The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

plankton.’
    ‘Plankton being –?’
    ‘Oh, whales, shoals of fish and so on.’
    The wizards looked long and hard at the huge cone-shaped object.
    ‘Intelligence?’ said Ridcully.
    ‘What for?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘It will withstand anything except a
direct
hit with a comet, and I estimate it’ll have a lifespan of about 500,000 years.’
    ‘And then it’ll die?’ said Ridcully.
    ‘Yes. I estimate it will, by then, take it twenty-four hours and one second to absorb enough food to last it for twenty-four hours.’
    ‘So after that it will be dead?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Will it know?’
    ‘Probably not.’
    ‘Back to the drawing board, Senior Lecturer.’
    Ponder sighed.
    ‘It’s no good ducking,’ he said. ‘That won’t help. We’re paying special attention to comets. We’ll let you know in plenty of time.’
    ‘You’ve got no idea what it was like!’ said Rincewind, creeping along the beach. ‘And the noise!’
    ‘Have you seen the Luggage?’
    ‘It certainly made my ears ring, I can tell you!’
    ‘And the Luggage?’
    ‘What? Oh … gone. Have you
looked
at that side of the planet? There’s a whole new set of mountain ranges!’
    The wizards had let time run forward for a while after the strike. It made such a depressing mess of everything. Now, drawing on its bottomless reserves of bloodimindium, life was returning in strength. Crabs were already back although, here, at least, they didn’t seem inclined to make even simple structures. Perhaps something in their souls told them it’d be a waste of time in the long run.
    Rincewind mentally crossed them off the list. Look for signs of intelligence, the Archchancellor had said. As far as Rincewind was concerned, anything
really
intelligent would be keeping out of the way of the wizards. If you saw a wizard looking at you, Rincewind would advise, then you should walk into a tree or say ‘dur?’.
    All along the beaches, and out below the surf, everything was acting with commendable stupidity.
    A soft sound made him look down. He’d almost stepped on a fish.
    It was some way from the water line, and squirming across the mud towards a pool of brackish water.
    A kind man by nature, Rincewind picked it up gingerly and carried it back to the sea. It flopped around in the shallows for a while and then, to his amazement, inched its way back on to the mud.
    He put it back again, in deeper water this time.
    Thirty seconds later, it was back on the beach.
    Rincewind crouched down, as the thing wiggled determinedly onwards.
    ‘Would it help to talk to someone?’ he said. ‘I mean, you’ve got a good life out there in the sea, no sense in throwing it all away, is there? There’s always a silver lining if you know where to look. Okay, okay, life’s a beach. And you’re a pretty ugly fish. But, you know, beauty is only sk– scale deep, and –’
    ‘What’s happening?’ said Ponder’s voice in his ear.
    ‘I was talking to this fish,’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It keeps coming out of the water. It seems to want to go for whatever is the opposite of a paddle.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘You told me to keep a look out for anything interesting.’
    ‘The consensus here is that fish aren’t interesting,’ said Ponder. ‘Fish are dull.’
    ‘I can see bigger fish in the shallows,’ said Rincewind. ‘Perhaps it’s trying to keep away from them?’
    ‘Rincewind, fish are designed for living in water. That’s why they’re fish. Go and find some crabs. And put the poor freakish thing back in the sea, for goodness’ sake.’
    ‘Perhaps a rethink is in order here,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘About the newts,’ said Ponder.
    ‘Newts is going far too far,’ said the Dean. ‘I’ve seen more shapely things in the privy.’
    ‘I want the person who put the newts on this continent to own up right now,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘No one could,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘No one’s seen the Luggage since the last comet. We couldn’t get anything in there.’
    ‘I know, because I had a tank of thaumically treated whelks all ready to go,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘And what, pray, am I supposed to do with them?’
    ‘Some sort of chowder would appear to be in order,’ said the Dean.
    ‘Evolution makes things better,’ said Ridcully. ‘It can’t make them
different
. All right, some rather dull amphibians seem to have turned up.
But
, and this is important, those fish Rincewind reported are still