The Second Book of Lankhmar

which I mean, of course, the antipodes of Nehwon. Look up, bold comrade mine, at arching sky and heaven's top. You're looking at the same Great Equatorial Ocean we're afloat in, only halfway around Nehwon from Black Racer . You're looking down (or up , what skills it?) the tubes of the waterspouts there, so you can see the star at bottom of each."
           "I'm looking at the full moon too," Fafhrd said. "Don't try to tell me that's at the bottom of a waterspout!"
           "But I will," the Mouser responded gently. "Recall the gigantic spout like speeding mesa we briefly saw far south of us last noon? That was the moonspout, to invent a word. And now it's raced to sky ahead of us, in half day since."
           "Fry me for a sardine!" Fafhrd said with great feeling. Then he sought to collect his comprehension. "And those folk on Nehwon's other side — up there — they're seeing a star at the bottom of each waterspout now around us here?"
           "Of course not," the Mouser said patiently. "Sunlight drowns out their twinkles for those folk. It's day up there, you see." He pointed at the dark near the moon. "Up there, you see, they're bathed in highest noon, drenched in the light of sun, which now is somewhere near us, but hid from us by the thick walls of his sunspout, to coin a word wholly analogous to moonspout."
           "Oh, monstrous!" Fafhrd cried. "For if it's day up there, you little fool, why can't we see it here? Why can't we see up there Nehwon lands bathed in light with bright blue sea around 'em? Answer me that!"
           "Because there are two different kinds of light," the Mouser said with an almost celestial tranquillity. "Seeming the same by every local test, yet utterly diverse. First, there's direct light, such as we're getting now from moon and stars up there. Second, there is reflected light, which cannot make the really longer journeys, and certainly can't recross — not one faint ray of it — Nehwon's central space to reach us here."
           "Mouser," Fafhrd said in a very small voice, but with great certainty, "you're not just inventing words, you're inventing the whole business — on the spur of the moment as you go along."
           "Invent the Laws of Nature?" the Mouser asked with a certain horror. "That were far worse than darkest blasphemy."
           "Then in the name of all the gods at once!" Fafhrd demanded in a very large voice, "how can the sun be in a waterspout and not boil it all away in an instant in an explosion vast? Tell me at once."
           "There are some things man was not meant to know," the Mouser said in a most portentous voice. Then, swiftly switching to the familiar, "or rather, since I am in no way superstitious, there are some things which have not yielded yet to our philosophy. An omission which in this instance I will remedy at once. There are, you see, two different kinds of energy, the one pure heat, the other purest light, which cannot boil the tiniest water-drop — the direct light I've already told you of, which changes almost entirely to heat where e'er it hits, which in turn tells us why reflected light can't make the long trip back through Nehwon's midst. There, have I answered you?"
           "Oh damn, damn, damn," Fafhrd said weakly. Then managing to rally himself, if only desperately for a last time, he asked somewhat sardonically, "All right, all right! But just where then is this floating sun you keep invoking, tucked in his vast adamantine-walled waterspout?"
           "Look there," the Mouser said, pointing due south, steerside abeam.
           Across the moon-silvered gray field of the sea pricked out with speeding towers of waterspouts, almost at the dim distant horizon, Fafhrd saw a solitary gigantic waterspout huge as an island, taller than tallest mesa, moving east at least as swiftly as the rest and as ponderous-relentlessly as a juggernaut of the emperor of the Eastern Lands. The hair rose on the back of Fafhrd's neck, he was harrowed with fear and wonder, and he said not a word, but only stared and stared as the horrendous thing forged ahead in its immensity.
           After a while he began also to feel a great weariness. He looked ahead and a little up at the stiffly flapping silver lace of the twin shimmer-sprights before the prow, taking comfort from their nearness and steadiness as if they were Black Racer 's flags. He slowly lowered himself until he lay prone on the