ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

CHAPTER 3 ~ Two Worlds Meet

Eight strange men emerged suddenly from the forest near the beach and walked slowly towards Christopher Columbus and his men, who stood in a tight group, whispering nervously among themselves. The men from the forest did not look like anyone the sailors had ever seen before.

The only clothing they wore were "loin clothes" — pieces of fabric which hung down in the front and back of their hips. Their chests and legs were bare, and their feet were covered by "moccasins", soft shoes that seemed to be made of cloth or animal skins. Several of the men wore leather belts that held knives in sheaths, and they also wore small bags that might have held food. The bags and the knife sheaths both seemed to be made of animal skins.

Jon-Max and Laura were standing slightly to one side of Columbus and his men, and the men from the forest walked right past the two invisible 5th graders. The strange men walked up boldly to Christopher Columbus. A tall man stood at the front of the group and studied Columbus carefully from head-to-toe for a moment, obviously curious about the European's clothing.

Jon-Max whispered to Laura "They don't know what to think of each other. Neither of them has seen anything like the other."

For a moment the leader of the strange men glanced over in the direction of the two invisible 5th graders, a puzzled expression on his face. Jon-Max gave Lauraa a worried look, and he silently put his finger to his lips. Lauran odded herhead vigorously to show that she understood: the men could hear them, so they had to be silent!

The leader of the strange men looked back at Columbus and spoke a few words in a language neither of the 5th graders understood. Jon-Max hadn't told Gidget and Gazmo to translate the Indians' language into English, and it was too late to do it now.

Columbus and his men obviously didn't understand him either. They looked puzzled for a moment, then Columbus spoke hesitantly to the leader.

"We . . . we come in peace." Columbus slowly drew a dagger from his belt and laid it on the sand at his feet, then he stepped back with his hands held up. He was trying to show the Native Americans that he wouldn’t harm them.

Next Columbus pointed towards his ships, anchored off shore. "We come from across the ocean." Columbus pointed towards the distant horizon, then moved his hand slowly back towards the beach. He was trying to indicate that they had sailed across the ocean from a far away land.

The leader of the strange men must have been an intelligent man, because he understood what Columbus meant. He nodded and smiled at the Europeans as he pointed at the forest for a moment, then he pointed at himself and the other men. The meaning was clear; we come from forest.

Jon-Max motioned silently for Laura to follow him up the beach, away from the other people. The two 5th graders moved up the beach until they were 100 feet from the group. They could talk normally here, because the sound of the waves on the beach covered their voices.

"My teacher in the year 2058 told us about this meeting," said Jon-Max. "Columbus was lucky to have met this group of people instead of some other group. They're from the Arawak tribe."

"Why is that so lucky?" said Laura.

"Because there's another tribe in this area call the Caribs," Jon-Max said. "The Caribs are cannibals. They eat people!"

"Yike!" said Laura "Let's get out of here!"
"Don't worry, there aren't any of them around here now. Columbus gets along pretty good with this group of Indians. But later on, even this tribe of Indians get pretty hostile towards the Europeans."

"How come?" said Laura .

"Well, Columbus goes back to Spain, and he's rewarded by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for his discovery of this new world. They give him 17 ships and 1500 men to come back, start a colony, and do some serious exploration. He checks out this whole area, sailing all over the place and discovering some really cool islands."

"Which islands does he discover?"

Jon-Max took off his sunglasses and attached them magnetically to his blue metallic shirt, then he squeezed his eyes closed for a moment as he tried to remember what he had learned from his teacher in 2058. "Let me think a second . . . Oh, yeah! He discovered the islands of Puerto Rico and Jamaica, which are really super vacation places today. Great beaches, things like that."

"Hey, way to go, Chris!" Laura said enthusiastically, looking down the beach at Columbus and his men as they continued to make hand gestures to communicate with the Indians. Then Laura said to Jon-Max, "Hey, wait a second. You said the Indians got real hostile later on. What happened?"

Jon-Max shook his head sadly. "Some of the people that Columbus left to start a colony weren't very fair with the Indians. The colony was called Isabella, because Columbus named it after Queen Isabella of Spain. It was the very first colony in the New World."

"The first colony!" Laura said excitedly. "I didn't know that!"

"Not many people do," said Jon-Max. "Don't forget it. It's an important fact."

"I won't forget it," said Laura .

"Good. Well, anyway," continued Jon-Max, "like I said, some of the people in the colony were real nasty to the Indians. That made them mad, of course, so they decided the Europeans were no good."

"Boy, that was dumb of the Europeans, wasn't it?" said Laura .

"You bet it was," said Jon-Max. "And the sad part was that this happened while Columbus was away from the colony on an exploration trip, discovering cool places like Jamaica. When he came back he found out the colonist had made the Indians mad, and they were about to attack the colonists. Columbus had to lead his own people in a battle against the Indians."

"Did he win?"

"Yeah, he won. They beat the Indians. But then he did something I think was pretty rotten."

"What did he do?" said Laura .

"After he won the battle against the Indians, he shipped some of them back to England . . . as slaves."

"As slaves?" Laura said in amazement. As she shot an angry look down the beach at Columbus. "Wow, I thought that guy was okay. But if he made slaves out of people . . . well, that's just not right."

Jon-Max smiled at his friend, but there was a sad look in his eyes. "I know what you mean. By the time you and I are born – more than five hundred years from now – people have learned to treat each other a lot more fairly."
"They sure have," said Laura . Then, as \she continued to watch the Indians use hand gestures to communicate with Columbus, a puzzled expression came over her face. "Hey, Jon-Max, I just thought of something."

"Thinking is good," Jon-Max said with a big smile. "What exactly did you think of?"

"Well, if Columbus and his men had to sail all the way across the Atlantic ocean to reach America . . . then how did the Indians get here?"

A big smile lit up Jon-Max's face. He grabbed his sunglasses from his shirt and whipped them on quickly as he said, "That, my friend, is a great question. Why don't we take a quick trip back a few thousand years and find out just where these cool Native American dudes came from in the first place!"

Before Laura could utter a word, Jon-Max spoke to the little device on his belt. "Gidget? Set the anywhen device to take us back to the time when Native Americans first arrived in North America."

A few seconds passed while Gidget transmitted information to the anywhen device on Jon-Max's wrist, setting it for their next time travel adventure. Then Gidget's voice filled the air around the two 5th graders.

"Coordinates set, Jon-Max."

Jon-Max grinned at Laura as he put on his sunglasses and then said, "Hang on! You're going to love where we're going next!" Laura quickly put on her sunglasses, too.

"Just a moment, Jon-Max," Gidget starting saying. "I should warn you that – "

Before the voice of Gidget could say another word, Jon-Max punched the button on the anywhen device, and a blue flash of light lit up the sand for a instant, startling both the Indians and the Europeans who were standing further down the beach. When the flash was gone, Columbus and the Native Americans were staring in amazement at the place where two invisible 5th graders had just left the year 1492 and traveled back almost 10,000 years in time.

The young students were about to come face-to-face with the very earliest Native Americans — and face-to-face with the huge, hairy monsters that these primitive people hunted for food!

NEXT: CHAPTER 4 ~ HUNTING THE WOOLY MAMMOTH
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)