Reincarnation can only be an improvement- uh.”
His hand flew to his mouth but Rincewind was already pointing a trembling finger at him.
“Reincarnation!” he said excitedly. “So it is true what the mystics say!”
“I’m admitting nothing,” said Scrofula testily. “It was a slip of the tongue. Now-are you going to die willingly or not?”
“No,” said Rincewind.
“Please yourself,” replied the demon. He raised the scythe. It whistled down in quite a professional way, but Rincewind wasn’t there. He was in fact several metres below, and the distance was increasing all the time, because the branch had chosen that moment to snap and send him on his interrupted journey towards the interstellar gulf.
“Come back!” screamed the demon.
Rincewind didn’t answer. He was lying belly down in the rushing air, staring down into the clouds that even now were thinning.
They vanished.
Below, the whole Universe twinkled at Rincewind. There was Great A’Tuin, huge and ponderous and pocked with craters. There was the little Disc moon. There was a distant gleam that could only be the Potent Voyager. And there were all the stars, looking remarkably like powdered diamonds spilled on black velvet, the stars that lured and ultimately called the boldest towards them…
The whole of Creation was waiting for Rincewind to drop in. He did so. There didn’t seem to be any alternative.
ar arced out of the sky and trembled to a halt in the woodwork by the wizard’s ear. He screamed briefly and scrambled up the ladder after the others.
Arrows whistled around them as they came out on to the narrow catwalk that led along the spine of the Potent Voyager. Twoflower led the way, jogging along with what Rincewind considered to be too much suppressed excitement.
Atop the centre of the ship was a large round bronze hatch with hasps around it. The troll and the tourist knelt down and started to work on them.
In the heart of the Potent Voyager fine sand had been trickling into a carefully designed cup for several hours. Now the cup was filled by exactly the right amount to dip down and upset a carefully-balanced weight. The weight swung away, pulling a pin from an intricate little mechanism. A chain began to move. There was a clonk…
“What was that?” said Rincewind urgently. He looked down.
The hail of arrows had stopped. The crowd of priests and soldiers were standing motionless, staring intently at the ship. A small worried man elbowed his way through them and started to shout something.
“What was what?” said Twoflower, busy with a wing-nut.
“I thought I heard something,” said Rincewind.
“Look,” he said, “we’ll threaten to damage the thing if they don’t let us go, right? That’s all we’re going to do, right?”
“Yah,” said Twoflower vaguely. He sat back on his heels. “That’s it,” he said. “It ought to lift off now.”
Several muscular men were swarming up the ladder to the ship. Rincewind recognized the two chelonauts among them. They were carrying swords.
“I-” he began.
The ship lurched. Then, with infinite slowness, it began to move along the rails.
In that moment of black horror Rincewind saw that Twoflower and the troll had managed to pull the hatch up. A metal ladder inside led into the cabin below. The troll disappeared.
“We’ve got to get off,” whispered Rincewind.
Twoflower looked at him, a strange mad smile on his face. “Stars,” said the tourist. “Worlds. The whole damn sky full of worlds. Places no-one will ever see. Except me.” He stepped through the hatchway.
“You’re totally mad,” said Rincewind hoarsely, trying to keep his balance as the ship began to speed up. He turned as one of the chelonauts tried to leap the gap between the Voyager and the tower, landed on the curving flank of the ship, scrabbled for an instant for purchase, failed to find any, and dropped away with a shriek.
The Voyager was travelling quite fast now. Rincewind could see past Twoflower’s head to the sunlit cloud sea and the impossible Rimbow, floating tantalisingly beyond it, beckoning fools to venture too far…
He also saw a gang of men climbing desperately over the lower slopes of the launching ramp and manhandling a large baulk of timber on to the track, in a frantic attempt to derail the ship before it vanished over the Edge. The wheels slammed into it, but the only effect was to make the ship rock, Twoflower to lose his grip on the ladder and fall into the cabin, and the hatch to slam down with the horrible sound of a dozen fiddly little catches snapping into place. Rincewind dived forward and scrabbled at them, whimpering.