The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,31

And often they are an ill-matched pair, one small, dense and actinic, the other huge and red. There is day on the red stars, just occasionally. And there is night on the hemisphere where the bright star does not shine. Dark? There can only be darkness on a sun by contrast.

On this sun the Jokers lived. They ...would have to be like Creapii, with an armoured integument. Certainly the huge rafts, poised on a heat-contour, would have to be protected. Before the Creapii discovered matrix-power their rafts floated on a down draught of oxidized iron, but the Jokers must have been more inventive ...a race that twisted the Chain Stars would have to be inventive.

Power would be no problem. Power enough would be very close indeed … but it was only a theory …

Take men. The Jokers had ceased to build their strange artefacts long before man arose, brother to the apes, but who knew where men had come from? And men were adaptable, or could adapt themselves. There had been a thousand years of colonization. Now the sinistrals of Widdershins had night-black skin, no body hair, a resistance to skin cancers and UV-tolerant eyes. By mere chance, too, half of them were left-handed. On Terra Novae men were stocky and had two hearts. Pineals had more in common with phnobes than other men. The men of Whole Erse lived in a permanent war. Eggplanters were simply strange, and edgy, and vegetarians green in tooth and thorn. And men, it was admitted, were the sort to glory in planet-sized memorials. Weren’t the leading Joker experts men?

Spooners could have been Jokers. As many artefacts were found on cold worlds as hot ones, and the dark side of the sun took on a new meaning in the far orbits. Sidewinders, Tarquins, The Pod, the two Evolutions of Seard … they all could have been the Jokers.

Somewhere was the Jokers World. It had been a legend so long that it was not open to doubt. There, waiting, were the secrets of the Towers, the machines that made the Chain Stars, the frictionless bearing, the meaning of the universe.

The pinpoint junctions cast a pale light along the tunnel. Dom hurried forward, darting around a small wheeled robot that was inspecting a junction box.

They broke into a cavern, and Hrsh-Hgn stared up at the shadowy machine that loomed above them. He nudged Dom and pointed upwards.

‘Do you know what that iss?’ he hissed.

‘It’s a matrix engine,’ said Dom. ‘Warship size. The Bank’s got his own ships, hasn’t he?’

‘I believe not.’

A wheeled robot braked in front of them. It extended a padded arm and pushed at them, ineffectually. They hurried on.

The tunnel led into a cavern off the main hall. It was thronged, as usual. The entrance to the ship park was on the far side.

They split up. Dom dodged among the groups, keeping an eye open for Widdershins robots. Hrsh-Hgn loped stiffly in what passed on Phnobis for a conspiratorial walk.

Dom was halfway across the glittering floor when he glimpsed Joan entering the hall, with three security robots on either side of her. She seemed to dwarf them. She looked determined.

He ducked back and a hand gripped his shoulder. He spun round.

The man was smiling. The smile looked awkward on that face.

He saw the blue robe and the heavy gold band around the neck, and Dom remembered. He tried to back away, but the hand followed him. It was the man at the party.

‘Please don’t be afraid.’ Dom squirmed under the grip. There was a flurry and the hand flew off his shoulder, Ig’s needle-sharp teeth buried in a finger. But the man did not scream, although his faced paled. Dom stepped back into the embrace of a robot.

He took off. Strictly speaking, flying within the bounds of the Bank was illegal. He just hoped the Bank would not interfere.

The sandals were built for one, though they could operate in strong gravity fields. Below them two other robots were staring vacantly upwards, and across the floor two more had Hrsh-Hgn cornered.

There was an eerie calmness about the vertical flight. The roar of the crowd dropped away, leaving only the underlying thunder of the Bank. He looked into the robot’s multifaceted eyes, which mirrored the corona effects on the surrounding pillars.

‘You’re a Class Two, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘That is so, sir,’ said the robot.

‘Are you equipped with any motivation towards personal safety?’

‘No, sir.’ The robot glanced down. ‘Unfortunately.’

Dom kicked his heels together and went into a