The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,22

yellow markings, boss, with a black band across the yellow.’

Dom sighed with relief. Not all sundogs were friendly, or bright enough to realize what would follow if they forgot themselves and engulfed a small spaceship.

‘That will be the one who calls itself Abramelin-lincoln-stroke-Enobarbous-stroke-50.3-Enobarbous-McMirmidom,’ he said. ‘He’s okay. He does haulage work for us.’

A thought stole unbidden into his head.

Hullo, spaceman. You wish to travel, maybe?

‘Please take us to the First Sirian Bank.’

Price for journey: seventeen standards.

The ship bucked slightly as the sundog reached out and enveloped it in a pseudofield. The giant semi-animal rotated slowly to face the actinic blue star, inasmuch as a sundog had a face.

‘This is undignified,’ moaned Hrsh-Hgn. ‘Carried by a dog like so much freight.’

To be ready.

‘Would you rather Grandmother caught us, in her present mood?’

To be steady.

‘Frssh!’

‘Come on, now, face it like a cosmopolitan.’

Go.

An invisible hand wrenched See-Why out of the sky and hurled it at them. They were falling into the sun. Then they were falling around the sun. They skimmed over a blurred sea of blue-white fire that broke on the reefs of space, its roaring a dim thunder inside the pseudofield, towards a glowing horizon that had no curve.

And the star dopplered behind them. Sundog soared up into the interstellar dark, singing.

Silence filled the cabin.

‘Wow,’ said Dom.

‘Urghss!’

Isaac peered at the matrix panel, and dimmed the ship lights. In the darkness there were only the stars ahead, and they began to flare blue.

‘Prepare yourselves to become a relativistic impossibility …’ sang Isaac.

Illusion.

Dom knew about the things seen in interspace. The larger ships usually had screening around most of the hull, and perhaps an unscreened lounge for the incurably curious …

A white stag galloped through the cabin wall, which glowed under an orange light. It bore a gold crown between its horns. Dom sensed its fear, smelled the rankness, saw the sweat-matted hair on its flanks – but its hooves merged with the floor, and floor and skin merged and flowed continuously. It reared, and leapt through the autochef.

Dom saw the huntsman on his black horse when he brushed through the wall of the drive cabin like bracken. He wore white, except for a red cloak hung with silver bells, and his face beneath yellow hair that billowed in an intangible wind was pale and set. For a moment he looked at Dom, who saw his eyes gleam momentarily like mirrors and a hand go up protectively. Then horse and rider were gone.

‘Chel! He almost seemed real!’

Isaac grinned. ‘He almost certainly is, somewhere.’

‘Uhuh. They say interspace is where all possibilities intersect. I got the feeling he sensed us.’

‘A spirit on the wind, no more.’

Dom stood up unsteadily. The walls still looked as if they had been made of second-hand moonlight.

‘Now there’s an illusion I’ve heard about.’

A red globe the size of a fist drifted easily through the shielded windows. He watched fascinated as it passed through the autochef, part of the main cable conduit, and the floating figure of Ig, who stirred uneasily in his sleep. It disappeared in the general direction of the matrix computer.

It was an interspace interpretation of a star, probably BD+6793°. They were harmless enough, though a red giant or a spitting white dwarf could be unnerving to watch as it passed through your body.

Dom looked round after hearing a scuffle. Hrsh-Hgn was wedged under the autochef, in the foetal position. It was almost an hour before he was persuaded to emerge, blinking with embarrassment.

‘We phnobess are not perhapss so ressilient ass you—’ he began. ‘Intersspace sscares uss. It is a region of uncertainty. Who knowss that we may not ceasse to exist?’

‘You appear to be all here, physically and mentally.’

The phnobe nodded sheepishly.

Isaac closed the maintenance panel on the autochef.

‘It’s a ‘706 model, a quality job,’ he said. ‘I can’t find a printout for the menu, anywhere.’

Dom nodded. ‘I think Great-great-grandfather intended the One Jump as a one-man ship. I should imagine the menu is programmed into it.’

‘Quite. He’d be so busy fleeing from his creditors he’d have no time— Sorry, chief, I think maybe I stepped out of line a little there.’

‘It’s okay. He was a bit of a pirate. But according to the family history he was a strict Sadhimist, too. Simplicity was a virtue. I shouldn’t expect it to run to anything more appetizing than bread and maybe fish.’

The autochef used simple molecule-breeding techniques to duplicate dishes stored as probability equations in its menu. The one aboard One Jump Ahead gurgled after it was switched