The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,4

orders, er, to take you back,’ said the guard. Dom ignored him and stepped aboard his own craft. The guard swallowed, glanced at the stripper and then at Dom, and hurried into the control bubble. By the time he had reached the radio, Dom’s flyer was a hundred metres away, bouncing lightly from wavetop to wavetop before gliding up and over the sea.

Extract from 2001 and All That: an Anecdotal History of Space-Travelling Man, by Charles Sub-Lunar (Fghs-Hrs & Calligna, Terra Novae)

‘Mention should be made of Widdershins and of the Sabalos family, since the two are practically synonymous. Widdershins, a mild world consisting largely of water and very little else, is one of the two planets of CY Aquirii. Its climate is pleasant though damp, its food a monotonous variation on the theme of fish, its people intelligent, hardy and – due to the high ultraviolet content of the sunlight – universally black and bald.

‘The planet was settled in the Year of the Questing Monkey (A.S. 675) by a small party of earth-humans and a smaller colony of phnobes and there, perhaps, pan-Human relations are better than on any other world.

‘John Sabalos – the first of his dynasty – built himself a house by the Wiggly River, looking over the sea towards Great Creaking Marsh. His only skill was luck. He discovered in the giant floating bivalves that dwelt in the deep waters a metre-wide pearl made up largely of crude pilac, which turned out to be one of the growing number of death-immunity drugs. But pilac was found to be without many of the unfortunate drawbacks of many of the other twenty-six. It became the foundation of the family fortunes. John I extended his house, planted an orchard of cherry trees, became the first Chairman when Widdershins adopted Rule by Board of Directors, and died aged 301.

‘His son, John, is considered a wastrel. One example of his wastefulness suffices: he bought a shipload of rare fruits from Third Eye. Most were rotten on arrival. One mould was a strange green slime. By an unlikely combination of circumstances it was found to have curious regenerative properties. Within a year, just when dagon fishing was becoming almost impossible because of the high injury rate among the fishermen, it became a mark of manhood to have at least one limb with the peculiar greenish tint of the cell-duplicating googoo.

‘John II bought the Cheops pyramid from the Tsion subcommittee of the Board of Earth and had it lifted in one piece at an area of waste ground north of his home domes. When he made an offer for Luna, to replace Widdershins’ smaller but still serviceable moon, his young daughter Joan I packed him off to a mansion on the other side of the planet and took over as Managing Director. In her the Sabalos fortunes, hitherto dependent on a smiling fate, found a champion. They doubled within a year. A strict Sadhimist, she executed many reforms including the passage of the Humanity Laws.

‘Her son – she found time for a brief contract with a cousin – was John III, who became a brilliant probability mathematician in those early, exciting days of the art. It has been suggested that this was a peaceful escape from his mother and his wife Vian, a well-connected Earth noblewoman to whom he had been contracted in order to strengthen ties with Earth. He disappeared in strange circumstances just prior to the birth of his second child, the Dom Sabalos of legend. It is understood that he met with some kind of accident in the planet-wide marshes.

‘A body of myth surrounds the young Dom. Many stories relating to him are obviously apocryphal. For example, it is said that on the very date of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board, he …’

The stars were out as Dom reached the jetty which stretched from the home domes far out into the artificial harbour where the feral wind-shells were kept.

Lamps were burning. Some of the early-duty fishermen were already preparing the shells for the night’s fishing; one old woman was deep-frying King cockles on a charcoal stove, and a tinny radio lying on the boards was playing, quite unheeded, an old Earth tune with the refrain, ‘Your Feet’s too Big’.

Dom tied up at the jetty alongside the great silent bulk of a hospital float, and scrambled up the ladder.

As he walked towards the domes he was aware of the silence. It spread out from him like a wake, from