The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

sir. And … and I’m pretty sure things will stay on it. I’ve been experimenting.’
    ‘Experimenting?’ said the Dean. ‘What good does
that
do?’
    The doors were flung open. Turnipseed, Ponder’s assistant, hurried across to the table in a state of some agitation.
    ‘Mister Stibbons! H EX has found something!’
    The wizards turned to stare at him. He shrugged.
    ‘It’s gold,’ he said.
    ‘The Guild of Alchemists is
not
going to be happy about this,’ said the Senior Wrangler, as the entire faculty clustered around the project. ‘You know what they are for demarcation.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Ridcully, steering the omniscope. ‘We’ll just give them a few minutes to turn up, otherwise we’ll go on as we are, all right?’
    ‘How can we get it out?’ said the Dean.
    Ponder looked horrified. ‘Sir! This is a universe! It is not a piggy-bank! You can’t just turn it upside down, stick a knife in the slot and rattle it around!’
    ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Ridcully, without looking up. ‘It’s what people do all the time.’ He adjusted the focus. ‘Personally I’m
glad
nothing can get out of the thing, though. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t intend to occupy the same room as a million miles of exploding gas. What happened?’
    ‘H EX says one of the new stars exploded.’
    ‘They’re too big to be stars, Ponder. We’ve been into this.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Ponder disagreed.
    ‘They’ve only been around for five minutes.’
    ‘A few days, sir. But millions of years in Project time. People have been dumping rubbish into it, and I think some just drifted in and … I don’t think it was a very well-made st – furnace in the first place.’
    The exploding star was shrinking now, but flinging out a great halo of brilliant gases that even lit up one side of the rocky lumps the wizards had been making. Things want to come together and get big, Ponder thought. But when they’re big enough, they want to explode. Another law.
    ‘There’s lead and copper here, too,’ said Ridcully. ‘We’re in the money now, gentlemen. Except that in this universe there’s nothing to spend it on. Even so, it seems we’re making progress. You’re looking peaky, Mister Stibbons. You ought to get some sleep.’
    Progress, thought Ponder. Was that what they were making? But without narrativium, how did anything
know?
    It was day four. Ponder had been awake all night. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d probably been awake the previous night, too. He may have nodded off for a while, pillowing his head on the growing pile of screwed-up pieces of paper, with the Project winking and twinkling in front of him. If so, he’d dreamed of nothing.
    But he’d decided that Progress was what you made it.
    After breakfast, the wizards looked at the ball which currently occupied the centre of the omniscope.
    ‘Um, I used iron to start with,’ said Ponder. ‘Well, mostly iron. There’s quite a lot of it about. Some of the ices are really nasty things, and rock by itself just sits there. See this one here?’
    A smaller ball of rock hung in space a little way away.
    ‘Yes, very dull,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Why’s it got holes all over it?’
    ‘I’m afraid that when I was dropping rocks on the ball of iron there were a few that went out of control.’
    ‘Could happen to anyone, Stibbons,’ said the Archchancellor generously . ‘Did you add gold?’
    ‘Oh yes, sir. And other metals.’
    ‘Gold does give a crust some style, I think. Are these volcanoes?’
    ‘Sort of, sir. They are the, er, acne of young worlds. Only unlike ours, where the rock is melted in the internal magical fields generated in the sub-strata, the magma is kept molten by the heat trapped inside the sphere.’
    ‘Very smoky atmosphere. I can hardly see anything.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Well,
I
don’t call it
much
of a world,’ said the Dean, sniffing. ‘Practically red hot, smoke belching out everywhere …’
    ‘The Dean
does
have a point, young man,’ said Ridcully. He was extra kind, just to annoy the Dean. ‘It’s a brave attempt, but you just seem to have made another ball.’
    Ponder coughed. ‘I just put this one together for demonstration purposes, sir.’ He fiddled with the controls of the omniscope. The scene flickered, and changed. ‘Now this,’ he said, and there was a twinge of pride in his voice, ‘is one I made
earlier
.’
    They stared into the lens.
    ‘Well? Just more smoke,’