not Judawali!” repeated Jimba, more insistent than before. Grabbing Ernie by the shoulder, he began tugging him toward the corridor again. “Not Judawali!”
“Of course it’s Judawali,” repeated Ernie. Then seeing the teenage hunters on either side of the young warrior, “And Budjiwa and Mutapina. My God they must have all followed us through the reality leak. It’s a wonder we all landed into the same reality.”
“Not Judawali! Not Budjiwa! Not Mutapina!” insisted Jimba, still tugging at Ernie’s shoulder.
“But of course it’s ...” began Ernie. But then he reeled back in horror as he realised why Jimba had been so keen to keep him out of the freezer room. He realised that Jimba had been right after all. It was not Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina standing in the icy freezer room in the spacecraft.
It was their naked, disembowelled carcases, which hung suspended by meat hooks from the ceiling.
The Rainbow-creatures most definitely were carnivorous, and humans were the meat which they chose to eat!

Brian’s reality
“Oh, my God, they’re going to kill me!” thought Brian as the sergeant cocked the machine-gun, ready to fire it.
“Hold on, he’s not in uniform,” pointed out a tall, fair-haired lieutenant.
“Then he’s a spy! And we always shoot spies!” insisted the squat, Neanderthal sergeant. He raised his machine-gun again aiming it at Brian.
“No, I’m a civilian!” insisted Brian.
“A civilian? Out here?” said the sergeant. He waved his machine-gun around the bomb crater-pitted battle zone where they stood. “What in hell would a civilian be doing out here?”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Brian. He wondered, “What the hell can I tell them? If I try to explain what really happened, they’ll never believe it in a pink fit.”
“If you’re a civilian, where do you come from?” asked the lieutenant. Brian sensed he was more willing to give him a fair chance than the squat, ugly sergeant.
“Merridale,” answered Brian truthfully.
“Marydale?” asked the sergeant. “Where the hell is that?”
“Merridale,” corrected Brian. He saw the sergeant scowl and thought, ‘I’d better be careful, it won’t do to antagonise this bloke.’ Aloud he said, “It’s a country town in south-eastern Victoria.”
“South-eastern Victoria?” repeated the sergeant, sounding sceptical. “You’re a long way from home then. This is in the south-west.”
“South-west!” thought Brian. “Then I was right, that crazy reality leak has shifted me to another location!”
“Come on, Bill, this guy is obviously lyin’,” insisted the sergeant.
“We don’t know that for sure,” protested the lieutenant. Then, turning toward Brian, “I’m afraid we’ve never heard of this place ...?”
“Merridale,” said Brian.
“Yeah, Merridale.” He considered for a few seconds then asked, “What’s the nearest township to Merridale?”
Brian thought for a moment, then said, “Well, Glen Hartwell’s about thirty kilometres away, or sixty kilometres further north would be BeauLarkin.”
“Never heard of either of them,” insisted the sergeant.
“Well, after that you’ve got Sale, then Dandenong. Then, of course, Melbourne.”
“Melbourne!” said the lieutenant, sounding shocked.
“Yes, Melbourne,” agreed Brian. He wondered why they had all started exchanging wide-eyed glances.
The sergeant laughed sardonically. “Told you he was lyin’, sir.”
“Lying? No, I ....”
“This is Melbourne,” said the lieutenant silencing Brian’s protests.
Brian could not believe it. “What?”
“That’s right,” insisted the lieutenant. He pointed to a dirty black morass where bodies of men and battle craft lay floating a hundred metres or so away. “That’s what they used to call the Yarra River. Right where we’re standing is what used to be called Flinders Street Station.”

Garbarla’s reality
“Liru?” repeated Garbarla as they stood in the small oasis in the yellow sandy desert. He wondered if he had heard correctly.
“Liru,” repeated Gunbuk.
They both stared across the small, clear pond toward the tall, man-thing with the snake-scaled reptilian skin and forked tongue, which flicked in and out of his mouth rapidly, as a snake’s tongue did to smell the air.
“Liru!” thought Garbarla. In Dream-Time legend, Liru was a poisonous snake-man, in the days when animals still had human form. Kunia and Woma were harmless snake-people. Woma was content with their life together, but Kunia wanted to travel and see the world. “Stay with me,” pleaded Woma, tugging at her husband’s arm. But Kunia would not be swayed. Impervious to her entreaties, he set off with just his dilly bag and digging knife to see the world. After walking many days, he came to a great rock, Uluru (Ayers Rock), standing in a desert of yellow sand. Kunia was still marvelling at the great rock, when he heard footsteps behind him. Thinking it was Woma, that she had followed him after all, he turned. And saw Liru, a snake-man like himself. “Hello, brother snake,” said Kunia, holding out the hand of friendship. But Liru ignored the hand. He was a venomous snake-man and lived only to kill others. “I am no brother of yours,” said Liru almost spitting the words out. He threw his spear at the harmless snake-man, who nimbly side-stepped it. Despite possessing no weapon but his small knife for digging grubs from trees, Kunia prepared to do battle for his life. The fight between the two snake-men went on for hours. As they fought they rolled about the yellow sands, which were stained red by their blood. Although peaceful by nature, Kunia fought valiantly. But he was greatly outmatched in both strength and in weaponry by Liru. So eventually the venomous snake-man won. Poor Kunia lay dead, his blood spilled out, staining the sands red. And to this day the desert around Uluru is made up of red sand.
“Liru,” said Garbarla again recalling the legend of Liru and Kunia. He knew that Aboriginal Dream-Time legend said that Liru is unbeatable, and thought, ‘We have to avoid a confrontation at all costs.’ Holding out his right hand toward the snake-scaled man in the universally recognised gesture, he said, “Friend.”
The varicoloured snake-man spat his contempt at the gesture and started around the small pond toward them. “Kunia!” he hissed.
“No, I’m not Kunia,” protested Garbarla. “My name is Garbarla. Joseph Garbarla.”
“Kunia!” insisted Liru. Again he spat his contempt.
“No, not Kunia,” insisted Garbarla. However, when he lifted his hands, to his astonishment and horror, he saw that his flesh was now covered in snake-like scales.
“Kunia,” insisted Liru, who had almost reached them.
‘My God, I really have become Kunia somehow!’ thought Garbarla. ‘And Kunia cannot beat Liru in battle!’ He looked back toward Gunbuk and received another shock. His half-brother had also changed. His flesh was now blood red and covered in large spikes. “Oohlah!” thought Garbarla. “Gunbuk has changed into Oohlah, the red, spiny lizard!” He recalled there was a Dream-Time legend about Oohlah and Liru, but could not remember what it was.
‘Can Oohlah defeat Liru, where Kunia cannot?’ wondered Garbarla, desperately trying to remember the legend of Oohlah and Liru. But before he could do so, Liru reached them.
Standing only a few metres from the two half-brothers, Liru the venomous snake-man held out his spear menacingly and said again, “Kunia!”
And finally Garbarla realised that it was a call to battle. ‘A call to a battle that I cannot win! Since Kunia cannot beat Liru!’

Ernie’s reality
Ernie gazed round the meat store in horror. He saw that all the brown carcases were naked, disembowelled Aborigines whom the aliens had killed and strung up to eat.
In a daze, he allowed Jimba to half-lead, half-carry him back out into the corridor of the alien spaceship. As they left the cold store, Ernie wondered how many human beings the bear-like aliens had killed and eaten down the centuries. He knew that there were hundreds of thousands of people who seemingly disappear off the face of the Earth each year, right around the world and thought, ‘Are these bear-creatures responsible for them all? Are they coming here regularly, eating thousands of us every year? And if so, for how long have they been doing so?’ He realised that there have been sightings of UFOs since pre-biblical times. ‘Have they been coming here for thousands of years, feeding off us? Maybe humans are the only thing that they do eat; maybe they have always fed off our species, at least since their species first perfected space flight?’
“Come on, got to go,” said Jimba, shaking Ernie, trying to wake him from his reverie.
But before they reached the stairway, Ernie felt the short hairs on the nape of my neck bristle and realised that they were being watched. He started to turn, but too late, and was grasped by a pair of vice-like arms and easily lifted off the floor and carried into a room at the end of the corridor. Over to what looked like a gigantic glass tube standing on end.
The creature carrying Ernie waved a paw in front of the glass, like a conjuror making magic passes over a crystal ball, and an opening appeared in the glass. Ernie was bundled inside and the opening vanished again, as though by magic, leaving him sealed inside the glass prison.
A thin mist began to enter the tube from a source which Ernie could not detect. He expected to be frozen inanimate as in the numerous science fiction movies which he had seen on late night television, or had been dragged along to the Odeon to watch with Rowena. But the only noticeable result of the gas was a slight tingling, pins and needles feeling throughout his flesh and a slightly dizzy feeling in his head. But Ernie remained awake and could watch the aliens moving silently about the smoky grey-blue room.
At one end of the room, he could see a series of hundreds of varicoloured matchbox-sized lights flashing all the colours of the rainbow. ‘Some form of gauges to monitor my reactions?’ he wondered. Although there were a dozen other glass cylinders in the room, from what Ernie could see, only his was occupied. ‘Surely they don’t need all those gizmos just to monitor one glass cylinder?’
From time to time, one of the bear-creatures would stop to peer in at Ernie, who took the opportunity to also examine them more fully on each occasion. Once or twice Ernie thought that he saw pity in the eyes of an alien as it gazed in at him.
‘So you’re not unthinking monsters after all!’ thought Ernie gazing into the yellow-furred face of an alien. ‘You do have some humanity for your fellow creature! Or are you just the alien equivalent of animal liberationists? You don’t think of me as an intelligent creature at all. You just can’t stand to see a dumb animal caged up!’ He had seen a similar look in the eyes of people watching the cruel storage of hens or cows in battery farms.
Peering out at the procession of giant creatures from his glass prison, Ernie wondered how long it would be before the butcher came for him. How long before he was gutted and hung up in the cold room alongside Judawali, Budjiwa, Mutapina and the others. ‘Maybe they don’t like white meat?’ he thought, grimacing at his own attempt at humour. ‘Maybe that’s why they locked me in here! Or maybe their butcher is out on the surveillance expedition, and they don’t want me loose in the cold storage room?’
Surprisingly, the thought of his own imminent death did not terrify him -- much! But Ernie did feel sick to the stomach at the thought that his actions would cause the death of young Jimba. Who Ernie assumed was locked in another glass tube somewhere nearby.
‘Or already hanging in the cold room!’ Ernie realised. He almost threw up at the idea, but managed to fight down the rising bile. Although his mouth was swamped in the cloying taste of hot vomit.
Ernie peered out from his glass prison for what seemed like hours, during which time the stream of aliens dwindled to a trickle, then tapered out altogether. Then, after another ten minutes or so, Ernie sudden saw a face that he recognised. That of the nineteen-year-old full-blood hunter, Nambidjimba.
For a few moments Jimba peered around the tube, obviously looking for some kind of opening mechanism. Then, unable to find any, he retreated a dozen paces or so, and raised his hunting spear.
‘Holy shit!’ thought Ernie. Instinctively he crouched as the spear was hurtled at the glass cage. Using the spear-launching instrument, the woomera, an Australian Aborigine can hurl a three metre spear with tremendous force. He had once seen the tribe’s greatest remaining hunter a buck-toothed teenager, Alex Jalburgul Gul, throw a spear through a thin pine tree with the added impetus of the woomera, and thought, ‘At this range it’ll do as much damage as a cannon-shot!’
But the spear shattered on impact without penetrating the obviously super-reinforced glass tube.
Obviously astonished, Jimba began to look around the tube again for a release mechanism. Failing to find any, after a few minutes he turned away and went across to a far wall, where hundreds of small lights were flashing yellow, orange, red, green, blue, brown, and purple.
Seeing Jimba studying the lights, it occurred to Ernie for the first time that they were actually buttons on a gigantic series of control panels. Hundreds of flashing buttons, any of which perceivably might open the glass cylinder. ‘Or pump in poisonous gas or kill me in any number of ways!’ thought Ernie. He wished that he could shout to Jimba not to risk pushing any of the buttons, however, the cylinder was sound proof. Even the wood-splintering impact of the spear had been inaudible to Ernie. ‘For God’s sake, just don’t push anything!’ thought Ernie.
And, as though hearing Ernie’s thoughts, the young warrior finally turned away from the control panel. He returned to the cylinder where he mouthed something to Ernie, who could not understand it. Then, to Ernie’s dismay, Jimba turned away and crept out into the corridor and disappeared from Ernie’s sight.

Brian’s reality
Brian looked around the crater-pitted mire in shock. “This ... this mud pile is all that’s left of Melbourne?”
For the first time since they had met, the Neanderthal looking Yank sergeant smiled. “That’s right.”
‘He’s proud of it!’ thought Brian. Despite his terror his blood started to boil. ‘That bastard is actually proud of what they’ve done to Australia’s second largest city.’
“So, what’ll we do with him?” asked a beak-nosed corporal.
They continued to argue over Brian’s fate out in the open for a few minutes more. But as day broke, the tall, fair-haired lieutenant said, “Anyway, let’s not stand out in the open arguing. We’ll be sitting ducks when the sun comes up.”
“Let’s take him back to HQ for questioning,” suggested the corporal.
“Why bother?” demanded the sergeant, his machine-gun still cocked and ready. He was obviously a bit putout that he would not be allowed to slaughter Brian in cold blood. “Why don’t we just shoot him and get it over with?”
“Because he might just be a civilian as he claims. In which case it would be murder,” pointed out the lieutenant.
“So? The only good Aussie is a dead Aussie,” misquoted the sergeant.
“And if he’s a spy, he might have some valuable info that we can get out of him,” said the corporal.
“Oh, all right, you’re the bosses,” conceded the sergeant grudgingly.
‘My God, you really do want to murder me, don’t you, you bastard!’ thought Brian.

They seemed to walk for half an hour, although it was probably only ten minutes, crouching low in a bid to escape detection from the Aussies as they wended their way through the crater-strewn morass that was Melbourne, until reaching the Yank HQ: a dilapidated two-room wooden shack, half buried in mud, with mud also spattered across the roof and outside walls as camouflage.
As they entered the hut, a good-looking, muscular black man with major’s insignia was sitting at a stool in one corner, trying to hear above the static coming through a small radio set. The front room was a strange mixture of traditional military and electronic equipment, and bizarre gadgets and weapons that would not look out of place in Star Trek Voyager or Babylon Five.
Turning round at their footsteps, the major asked, “What’s this, a gook?”
“He claims to be an Aussie civilian, but I think he’s a spy,” said the sergeant.
“A civilian? Out here?” said the major. Obviously, like the sergeant, he was reluctant to give Brian any benefit of the doubt. “I think you’re probably right, Mullins.”
“Not necessarily,” contradicted the lieutenant. “He admitted to being an Aussie as soon as we found him. Why would he do that if he was a spy?”
“Probably realised that his accent would give him away anyway,” said Sergeant Mullins. “So he decided to try and bluff it out.”
“What accent?” asked the beak-nosed corporal. “He doesn’t have much of an accent at all. Which probably means he’s from right here in the south as he claims. Southern Aussies only have very light accents. It’s only in the northern half of the continent that they have the course drawl that most Yanks think of as an Aussie accent.”
While they continued to argue about his fate, Brian took the opportunity to look around the HQ. Although bare, the inside was a thousand Percent cleaner than the outside. Although there was a faint smell of disinfectant, sulphur, and chlorine in the air. In one corner of the front room was a long wooden bench that ran the entire length of the room. There were large glass jars of various coloured powders, liquids, and crystals on the table. Along with metal canisters that looked similar to the triangular grenades that Brian had not dared use earlier. Although these were square and lemon-yellow.
Looking at the metal-plastic canisters, Brian thought, ‘They must be grenade cases of some kind.’ He sniffed at the chemical cocktail in the air and realised, ‘They’re using chemical weapons of some kind!’
He did his best not to breath too deeply, worried that the chemical-laden air of the shack might be dangerous to them all.
Seeing where he was looking, Sergeant Mullins said, “Forget it, gook, those grenades haven’t been assembled yet. They’d be no use to you. Even if you did know our control codes.”
“Over here,” called the black major, whose name Brian learnt was Thompkins.
When Brian hesitated, Sergeant Mullins cocked his machine-gun and pointed it in his direction. “You heard the major. Over here, gook.”
“Take him into the back room for interrogation, Lieutenant Rivers,” Major Thompkins ordered, and the lieutenant and sergeant grabbed Brian by one arm each and led him over to a small door leading to the back room.
Two small cots were set up in one corner of the back room. In another corner was a heavy wooden chair with leather restraints for the arms and legs.
“In the chair,” instructed Major Thompkins.
When Brian hesitated again, Sergeant Mullins grabbed him by one hand and virtually threw him into the chair.
“Jesus!” cried Brian as he belted one knee painfully into the wooden chair.
Then before he had a chance to rub the knee, one hand was grabbed by Major Thompkins, the other by Sergeant Mullins and they quickly strapped him into the chair.
Then, like something out of a Phillip Marlow novel, the overhead light was turned off. And a single bright light was shone directly into his face, blinding Brian as Mullins, Thompkins, and Lieutenant Rivers took turns interrogating him.

For what seemed like hours they asked him the same questions over and over again, trying to break down his story. Trying to get him to confess to being a spy for the Aussie army.
“Stubborn bastard, isn’t he?” said Major Thompkins at last, when he had failed to get Brian to change his story.
“We’ll never get him to talk like this,” insisted Mullins, “he’s too well trained.”
“Yeah,” conceded Thompkins grudgingly, “I’ll say that for the damned Aussies, they don’t send raw recruits on a mission like this. Their men can handle almost anything.”
“Let me try some of the hard stuff,” suggested Mullins.
‘Hard stuff!’ thought Brian. For one crazy second, he thought that they were going to pour bootleg whisky down his throat. But then, following the sergeant’s glance, he saw a small cabinet containing pincers, tongs, thumb-screws, and various other instruments of torture.
“But you can’t torture him,” protested Lieutenant Rivers. “We don’t even know that he is a spy. There are rules governing this sort of situation ....”
“We’re in the middle of a war, not some society ball!” snapped Major Thompkins. “As someone once said, ‘War is hell!’ And there are no rules in hell, all right!” The major nodded toward Sergeant Mullins.
The sergeant grinned like an idiot and strode across to the cabinet. He almost ripped the door off its hinges in his eagerness to get at the contents. Then grabbing up some tools from the cabinet, he returned to Brian, who was strapped helplessly to the wooden chair.
“Jesus, noooooooooo!” screamed Brian, struggling against the straps that held him in place.

Garbarla’s reality
“Kunia!” repeated Liru, the snake-skinned man, holding his spear out menacingly toward Garbarla.
Garbarla looked at his half-brother, Gunbuk, red-skinned and spiny like a spiny, red lizard. Then he looked down in disbelief at his own flesh, green and scaly like the skin of a snake. ‘I can’t possibly beat Liru!’ he thought. He looked round the small oasis and the yellow, sandy desert behind him, desperately searching for somewhere to hide. But he soon realised that there was nowhere to run.
“Kunia! Time to die!” said Liru, starting toward Garbarla-Kunia.
Garbarla bobbed to one side, intending to duck into the desert, futilely hoping to outrun Liru across the burning yellow sands.
As Garbarla moved, Liru launched his spear. At that distance, no more than three or four metres, Garbarla would have been killed instantly, if he had not already dived aside.
Liru cursed and ran past Garbarla, to pick up his spear. However, with the speed of the red lizard that he now resembled, Gunbuk dashed forward and grabbed the spear first.
“Kunia!” snarled Liru. He stabbed a fist toward Garbarla, to indicate that his fight was with the half-breed Aborigine, not his full-blood half-brother.
“Liru!” hissed Gunbuk, using the venomous snake-man’s own policy of intimidation back at him.
“Kunia!” insisted Liru still pointing toward Garbarla.
“No! Liru and Oohlah do battle!” insisted Gunbuk. Holding the spear out menacingly he advanced toward Liru.
“Liru and Oohlah do battle!” thought Garbarla. He realised that was the title of the Dream-Time story about Liru and Oohlah. He only wished that he could recall the story itself. “Can Oohlah kill Liru where Kunia cannot?” wondered Garbarla. “If Gunbuk can kill Liru, that will solve the problem of me having no chance against the venomous snake-man!”
Having reached the very edge of the oasis, still shaded by the sweet-smelling eucalyptus trees, Garbarla stood watching as Gunbuk-Oohlah advanced on Liru, holding up Liru’s own spear as a weapon.
“Liru and Oohlah do battle!” repeated Gunbuk as he advanced, obviously hoping to demoralise the previously fearless snake-man.
Liru stood his ground for a moment. He thrust his chest out like a cobra readying to pounce. But when Gunbuk-Oohlah refused to be intimidated by this show of bravado, the venomous snake-man turned to flee.
“Let’s see how fast you can run around the pond now!” thought Garbarla. He expected to see Liru run back around the waterhole to avoid the spear.
Instead, to Garbarla’s astonishment, Liru turned and dived into the waterhole. Coiling his body rapidly like a swimming snake, Liru sped across the small body of water, reaching the opposite bank in only seconds.
“What then ...?” thought Garbarla. His half-brother turned round to give him a puzzled look.
Then shrugging, Gunbuk said, “Liru and Oohlah lived in the time when animals were still people.”
As if this explained everything, Gunbuk set off around the bank after the fleeing Liru. Gunbuk had always been a remarkably fast runner. A fact which had served him (and the tribe) well when he was out hunting. When a hunt went wrong and kangaroos or other game took to flight before the hunters were in position, Gunbuk’s speed had allowed him to make up enough ground to get in one good shot with his spear or hunting boomerang, often bringing down a roo or wallaby while slower hunters stood round cursing their misfortune.
But although Garbarla had gaped in amazement many times before at his half-brother’s fleetness of foot, nothing prepared him for the speed which Gunbuk-Oohlah displayed now. Just as Liru has swam across the waterhole in only seconds, Gunbuk raced two hundred metres round the bank in only five or six seconds.
‘No man on Earth can run that fast!’ thought Garbarla. Then recalling his half-brother’s words, “Liru and Oohlah lived in the time when animals were still people,” he thought, ‘Of course! Gunbuk is shaped like a man, but in this reality he is a red, spiny lizard! He can run at phenomenal speed over short distances, just like a spiny lizard.’
Liru looked just as startled by Gunbuk’s inhuman burst of speed as Garbarla had been. For a second the venomous snake-man stood his ground and Garbarla thought, ‘He can’t be planning to do battle with just a digging stick and stone knife when Gunbuk has two spears -- his own and Liru’s.’
After a second’s hesitation, Liru turned and dived back into the pond. Again he coiled snakelike across to the other side -- where Garbarla still stood. But this time, instead of standing watching, Gunbuk took off lizard-like around the bank, hoping to beat Liru to the opposite bank.
‘If Gunbuk gets there first the battle is over!’ realised Garbarla. He knew that whereas he would have hesitated to kill Liru, even to save his own life, his half-brother would not hesitate for one second. Gunbuk was too good a hunter to let compassion get in the way of killing a dangerous foe.
As it was though, Liru reached the bank, while Gunbuk was still ten metres away.
‘What now?’ wondered Garbarla. For a moment he expected Liru to reverse direction and swim back again. And he half thought that Liru and Gunbuk would continue racing round the waterhole for hours or even days.
Instead Liru leapt onto the grassy bank. Then, taking his hunting knife from his belt he turned and headed straight toward Garbarla.
“Kunia cannot defeat Liru!” thought Garbarla again. Turning on his heels, he raced out into the hot yellow desert with Liru less than five metres behind him and closing fast.

Ernie’s reality
Trapped in the glass cylinder in the pale blue room aboard the alien spaceship, Ernie watched in dismay as young Jimba crept out into the corridor.
‘He’s gone to get help!’ thought Ernie. But after ten minutes or so Ernie began to wonder whether Jimba had deserted him.
It was nearly an hour before the Aborigine returned. To Ernie’s amazement, the young hunter was leading one of the yellow-furred bear aliens at knife point.
The creature made a few passes with one of his paws before the glass tube and a large section disappeared again. Ernie jumped out into the main room and almost fell to the floor, as his limbs gave way under him.
“Holy shit!” said Ernie. The instant he stepped out of the glass tube his lower limbs became a mass of pins-and-needles unable to support him. “I’ve got no feeling in my legs!”
As he fell, Jimba effortless caught Ernie with one arm and held Ernie up until his limbs began to function properly again.
Seeing his weakened state, the bear alien crouched as though to lurch at the two men. However, it soon changed its mind when young Jimba made a few passes of his own, with the point of his spear before the creature’s ursine face.
Ernie heaved a sigh of relief at being released from his glass prison. Although Ernie had never suffered from claustrophobia (and the view from within the cylinder was considerable, since the tube was transparent for about three-quarters of the way around), nevertheless Ernie was overwhelmed with pleasure at being free again.
As soon as Ernie was able to stand again, Jimba motioned with his spear for the bear alien to enter the glass cylinder that Ernie had vacated. When the alien hesitated, Jimba waved the spear in front of its face again. But this time, instead of doing as instructed, the alien stepped backward out of range of the knife.
When the bear refused to be intimidated by mere threats, reluctantly Jimba prodded the creature with the spear point. Hard enough to cause pain, but not to break flesh.
The bear alien gave a high-pitched, baby-like squeal and hastened to enter the cylinder.
Ernie almost felt sorry for the creature. But then he remembered the disembowelled corpses of Tubby Budjiwa and the others in the cold store and managed to harden his heart.
When at last the alien had entered the cylinder, they were confronted with another problem: how to close the cylinder to trap the creature inside. Although the cylinder had instantly opened when the alien waved a paw in front of it, it failed to respond when Ernie or Jimba waved a hand at it.
“Maybe it only responds to a particular hand movement,” guessed Ernie aloud.
Jimba shrugged. The young Aborigine started to say something then stopped. He pointed toward the bear alien inside the cylinder.
Following his gesture, Ernie saw that the creature had his paws clasped together as though hiding something from them. “He’s got something hidden in his hands,” said Ernie. “Some kind of control device.”
“Open,” said Jimba, pointing his spear toward the bear alien’s paws.
The ursine beast shook its head in refusal.
This time Jimba had to jab the creature hard enough to make it bleed before it finally opened its paws.
At first there seemed to be nothing. “But he must have something,” insisted Ernie. He thought, ‘How else could he have opened the cylinder? And why else would he hide his hands, even when Jimba was stabbing him hard enough to make him squeal and bleed?’
This time it was Ernie’s turn to shrug in dismay.
They had almost given up, accepting Ernie’s idea that a particular sequence of hand movements was necessary, when Ernie saw the solution. “A ring!” he said. “It’s wearing a ring.”
They hadn’t noticed at first, because the golden-yellow of the creature’s long, shaggy fur had concealed it.
“Hand it over,” ordered Ernie holding his right hand out toward the creature.
At first, the bear refused to obey. But after a couple more jabs from Jimba’s spear it changed its mind and hurriedly removed the ring and handed it to Ernie.
Placing the ring on his left index finger, Ernie waved his hand in front of the cylinder and said, “Sim-cella-bim,” as the tube wall sealed shut again.
Leaving the pale blue room, Ernie and Jimba stepped out into the central corridor and almost walked straight into the back of another alien.