Publisher's Synopsis
Reuben Watson lived a quiet life for an ex-paratrooper. He had migrated from England to far North Queensland, Australia. He stared into thousands of acres of scrub jungle, as he stood in his back garden performing call of nature at 11 pm one evening. Without warning, Reuben had one of his calf muscles badly slashed. Mary, his wife, drove him to the nearest hospital. Reuben couldn't tell the treating doctor how it happened. Doctor Sluff, a psychiatrist, was brought in. Under hypnosis, Reuben described the little people with swords. Sluff had Reuben committed to an out of the way psychiatric hospital while the Constabulary came off second best as they searched the rainforest at night time for unknown assailants. Due to this, the C.M.F. or known other places as the Home Guard were requested to assist the Constabulary in their quest for closure into the death and wounding of two of their young officers. It was probably fortunate for the little people that the C.M.F. personnel were mostly boys who had just elevated their prowess to include shaving, and their searching included boredom; this meant that they missed things. Reuben, with the help of another former soldier under his command, escaped the psyche ward. Sluff, with a pulped nose, wanted Reuben and Earnie to pay dearly. Reuben became a wanted man. Earnie took Reuben to access the scrub jungle behind Reuben's home where all the activity seemed to be. With luck and understanding, Reuben encountered a little person, saving him first from a wild pig and then possibly the big soldiers. Reuben and his wife, Mary, communicated with Hoonig through sign language, and eventually met 29 other little persons. They were part of a deep space exploratory team trapped on the planet by a disabled spaceship called a soomat in their language. With a little marker pen and a sheet of A4 copy paper, Hoonig was a fine artist in communicating. Against his better judgment, Reuben removed the plate from a power point and Panaz with his miniature multi-meter, a young electrical engineer who knew everything, was blown across the room. It was fortunate for Panaz that Reuben once played cricket. Madic fell in love with Reuben: it didn't matter to her that he was 180 cm (6ft) and she was only 40cm (18 inches) tall. Reuben and Mary found that they were not a lot different to big people, except that they were tiny in comparison and were perfectly to scale. Detective Sergeant Hurst of the Constabulary led the ground search team and accidentally, secretly discovered their existence; not wanting to expose them to unimaginable wickedness he shut his official mouth and took retirement. Colonel Stedman on assignment from the Townsville Army Barracks jibed at their existence and called them "bloomin' fairies" and exercised the cliche "Bloody nonsense!" Meanwhile all the little people were partying and bathing upon Mary's kitchen table. Pint sized soldiers not only carried swords but also tiny assault rifles, ray guns and explosives. Their land based vehicles seemed to be about the size of pedal cars and what Reuben believed to be Diesel powered. Their aerial transporters were very fast, tiny, flying saucers; and they possessed five of them. For the repair of their mother ship gold was required because of its properties. Earnie built model boats and ships and his surplus was just what the Fairies required to dredge for alluvial gold in a local stream. It was somewhat of a worry for little people to be dredging out in the open for any passer-by to see; it created too much of an interest. One small scale boat was of a warship; and the ship's guns were shot guns cut to size and simple for Fairies to use especially on low flying ducks; this helped provide them with food. Eels could be caught on Reuben's fishing line and dragged up onto dry land by their little tracked vehicle: not a problem.
