The Darkside Of The Sun

matrix on it. The tower was later found to be intact. Three neighbouring stellar systems had been wrecked, however.
    The phnobes never discovered a Joker tower: they had always known of one. The tower of Phnobis, rising from the sea into the perpetual cloud cover, was the cause and basis of the planet-wide Frss-Gnhs religion – literally, Pillar of the Universe.
    Earth-human colonists had found seven, one of them floating in the asteroid belt of the Old Sol system. That was when the Joker Institute was set up.
    The young races of men, Creapii, phnobe and drosk found themselves watching one another in awe across a galaxy littered with the memories of a race that had died before human time began. And out of that awe arose the legends of Jokers World, the glittering goal that was to taunt adventurers and fools and treasure hunters across the light years …
    Dom touched the tower. There was the faintest tingle, a sudden stab of pain. He leapt back, frantically rubbing life back into his frozen fingers. The coldness of the towers was always greatest at noon, when they drank in heat, yet grew icy.
    Dom set off round the tower, feeling the cold reaching out towards him. Looking up he thought he saw the air within a foot of the smooth walls darken, as if light was just a gas and was being sucked in by the spire. It wasn’t logical, but the idea had a certain artistic appeal.
    Towards noon a security flyer glittered briefly on the western horizon, heading south. Dom stepped sideways into a clump of reeds … And wondered what he was doing in the marsh. Freedom, that was it. The last day of real freedom. His last chance to see Widdershins without a security guard standing on either side of him and a score of more subtle protections all round. He had planned it, down to squashing Korodore’s ubiquitous robot insects that spied on him – always for his own protection – in his bedroom.
    And now he’d have to go home and face Grandmother. He was beginning to feel just a little foolish. He wondered what he had expected from the tower: some feeling of cosmic awe, probably, a sense of the deeps of Time. Certainly not this sinister, insidious sensation of being watched. It was just like being at home.
    He turned back.
    There was a hiss of superheated air as something passed his face and struck the tower. Where it hit the frozen wall the heat blossomed into a flower of ice crystals.
    Dom dived instinctively, rolled over and over and was up and running. A second blast passed him and a dry seed head in front of him exploded into a shower of sparks.
    He stifled the urge to look round. Korodore had schooled him unmercifully in assassination drill. Knowing who was the assassin was small reward for being assassinated. Korodore said, ‘The price of curiosity is a terminal experience.’
    At the edge of the lagoon Dom gathered himself and dived. As he hit the water the third blast seared across his chest.
    Great bells rang, far out to sea or maybe in his head. The cool greenness was soothing, and the bubbles …
     
    Dom awoke. With an inculcated instinct he kept his eyes closed and tentatively explored his environment.
    He was lying on the mixture of sand, ooze, dry reed stems and snail shells that passed for soil on most of Widdershins. He was in shade, and the thunder of surf was very near. And the soil rocked, gently, to the beat of the waves. The air smelled and tasted of salt, mingled with marsh ooze, reed pollen and … something else. It was dank and musty, and very familiar.
    Something was sitting a few inches away. Dom opened one eye a fraction and saw a small creature watching him intently. Its dumpy body was covered in pink hair which sprouted from a scaly hide. A snout was a bad compromise between a beak and a prehensile nose. It had three pairs of legs, no two exactly alike. It was almost a Widdershins legend.
    Behind Dom someone lit a fire. He tried to sit up and it felt as though a red-hot bar had been laid across his chest.
    ‘O juvindo may psutivi,’ said a gentle voice.
    A face out of a nightmare appeared above him. The skin was grey and hung in folds under eyes four times the proper size in which small irises stared out like beads in milk. Great flat ears were turned towards Dom. The musty smell was overpowering. The face was set off by a pair of large sungoggles.
    The phnobe was trying to speak Janglic. Dom summoned his resources and answered him in jaw-breaking phnobic.
    ‘A sscholar,’ said the phnobe,