Free Strata by Terry Pratchett Page A

grimaced.
    ‘That is easy,’ he said. ‘There’s an eighty-metre hole in the shell. We passed it last orbit.’
    ‘
What?
’
    ‘You were busy looking at the waterfall and in any case it did not seem particularly important. No doubt the disc-dwellers have space travel.’
    They hovered over the hole twenty minutes later. It was slightly elliptical, and the edges seemed to have been melted. It could have been made by careful jockeying of a ship with a fusion drive, thought Kin. Or a geological laser. Would a Terminus probe have carried one? Probably.
    ‘We’re still way above atmosphere,’ said Marco. ‘I hope the disc-dwellers aren’t sore about people making holes in the sky.’
    ‘We could offer to pay for repairs,’ said Silver.
    Kin wondered if that was a joke. Why would anyone shut themselves away from the universe like this? It didn’t make sense, unless they were completely paranoid. If they weren’t to start with they would be now.
    ‘No,’ she said out loud. ‘They couldn’t have built something like this if they were mad.’
    ‘It looks like Earth, and Earthmen are mad,’Silver pointed out. ‘I suppose humans haven’t been doing a little secret world building?’
    ‘No …’ began Kin, and saw they were both looking at her slyly. ‘I don’t know,’ she finished lamely. ‘It certainly looks like it, I’ll admit.’
    ‘It certainly does,’ said Marco.
    ‘It does too,’ agreed Silver.
    ‘Don’t breathe,’ said Marco. ‘There’s just enough room. We’re going in.’
    The ship dropped through with a few metres to spare, and the proximity detectors shrilling. They were still going mad when Kin looked up and saw a ship speeding towards them.
    It hit in one of the holds, buckling the hull and sending the sky wheeling crazily. Damage doors crashed into place and then the control room lurched again as it fell away from the ship under its own power, a self-contained emergency craft.
    The damage to the ship was nothing to what happened to the attacker. It disintegrated.
    Blue-green shards were spreading across the sky and, as Kin pulled herself up from the cabin floor, the screens were sparkling like glitter dust.
    The inner door of the emergency airlock opened and Marco loped in, tugging at his helmet with two hands. Another one held a laser rifle, salvaged from the other half of the ship. The fourth held a long sliver of glass, gingerly.
    ‘Looks like someone threw a bottle at us,’ said Kin.
    ‘Their aim was remarkable,’ said Marco coldly.‘I can take us back to the rest of the ship, but it is hardly worth it. We’ve got no Elsewhere capability. I can’t build a pinch field. Most of the contents of the hold are floating out there somewhere, and they were our weapons. The auxiliary systems are all working. I could probably fly us home on the ringrim motor alone.’
    ‘Then all is not lost,’ rumbled Silver.
    ‘No, except that it would take about two thousand years. Even this bloody gun is useless. Someone thought it a safe idea to pack the main coil in a separate box.’
    ‘So we land on the disc,’ said Kin flatly.
    ‘I was wondering when someone was going to say that,’ said Marco. ‘It’ll be a one-way trip. This craft won’t lift off again.’
    ‘What hit us?’ said Silver. ‘I thought I saw a ball about ten metres across …’
    ‘I’ve got a horrible feeling I know what it was,’ murmured Kin.
    ‘Yes. It was a weapon,’ said Marco. ‘I admit I find its complete destruction difficult to understand, but the fact remains that we had a stargoing ship. Now we have not. I intend to make one orbit before landing.’
    Silver coughed gently. ‘What’, she said, ‘will we eat?’
    It took several hours to ferry the dumbwaiter across from the lazily spinning ship. At Kin’s insistence they also brought the sargo with Jaloin it, and linked it into the emergency system. The waiter had its own internal power supply – as laid down by regulations. No one wanted to