"Why don't you two just bloody get married and get it over with. I'm sure Estelle can do the honors as captain of this ship. Well, sort of..."

         Even now, as he and Oression lay in the shallow hot spring-fed section of the ship's circumferential stream they had called `Hot Water Beach', Jamieson couldn't help chuckling over what Johnstone had said when Oression first awoke on the ship. Her smile had been instant when she first saw him.

        "What are you laughing at?" she now asked him.

        "Nothing," he laughed and splashed some water in her direction. She returned the favor, smiling and laughing in a way that made Jamieson almost forget she had been awake little more than just a single day...

        He, Errol, and Oression had been rescued directly from the police bubble while it was passing through a blank section of vertical shaft. Oression had however been put to sleep along with the officers `for the sake of her sanity', as Estelle put it, when she and Sequeyhorn pulled her through the Gate as soon as it formed round the bubble's door. They also told him Johnstone and Carol had been instructed through their earbugs to head for a Gate in the apartment's toilet as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, which they had succeeded in doing.

        "Real Zap-Flush jobs those things, weren't they?", Johnstone had laughed on their return to the ship. "Hi-tech splat-in-a-flash! Wow!"

        The ship stayed in the vicinity of Urklak Elvos to see if what Sequeyhorn predicted would happen actually did. And he wasn't far wrong. Errol, Jamieson and Oression were found guilty in absentia of Sedition and Attempted Cultural Sabotage in just two days. Most of the testimony came from, as it turned out, Sithiui, the middle-aged man who, with his daughter Oeficne, had approached Errol's group on the plane. He was an undercover `Monitor of Cultural Safety', according to his official title, and it was just their bad luck he had been on their plane. He had really only begun to become interested in Errol when Jamieson and Oression had presented themselves to him, he somehow got the impression from the way they `subsequently interacted' with him that they were in cohorts to `subvert the Noingi way of life'.

        After watching the man saying all this in a courtroom that Johnstone described as `looking like something out of Franz Kafka', Johnstone and Carol congratulated themselves for their good luck in having been on the `right' plane.

        `Euthanasia' was of course the mandatory sentence. During the trial, Estelle had been monitoring the opinions of Oression's parents, relatives, and all the friends and acquaintances she could trace. She hoped Oression could be returned, still asleep, to any who remained sympathetic to her under a suitable cover story. But all of them condemned her even before the trial began as a `lying, deceitful traitor who had fooled everybody', only her parents really considered the possibility she may have been `sucked in', or `made to do what she did against her will'. So, once sentence had been passed and all hope had gone that she could return to Urklak Elvos, Oression was reawakened aboard the ship, in the summerhouse, with everyone standing round her.

        "We must remember," Estelle explained later, "that under Noingi Law suspects are neither innocent nor guilty until the final verdict, they use the word `indeterminate'. But so few trials result in innocent verdicts that most people treat suspects as guilty from the start, and often continue to even when found innocent. With her gentle personality, Oression would have found survival extremely tough, she might well have accepted a means of suicide if any of her ex-friends had been charitable enough to offer it."

        "What I can't understand," Errol asked her then, "is why everybody at the party adopted the new music so quickly and danced to it. They went wild. It can't just have been me and Johnstone, though we certainly got them going," he grinned at him. "It had to be something in the Noingi themselves, something which must break out on its own from time to time."

        Even Jamieson could see his point, even if Carol couldn't. She made that clear with a huffy sigh.

        "Yes, I have to admit there may be something I missed myself," Estelle agreed with him reluctantly. "It is almost as if the Noingi knew, right from when they first decided to rebuild the world of their ancients, that there were a lot of things they would have to repress in their own nature if they didn't want to repeat their mistakes. In short, when they expunged the impulsiveness that can cause so much crime, their high spiritedness went with it. A stiff price to pay for what they have now achieved. Perhaps they are more like Polynesians than I first thought, but have now become so effective at keeping that locked up in their cultural straitjacket..."

        "Yet you can't call them a miserable lot, can you?" Johnstone said. "They may be deeply repressed, but on the whole they seem happy enough."

        "At least those who aren't unlucky enough to get caught up in somebody else's misguided activities," Carol said pointedly.

        "Do you think we might have kicked off some sort of social revolution?" Errol asked Estelle as if he hadn't heard that. "Like the one that started back on Earth with the Beatniks, Hippies, Flower Power and all those folk until the bombs dropped? We were pretty repressed ourselves, weren't we? Though not on the Noingi scale admittedly. We always had lots of outlets, sport, entertainment, just plain fun."

        "That could well happen," Estelle agreed. "Planet-wide witch-hunts have begun, and not just for you people. When they discovered the records I planted in their computer system were false, that really frightened them. Since nobody had ever attempted to penetrate their system before, there was no security at all. So everybody who came along to that party are now being dragged in for questioning. Hordes of other good citizens, friends relatives, are all under suspicion. Many have already paid a stiff price, they now have misdemeanor notes attached to their personal records which could make it very hard for them to advance in their employment, or even find any if they have none. So if enough innocent people get hurt, there may be enough to rise up against the leadership. If that does happen, I just hope it doesn't destroy the Noingi as your own revolution could have back on Earth. Risk you take with revolutions, you know."

        "On the other hand," said Johnstone, "it might just give the Noingi the shake-up they need to pick themselves up and figure out just what they want to be."

        "I think it's a real shame," Carol stared at him and Errol. "The Noingi found a way of making their society a beautiful cool, clear crystal-pure pool, and you two just had to piddle into it.

        The two of them looked at each other.

        "I can understand your feelings, Carol," Errol said to her, "but not..." He suddenly broke into helpless laughter. Johnstone quickly joined him. "And now you're paying the price," Citatay finally joined in the discussion in a bored voice. "Me."

        She was probably right. She had been left almost as high and dry as Oression. Although not in trouble with the police, she quickly found herself ostracized by her high-born family for having their name associated in the public eye with `those criminals', and by her friends for the ruthless way she had ditched Openha in her pursuit of `one of them'. With her personality she had a better chance of getting by than Oression, but Estelle thought that she had paid far too high a price for what had happened. Was it really her fault she succumbed so completely to Errol's `charm', considering the differences in emotional responses between Noingi and Earth humans? Estelle felt a certain responsibility for that, so she had therefore taken a chance and offered her a place on her ship. She also thought Citatay would ginger up Jamieson and the others and be a good companion for Errol, who had clearly not been entirely averse to her attentions.

        While Jamieson could understand Estelle's views, he didn't much care for that idea of having Citatay aboard at all. Nor did the others with the exception of Errol, who agreed that he had actually quite liked her and her `un-Urklak high-spiritedness'.

        It didn't take her too long to make up her mind. She stepped into the workshop the instant she realized she `had whole new worlds in front of her instead of that boring old one', as she put it herself when Estelle reintroduced her to them all in their lounge.

        Although Oression wasn't dumb, and like Citatay, came from a technologically far more advanced society than even the Americans had been, it looked like she was going to be slow to adapt to Estelle and her ship. Estelle believed that that was because she refused to believe her family could reject her in the way they did, in spite of the evidence. Citatay on the other hand was clearly adapting very quickly indeed. In fact so completely did she understand Estelle and her ship Jamieson thought she might one day displace Errol in that respect. If it wasn't for her arrogance, she might even have been able to take over his role as the person they all looked to as their link between them and the unanswerable mystery Estelle and her ship still ultimately represented.

        "Look's like we might have a female Dr Zacharias Smith on board," Johnstone had commented as he, Errol, and Jamieson unofficially tried to work out who was going to share a room with who. "Hope she doesn't get us Lost in Space."

        "Doctor who?" Jamieson unfortunately asked.

        "No, Doctor Smith," Johnstone roared with laughter. "Would like her a lot more if she was like Doctor Who."

        In the end, `to keep everybody happy', as Errol put it, Citatay moved in with him, and Oression `for the time being' as Johnstone laughed, moved in with Carol. Johnstone had kindly offered to bunk in with Jamieson (or vice versa) to let Oression have a room to herself, but much to Jamieson's surprise at least since Carol still didn't seem to like her much more than Citatay did, Carol offered to `take her in, help her adjust. After all, we did this to her. Just like Estelle, I feel a certain obligation to help clean up the mess those two men left'.

        Jamieson couldn't figure out why Estelle didn't just add two more rooms to the house, she could obviously do that sort of thing overnight. But he guessed she wanted to see if her friends solved that problem for themselves.

        Another problem they hadn't even got round to considering had been solved overnight, indeed that first night of their return. When they woke up the following morning, they discovered their hare lips and dark skins had gone, `Dr Findlay' had evidently made a house call. The sight of that white skin and `stiff upper lips' as Johnstone called them clearly upset Oression after she had fully come round after being woken and, almost to Jamieson's pleasure, Citatay seemed to be a little shocked too. But as Estelle pointed out, sooner or later they would be on their way to another world, and surgery might be required again. This would be more reliable if there were no `hybrid patients' as she put it. And as she also pointed out, `should deeper relationships form between you, nobody has to decide whether to alter their appearance for the sake of the other'.

        Jamieson couldn't work out what she meant for a little while. But then it finally dawned on him that he and Oression might have had a problem: would he become a `Noingi', or would she assume an Earth appearance with a full upper lip for his sake? He was glad that Estelle had relieved them of the need to work that out.

        And to think all this had begun with a little act of jealousy which so very nearly went unnoticed...

        As he wriggled further down into the shingle and lazily stirred a little more of that lovely warm water over himself, he thought once again about Johnstone's remark when Oression first woke. But he knew that time would tell, God would let him know. He would find out what he needed to about Noingi marriage customs and the possibility of children at the appropriate time. He knew they certainly couldn't just share a room as Errol and Citatay were doing. He hadn't been too surprised to find Oression was even more strongly disapproving about that than he was. Marriage became the centerpiece of Noingi Religion once they rediscovered Christ (the Diaeduee had called him Yn Quo), for on His Visit to Urklak Elvos 7000 years ago he had married the fallen woman He had raised up. Unmarried cohabitation was therefore completely unthinkable to them.

        Except, apparently, as on Earth, amongst the class Citatay had come from.

        The six of them filed though the workshop Gate straight onto a bare featureless sandy plane. Yet somehow it didn't seem like the middle of nowhere. The first thing Jamieson saw as he looked round with the rest of them was the enormous moon almost directly ahead suspended above a range of hills that looked like they were made of glass. With the same gentle features of bright land garlanded by dark `seas', it must have been at least twice the size of Earth's Moon. Overhead the Milky Way arced more brightly than Jamieson had ever seen it before, even out in the back paddocks on a moonless night. Several bright stars also pierced through that magically luminous sky, some of which were definitely orbs. Estelle had said the system had many planets.

        And off to the right of them, eerily beautiful even at that distance, was one of the wandering spectral cities called sihiminoef. Its buildings looked like intricately filigreed temples and palaces; Errol had said the example Estelle had briefly shown them in Class looked just like the fabulous Golden City of Jaisalmer that he had visited on a trip through India in his earlier youthful travels.

        "Oooh... how romantic," Johnstone reached out and grabbed Carol round the waist. "God, you're so beautiful," he mock sobbed at her.

        "Cut it out!" she wriggled out from him ungraciously and stared back at him.

        Citatay laughed at her point blank, and that made Carol even more furious.

        "Off to another bright start in interplanetary relations, are we?" she deepened the wound.

        "Oh, come on, girls," Errol stepped forward to wrap an arm around Citatay's waist and gave her an indecent-looking cuddle. She giggled in an exaggerated way, still staring at Carol.

        "Really, Carol," Jamieson himself now thought he'd better intervene. "You know she can't help it, she's just that sort of person. - Try to be a little more kind, Citatay," he directed his attention to her. "She lost her brother in a very unfortunate way not very long ago."

        Citatay just looked at him, expressionless. Jamieson couldn't be sure, but he thought - or would like to have thought - that it was as far as she would ever come to apologizing.

        Jamieson looked round at Oression. He was glad when she gently slipped her hand into his.

        "I think somebody might be coming," Errol said as he turned to look behind them, as they all then did. "There..."

        A small cloud of dust could be seen on the horizon, Jamieson thought he could hear the pounding of many hooves.

        They also saw that, not very far away, between them and the approaching horsemen, if that's what they were, was a wide ravine of some sort.

        "Which way, folks?" Errol asked.

        "That way, I reckon," Johnstone pointed to the ravine. "Maybe we'll get a closer look at those riders when they come up to the edge."

        But nobody was willing to move. They were definitely riders, and they were galloping towards them at such a pace it was as if the ravine didn't exist at all.

        "Otzeh! Anwirz..!" Citatay shouted. Jamieson's earbug translated her first word as an oath.

        It didn't need to translate the second, a chill ran up his spine. In this weird world of games called Saioareapul in which all the inhabitants were merely players, the Anwirz were the toughest players of all. Their mounts resembled Earth's reindeer with their complicated branching horns, but they had the bodies of gazelles. They were built for speed and allowed the lightning attacks the Anwirz were famous for, yet the slightly lighter gravity here, as Estelle had explained, also allowed the frail-looking animals to have the strength and endurance of horses. In appearance and action the Anwirz themselves looked something like Samurai swordsman, "with a bit of half- starved Klingon thrown in," Johnstone had laughed when they viewed the pictures taken by Estelle's flies. But in their physical appearance they were tall, wiry, tough versions of the Diaeduee, from which all the humans of this world had clearly descended.

        And it was this mystery, along with so many others, that had perturbed even Estelle herself. And that in turn had worried the team. Somebody with a technology at least as advanced as her own had clearly reshaped this world, a little smaller than Earth, into a fantasy. Perhaps it was the Diaeduee themselves, but there was absolutely no evidence she could see from the vast quantity of information she had extracted from Urklak Elvos's computers that they had even managed to get into Space, let alone acquired the technology for `terraforming worlds', as she described it. Nor did the computers that operated Saioareapul's illusions give any clue. Unlike those of Urklak Elvos, these were not only completely impenetrable, they appeared to have mechanisms that detected any attempt to look into them. That on its own had also clearly worried her, which made her friends even more worried.

        "And on top of that," Estelle had added, "a lot of resources, material and energy, come into and leave the world through just five Gates like mine. That, I have to say, is very worrying. However built - or remodeled - this planet is still around somewhere. I have made no progress on finding out who."

        "Do you think we should leave the system right now?" Errol asked her. "No point," she replied. "They almost certainly know we're here, and could probably find us wherever we might go."

        From what she saw of Saioareapul itself however she saw no harm in the team visiting it if they wished to, even though it would mean the four humans would have to undergo their hare-lip surgery again, though their skins did not need to be darkened since the Diaeduee had been light-skinned. Indeed, Saioareapul seemed entirely benign. Nobody died through disease or violence, the population was held constant via natural birth and death only. Food literally grew on trees, all fruit contained all the essential nutrients required for humans and Diaeduee alike. Herbs and vegetables had all the usual `additional' uses. Since the 184 Peoples of Saioareapul thereby had all their material needs provided for automatically, there was no such thing as an economy, though they could and did hunt and fish or plant crops as their `ancient' customs dictated, and make exchanges and gifts to each other in the same way. The only `currency' was `qualities of personality' as Estelle had put it, `things like charisma, imaginativeness, humor, all help, but if you are perceived to have nothing behind them, you may find yourself ignored, or worse...' The Thirteen Classes recognized across all the tribes were certainly a barrier, but you could rise through them if you displayed the special talents held to be important in each. People within your Class could be either surly or friendly to you depending solely on how they saw you and how you behaved towards them.

        Estelle insisted however that, if they did go down to Saioareapul, nobody would come back back up to the ship until they had been there long enough to find at least some solutions to the puzzles the world presented. They would also go down as odostema, the lowest Class in the Dmoco People, itself very low in the Saioareapul scheme of things, consisting of agricultural peasants. (`Perhaps old cobblers would be more appropriate', Johnstone had said.) They would be dressed accordingly in garments that looked like stitched together potato sacks belted at the waist with tasseled chords. The girls would in addition wear jerkins, the men scarves, all of the same material, though dyed in pale colors of their choice.

        Language would be a problem. Although there was a common language spoken by all the Peoples, each had its one dialect adapted to its own particular subculture. And the common language was essentially that of the Diaeduee, quite different from that of the Noingi, so Oression and Citatay would be at little greater advantage than the others. They would all have to spend a few days learning the basics, with earbugs to help them understand the finer points of what might be said to them.

        "Since Saioareapul is a game world," Estelle had reiterated finally, "there should be no easy exits. You'll be on your own down there. For the same reason I won't be joining you. It will also give me an opportunity to learn more about this deeply puzzling artificial world and what - or who - might lie behind it. So until I can solve the problem here, you might as well stay down there and enjoy yourselves, if you can."

        Although that gave the others pause, there was no stopping Citatay. She was clearly fascinated with the idea of not just seeing her world's mythology brought to life in that dramatic and totally unexpected way, but actually taking part in it, even with such a lowly status. Carol thought the idea of a world that was nothing more than a game `just totally stupid', but she reluctantly agreed when Errol thought it `might be fun'. Johnstone said he couldn't resist the chance of `being a real oaf for a change, even on a little toy world'. Jamieson couldn't make up his mind, but he couldn't find any real objection to going. Oression was apprehensive, but she would go with Jamieson if he `really wanted to'. Errol insisted however they should go along `to keep everybody's feet on the ground' as he put it. So they reluctantly agreed to.

        The notion of `feet on ground' was clearly proving foreign to Citatay now however, for she began to walk slowly up to the ravine, eyes fixed on the Anwirz who had nearly arrived on their side of it. Jamieson guessed the troupe contained roughly thirty men and women, with a few children in a group in the middle of the bunch riding only slightly smaller mounts. The smallest children were carried Eskimo-style in pouches on their mother's backs.

        The rest of the team hesitated, looking at each other. But Johnstone's fatalistic grin and "yeah, well, what the hell..." encouraged them to follow him and join her.

        " - Careful!" Carol cautioned, suddenly holding back. "We don't know how crumbly that edge might be."

        "Seems solid enough on their side," Johnstone remarked. "And on ours," he added with a grim smile as Citatay went to within a foot of it.

        It was certainly a deep ravine. Although Jamieson had dared to go only a yard from its rim, he could see no hint of its bottom. It was as if both parties were on opposite sides of two cliffs that separated two halves of a world. He shivered as he felt a chill breeze come up from it.

        "Now what happens?" Johnstone asked.

        "The way they are still in that column formation like that instead of strung out along the ridge is worrying," Carol said. "I think they have the means to cross over. - Yes, indeed they do," she added as the leader of the troupe raised his head as if to address the sky, then shouted two short words: `Fen Char'. He then took his staff with its complex sets of silver cones all fitting one within one other at both ends, and rotated it twice in the air like a bandmaster. He then reached down to touch one end to the ground, then the other in exactly the same spot.

        The chill draft Jamieson had felt earlier now came again, but stronger this time, and seem to churn the very air between the two groups. He could see Errol and Johnstone look at each other. He looked at Carol, then at Oression, who now seemed petrified. Their gaze, like Citatay's, was fixed on the gap between the two groups.

        Citatay though looked expectant and exhalted.

        "What a wonderful people..!" she shouted.

        The merest hint of an arch began to appear across that ravine, almost as if it were somehow penciled in in three dimensions. The two lines then somehow split to become four, with the second pair dropping just below the first. While the bottom pair continued to lower themselves into the chasm, the top pair straightened, so that they stayed the same distance apart at the center. What looked like gray brickwork then began to fill the spaces between these lines; an impossibly slender bridge was taking shape before the team's eyes. The top line then split again, the second line rising a little way this time to form handrails. These then extended themselves beyond the bridge at each end for a hundred feet or so, spreading apart as if to ensure that the Anwirz would be funneled onto the bridge in complete safety.

        Estelle had explained to them in Class that all of the apparitions, specters, ghosts and the like that they might encounter on this world were produced using technology little different from that she used to produce the scenery in her Classes. But knowing that didn't seem to help very much right now.

        "Holy jumping poo..." Carol breathed, staring at that bridge as the Anwirz began to make their crossing of it.

        "Time to go, folks," Errol sidled away, barely able to take his eyes off that mesmerizing sight.

        "It's no use," Citatay laughed at them all, her eyes dancing wildly with delight. "They'll just catch you."

        "Gotta try," Johnstone replied as he took one more glance and broke into a dead run. Errol took off at a more leisurely pace glancing behind him, but he was soon loping away to catch up to Johnstone.

        Jamieson looked at Oression, who nodded. They too then started to run. Jamieson found he had to hold himself back to allow Oression to keep up with him. He knew they had no chance of catching up with Errol or Johnstone, but they had to try, anything was better than just waiting for the Anwirz to do - do whatever they would with them. People couldn't kill each other on this world, but they could certainly inflict pain at any intensity they wished. They could also give great pleasure if they liked you, but he doubted the Anwirz had that in mind.

        It didn't take long. The first few riders galloped past Jamieson and Oression as if they weren't there. The main bunch was not too far behind, it split in two to circle round them on both sides, leaving them surrounded. Errol and Johnstone were brought back on the run with whiplashes cracking just inches from their backs.

        Jamieson was shocked to see that Citatay was sitting behind the chieftain on his mount, laughing away in absolute ecstasy.

        "You fools..!" she shouted down to them from on high as the chieftain brought his mount in front of the group and reared it up on its hind legs. "I told you they were a wonderful people. You should have listened. - Sorry, Errol."

        Errol grimaced as she snuggled even closer to her leader.

        "You bitch..." Jamieson heard Errol say under his breath as he smiled an exaggerated Noingi smile in their direction.

        Suddenly Jamieson felt Oression being pulled away by strong hands from beside him. Two Anwirz had gotten down from their mounts and were holding her, struggling, while a third cut open what looked like a small peach and held it under her nose.

        She began to smile at them in a way which chilled him to the bone. Jamieson moved forward as they turned to lead her, now completely compliant, to one of the women's horses. But he didn't get very far. He saw the point of a sword arc into the air from behind him, then come slicing down to pass right through him with a horrible thok from above his right ear all the way down to his left hip. Paralyzed with the most horrendous agony, he saw his blood spurt and boil out of that immense wound. Then, to add to that horror, he felt the entire top half of his body begin to slide off the bottom half as if he had been nothing more than a rotten melon.

        But before he reached the ground, something went horribly wrong with the way he was seeing. The entire left side of the world seemed to expand and grow as if it has been painted on the surface of a balloon that was being blown up, and the shapes and colors went all strange and twisted, as if the balloon was somehow melting as well. Then he saw his waist and legs topple forward beside him in slow motion, his intestines spilling forward as if out of a fruit bowl to reach out to the horizon...

        And all he could hear was the frantic tat-tat-tat-too of a thousand snare drums and the twitterings of birds, growing ever louder and louder...

        He passed out as his body hit the ground and rolled forward. The last thing he remember was banging his head against a small rock with a sickening squishy crunch...

        He woke to find Errol and Johnstone standing either side of him. He sensed Carol sitting behind him with his head in her lap. He drifted off to sleep again for a few moments, but then came to properly at last.

        Suddenly he remembered what had happened - and what had happened to Oression. He looked wildly around, but she was gone, and so were the Anwirz. His friends were still in the desert, right where they had apparently left them. Or were they? That spectral city, the sihinim - or whatever - looked a lot closer than it had before.

        "It's okay, they've gone," Errol reassured him. "They've taken Oression though. I'm sorry. There was absolutely nothing we could do."

        "Oh my God - that's terrible," he stared up at them. " - What happened?" he was suddenly confused as memories began to flow. "I - I was cut in half by that sword. - You must have seen what happened."

        The others looked at him mystified. So he told him what had happened to him in all its grisly detail. He heard and felt Carol's indrawn breath, had they not seen what that Anwirz had done to him? How was it he was in one piece? Had Dr Findlay somehow performed some miracle of surgery they weren't telling him about?

        "I think we'd better tell you what we saw," Errol looked at him, clearly more amused than sympathetic. "We saw that Anwirz slice at you with his sword. But it was fake, made of light like so much else round here. You certainly fell, but not into two pieces. Looks like you've just had a hallucination, my boy. That `sword' probably puffed out a hallucinogenic gas or something as it moved. Like LSD back home from the sound of it," he grinned round at the others. "Welcome to the club."

        Jamieson had no idea what he meant.

        "So how do we get Oression back?" He felt something hard and cold come into his voice as he looked Errol in the eye. "I don't care tuppence about Citatay."

        Errol looked at Johnstone and Carol.

        " - What happened after I - died?," he asked them quickly. "You say they just up and left? Nothing else?"

        "That's right," Errol answered him. "And that may actually have been Citatay's doing - indeed we're not sure she wasn't in fact trying to protect us in some way from the start. She actually thanked her new found friends for rescuing her and her `handmaiden' from those `hapless fools'. You know, us. She then said we were too silly to even know where we were, so there wasn't much point in putting us to the sword. We'd just forget come morning."

        "Gosh..." was all Jamieson could say.

        "We think she got onside with the Anwirz by passing herself off as some sort of high-born Princess," Johnstone said. "And you've got to admit, she certainly looks and acts the part. - She may just be joining in the spirit of the game a bit faster than we are."

        " - That's not a bad idea," Errol looked at him.

        "Rubbish..!" Carol said. "She's just treating us like dirt. Having some fun at our expense. What kind of jolly time do you think Oression's going to have as Citatay's `handmaiden' or whatever? How are the Anwirz likely to treat mere servant girls?"

        "Jeez..." Johnstone stared into the air. "If their mythology's anything like our mythology..."

        "I'm going to find her," Jamieson said as he struggled to get up. But his legs were still too wobbly, he had to sit down again. He was now really beginning to think that Saioareapul was a very evil world indeed.

        " - Why don't you just ask Estelle to find her, take her back to the ship if she wants?" Johnstone suggested. "Whoops, sorry, I forgot. No fool's exits."

        "That's right," Errol agreed. " - Meanwhile, right now we have more immediate problems," he pointed.

        Jamieson looked. If they hadn't moved, it meant that Sihiminoef had become closer while he was unconscious. He now realized he could actually see it moving, indeed its entrance archway was actually rotating round to face them almost as if to scoop them up. He doubted if they could outrun it, even if he was able to get up right now.

        What a hell of a mistake he'd made in coming here and bringing Oression with him. He began to feel sick again. But there was nothing else for it, he had to get stuck in and find her, no matter what it took.

        He made himself get up, then began to walk, albeit a little unsteadily, towards the spectral city. If he couldn't escape it, then he might as well face it head on. He didn't look round to see if the others were following him.

        It felt as if the city was made of fog as Jamieson walked through its portals with the others. The buildings, with their lacy walls within walls, narrow alleyways, and doorways and windows surrounded by carved horn and lute-playing figures, looked quite solid as did the cobbled street. Yet they were standing in the street rather than on it, its surface came up to Jamieson's ankles. He could see the real ground through a small triangular gap below the hem of his sack-like sinnen in the direction the city was moving. He walked over to a building and tried to feel for its wall, but his hands just disappeared into it without resistance. So he stepped right in and found - nothing, just an inside-out view of what he had seen on the outside. It really was nothing more than a stage prop made out of light.

        " - Hellooo..."

        Jamieson jumped a foot.

        But it was only Johnstone; he had stuck his head and arms through the same wall a few feet away and waved to him. He laughed, then withdrew.

        "So, where're are all the folks?" Johnstone looked round as Jamieson also withdrew from the building.

        As if that had been a command, the people - the Iatoans, Jamieson remembered from Class - began to appear in their throngs as if out of a mist. And they looked as Indian as their city did. Their robes however, looked more like the saffron ones Jamieson had seen Thai monks wear in travelogues. Only the hair lips and the lacy caps everybody wore were different, and the fact that everything, all the buildings, the streets, the clothing, even their skin, was the same shade of ivory. Were it not for the street games the children were playing with their hoops, balls, and even a skipping rope Jamieson could see in the distance, the scene could have come from that immensely complicated ivory carving Auntie Billie kept in a glass case on her sitting-room mantelpiece.

        " - Wow..." Carol breathed.

        But it was still as if the team weren't there, the people didn't appear to see them. Even worse, they drifted past - and through - the team just as their buildings did. Jamieson found that horribly unnerving.

        "So how do we make contact?" Carol then asked.

        Jamieson saw a few of the nearer Iatoans turns their heads in their direction as if they had just heard a strange sound.

        "There's your answer," Errol laughed. " - Hello," he addressed the nearest couple to him. "Nice to meet you. - Been a lovely day, hasn't it?"

        "Indeed it has," they replied as if they hadn't spoken to anybody for years. At least that's the way it sounded through Jamieson's earbug.

        "Allow us to introduce ourselves," Johnstone then stepped forward. "My name is Johnstone. The exceedingly nice gentleman on my left here is Errol, the tall, thin but clever lady here is Carol, and the big strong manly bloke behind me is Jamieson."

        Several more people began to turn their attention to them. Jamieson noticed suddenly that the city seemed to have come to a halt - or was it they were now moving with it? He looked down and saw that he was now standing on the street rather than in it. It seemed that everything became solid once people appeared and you began talking to them.

        Color also began seeping into the scene; the people, the buildings, even the street itself. The effect was like something out of Penny's "Illustrated Shakespeare" Aunt Clarrissa had misguidedly given her on her last birthday.

        "Welcome to our city of Boiniopul," the husband of the couple said, extending his arm forward in the Diaeduee greeting so many thousands of years old, it gave Jamieson an eerie feeling to see that. "My name is Tienniul, my wife is Dodundul. How can we help you? We can provide you with shelter, sustenance, entertainment after your day of travels and travails. Let us show you our great city," he gestured round to the people behind, "and you may like to tell us of the doings of your own folk in your own far-off lands."

        "We would love to do that," Errol smiled. "My friend here is on a quest to find his missing lady, abducted by the Anwirz, so maybe we can help each other in some way."

        "A quest..?" the couple echoed and looked at each other delightedly as if they hadn't been involved in such a thing for years. A joyful murmur spread through the crowd.

        "Good one, Errol," Johnstone said to him in a half whisper.

        "Then you will need to be fed well before we can do anything," Dodundul said in her high-pitched yet soft voice. The now gathering crowd murmured their approval.

        Suddenly a young man near the back of the crowd raised what look like a long-stemmed bugle into the air and played a cadence of notes that sounded like something out of the Scottish Highlands. It made Jamieson think of the film `Brigadoon' he had taken Pauline, one of the girls from the office, to see a few months ago (oh heavens...where was she?). But then this whole place was just like that little mythical town in so many ways.

        "Come, we are ready!" Tienniul laughed, eyes sparkling. "All is prepared for you. Follow...!"

        "Already..?" Johnstone looked round at the others. "These guys must be really magic."

        Jamieson began to feel enormously hungry as they followed Tienniul through the crowd, which in turn fell in behind them. Their numbers swelled as they proceeded down a narrow avenue. He hoped the food wasn't going to be as imaginary as everything else around here as he looked up at the coruscated piles upon piles of temple-like buildings around him.

        The avenue ended in a circular avenue surrounding a small park with ghostly-looking trees and what appeared to be a fountain in its center. Water splayed out from a central column made up of by what looked like four young buglers standing with their backs together. They all looked like the bugler who had announced the dinner.

        "Nice fountain..." Carol remarked absent-mindedly. "Bit like the one in Albert Park."

        "Yeah," said Errol, hardly glancing at it.

        On the other side of the park was the highest, largest building of the city, and that really looked more like something from the Far East with its figurines inhabiting every crenelated nook and cranny they could find. And there were certainly lots of those, Jamieson couldn't count the number of towers, spires, terraces and turrets he could see, most containing others piled up within them.

        What he was completely unprepared for though as they were led through the surprisingly narrow slit-like entrance was that the building was really one gigantic filigree. He could see the night-sky through the multitude of gargoyles and the like that made up its interior walls and ceilings as well. It was an exquisitely beautiful and magical place. Indeed, it was almost enough to make him forget what he had suffered at the hands of the Anwirz.

        He could not tell if the people inside were the same as those he had seen outside, for they were all wearing bright colored fancy dress-like garments in all sorts of designs, as well as masks in the form of animal heads the like of which Jamieson had never seen before. He wondered if he was in a way looking at the `missing' animals of Urklak Elvos, but it was impossible to know which were realistic, which were mythical, or just completely imaginary. He saw what looked like an monkey's head with an immense brain bursting out of its skull, a huge horse's hoof with tiny slits for eyes, nose and mouth and with three pairs of horns curving out of its top nearly meeting in the center. Another looked something like Bill Badger out of a Rupert Book except the stripes were candy-colored. One caused his heart to jump, for it was clearly based on the animals the Anwirz rode, except that its antlers were far more complicated, coming back over its head to form a lacy fuzzy ball.

        "Gee, this has to be Marc Chagal on speed," Johnstone gazed round, wide eyed.

        The music, which sounded to Jamieson like a cross between Gypsy and Indian snake-charmer music, was provided by masked musicians who wandered at will amongst the crowd, usually singly, though when two or more met they would perform as duet or a trio for a while before separating again. The instruments were nothing like those back at that Noingi party, they consisted wholly of flutes and woodwind in all manner of variations, from what looked like tiny clarinets to a particularly odd looking thing with two tubes branching off the one mouthpiece and ending in a large semi-divided gourd-like bulb.

        The food, laid out on the polished-marble stone platform that formed the center of that huge open space, may have been alien in form and color, but was still recognizable as fruits, vegetables, grains, breads, meats, grains, rices, and beans. All had been prepared in a mix of styles that could have come from anywhere on Earth, Europe, India, Asia, Pacific Islands even. Jamieson wasn't entirely sure what was edible and what was not, two large shallow dishes full of what looked like miniature waterlilies occupied the center of the platform; a large roast wombat-like animal, though this one had tusks, occupied the center. On closer inspection he could see that it had been sliced very thinly across from right behind the head all the way down to its stubby tail. Several large bladed knifes bristled out of it like bizarre porcupine quills.

        "Okay, so what's safe, and what isn't?" Jamieson heard Errol mutter as he looked around. Then he apparently remembered he needed a plate, so he picked one off the various piles from around the edges of the platform. They were white china, heavily embossed all over with figures like those from the temple. He also took what looked like a short, wide combination knife and spoon in gold from one of the little rectangular bronze dishes between them. Jamieson did the same.

        "It's all safe probably, except the alcohol - just like on Urklak Elvos, remember?" Carol said to him as she picked up her own implements, then looked round at the others. "Have to make the best guess you can about any drink you sample."

        "And hope one of Estelle's flies sees us if we suddenly fall over clutching our stomachs," Johnstone laughed grimly as he looked round for one. Jamieson and Errol did the same, but couldn't spot any either.

        "Yeah, well, that's life I guess..." Errol said as he reached for a purplish drink in a glass shaped something like a ram's head. "Yum..!" he grinned in an exaggerated way. "Tastes something like it looks, like concentrated grape juice. I think this one will be my poison of choice this evening..." He gazed round at that colorful vibrant crowd.

        Suddenly Jamieson became aware that Tienniul and Dodundul and a few other Iatoans close by were looking at the four humans a little oddly. He realized they had been speaking amongst themselves for rather too long.

        He hoped this magic scene wasn't just about to evaporate in a puff of mist.

        "What was that, Errol?" Johnstone had also obviously just realized what had happened. He grinned around at the assembled crowd. "What tastes so - so good?" It was clearly the nearest word in the local language he could find.

        " - Everything..!" Errol laughed, holding his glass in the air with one hand, his plate in the other. " - Thank you so very much indeed everybody," he addressed the crowd. "My friends - especially Jamieson here," he prodded at him, "are very, very grateful."

        The Iatoans around them erupted into joyful laughter as the four humans tucked in. And there was nothing imaginary about that food. It tasted good, it certainly went down as if it was solid, the drink made them feel good without being light-headed, and nothing appeared to be poisonous.

        Then the dancing and singing began...

        Jamieson couldn't believe it when, what seemed no more than ten minutes later, a young man, the one he remembered had blown that bugle that announced dinner, told them that it was time for them to leave. He introduced himself as Edequahun. "As you know," he said gravely, "our Saioareapul fades when the sun rises, we are all creatures of the night. If you follow me, I will take you to the people who can help you. We have very much enjoyed having you with us, we are so glad to be able to help you in your quest."

        Suddenly it was as if the four humans had somehow faded from the sight of the Iatoans, for the party continued around them as if they had already gone. Not one person, not even Tienniul or Dodundel, so much as glanced in their direction. Jamieson felt sad, but he guessed there simply wasn't time for goodbyes. Their journey obviously also had to be completed before dawn, and if it was going to be a long one...

        To his total surprise, he saw the first hint of dawn in the distant sky as Edequahun led them out through that narrow doorway again. He looked round at the others and pointed, speechless. That dinner couldn't have lasted more than a hour or so at the most. He rubbed his eyes and stared again.

        "Time passes more quickly with us when we enjoy ourselves," Edequahun explained sadly when he saw their disbelief. "It is a condition of our existence which is so easy even for us to forget. I am proud that you have honored us by remembering."

        Jamieson wondered if the Iatoans were the politest people in all of God's creation. (Did God actually create them, he wondered, through the planet's computers? Or through the people who built those computers? He would have to ask Him for guidance in that matter...)

        Edequahun did not lead them round the park as they expected however, but directly to the fountain at its center. Jamieson noticed that not only had it been drained and the water turned off, but several large lidded wicker baskets in the shape of fat vases had been arranged in a circle around its central column. He could see now that its bottom was not ivory like the rest of it and all the other structures in this city, but made up of diamond-shaped tiles in various pale shades of mauve and blue.

        "I would be very grateful if you would please step into our fehuanun," Edequahun gestured in a very human-like way for them to step over its outer wall.

        With exaggerated graciousness, Johnstone offered Carol his hand to help her step over the wall. She pulled a wry face as she did so that made him laugh. Once Jamieson and the others had stepped over, Edequahun turned towards the center column and began to hum in a supernaturally deep way that sent shivers down Jamieson's spine.

        He looked round at the others. They were clearly just as startled as he was.

        Out of the corner of his eye, Jamieson believed he caught a flicker of movement from one of the four `cherubs' flanking the column.

        Edequahun's hum then flowed smoothly into a chanting of distinct words that Jamieson's earbug didn't attempt to translate.

        The four cherubim then slowly came alive as if released from the stone from which they had been carved. They raised their bugles to the skies and began playing a fanfare that sounded like something one might hear in a huge Cathedral.

        "Jeez..." Johnstone looked around him as they all realized the `fountain' had just moved somehow.

        Then it actually began to lift off the ground. Jamieson shivered, his legs all but buckled beneath him as he frantically turned to grab for the wall behind him. That didn't help much, he just had a clearer view of the ground falling away below him. He froze.

        "Hold on, everybody..!" Errol called as softly as he could so as not to cut across the cherub's music.

        Once the fountain had risen a hundred feet or so above the city, Edequahun slowly made his way round towards the side of the fountain facing south away from the dawn. Jamieson noticed his chant also change. The two cherubs facing that direction now took the lead in the fanfare, and the fountain began to move in direction and pick up speed.

        The four humans, now crouching at the railing like Jamieson for dear life, looked at each other. Johnstone began to laugh, then to stand up.

        "What a bunch of old Aunt Nellies you are..!" he said. He put a hand to his forehead and, throwing his shoulders back in an exaggerated way, surveyed the domain around him like a field officer.

        He laughed again as the others picked themselves up and tried their best to look relaxed.

        "Nice day for flying," Errol said just a little too brightly as he too stood more erect and looked around. He then stepped toward the fountain's wall and put his arm out as if feeling for something. To his obvious delight, he found something that was somehow solid but completely invisible about a foot away from it. He felt over it a little higher.

        "There's no slipstream wind..." Carol said, looking round her. "Whatever you've found there probably covers the whole thing."

        "Not doing a Marcel Marceaux here, are we?" Johnstone said as he punched out over the railing and struck something solid. " - Ouch!" he laughed ruefully ."It's a Star Trek-type force field. Betcha."

        The team soon became lost in gazing at the extraordinary view around them. Jamieson was just able to see, before it moved too far behind them, that the Sihiminoef was made up of circles within circles like so many of its larger buildings themselves. The fountain was clearly heading back over the plain on which they first landed, indeed they were moving parallel to the ravine which split it end to end. He could now see that this was absolutely ruler straight from horizon to horizon, but they were just a little too far away from it for him to be able to see if it did have a bottom.

        As they flew on, Jamieson noticed that the `glass mountains' to what he now thought of as the east had become obsidian with a hint of the pink from the dawn, and that behind them was the sea. But it looked peculiarly far away, he wondered them if the plain might in fact be a high-altitude plateau. Those mountains would therefore drop away into huge cliffs on their other side.

        He looked out in the opposite direction, towards the `west'. Here the plateau gradually sloped up in the distance towards a long chain of more conventional-looking peaks that made him think of the Southern Alps, even though he had only seen those in pictures.

        "We may be nearly there," Carol called softly to them, pointing ahead from her vantage point nearer the eastern side of the fountain. Errol stepped round to join her. Jamieson thought he'd better join Johnstone on the opposite side. He had no reason to suppose they could unbalance the vehicle, but why take unnecessary risks?

        They appeared to be approaching a small but deep-looking bay that actually cut into the ravine, Jamieson could see it continue on in its perfectly straight line through the rolling green hills on the other side. He wondered if that meant it was filled with water. Pine-like trees lined the cliff tops on the opposite side of the bay except near the very end of the promontory. Here an immense Chinese temple-like building without walls stood.

        As they approached the cliffs that divided the plateau from the waters of the bay, Jamieson heard a slight lowering of pitch from both Edequahun and the cherubs. The fountain began to descend fairly quickly, and didn't seem to miss the edge by much as it passed over it. But the sudden blaring of the bugles from the cherubs facing the rear of the fountain was a surprise.

        "Hullo, looks like the brakes just went on," Johnstone said from beside him. "I think we're nearly there, wherever there might be."

        The fountain lowered itself vertically just a few yards from the cliff face, moving sideways towards the ravine as it did so. When it arrived at its bottom, Jamieson's breath caught in surprise at what he saw.

        "Good Lord," Johnstone said quietly.

        The sloping walls of the ravine had been undercut just above sea-level to form two wide shelves either side. On those shelves, and hard up against their rear walls, were multitudes of crude-looking houses that looked as if they had been cut from the stone of the cliff itself. They had tiled roofs made out of what looked like split field tiles, tiny crooked chimneys, simple wooden doors, and windows glazed with what looked like glass off-cuts roughly glued together. A narrow strip of open space was left at the edges of the shelves to form wharves; boats resembling small narrow chinese junks were tied up to them. The only other structures were the rough stone bridges linking the two platforms across the ravine, and what looked like the top of a curved dam at the far end; Jamieson supposed it was there to prevent the seawater from flowing into the ravine. If it really was bottomless, Jamieson thought idly, it wouldn't have taken long for the whole planet's oceans to drain into it.

        With a fanfare that sounded like something out of the Olympic Games, the fountain landed on the leftmost wharf - or rather in it, Jamieson felt himself picked up by the rocky surface as the fountain descended into it. He looked at the others, then down at his feet as they did the same. The bare rock now actually filled the floor of the fountain. As he watched, another flourish of the bugles sounded and its circular wall began to slide away to their right towards the ravine leaving the whole team - and all those baskets - behind on the wharf.

        "Farewell..!" Edequahun called to them. "The Witnols know what to do..!"

        With a very final-sounding flourish, the fountain shot up into the air and speed quickly up into the sky as if wishing to leave as quickly as possible. But then, as Jamieson turned to see that the sun was now clearly not far away from spilling over the horizon, that wasn't too surprising.

         "Guess they're just not too good at goodbyes," Johnstone said wistfully.

         "Oh, my God..." Carol then breathed. She was gazing fixedly in the direction of the village.

        Apparently this was normally far too early an hour for its inhabitants to rise, only two of them had managed to sleepily creep out of doors in response to the fountain's fanfares. But when they looked round and finally noticed the baskets and the four humans standing on their waterfront, they jumped a foot.

        Then they got busy. They started running round and yelling frantically, knocking on every door they could find. Those who came out quickly did the same once they saw the baskets and the now very anxious figures on the waterfront. It wasn't long before the entire population of the village was up and on its feet.

        "Oh, my God..." Carol breathed again as she saw, as Jamieson did, that the Witnols looked about as inhuman-looking as they could possibly be. They were about three feet tall, gray skinned, and naked apart from filthy-looking dhoti-like rags round their waists; there was no way of telling male from female. Their legs were as long and skinny as their arms, only their hands looked normal. But their heads were revolting. Jamieson remembered nearly being sick when he watched that Our World program about the animals of South America and saw the eerily human-like head of a sloth. The Witnols heads were just like those, except they were completely bald and had those hare lips to make them look even more horrible.

        He hoped they wouldn't have to spend too much time with these creatures.

        "You know, these guys are straight out of that film of H.G. Well's "The Time Machine",' Johnstone laughed. "They're the Morlocks to a T. - Anybody see that film? Had that Aussie actor in it - what's his name? Yeah, Rod Taylor."

        To Jamieson's mind this didn't seem the right time to be talking about films.

        Yet the Witnols, once they collected themselves together into a group just fifty yards away, were now advancing only haltingly. They obviously wanted to get to that food, but they moved as if somehow trying to hide behind each other in awe of the humans. Heads popped out from behind others, then retreated again. They reminded Jamieson of those funny South African meerkats he had seen in another Our World documentary a year or so ago.

        "You know, I'd say these fellows actually seem nervous of us," Errol said. "They might look like Morlocks, but they don't seem to act like them. - Let's step back a bit, if we can. They obviously want whatever's in these baskets very much indeed."

        He looked round behind him and moved as far away from the baskets as he could without going too close to the end of the wharf. The others followed his lead and did the same.

        That was enough for the Witnols. They rushed forward as one and all but scrambled over each other to get at those baskets. They threw the lids off not caring where they went, and pulled the contents out as quickly as they could. And it was food. Jamieson wondered if it was the left-overs from the banquet. He doubted whether the Witnols would have cared in the slightest though, they emptied those baskets with abandon, fighting, yelling and screaming at each other so as to get their hands on whatever they could. A lot of the food got smeared over bodies, trampled underfoot, even thrown at others to keep them at bay.

        And the stench was terrible. Jamieson couldn't tell if it came from the spoiled food, the Witnols themselves, or the way they visibly sweated. It was the most disgusting scene he had ever witnessed.

        Before five minutes had passed, the food had all gone. All the baskets had been tipped over and had pairs of legs sticking out of them, in one case two pairs. Jamieson didn't doubt their occupants were licking those baskets as clean as a whistle.

        Suddenly one of the Witnols stood up on the side of a basket that still had a licker inside it and raised his hand to display a very crude looking hand-signal. An expectant hush fell over the crowd, then one by one they began to face that leader and bend over. He thought they were about to salaam or something.

        But they didn't. In a gross parody of the fanfares Edequahun had used to control the flight of his fountain, they all broke wind in the most spectacularly noisy fashion he could ever have imagined.

        Jamieson laughed harder than he ever had in his life. Johnstone and Errol were doing the same.

        "I just know I'm going to love these little guys," Johnstone managed to get the words out.

        But Carol was not amused. Jamieson couldn't be sure whether she was more disgusted with the behavior of the Witnols or of her three companions.

        "I used to know some engineering students who - did this sort of thing," her voice dripped with distaste. "And I used to think it was so funny."

        Jamieson didn't dare look in her direction as the most appalling stench he had ever smelt, even worse than old McCracken's piggery when the skim milk tank fell over, drifted in their direction. This only made the three men laugh harder still. They didn't even try to hold their noses.

        Johnstone then blew a raspberry, which made them laugh so hard they almost didn't notice that the Witnols seemed to have become curious about their peculiar new visitors, and were advancing towards them. Jamieson's laughter was quickly replaced with alarm. He and the others were already close to the edge of the wharf, and if the Witnols were as clumsy with objects of curiosity as they were with their food...

        Errol and Johnstone seemed to realize this too, and looked at each other as if wondering what to do.

        Suddenly Johnstone stepped forward and immediately began performing a Maori haka:

        Ka Mate! Ka Mate!

        Ka Ora! Ka Ora..!

        As the Witnols fell back, knocking each over in alarm, Carol for some reason got a fit of the giggles. Why she should find that so amusing rather than that incredible farting display Jamieson just couldn't understand at all.

        Then his heart sank as he realized that Johnstone had put the fear of God into them. The Witnols were now fleeing in terror for their huts and houses, he heard the first doors slam. How could he hope for their help in finding Oression now?

        Apart from a quick flutter of a curtain Jamieson occasionally saw out of the corner of his eye, it was as if the little town's occupants had vanished into thin air.

        They were about to cross the last bridge across the ravine before the dam when Errol, who had brought up the rear, called out softly. Jamieson turned with the others to find that a young Witnol had caught up to them.

        "Please, would you come this way," it gestured urgently. "We are now ready to give you the help your friends asked of us."

        The team looked at each other. Jamieson noticed the Witnol was showing no sign of nervousness.

        "Do we go, or do we stay?" Errol spread his hands. "The only way out for us anyway is over the water," he pointed out to sea. "And I've no idea how to sail anything, let alone a junk."

        "Follow me," the Witnol turned and began to walk quickly towards a narrow alleyway between houses. It was hard to see where he could possibly be going.

        Errol looked at the others, shrugged, and turned to try and catch up to the little figure. The others could only fall in behind.

        The house at the end of the alley turned out to be only a shell. Its wide double-doored entrance revealed another that opened into a wide concrete-lined tunnel leading into the side of the ravine. Two more senior-looking Witnols were standing just inside. Both were wearing what looked like leather aprons, though these wrapped right round them. They were covered with all sorts of pockets and loops filled with all kinds of engineering tools. Some, spanners, screwdrivers, hammers, might have come from any tool shop back on Earth, but others Jamieson could make no sense of at all.

        Both these Witnols greeted the four humans so effusively Jamieson wondered if they had anything to do with those in the village at all. When they gestured at them to follow them into the tunnel, the team felt they could hardly refuse. The young Witnol brought up the rear.

        Jamieson couldn't for the life of him see how they could get to a bunch of very fierce wandering tribesmen like the Anwirz by walking through a tunnel. But he didn't see what choice they had right now.

        The tunnel continued for a hundred yards or so before they entered the hugest cave he could ever have imagined. And it was absolutely full of machinery and workshop equipment of all descriptions. It made him think of the school trip to the Arapuni Dam and its powerhouse back in the primers when he was seven or something. Here too there were lots of electrical machines, including two huge buzzing transformers connected to what looked like two power pylons. These however had piles of big thick porcelain-like disks at the top of them between which high-voltage arcs crackled and surged.

        But it was the immense open-framed steam-engine that filled the middle of the cave that held Jamieson transfixed. What looked like a hundred or so Witnols, most covered head to foot in grease, not only crawled over it, but through it, and obviously reveling in it. He couldn't believe his eyes. It was clear that engines and machines were what Witnols, these ones at least, lived for.

        "Hey, that thing could have come out of a Devonport Ferry," Johnstone laughed, pointing at it. "'Cept it's bigger than the ferry."

        "Perhaps it's a good thing it's not going right now," Errol said. "Would make a hell of a racket. The whole place would pound and shake. Steam everywhere..." he observed. "Guess the boiler's in another cave next door," he looked round as Jamieson did, but neither could see it. " - What's it drive?" he then peered towards the far end as if to somehow look beyond that.

        "Electric generator," said the single Witnol who was now accompanying them, the boy and the other Witnol had apparently taken off on more urgent business elsewhere. "Must have it back in service soon. We're running our Quaynelk - " he gestured at the two power pylons or whatever they were - "from batteries just now."

        " - Wonderful!" Johnstone said, looking the towers up and down again. The humans themselves were now beginning to draw attention from the Witnols. Indeed it wasn't long before the entire workshop, even the grease monkeys in the engine, had downed tools to stare at the humans, something which made Jamieson feel very uncomfortable. Estelle had explained that because the planet's populations, real or artificial, were so different in appearance from each other, they almost certainly wouldn't see the humans as alien. But that didn't seem to be the case here. Perhaps the Witnols, being so wrapped up in what they were doing, had so little contact with the rest of their world everybody looked as alien to them as they probably did to everybody else.

        "Would you all care for something to eat before we begin our journey?" the Witnol asked them then, pointing to a narrow doorway between two untidy-looking workbenches a little way down the side of the cave. "Or would you just like for us to get on our way as soon as we can?"

        The four looked at each other.

        "Might be wisest to eat," Errol said. "We don't know how long this is going to take, let alone whether it's going to be successful. Besides, it's an old traveler's rule never to walk past a toilet. Guess the same applies at the other end. But this is Jamieson's quest..." He looked at him.

        Jamieson looked at the other two, but it was clear from the expressions on their faces that they would leave it up to him.

        "Okay, I think Errol's right," he said to them. "Thank you, Frag - "

        "Fragdad," the Witnol smiled at him. At least Jamieson hoped it was a smile.

        "Sorry," he said to him quickly as the little figure turned to lead them to wherever they were going.

        Jamieson quickly began to wonder if he made the right decision as they walked into what looked like a rough-and-ready Ministry of Works cafeteria and saw what the three or four diners there were eating. There appeared to be one item only on the menu, and it looked like porridge. Certainly he liked porridge, it was the only thing he had ever found that stuck to his ribs right through to lunchtime. But he doubted very much that this stuff, whatever it was, was going to taste anything like it. Certainly not from its smell, which was definitely of fish.

        "Oh, boy..." he heard Carol say under her breath.

        Fragdad lead them to one of the several empty tables. These didn't look any more appealing than the food. Each consisted of a circular pressed-steel disk about six feet across supported by six legs made of thin strip steel in the form of a `J'. The short arms of these J's supported similarly pressed-steel seats that looked like they came off tractors. Obviously they weren't designed to support anything much heavier than a Witnol, for when the humans sat down on them the J's proved somewhat springy and caused the tabletop to move around in an unsettling fashion.

        This wasn't helped when Johnstone bounced up and down on his seat. "Anybody feel seasick?" he laughed.

        The food might have been simple, but at least it was instant. They had all barely gotten used to moving very carefully when it arrived courtesy of a fast-moving waiter who plonked it down in front of them from a platter that looked like a miniature of the table-top. The plates looked the same, only smaller still. At least the funny-looking short but wide knife-spoons were something in common with the Iatoan banquet, if nothing else. But then they clearly suited the Noingi kind of mouth.

        The flavor of the `porridge' wasn't bad to begin with, it reminded Jamieson of the Salisbury Paste he had loved as a kid. But as he got further down into bowl he wondered if its flavor had changed or if he had, it began to look and taste more and more like congealed vomit. After two more mouthfuls, he had to give up.

        No wonder those Witnols had gone for the Iatoan's food so enthusiastically if this was the level of their cooking.

        "Does all your food come from the sea?" Errol asked Fragdad in such a polite way Carol nearly broke out in a fit of giggles.

        "Virtually all of it," Fragdad replied. "We make the occasional trade with other Peoples, which is of course why you're here. But our wives get the lion's share, as you saw this morning."

        Jamieson couldn't believe what he had just heard. Those Witnols had all been female.

        "How does that work?" Carol asked through another near fit of the giggles. "You do the work, they get the reward."

        "Woman's Liberation," Johnstone laughed a staccato laugh.

        "Ah, but they do do all the work," it was Fragdad's turn to laugh. "They do the fishing, prepare our meals down here," he pointed to the small door that Jamieson now assumed a waitress had come out of. "They harvest and dry certain of our marine plants to get the fibber to weave into our clothes," he looked down at his apron, "they repair and look after our houses for us, they're simply wonderful. And all we do all day is play with our machines, improve them, make them bigger, faster, more powerful, learn new things as we go. We hope to conquer the air and the sea soon, just as we have conquered the earth."

        "Conquered the Earth?" Carol asked him, her thin eyebrows raised.

        "You'll see what I mean very soon now," his entire face wrinkled in what Jamieson now suspected was a Witnol grin. "We will make our departure just as soon as we have used the facilities."

        Jamieson doubted there could be any ambiguity as to what he meant there, but wondered if he had correctly translated the tone in Fragdad's voice as a compulsory one.

        But he realized he badly wanted to go anyway. He hadn't wanted to during the banquet, but that wasn't so long ago. Perhaps artificial Peoples like the Iatoans didn't need toilets. It crossed his mind that that might be a handy way of telling the difference between the real Peoples and artificial ones on this world.

        A drink of water was then brought in by the waitress. This came in what looked like spun metal chemist's flasks with necks only wide enough to accommodate a short metal straw.

        The instant the last such flask had been emptied and placed gratefully back on the table, Fragdad rose and indicated with an almost playfully sweeping gesture that they should follow. He led them through another narrow doorway next to that leading to the kitchen. They had to wait in the passage a moment as two of the Witnols they had seen earlier exited from another doorway in it, one of them was adjusting the fit of his apron. Carol began to look around her anxiously, but Fragdad appeared not to notice.

        It then crossed Jamieson's mind that, with their love of machinery, the Witnol's toilets might be very complicated affairs.

        He found he needn't have worried on that score as they finally stepped into that small room. If the females had no sensitivity to pongs and stinks, the males were certainly no better. Jamieson was surprised that those that rose to punch him in both nostrils hadn't percolated into the restaurant in spite of the large fan in the ceiling.

        Nor was the room any easier on the eye. The only evidence that this was a toilet at all was the four-wire rack along the back wall at what for them was an uncomfortably low height, and the trench below it which was, mercifully, deep enough not to be unsightly. As Carol's anguished cry as she looked frantically round made clear, there was also no provision for the separate sexes. The ablutions they had seen in that Nrebu house now began to look luxurious by comparison.

        "Well, at least it's separate from the cafe, Carol," Johnstone laughed. "Credit where credit's due."

        "You could wait outside and take your chances after we are through," Errol tried to reassure her. "Does she have to go at all?" he asked Fragdad.

        "There are no facilities on our underground vessels," he said, eyebrows knitted in an utterly unreadable expression. "And we cannot guarantee that our voyage will be mercifully brief."

        "I'll wait outside," Carol said peremptorily. She turned her back on them and left.

        The instant she did so, they heard a massive rolling thumping sound come through the plain gray walls of that room and up through their feet. A shiver of cold ran up Jamieson's spine as the thought being caught in an earthquake underground. But the look of sheer joy on Fragdad's face made him realize what had happened.

        "Your engine's just restarted," Errol grinned at him at the same instant that it stopped.

        "Just first turn," he replied. "Probably only a moment or two before its test run. I hope you can see it running properly before we leave."

        Only Fragdad found an easy relief after that. After waiting a few moments for Carol to take her turn and huffilly rejoin them, they returned through the restaurant to the cave.

        It crossed Jamieson's mind that complicated toilets might've been better after all.

        Barely a moment after they returned to that vast hall, there was a shout, then another, then several more in quick succession, a roar of steam like the breath of God, then the mighty cranks of that great engine slowly turned through half a revolution. Once again a few more shouts, Jamieson saw various technicians consult what appeared to be banks of strip-like dials, another series of shouts, and this time they allowed the engine two more revolutions.

        Another quick check, a final-sounding shout, and the engine began to turn again, and kept turning, then gradually began to pick up speed. A cheer went up as the last few grease monkeys clambered out of that immense frame and stood back to stare with their fellow Witnols up at that now amazingly smoothly running handiwork from which little steam escaped even from its valves. It reminded Jamieson of when he was a little kiddie rolling round on the living room floor, looking up at his mother using her sewing machine. Her right leg would rock back and forward so quickly on that treadle the machine would go as fast as an electric one. Jamieson now found himself swept up in the excitement, he was able to understand why these fellows had dedicated their lives to their machines.

        Suddenly a lot more lights came on overhead and the cavern lit up as if the roof had opened to let the sun in. The shout of joy that went up rang through Jamieson's ears.

        "Your mythology certainly contained some amazingly advanced machinery," Carol said to Fragdad with a suspicious tone in her voice. "I am most impressed."

        "Ah, but then our people have always had that gift since the most ancient of times," he wrinkled his face at her just as ambiguously. "It is now time to share with you another of our gifts, though this one we did not develop entirely on our own."

        He lead them past the far end of the steam engine and its technicians, who were now at last able to turn to more important matters on their workbenches. The black barrel of the electricity generator was surprisingly small compared to the huge bulk of what turned it. There was very little sign of its operation, no hint of a stray spark, just a barely audible hum and the faintest whiff of ozone.

        But what looked truly strange was the two slightly angled rows of immense hollow glass blocks ranged ahead of them. About thirty feet long and ten or so high, their cylindrical interiors were packed with machinery. Each sat on rails on concrete platforms just outside matching square tunnels in the cave wall, narrow ramps led up to their nearer ends. Thick massive steel doors with lagged steam pipes leading to their hinges hung open to the right of each cave. Only seven of the blocks were present however, the platforms for three were empty and their cave doors closed.

        "Gee whizz..!" said Johnstone, "they look just like torpedoes." "Pardon?" Fragdad asked him.

        "Well, where we come from we have ships that can go under the water that we call - " Johnstone said.

        " - Johnstone...!" Carol tried to bring him up short.

        "Do you really?" Fragdad asked him, apparently unperturbed. "We are trying to make those, the same as we are trying to build flying machines, but there are certain problems we have not as yet been able to overcome. - Perhaps you could teach us," he looked at him eyes wide and mouth wrinkled in an expression that Jamieson thought might be eagerness.

        "Oh, I would think you have much you could show us," Errol brought all his diplomatic skills to the fore. "Am I correct in thinking that these - vessels," he pointed "are able to navigate underground?"

        "You are correct!" Fragdad spoke so loudly several technicians turned to look at him and at his four strange-looking companions. "And it is these saiyanda that will enable us to reach your friends. Now, if you would care to step this way..." he mounted a gentle ramp up to the first of the blocks on the left.

        "Please, would you step into the saiyanda," he stood by its very solid end and, in a motion that resembled an underarm bowl, indicated they should somehow just step through it. When nobody moved, he looked at them and said the single word `Nessik' which Jamieson's earbug translated as `Gate'.

        "Good heavens, I think it really is a Gate," Carol said, shocked. "See those odd-looking gray balls embedded in each corner? And I think there's another set just behind it." She actually tried to peer round the edge.

        But she still made no move to enter it, and nor did anybody else. Finally Jamieson did. If this was the only chance they had of finding Oression, then he at least was going to take it.

        As Carol had predicted, he found himself stepping into that already cramped saiyanda. He quickly moved toward the front as the others followed, Fragdad entered last.

        Much to their surprise, another Witnol then entered the saiyanda from its front end. Jamieson thought it might have been the other Witnol who had met them at the cave entrance, but he couldn't be sure. For, without looking round, the little figure quickly sat himself in a narrow chair in front of a tall even narrower sloping panel to the left of the vessel's front `window'. Rows of push-buttons and what looked like gray piano keys ranged along its bottom, a diamond-shaped grid made up of huge numbers of bright tiny multicolored lights filled its top half as soon as the `pilot', as Jamieson now assumed he was, pressed a button. The machinery around the cabin also began to whirr, then settled into a low hum.

        "We will be underway in seven seconds," Jamieson's earbug helped translate the pilot's gravely voice. "Please note the positions of the handholds nearest you."

        The four humans took the hint and reached for them.

        On the due mark they felt the saiyanda begin to move gratingly towards the tunnel as if they were on caterpillar tracks. Jamieson looked down, but could not see anything beneath the rows of cabinets either side, only the concrete of the platform and the gap between this and the tunnel as it passed below them. Johnstone saw him look down, did the same, but then just looked back at Jamieson with a shrug of his shoulders.

        "Does this - vessel - run on - tracks?" Carol asked Fragdad as she made a flat looping motion with her hand.

        "Saiyanda," Fragdad corrected her gently. "Yes, but once we're underway, the Nessiks fore and aft will take over and move us through the ground."

        "How does that work?" she looked at him, puzzled.

        "Give him a chance to show us, Carol," Errol grinned at her. "Meanwhile, let's just - well, stand up and enjoy it."

        Jamieson hoped the lack of seating in saiyandas meant journeys were somehow relatively quick, even if he couldn't see how.

        As they completed their entry into the tunnel, a row of unevenly spaced white lights just like those in a bus came on along the top of the saiyanda. Jamieson also noticed a change in the smell. He had wondering if the only smell on their journey would be the old-cabbage one of Witnol, but the same hint of ozone he had smelt as they passed the generator was now almost a relief.

        He looked back as they all then did to see the shadow of the huge door to that tunnel close in on them; a little tremor of fear ran through him as he felt its clang though the walls of saiyanda. Just as he turned to look forward again, he noticed the edge of a duplicate control panel at the right rear of the cabin. Obviously the machine could go in either direction.

        A huge pile of dirt rapidly begin to build up against the lens-like front of the saiyanda until it completely filled it. Once again he attempted to look behind them, but as his companions weaved their heads from side to side to get a view themselves both backward and forward, he quickly gave up.

        "Could you switch on the forward and rear lights?" Fragdad called forward to the pilot.

        Jamieson then noticed that the grating underfoot was now beginning to give way to one all around him, something like scraping a chisel along a brick. He looked forward again to the window where the only faint increase in illumination showed a completely featureless wall, though a thin dark web-like vein wriggled quickly through it. He looked around him and could see other similar veins wriggling round the entire vessel between the cabinets.

        He could now actually feel the machine accelerate. The others looked round them in astonishment.

        "And we are now actually passing through solid rock?" Carol asked Fragdad in total disbelief. Jamieson wasn't sure he could believe it himself.

        "Yes, indeed we are," Fragdad's face wrinkled in what Jamieson now believed was the Witnol equivalent of a beaming smile. "As you've probably already guessed by now, the front Gate transfers a thin square sliver of rock to our rear, and the process of doing so moves us forward quite smoothly and quickly as you can see. The harder the rock the faster we go. Sometimes we have to use our tracks to move through very soft rock or rubble, especially that near our Quaynelk."

        "Jeez - How fast can this thing go?" Johnstone asked the pilot excitedly. The pilot looked back to Fragdad, who wrinkled his nose back at him.

        The pilot consulted the grid in front of him. "We are now moving at a speed of ofai osu taiun towards our destination."

        "Wow..." Johnstone said as their earbugs translated this as 110 miles an hour. He was clearly as stunned as they all were.

        "How do you steer this machine then?" Carol took courage and also asked the pilot directly.

        The pilot looked back anxiously towards Fragdad, but once again he assented.

        "We slightly retract one pair of Nessik Spheres at each end of the saiyanda according to the horizontal or vertical direction in which we wish to go," he explained. "That means we send very thin wedges of rock behind us rather than wafers until we are on our new heading.

        "And navigation?" she asked further, peering forward over Jamieson's shoulder at the pilot's multicolored display. "How can you tell where you're going?"

        "This chart here tells me all I need to know," the pilot himself pointed at it. "At the moment it is showing me in coded form the status of the saiyanda's systems, which are functioning normally. But if I press this switch here - " he leaned back so that they could all get at least some view of the panel, "we see a map of our Quaynelk at the right hand side here," he pointed to the four tiny yellow lights indicating their cave, "our destination where the Anwirz were last located on the left there," he pointed at the four blue lights on the other side, "and all these paler colors in between show us the known and estimated rock densities in between. The white area at the top is the air above the surface, off the top left of the screen are the Hsow Mountains. The small white area at the bottom here is the Pedwedwa Civilization. We have only made contact with them recently, but we suspect they could be a truly planet-wide underground people, hence the name - "

        "An underground civilization!" Carol was amazed and thrilled at the same time. "Oooh, I'd just love to see that. - What are they like? Perhaps..." she looked round at the rest of the team.

        Errol shook his head. "I'm sure we'd all like to pay a visit. "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and all that. But sadly..." he grinned at Fragdad.

        "You may not have liked what you would have seen," Fragdad said to her. "If you can imagine a kind of fusion between the human form and an insect one, with part of their rear ends glowing in the dark to enable them to find their way round - "

        "Your kidding her, aren't you?" Johnstone laughed.

        "Well..." he looked back at him then at Carol with yet another utterly incomprehensible expression on his face.

        Just then there was a shout from the pilot. As they all turned to look at him, they saw his entire screen flash a bright but deep purple color. It did so once again before the ship's status screen came back on.

        "We've just received a Summons," the pilot actually seemed to put an effort into keeping his voice gravely and flat.

        "Have we..?" Fragdad looked at him with another incomprehensible expression on his face. Jamieson's earbug translated his tone of voice though as a mixture of excitement and dread.

        The Witnol then looked at the four humans. "I'm sorry, but this means we now have to change course and respond to a Summons we have just received from an Iskurahi. We are compelled to go. If we do not, our saiyanda will be diverted there anyway. She is situated on Tea Oiden in the Hsow Mountains not too far from here. Unless I am very much mistaken, I should think it concerns you people."

        Jamieson's heart froze as he felt the machine actually bank as it turned. It was as if the thing flew underground.

        He then looked forward to the pilot's screen. A large cluster of gold lights apparently marking their new destination now began to appear on its left. The blue marking the Anwirz was moving somewhere up above its middle.

        "What exactly is a - an Iskurahi?" Johnstone asked him.

        Fragdad looked at him in total surprise, even shock. "How can you possibly not know? Where are you people from? They are the most powerful beings in our world and beyond. Their magic is way beyond the most powerful we know of, their machines..." he had to pause for breath. "And there are only five of them. When they summon, we go. If we don't, we are taken, or they appear in our midst. Laieo..."

        He stared at Johnstone, then at the rest of them. Jamieson suspected he was reacting as if he had just realized something absolutely dreadful.

        "Are you people from - from another world?"

        He then actually shrank back as if in fear. The pilot looked none to comfortable either.

        "In a way..." Errol tried to be truthful and diplomatic at the same time. But that left even him at a loss, he could only shrug and look round at the others.

        "Well, we think we had a spell put on us to make us think we are from another world," Johnstone said. "All our memories of - this one - seem to have, well gone," he looked dramatically round him, rolling his eyes. "If we could only know who, or why..."

        Jamieson found himself struggling to keep his face straight. One good fib deserved another.

        But he also hoped to God it worked.

        Then the thought hit him - what chance had they of finding the girls now? And how, the thought only now occurred to him, had the Witnols planned to rescue them anyway? They hardly seemed a match to the Anwirz. Like putting a Cub pack against a bikie gang.

        "We expect to reach our destination in three minutes," the pilot said in a tone of voice suggesting he was willing to let the subject drop. "You will notice that our vessel will tilt up significantly as we climb the Iskurahi's mountain."

        "Oh, goodie..!" Johnstone beamed at Fragdad. "I've always wanted to climb a mountain - from the inside..!" He put on his best Goon Show voice.

        Jamieson laughed with the others, even though he had been brought up to hate the Goon show. His father had insisted that it denigrated Great Britain, and that Peter Sellers sounded too much like Lord Haw Haw.

        He noticed that the vessel appeared to be slowing down, the air also seemed to be getting warmer. But just as these thoughts crossed his mind, the saiyanda began to tilt noticeably upwards, just as Fragdad had warned it would. He immediately reached out for another handhold, and found it at the same time Carol did. She smiled at him quickly as she quickly reached for another behind him, he grinned back as he grabbed one further forward.

        As the vessel tilted even further upward, he felt an air of apprehension begin to settle on them, including perhaps the two Witnols. He looked forward to see the golden destination nearly fill the screen just the instant before the pilot switched to a status display. They were now very nearly there.

        And before he knew it, daylight poured in through the front of the cabin as the saiyanda literally ground to a halt and all fell totally silent.

        Nobody moved, or even breathed.

        At last the pilot stirred, pressed a series of piano keys, and looked back at his passengers.

        "If you would now all care to disembark, the forward Nessik is now ready."

        The four of them looked at each other in hesitation. But since Jamieson obviously had to go first, he moved past the pilot, nodded his thanks, and gingerly peered out of the front of the saiyanda.

        He saw there was a good three-foot drop onto snow in front to him. He didn't know what to expect, but he jumped anyway. Landing with a funny crunch, he didn't look round, he was somehow too frightened to. He reached in to help Carol down - and jumped again when he saw that his arm had been severed at the elbow and that he could see the pink and white inside of its other half suspended a few inches away from the stump of his arm as he reached into the Gate. He pulled it out reflexively at the same instant as Carol screamed and shrank back into the saiyanda, turning to bury her head in Johnstone's shoulders. He quickly realized that she had seen the same horrible sight he had. Estelle's Gates had always been far apart, even thousands of miles, but these were separated by just a few inches.

        He felt week and sick. He tried to fasten on to the thought that at least he hadn't seen the insides of the pilot as he came aboard.

        " - Can I help you?" he heard the melodic tones behind him.

        He turned - to see the most amazingly beautiful middle-aged woman he had ever seen in his life. She was just like Snow White in that Walt Disney film he had loved so much when he was a kid, except she must have been about fifty years old. She also had the cleft palate of the Diaeduee, though hers was so slight it was barely there. She stood in front of him, arm outstretched, ready to take his hand in her own.

        Jamieson froze. She was beautiful. But then, so he was able to see for the first time, was the place they had just arrived in. They were standing on hard snow on a rounded saddle-shaped ridge between two peaks, the one ahead looked the highest in the entire range. To the right the slope dropped away towards other smaller peaks before disappearing out of sight. To their left however the slope led gently down to a yellowish-brown lake with wisps of steam coming from it, it made him think of the crater lake he had seen pictures of at the top of Mount Ruapehu.

        But the subtle mid-morning colors from those other far-off peaks were something he could never have imagined even from the color pictures of the Southern Alps he had seen; the deep blue sky overhead, the paler blue of the haze that separated them from lesser peaks, the orangey-yellow of the distant desert to their right that Estelle had put them down on, cut across by that black line of the ravine.

        And beyond the haze on both left and right Jamieson could see the pale blue green of the sea. The whole land was part of a peninsula or an isthmus.

        Suddenly Johnstone jumped down from the saiyanda beside him, and looked the woman in the eye.

        "And you must be..?"

        She laughed at him with a sparkle in her eye.

        "A pleasure to meet you, Johnstone. Estelle has told me so much about you - as indeed she has about you all," she moved to peer into the saiyanda. "My name is Idda, and I am from the Iskurahi. I would like to talk to you further, but I am afraid that Estelle needs you to return to her ship urgently."

        " - What..?" Carol's voice suspended itself in mid air just in front of the saiyanda. Jamieson tried hard not to look at the bloody red of her severed neck. "Oh - shit..!" she saw the expression on his face, and leapt out.

        Jamieson closed his eyes.

        "S'okay, we're all here," Errol laughed at him after Jamieson heard the thump of his landing. "You should have stood square-on to the saiyanda and moved more quickly, then you wouldn't have had those X-Ray visions."

        "Do you do kryptonite here?" Johnstone as