The Darkside Of The Sun

than he could follow it. It flashed once, high in the air. A flamingo dipped out of the flock as if coming in to land, and crashed heavily among the reeds. The tension in the air snapped like a finely drawn wire.
    Ignoring Dom, the smuggler loped across to it, drew his knife from its breast and began to pluck it. He paused after a minute and glanced up sharply, pointing with the knife.
    ‘A word of advice. Do not ever again even think of a heroic leap at any person holding a tshuri knife. You have about you the air of one with many lives to wasste. Maybe therefore you rissk your life easily. But foolish gestures towards a knife end sadly.’
    Dom let the tension flow out of him, aware that a fraught moment had passed and gone.
    ‘Besides,’ the smuggler went on, ‘doesn’t gratitude count for anything? Soon we will eat. Then we will talk, maybe.’
    ‘There’s a lot I want to know,’ said Dom. ‘Who shot at …’
    ‘Tssh! Questions that can’t be answered, why ask them? But do not rule out bater .’
    ‘Bater?’
    The phnobe looked up.
    ‘You haven’t heard of probability math? You, and tomorrow you become Chairman of the Board of Widdershinss and heir to riches untold? Then first we will talk, and then we will eat.’
    See-Why hung in the mists that had crept out of the marsh. The island sailed dripping through the clammy curtain, leaving a mist-wake that writhed fantastically over the suddenly sinister marsh.
    Fff-Shs came out of the woven hut at one end of the island and pointed into the whiteness.
    ‘The radar says your flyer iss hardly more than a hundred metres thataway. Sso I leave you here.’
    They shook hands solemnly. Dom turned and walked down to the water’s edge, then turned again as the phnobe hurried after him. He held the little rat-creature, which had spent most of the journey asleep round his neck.
    ‘Tomorrow, maybe, there will be great ceremoniess?’
    Dom sighed. ‘Yes, I’m afraid there will.’
    ‘And giftss, maybe? That iss the procedure?’
    ‘Yes. But Grandmother says that most will be from those who seek favours. Anyway, they’ll be returned.’
    ‘I sseek no favours, nor will you return thiss small gift,’ said the phnobe, holding out the struggling creature. ‘Take him. You know what he iss?’
    ‘A swamp ig,’ nodded Dom. ‘He’s one of the bearers on our planetary crest, along with the blue flamingo. But the zoo says there’s only about three hundred on the planet, I can’t …’
    ‘This little one has dogged my footsteps these last four months. He’ll come with you. I feel he will desert me soon anyway.’
    The ig jumped from the phnobe’s arm and settled around Dom’s neck, where it re-placed its tail in its mouth and began to snore. Dom smiled, and the smuggler answered with a brief mucus grimace.
    ‘I call him my luck,’ said the phnobe. ‘It’s an indulgence, maybe.’ He glanced up at Widdershins’s one bloated moon, rising in the south.
    ‘Tonight will be a good night for hunting,’ he said, and in two strides had disappeared into the thickening mists.
    Dom opened his mouth to speak, then stood silent for a moment.
    He turned and dived into the warm evening sea.
    The heavy hull of a security flyer rocked in the swell beside his own craft. A figure appeared on the flat deck as he hauled himself aboard.
    Dom found himself looking first at the crosswires of a molecule stripper and then at the embarrassed face of a young security man.
    ‘Chel! I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize …’
    ‘You’ve found me. Good for you,’ said Dom coldly. ‘Now I’m going home.’
    ‘I’ve got orders, er, to take you back,’ said the guard. Dom ignored him and stepped aboard his own craft. The guard swallowed, glanced at the stripper and then at Dom, and hurried into the control bubble. By the time he had reached the radio, Dom’s flyer was a hundred metres away, bouncing lightly from wavetop to wavetop before gliding up and over the sea.
     
    Extract from 2001 and All That: an Anecdotal History of Space-Travelling Man , by Charles Sub-Lunar (Fghs-Hrs & Calligna, Terra Novae)
    ‘Mention should be made of Widdershins and of the Sabalos family, since the two are practically synonymous. Widdershins, a mild world consisting largely of water and very little else, is one of the two planets of CY Aquirii. Its climate is pleasant though damp, its food a monotonous variation on the theme of fish, its people intelligent, hardy and – due to the high