adventures

CHAPTER 5
BEAUTY AND BERNICE
From the Informative Record of Recent Grel History:
In the chambers of the Perfecton city, the Grel Master smacked the facial tentacles of a Servitor
with its own. 'Insult: waste of genetic data!' the Grel Master hooted at its hapless servant. 'I
ordered you to immobilize the human, not disintegrate it!'
The Servitor pointed helplessly at the now-empty corridor down which Stokes had fled. 'My
dataxe was set on immobilize,' it pleaded. 'Theory: perhaps our weapons act differently in this
building?'
The Grel Master glared at him for a moment. 'Weak theory. We shall proceed. We shall find the
other beings in the human's party, capture them and extract data from their brains. Forward.'
Extract Ends
Stokes had screamed as he'd fallen down the hole, a noise which probably added, accidentally, to
the impression that he had been vaporized. The hole had opened up beneath him at the instant
that the Grel had opened fire, and the trapdoor had slammed shut behind him again an instant
later. He fell down a glowing green tunnel, rings of light flashing by him at such a speed that he
was convinced that, should he ever hit the bottom, the impact would be quite fatal anyway.
But when the bottom of the tube was in sight, and Stokes had put his hands over his eyes,
furiously checking off the entry conditions for every religion he had ever heard about, he found
that he had started to slow down. His fall became a slower fall, then a drift, then almost a hover,
as he touched his feet down on a glowing green surface.
And fell in a heap as whatever field had supported him let go.
'Ah, there you are, Stokes!' called Singh. 'Come and have a look at this!'
The artist clambered to his feet, steadying himself mentally, and made his way into the
chamber where the other academics were standing. The floor he had landed on was located under
an overhanging roof, and Stokes was initially surprised to see that the others seemed to be
standing outdoors. The quality of light, the sky above their heads, the clouds . . . well, some sort
of strange spacial curving thing must have happened, if this was a world where you could fall
downwards and pop up on the surface again. Singh and Farouk would probably be debating about
it already.
But when he stepped from under the roof, he realized where he actually was, and staggered
back again.
His friends were standing before him, on a raised, round, green islet at the side of a silver
floor. A vast silver floor. A silver floor that he had initially taken to be an ocean. He couldn't see
the edge of it for the . . . clouds. He looked at the clouds that were drifting across the other side
of the floor, and followed them up. Up, into something that wasn't a sky, but was actually a roof,
thousands of feet up. It was glowing with a very skylike golden glow, and one patch, hidden
behind the roof overhead, was glowing brighter than the rest. Like a setting sun.
Otterbland saw Stokes's expression and laughed, taking him by the shoulder and leading him
to where the academics all sat on their dais. 'We think this chamber would take several days to
drive across, and you could fly a pod in here with no trouble, that ceiling's so high. The brightness
in the sky is moving, by the way.'