Moving Pictures

behind him, in a state of shock.
    “Are you crazy?” Ginger hissed. “Holding out like that! We could have lost our chance!”
    “I didn’t say anything! I thought it was you!” said Victor.
    “It was you!” said Ginger.
    Their eyes met.
    They looked down.
    “Bark, bark,” said Gaspode the Wonder Dog.
    Dibbler turned round.
    “What’s that noise?” he said.
    “Oh, it’s—it’s just this dog we found,” said Victor hurriedly. “He’s called Gaspode. After the famous Gaspode, you know.”
    “He does tricks,” said Ginger, malevolently.
    “A performing dog?” Dibbler reached down and patted Gaspode’s bullet head.
    “Growl, growl.”
    “You’d be amazed, the things he can do,” said Victor.
    “Amazed,” echoed Ginger.
    “Ugly devil, though,” said Dibbler. He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest. Gaspode could outstare a mirror.
    Dibbler seemed to be turning an idea over in his mind. “Mind you…bring him along in the morning. People like a good laugh,” said Dibbler.
    “Oh, he’s a laugh all right,” said Victor. “A scream.”
    As they walked off Victor heard a quiet voice behind him say, “I’ll get you for that. Anyway, you owe me a dollar.”
    “What for?”
    “Agent’s fee,” said Gaspode the Wonder Dog.

    Over Holy Wood, the stars were out. They were huge balls of hydrogen heated to millions of degrees, so hot they could not even burn. Many of them would swell enormously before they died, and then shrink to tiny, resentful dwarfs remembered only by sentimental astronomers. In the meantime, they glowed because of metamorphoses beyond the reach of alchemists, and turned mere boring elements into pure light.
    Over Ankh-Morpork, it just rained.
    The senior wizards crowded around the elephant vase. It had been put back in the corridor on Ridcully’s strict orders.
    “I remember Riktor,” said the Dean. “Skinny man. Bit of a one-track mind. But clever.”
    “Heh, heh. I remember his mouse counter,” said Windle Poons, from his ancient wheelchair. “Used to count mice.”
    “The pot itself is quite—” the Bursar began, and then said, “What d’you mean, count mice? They were fed into it on a little belt or something?”
    “Oh, no. You just wound it up, y’see, and it sat there whirring away, counting all the mice in the building, mm, and these little wheels with numbers on them came up.”
    “Why?”
    “Mm? I s’pose he just wanted to count mice.”
    The Bursar shrugged. “This pot,” he said, peering closely,
    “is actually quite an old Ming vase.”
    He waited expectantly.
    “Why’s it called Ming?” said the Archchancellor, on cue.
    The Bursar tapped the pot. It went ming .
    “And they spit lead balls at people, do they?” said Ridcully.
    “No, Master. He just used it to put the…the machinery in. Whatever it is. Whatever it’s doing.”
    …whumm…
    “Hold on. It wobbled,” said the Dean.
    …whumm…whumm…
    The wizards stared at one another in sudden panic…
    “What’s happening? What’s happening?” said Windle Poons. “Why won’t anyone, mm, tell me what’s happening?”
    …whumm…whumm…
    “Run!” suggested the Dean.
    “Which way?” quavered the Bursar.
    … whumm WHUMM…
    “I’m an old man and I demand someone tell me what’s—”
    Silence.
    “Duck!” shouted the Archchancellor.
    Plib .
    A splinter of stone was knocked off the pillar behind him.
    He raised his head.
    “Bigods, that was a damn lucky es—”
    Plib .
    The second pellet knocked the tip off his hat.
    The wizards lay trembling on the flagstones for several minutes. After a while the Dean’s muffled voice, “Was that all, do you think?”
    The Archchancellor raised his head. His face, always red, was now incandescent.
    “Bur saar !”
    “Master?”
    “That’s what I call shootin’ !”

    Victor turned over.
    “Wzstf,” he said.
    “It’s six aye-emm, rise and shine, Mr. Dibbler says,” said Detritus, grasping the bedclothes in one hand and dragging them onto the floor.
    “Six o’clock? That’s night-time !” groaned Victor.
    “It’s going to be a long day, Mr. Dibbler says,” said the troll. “Mr. Dibbler says you got to be on set by half past six. This is goin’ to happen.”
    Victor pulled on his trousers.
    “I suppose I get to eat breakfast?” he said sarcastically.
    “Mr. Dibbler is havin’ food laid on, Mr. Dibbler says,” said Detritus.
    There was a