by John Colvin

As the tide goes out, we sit on our beaches watching the tidal giants emerging from the ocean, each day standing a little taller, wearing their horned helmets.

They showed up off the coast of Florida a few years ago, and have been slowly making their way inland ever since. The first was discovered by a boating party, people with a lot of money and time on their hands. They noticed two black points jutting up from the water beside a taller, thinner shaft. What they took for rock formations were actually the tips of the giant's horns and the spear it carried. Some divers in the party discovered the true nature of the thing--a massive statue, or so they thought. But there wasn't just one. A few hundred feet away they found another, this one
completely submerged, then another, and another. They were in arrow formation, like a flock of geese. The arrow was pointed inland.
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Soon we were listening to discussions on our morning TV and radio shows about the possibility of lost civilizations like Atlantis or Mu. Could these things have been created by the same civilization that created the Easter Island heads? Was Eric Von Daniken not a kook after all? It was a welcome distraction from the endless steady drumbeat of the war news.

With their long beards and horned helmets the giants resembled ancient Vikings, but they bore no resemblance to any known artwork created by those medieval terrorists. Whatever they were, it appeared that the history books would have to be re-written. The biggest mystery was how these things, so close to Daytona Beach, had gone so long without being discovered. Some skeptics talked of hoaxes, but the statues were more than 150 feet tall, and were estimated to weigh at least a hundred tons. Who would have the money and resources to plant them out there in the ocean? Then other statues started to turn up.

A group was sighted near Galveston, Texas, again in the same arrow formation. Then another group was sighted near Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia. Those were anxious times when it was easy to see everything as a threat. Soon there was all kinds of wild speculation. Was this some kind of weird terrorist attack? What if they were poisoning our oceans? Could they be filled with fissionable materials?

Anxiety gave way to full blown alarm when it was noticed that the statues were moving. Each day as the tide went out, and more of the helmets showed above the water, we realized that these peculiar statues were not immobile,
and that perhaps we were wrong to assume that they were statues at all. Divers discovered deep ruts behind each foot that trailed off across the ocean floor and gradually faded where they had been washed away by ocean currents. It was apparent that the giants were shuffling forward, slowly making their way inland.

Now they were viewed as some kind of organic or perhaps mechanical entities. The general opinion was that they looked like Vikings, but the fact of the matter was that they didn't really have faces at all. Aside from their beards (and the occasional cluster of barnacles) their faces were featureless. No nose, mouth, or eyes were visible. Some people speculated that the horns on their heads were not horns at all, but perhaps some type of sense organ, since they had no apparent eyes or ears. The rest of their bodies appeared human enough, with normal hands and feet. They appeared to wear some kind of garment like a kilt or skirt made of the same volcanic rock as their bodies, and their chests were bare, free of hair or nipples. No navels were visible. They carried their enormous spears in their right hands, using them as staffs to help balance themselves as they slowly shuffled forward, and held shields braced in the crooks of their left arms. Their movement was so slow that it was impossible to detect with the naked
eye. Only time-elapsed film showed their slow advance. It was estimated that they would be completely ashore within the next five years. Then what?