Windows CE - The Ultimate Companion/ROMMAN_CE.iso/Files/Games/Frotz CE Games/JAWGAM.Z5

Z-code for Z-machine | 1995-11-28 | 262KB | 1,790 lines

Resident data ends at bc28, program starts at bc28, file ends at 3fff0

Starting analysis pass at address bc26

End of analysis pass, low address = bc28, high address = 3227c


[Start of text]

S001: "JIGSAW"
S002: "
An Interactive History
Copyright (c) 1995 by Graham Nelson
"
S003: "951024"
S004: "6/1"
S005: "a"
S006: "You can't go that way."
S007: "the"
S008: "the"
S009: "the"
S010: "the"
S011: "the"
S012: "the"
S013: "the"
S014: "the"
S015: "the"
S016: "the"
S017: "the"
S018: "the"
S019: "Darkness"
S020: "It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing."
S021: "As good-looking as ever."
S022: "Nameless item"
S023: "your former self"
S024: "keys"
S025: "newspapers"
S026: "It looks oddly like a rucksack you once took with you to Paris on
holiday, but perhaps all rucksacks look that way."
S027: "Discarded beside the old box is an empty rucksack."
S028: "(chapter name)"
S029: "The sharp mountain walls to west and north meet here at a basalt
pinnacle, on which a perfectly-cut cube two yards across is balanced."
S030: "A sharp, steep mountain wall rises to the north. Clouds gather and part
with furious speed on the crags above."
S031: "A slowly-rotating, holographic projection hangs in mid-air beneath the
churning clouds, in the shape of a torus."
S032: "The hologram is animated, and constantly changes, as if always saying
its previous picture was wrong but this one is right."
S033: "A sharp, steep mountain wall rises to the north, and scree rattles down
with each gust of wind, jagged as flint."
S034: "A small avalanche of stones of every size. Sooner or later, a boulder
will get you!"
S035: "an"
S036: "The oval rock which knocked you down is now in a more gravitationally
stable state, i.e., on the ground."
S037: "Oh, only the size of your hand, but it came within a foot of killing
you."
S038: "The sharp mountain walls to east and north meet here at a basalt
pinnacle, on which a perfectly-cut dodecahedron two yards across is balanced."
S039: "A violently rapid glacier-milk river plunges down the western rock face
into a canal just to the south, which flows away east."
S040: "Open field north of the canal, which opens out here to a steel-grey
river and then flows under the eastern corner of the golden Pyramid. In the
centre of the northwest face is a gleaming doorway."
S041: "You know. Sharp pointy beak, insistent manner."
S042: "A tree-trunk making a log bridge spans the glacial canal."
S043: "It spans the canal, giving you another way across."
S044: "Open field north of a slow, sludgy Ash River, which flows out of the
west corner of the golden Pyramid. In the centre of the northeast face is a
gleaming doorway."
S045: "Here, the eastern rock face meets the Ash River just to the south."
S046: "Cut into the rock face is a square-cut doorway, radiating cold and open
only onto blackness. Above it is an adamantine plaque, bearing the simple word
"TOLL" and a graph."
S047: "The vertical axis of the graph runs from 0 to 110 M, whatever M is; the
horizontal axis, from 0 to 100 Y. Plotted on the graph is a rising curve,
climbing slowly to M=20 at Y=20, then to M=40 at Y=40, and then a sudden rise
to M=80 by Y=50: after that the curve gradually rises to M=110."
S048: "The western rock face meets the glacier-milk canal just to the north."
S049: "A Chinese Pagoda, or pavilion, is placed serenely on this bank, its
doorway open."
S050: "The smoking remains of a Chinese pagoda are testament to vandalism
here."
S051: "A single, large room fills the Pagoda, light and pleasant."
S052: "The works of a colossal number of unnamed artists."
S053: "A fine (though empty) wicker cage rests among a display of 1930s Chinese
art."
S054: "Open field south of the canal, which opens out here to a steel-grey
river and then flows under the western corner of the golden Pyramid. In the
centre of the southwest face is a gleaming doorway."
S055: "Open field south of a slow, sludgy Ash River, which flows out of the
east corner of the golden Pyramid. In the centre of the southeast face is a
gleaming doorway."
S056: "To the north, the Ash River, sick with grey sludge, drains into a
culvert in the sheer mountain wall which runs along the eastern border of the
Land."
S057: "The steep mountain wall to the south is streaked here with foul white
deposits, and tiny broken bones are scattered about where you stand."
S058: "It's a three foot black rod with a rusty star on an end."
S059: "A three foot black rod with a rusty star on one end lies among the
bones, as though dropped by some prehistoric figure."
S060: "A crystal bridge now spans the Ash River."
S061: "It spans the Ash River, thereby providing you a way across."
S062: "The southern mountain wall is carved here with a mass of faces, each on
top of another: glaring, happy, bemused, tragic."
S063: "The faces are carved from remorselessly tough stone."
S064: "At the top of the pile, your own face stares out impassively."
S065: "The sharp mountain walls to east and south meet here at a basalt
pinnacle, on which a perfectly-cut octahedron two yards across is balanced."
S066: "The glacier milk is very cold, and although silted with the clay of the
White Mountains is unpolluted."
S067: "The Ash River is a warm, polluted sludge of grey ashes, carried east by
the current."
S068: "The golden Pyramid is about the size of the one in Century Park."
S069: "There's a burned patch of earth here, where the grenade blew up."
S070: "A hand grenade, like a metal goose egg, rolls about at the foot of the
Toll Gate like a fallen leaf caught in the breeze."
S071: "acquiring the grenade"
S072: "There's nothing left to enter."
S073: "A beautiful, furry, eight-eyed spider, a good two feet across from leg
to leg."
S074: "Above the culvert, waiting on a tough-looking web, is a two-foot furry
spider."
S075: "A spider's web of tough silken strands."
S076: "southwest"
S077: "southeast"
S078: "some"
S079: "As the senior primate present, you cast a dignified eye over your
ancestors."
S080: "Cut into what seems a perfect polyhedron, about an inch across."
S081: "an"
S082: "an"
S083: "The glacier-milk canal is now so broad and teeming that you can't cross
it on foot."
S084: "The Ash River is now so broad and vile that you can't cross it on foot."
S085: "The Pyramid is sealed up with a smooth golden wall, just inside the
doorway."
S086: "Thick, cloudy mist covers the Land here, suspended in the air like milk
in water."
S087: "You begin to lose your footing in that direction, and pull back."
S088: "The glow seems to come from a golden Pyramid."
S089: "a cloud of"
S090: "There is a cloud of disturbed air here, formed of currents and breezes."
S091: "Insubstantial and airy."
S092: "An ink-black ball hangs in midair, large enough to consume you whole."
S093: "A stable ink-black ball hanging in midair, in which nothing can be
seen."
S094: "You stand in absolute blackness, as if in space, but a space without
stars. You can imagine the six spatial directions, but although there seems to
be light and you can see your arms and possessions, there is nothing else. All
you can hear is your own breathing."
S095: "Fleetingly you glimpse an enormous table, but then the inky blackness
returns."
S096: "entering the Land"
S097: "You follow what you think is that direction for a while, but nothing
changes."
S098: "corner pieces"
S099: "centre pieces"
S100: "an"
S101: "edge pieces"
S102: "  Mould  "
S103: "a growth of mould in a Petri dish"
S104: "And 1% Luck"
S105: "Into the Dark"
S106: "  Park   "
S107: "parklands with wrought iron gates"
S108: "  Park   "
S109: "parklands strobed by laser light"
S110: "Somebody (and you have a pretty good idea who) seems to have dropped, of
all things, a jigsaw piece here."
S111: "  Barge  "
S112: "a shipping barge in a canal"
S113: "Out of the East"
S114: " Record  "
S115: "a 33 r.p.m. vinyl long-playing record"
S116: "Wish You Were Here"
S117: "  Wall   "
S118: "a wall covered with graffiti"
S119: "Old Cartridge Cases"
S120: " Invalid "
S121: "a moustachioed invalid in bed"
S122: "Temps Perdu"
S123: "  Glass  "
S124: "a cocktail in a glass, with tonic and ice"
S125: "Icy Calm"
S126: "  Snow   "
S127: "white folds of snow"
S128: "In The Wilderness"
S129: "  Moon   "
S130: "the full moon in a blue sky"
S131: "The High Point"
S132: "Christabel, My Dear"
S133: "  Lady   "
S134: "a lady wearing a crinoline dress"
S135: "creased edge piece"
S136: "a"
S137: "Banburismus"
S138: " Fields  "
S139: "fields of cabbages"
S140: "  Dunes  "
S141: "rolling, low sand dunes"
S142: "59 Seconds, 852 Feet"
S143: "  Plane  "
S144: "a silver USAF-marked plane"
S145: "The Ghost of the B-29"
S146: "Carriage "
S147: "a horse-drawn state carriage"
S148: "Lying about on the floor by the table is a centre jigsaw piece."
S149: "Ricochet"
S150: "  Train  "
S151: "a racing steam train"
S152: "No Compromise"
S153: "Black's"
S154: "The detector has three golden ball-bearings extended on arms from a
gimbal-mounting. It is not obvious how to activate it."
S155: "A square spiral staircase runs up and down between two floors, opening
out here at a landing with a noticeboard. Some way below the windows are
nondescript houses and a quiet city street."
S156: "It would be all too easy to get lost in the maze of hospital, and anyway
you have the feeling that history lies nearby."
S157: "This is the third floor of a tower. A few motor cars, big black upright
ones, run gracefully through Praed Street below, but horse-drawn carriages
still weave between them."
S158: "Miscellaneous circulars and memos are pinned to the board, all typed on
the headed notepaper of St Mary's Hospital School of Medicine, London
University. The most recent, still white, notices are dated in August and
September 1928."
S159: "   "A. Fleming
Hunterian Professor""
S160: "The only exit is back east."
S161: "bringing mould to attention"
S162: "forty or fifty"
S163: "Scattered over a work-bench are forty or fifty Petri dishes."
S164: "On the bench are sealed flat glass dishes about three inches across,
filled with agar jelly, a substance made of seaweed used for growing cultures
of bacteria. Usually these are just dumped in a lysol bath for a while to kill
off anything dangerous inside, and then washed up to be reused. There are so
many dishes that the surface of the desk is hardly visible."
S165: "Mounted on a grey board, it certifies Alexander Fleming's distinguished
record as a surgeon in the Great War."
S166: "One mouldy dish in particular has surfaced."
S167: "It seems to have been contaminated by a spore of mould, because a
circular colony of mould has grown across the surface of the agar.
Interestingly, near the edge of the mould, the bacteria seem to have gone,
leaving only a faint ghost image."
S168: "A heavy trunk-suitcase rests on the linoleum floor here."
S169: "A solid slab of a trunk, it bears chalk-marks suggesting that its owner
has just returned from the Continent."
S170: " "C. J. LaTouche
     Mycology""
S171: "A crowded mycological laboratory, full of moulds and the means to grow
them: bullocks' hearts in jars, sterilisers, centrifuges, vats of agar medium.
On one wall is a diagram of the lungs, and blackboards full of numbers make
frequent reference to Asthma.

The main door leads back out east; to the north is a lab assistant's office."
S172: "several"
S173: "White mice scurry about in cages along one wall."
S174: "They have paper nests, and water in bowls."
S175: "The mice have escaped from the cages."
S176: "the caged"
S177: "They have paper nests, and water in bowls."
S178: "The small annexe where lab assistants prepare solutions, grow moulds and
wash dishes used in the experiments. It is lined with bell jars and demijohns,
all neatly labelled in flowing black handwriting. The laboratory lies to the
south."
S179: "One particular bell jar catches your eye: it's full of spores of mould,
and labelled "Penicillium"."
S180: "Closer examination reveals that the top has been slightly loosened, and
the seal broken."
S181: "the"
S182: ""Late again, I see! I calculate you're going to be a fortnight later
than me, so when you get this note I won't be around. Anyway, we've got to stop
the old boy from making such a mess of discovering penicillin. Someone else is
bound to make a better job of it. I've already contaminated his lab with mould,
which ought to ruin his experiments for a while. Keep an eye on the old boy
anyway, just in case. -- B."

(Typed badly on St Mary's notepaper, with a hospital typewriter.)"
S183: "A quiet London street with low brick walls and a zebra crossing: from
time to time people stroll by in Sixties clothes. A tiled road-name spells out
"Abbey Road"."
S184: "Black grabs your arm. "No, this is the place, I'm sure of it!""
S185: "Not far from where you stand, a window of one of the buildings is
slightly ajar."
S186: "Smoked glass, or perhaps just dirty."
S187: "It's just a guess, but might their names perhaps be John, Paul, George
and Ringo?"
S188: "The window is shut tight."
S189: "Smoked glass, or perhaps just dirty."
S190: "Black looks remarkably cool and self-possessed, exactly the way you
haven't felt for quite some time."
S191: "Black leans against a wall beside the window, obviously waiting for
something."
S192: "Why bother?"
S193: "shutting up Black"
S194: "Why bother?"
S195: "Willkommen in Berlin. (Almost the only words of German you understand.)
You recognise it from spy films, by a tall tower on the horizon which looks
like a golf ball impaled on a spike - some kind of television mast? The streets
are drab in the dawn light, giving them a dirty, unfinished look.

This one is a broad, extremely straight avenue with four rows of trees which
are uniform enough to have been planted all at once, running east-west."
S196: "Once the Champs-Elysees of Berlin, this is a broad, infinitely sad
boulevard between long rows of old cuboidal buildings, reconstructed after the
terrible bombings of 1945. But perhaps all streets are sad at dawn, when
nothing is open: anyway, a more pressing concern is that up ahead to the east,
early morning commuters are having their papers routinely checked by yawning
policemen."
S197: "Into the Soviet Embassy?  Perhaps not."
S198: "There's no entrance to the Underground here, as that connects regions of
West Berlin."
S199: "Slipping back west seems infinitely preferable to having one's
credentials examined, surely?"
S200: "In the West, a hoarding like this would be advertising cigarettes. Here
it seems to be announcing some kind of 1989 Congress, and gives some prominence
to an official portrait of Erich Honecker."
S201: "A hoarding catches your eye."
S202: "A street-cleaner approaches your car window and offers to do the
windows, for a small token of your appreciation."
S203: "He has the distinctive smell of the streets about him."
S204: "Cunningly, Black seems to have had this note delivered by the most
indirect of means.

"Vital to keep Wall intact till 91, will explain later but all sorted out. See
you at Charlie.""
S205: "...but not very. About a hundred yards west is the triumphal arch, its
green-blue copper roof topped with what looks like a charioteer carrying a
flag. This is as close as you can get: the tree-lined square around it is empty
but for discreet guard-posts. No traffic passes beneath any longer, for no
traffic crosses the Wall.

Side streets run north and south, along the frontier of East Berlin."
S206: "You are not the first to entertain this hopeless idea."
S207: "Beyond the wall is the Street of the 17th of June, named by the West
Berliners after the tragedy of the Eastern uprising of 1953: when the West
stood by and did nothing. It is absolutely inaccessible.

Beyond that, the Russian War Memorial, an island trapped in the British Sector,
to the twenty million Russian dead of WW2."
S208: "This alley peters out further to the north, and is quite narrow here,
between the eastern building and the first fence of the wall to the west.
Beyond the fence, hares roam the hundred yard no-man's-land up to the Wall
proper."
S209: "Presumably, the barbed-wire fence, the land-mines, the 285 watchtowers,
the automatic machine-gun nests, the guard dogs and the Kalashnikov-armed Vopos
are intended as some kind of deterrent."
S210: "This is where the alley-path ends: it continues into the old French
Sector, but the bridge across the fifty-yard wide Spree River has been removed
and there's no way across."
S211: "The Wall and the river are in the way."
S212: "This spur of a path ends here, between the wall, the river and the
bricked-up housing blocks which once spanned the border."
S213: "tying the barge-rope"
S214: "Perhaps once a barge's tow-rope: though there are no barges here any
more."
S215: "Perhaps the most dangerous urban area in Europe. For the moment the
Vopos haven't seen you, but escapes are very rare. Even East Germany, over the
barbed-wire fence, looks a haven of safety."
S216: "Into the barbed-wire fence?"
S217: "Fifty yards from the East. Fifty yards from the West. Five seconds from
death. A hare looks up briefly, wondering what kind of animal you are."
S218: "It looks bewildered. But not as bewildered as you."
S219: "Here it is. The Berlin Wall. You're only a yard from the West, but what
a yard it is. Incredibly, you've held out this long, but here the concrete
extends eleven feet tall above you."
S220: "Into a solid wall?"
S221: "Forboding, tall, in your way, concrete, eleven feet high. Eleven feet
high!

There's no graffiti. That's all on the other face."
S222: "There is a way across, to the east."
S223: "Not a hope."
S224: "This block would probably have been demolished, if engineering works
like the Wall didn't always take priority. The door hangs open, half-shattered,
and masonry is scattered across the floor. Dangerous-looking stairs climb the
shell of the walls."
S225: "The way out to the street is west."
S226: "Almost anything could be underneath."
S227: "This cellar is the exit point of one of the makeshift, briefly-used
tunnels cut by "Travel Bureau Incorporated", a bunch of West Berlin university
students who risk their lives for this elaborate cause. The unguarded tunnel
runs west into darkness. A break in the masonry, which probably goes back to
the war, opens a cleft to the southwest.

You feel terribly nervous here. If you should be caught..."
S228: "The conduit is bricked up on all sides."
S229: "This conduit, once a service tunnel of the underground railway, is
bricked up on all sides and probably has been since 1961: if it weren't for the
cleft northeast, the only access would be by the manhole up in the ceiling at
the western end. Even the great trunks of telephone cables come in through one
cement wall and out by another."
S230: "There are a great many wires in the thick trunks."
S231: "The roof is mostly missing."
S232: "There's almost no floor left."
S233: "The balcony isn't altogether disused, though. A Berliner rests here."
S234: "This kind of Berliner is a doughnut (a local delicacy), though Kennedy's
famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech probably meant the other kind.

It looks rather succulent for Eastern produce (but that's probably just your
prejudices showing)."
S235: "A basket-weave purse has been half-concealed from view."
S236: "Slightly thick for a door-key, otherwise quite normal, and stamped with
a Cyrillic letter you can't read."
S237: "You have no idea how much 50 Ost-marks is worth. (But then, neither does
the German Democratic Republic which issued it.)"
S238: "One of the 13 border crossings, Checkpoint Charlie is rather
unimpressive to look at. A broad boulevard four lanes wide simply extends south
across a gap in the Wall: there is no cover or shelter of any kind. Uniformed
police shuffle about at each end, and here and there is the glint of gun-metal.
Far to the south is a blockhouse."
S239: "You can't bear to head further east into the heart of East Germany."
S240: "The West German police impose no restrictions, and are relaxed but
vigilant. Behind them is, of all things, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, though
nothing about this place is gone. Narrow, gaudy shops begin at once, as if it
were a perfectly ordinary street.

You're pretty sure you recognise Black in the queue of Westerners presenting
papers to get through... The others are mainly Turkish kids who'll smuggle back
cigarettes from the subsidised Intershop, and old women visiting exiled
children."
S241: "The Vopo attending you, a rather sympathetic-looking young man, waits
patiently for the production of your papers."
S242: "One of the Volkspolizisten who monitor the border, this young man has a
pleasant face and an easy, casual manner."
S243: "Black stands stranded on the far side of the Checkpoint, and your eyes
meet hopelessly."
S244: "A north-south corridor through East Berlin: there's really little else
to say about it, with the buildings closed up and the dawn gleaming dully off
the iron window-frames."
S245: "The road runs north-south."
S246: "A fairly-new white car, seemingly abandoned. Now this is not a
fashionable vehicle to a Westerner. BMW and Mercedes-Benz would be ashamed of
the styling, the oversized back bumper, the great sprouts on either side of the
engine, the crude finish of the chassis. But it works."
S247: "The Skoda is parked here, its engine running."
S248: "A white Skoda is parked here."
S249: "paralysing East Berlin's phones"
S250: "driving the Skoda"
S251: "
   Century Park Invites You To...
   The Party of the Century!

   Wear White and Bring a Sense of Hope for the Future!"
S252: "At one side of the great Park, on a gravel path which runs west to
northeast beside poplar trees. Crowds of celebrants are enjoying themselves to
the north, having abandoned the canvas marquee east."
S253: "But, that way lies the party. The crowd, the miasma of celebration for
something you never wanted to celebrate in the first place. You know you'll
succumb in the end, but for now you can't bear the idea."
S254: "There are only trees and railings that way."
S255: "The poplars are unclimbable."
S256: "The path's level."
S257: "There is no obvious exit from the Park."
S258: "Everybody else seems to be having a good time. Why not you?"
S259: "Hours ago, this was a popular beer tent; long since, the drink ran out
and the party moved on, leaving just canvas walls and bare benches."
S260: "The heavy canvas is in the way and, although there's clearly something
bulky stacked up behind the southern side, you can only go back west."
S261: "Sticking out of an unpleasant baked potato is a sparkler, still fizzing
away."
S262: "It is trademarked "Eterno" and waggishly claims it will see the century
out."
S263: "There are many places better not visited tonight, and chief among them
is this one, despite a certain fin de siecle decadence. It's a crevice behind
the beer tent, between dense trees and the rear wall of the Park. The most
politely describable use to which it has been put is as a dump for old plastic
crates of beer bottles."
S264: "That way's even worse. Fresh air may be found to the northwest."
S265: "An old tea-chest of a box, open-topped, the variety which once swung
ashore on ropes in East India Docks in the great Victorian heyday. Branded on
one side is "A.4"."
S266: "Mingled amongst the beer crates is a wooden packing box, broached at the
top."
S267: "The label on the tag is in some east European language."
S268: "A highly curious device, like a wood-mounted gimballed compass, with
dials and swinging arrows, inscribed "tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in
illis". The main feature is a white button."
S269: "Sitting on the jigsaw table, evidently left for you by Black, is the
curious device."
S270: "A few remains of fences and a crumbling wall are all that divides the
overgrown edge of the Park from this long-neglected churchyard, serene and
dappled with blacks and greens. Ivy and brambles curl their slow arms around
the stones, and the door of the Victorian red-brick chapel (to the east) has
gone altogether."
S271: "A night-jar flutters from perch to perch along an old iron fence."
S272: "A bird akin to the swift."
S273: "An odour compounded of desiccated, pressed flowers, incense and wax
makes you feel somehow rested in this modest and now deconsecrated chapel. The
old brass fittings and altar have been stripped, and the vestry to the east is
heaped with debris."
S274: "There is only one porch, to the west. The vestry lies east."
S275: "Written around the base, in large Roman letters, is: "Grad Kaldecki,
1917-95: Inventor, Sculptor, Philanthropist", and his motto: "felix qui potuit
rerum cognoscere causas"."
S276: "In pride of place is a shocking modern-art statue of a man, and it is a
kind of collage. He has an air-raid warden's helmet, a sickle in one hand, a
soldering iron in the other: an old-fashioned cavalry officer's tunic and a
pair of miner's trousers, then Indian sandals."
S277: "The vestry once held surplices. Today, it holds a surplus. Debris,
broken furniture, blown-in leaves, panes of dusty glass and mildewed cloth, all
unwanted."
S278: "It's a dead end."
S279: "There's even an old Victorian piano stool, but no sign of a piano."
S280: "The piano stool is here."
S281: "There's a letter E scratched on one side. Today it would be marked 2B,
as it's a medium soft charcoal pencil, but it looks very old."
S282: "On the floor, underneath where the stool used to be, is a pencil."
S283: "An old child's sketch book, pages of cartridge paper sewn up in cloth
binding. On the front, in faded copper-plate handwriting, is written "Emily's
Animals Book"."
S284: "A corner of the Park, beside copses of trees and some fencing. Standing
about here is the outdoor equivalent to always being in the kitchen at
parties."
S285: "This is the corner of the park. A path runs back east."
S286: "the"
S287: "A crazy, pyramid-like construction, the height of a small tree, but wide
at the base. Walking around it, you see no obvious beginning or end."
S288: "The pyramidal Monument, built by the (very eccentric) Hungarian who laid
out the park, dominates this corner. It isn't very pleasing to the eye.
Although the party's organisers planned to bounce flashy lasers off the tip,
somehow they don't seem to have got round to it."
S289: "The Monument dominates this corner, yet only you seem to have noticed
the charred and saw-toothed doorway open in one side."
S290: "The anticipated good-view-of-the-party is spoiled somewhat by the
perilous nature of the footing - on a sharp triangular wedge of metal. "exegi
monumentum aere perennius," says an inscription. Let's hope so."
S291: "There is no obvious way in."
S292: "Made of very thin fuse wire, the kind which would practically melt on a
hot day, which seems highly inappropriate for a lightning conductor."
S293: "Poking out of the top of the monument is a rickety lightning-conductor."
S294: "opening the monument"
S295: "the"
S296: "Stranger than ever when seen from up here."
S297: "A short metal corridor running along the inside of one wall of the
pyramid, and sloping slightly inward. The scene out through the south entrance
is perfectly, even alarmingly still. The far end turns and opens inside to the
east."
S298: "The corridor enters from the south, and exits to the east."
S299: "Some kind of invisible wall blocks the doorway. Through it you can see
absolute stillness, smoke hanging rigid as if photographed."
S300: "The display case is open."
S301: "Mounted on the inner wall is a glass display case."
S302: "A beautiful matchstick and papier-mache model of how the Park might have
looked in the last century, mounted on hard grey board."
S303: "This is a tiny tetrahedral annexe of a room, whose only clear feature is
a broad black disc embedded in the floor."
S304: "There's only one entrance, northwest."
S305: "The disc is jet black and about six feet in diameter. Around the
circumference is inscribed "rari nantes in gurgite vasto"."
S306: "The only exits are out west to the narrow corridor, and southeast via a
low doorway."
S307: "the"
S308: "A heavy old table, high and wide over a doubtless dusty floor, with fine
inlaid marquetry decoration. On one side is a brass plaque, declaring it to be
"by Mr Gm. Nelson, begun at the Holywell Stables, MCMXCIII; completed at the
Waynflete and Summertown, MCMVC"."
S309: "revealing the board"
S310: "the"
S311: "the"
S312: "lighting the board"
S313: "A quiet, narrow and gloomy Parisian street, running south downhill to
the Seine and north uphill to the Avenue Kleber. It is the dead of night,
though the air is warm. Despite the seedy look, the brass name-plates on the
door belong to the minor nobility."
S314: "The street runs north-south."
S315: "Inexplicably, your attention is drawn to the closed door of number 44."
S316: "The door of number 44 stands ajar."
S317: "This is one of the avenues meeting at the Arc de Triomphe, and at this
time of night carriages still hurtle down the cobbles, their sprung wheels
sparking off the stone, horses steaming in the warm air."
S318: "Paris is like a warren from here. Best not to stray too far from the Rue
Hamelin."
S319: "an edition of"
S320: ""Le Figaro" for May 18th, 1922. In the studied, literary style of French
newspapers, it carries critiques of Poincare's hard-line policy on German
reparations, and there is a frisson of excitement over the serialisation of the
latest volume of "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu"."
S321: "A slightly damp "Le Figaro" lies in the gutter, occasionally puffed up
by wind."
S322: "Liqueur impregnated with wormwood (prohibited these days, of course)."
S323: "A green flask of absinthe sits abandoned on a doorstep."
S324: "Black is also here, wearing that mocking smile, standing elegantly by
the side of the Louis XIV dance floor."
S325: "Dressed in black, for a ball."
S326: "A hazy, purple vision of a fashionable soiree, where ladies sweep by in
jewelled dresses and gentlemen stand puffing cigars, their top hats resting by
their feet. A few musicians are ploughing through Debussy's string quartet, and
the walls contain sculpture and impressionist paintings, so it must be very
avant-garde."
S327: "You are barely able to stand."
S328: "dancing with Black"
S329: "You are in a warren of twisty little Parisian streets, all alike, which
strike out in all directions."
S330: "Paris in the spring time... the blossom scent on the trees, the last
strollers along the banks to the west and in the Trocadero across the river,
the great skeletal A of the Eiffel Tower... You inhale the scents of night, and
sneeze with hay fever."
S331: "You are overcome with asthmatic coughing, and find that you've made no
progress."
S332: "Liberte -- Egalite -- Fraternite."
S333: "A small coin lies among the fallen blossom."
S334: "A claustrophobic apartment, almost bare of furniture, but piled with
heaps of paper, typescripts, manuscripts, cuttings from newspapers, scribbled
notes and old coffee bowls. There is a brass fur-topped bed beside a bamboo
table, and a single electric ring surrounded by milk-stains. The windows are
jammed shut and the air is almost fetid."
S335: "A handwritten card invitation to a party, in flowing French, full of the
names of great French families. There seems to be some reference to a supper
party at which M. Proust (to whom the invitation is addressed) is to meet
Stravinsky, Diaghilev and James Joyce."
S336: "A party invitation is propped up beside the electric ring."
S337: "It abounds with secondary clauses, circular sentences, aesthetic asides
and references to Time. This is the culminating passage of a million and a
quarter words: of deep significance. It'd be a shame to lose it."
S338: "One of M. Proust's paperoles has somehow got curled up around the
pendulum of the grandfather clock."
S339: "regaining "Le Temps Retrouve""
S340: "A grey square tea tray is perched on the coffee table, amongst the
debris."
S341: "It's hard to make out under all that literary rubbish."
S342: "A dark, high-ceilinged entrance foyer, adding to the seedy atmosphere of
gloom. A broad staircase is barred by locked doors, but there is a metal
cage-lift shaft. On one side is a glass window to the concierge's office, which
is dark and silent. A door to the west leads out to the street."
S343: "The staircase is inaccessible."
S344: "It is unclear how the lift can be worked."
S345: "The cage lift stands open at this floor."
S346: "A handsome boy of perhaps seventeen, who attends the lift."
S347: "A handsome uniformed boy politely does not stare at you."
S348: "A carpeted landing, bare and uninteresting."
S349: "A carpeted landing, bare and uninteresting except that the door in the
east wall is ajar."
S350: "This landing has rich yellow-red carpets."
S351: "You are seven or eight years old, and you have squirreled yourself away
to a secret corridor behind the hall to see the Clock. The ceiling is far
above, the windows are too high for you, the aroma of school dinners drifts in
from the kitchens."
S352: "You seem to be rooted to the spot."
S353: "You are always fascinated by the Clock, which works the school bell: the
cogs, the so-slow mechanism, the pendulum."
S354: "The Clock stands before you, huge and lustrous. The pendulum is still:
surrounding it, lead counter-weights hang like fir-cones. It is as if the
school day will never end, and no bell will sound."
S355: "In other words, a rather dark and gloomy tea-shop beside the river, to
which none of the lustre of Paris has attached. The river bank runs east."
S356: "Further into this quarter would be unwise at this time of night."
S357: "A tall grandfather clock stands immobile behind the counter."
S358: "It seems to have stopped."
S359: "The paperole has fluttered to the floor, dislodged by the pendulum of
the clock."
S360: "In other words, an elegant and zestful tea-shop beside the river,
romantic in the moonlight. The river bank invites you to stroll back east."
S361: "It's running smoothly."
S362: "Behind the counter, a tall grandfather clock smoothly keeps time."
S363: "In one corner is a bowl of jasmine tea nobody seems to have noticed."
S364: "Intriguing patterns swirl in the tea."
S365: "A stale madeleine completes the shambles."
S366: "A madeleine is a small rich shell-shaped cake, probably named after
Madeleine Paulmier, the 19th century French cook."
S367: "You stand on the brow of the largest of the four Kill Devil Hills, sand
dunes on the North Carolina coastline. A few miles due north is the tiny
village of Kitty Hawk, and just below you down the slope is some kind of wooden
railing.

It's a cold, windy day, and the great expanse of the Atlantic (to the east, of
course) is combed by the waves swept back."
S368: "You could lose yourself in the sand dunes for hours, but that would be
exhausting and pointless."
S369: "A paper dart lies nose down in the sand, ruffling in the wind."
S370: "Newsprint folded up into a crude paper dart, the kind which stalls
rather than glides."
S371: "The December 12th, 1903, edition, which is laceratingly cruel about the
second hopeless failure of Dr Langley's so-called flying machine "Aerodrome",
which crashed into a canal yards from take-off despite all the money the
Smithsonian and the U.S. Government could put in. Dr Langley, it seems, blames
his $50000 launching ramp and is confident the machine is sound. The "Herald"
begs to differ."
S372: "On the shallower northern slopes of Big Kill Devil Hill, thirty yards or
so to the west of a wooden hut."
S373: "A single wooden rail runs along the ground and slightly downhill to the
north for some sixty feet or so."
S374: "A few dollars' worth of wood, that's all; doesn't look like much."
S375: "A small crowd of spectators and witnesses from Kitty Hawk has gathered
here and is looking on with some interest. They have no objection to your
joining their number."
S376: "Five men, two boys and a dog, to be exact. All locals, called by the
flag that's flying from the hut."
S377: "The spectators are shouting and cheering."
S378: "scheduling aviation"
S379: "The Wright brothers are short, well-proportioned men of infinite
patience. They wear formal dress (with starched collars) on every conceivable
occasion, this one included."
S380: "Orville is adjusting the engine."
S381: "Wilbur is tightening the wire-pulls to the wing warping."
S382: "A valley among the dunes. A bicycle track runs north for some way in the
direction of Kitty Hawk, rising to the south. The hills are as lifeless as the
moon; spars of old trees, broken by frequent storms, break surface here and
there; pools of water have frozen in the sand; cold wind comes and goes in
gusts."
S383: "West Hill is not a very exciting place."
S384: "Looking north, there's nothing but miles of sand-bank and bicycle tracks
to Kitty Hawk. South, the ground falls to the valley, and east to the beach."
S385: "West Hill is not a very exciting place."
S386: "Kitty Hawk is four miles away!"
S387: "Down at sea level, the sand is wet and an effort to wade through. The
slope rises to the west, where a path winds up to a wooden hut. The vast ocean
is choppy and boatless. Regular gusts of wind blow up great waves."
S388: "The water looks cold, too."
S389: "A bottle, containing a rolled-up message, bobs away out on the waves,
not far from the shore."
S390: "Just a glass bottle (an old Coke bottle, of the 1950s variety, oddly)
with a rolled (therefore unreadable from here) message inside."
S391: "A one-storey wooden hut, with a tacked-down tar pitched roof, about
twelve yards by five, serves here as a hangar. The western wall has been opened
up like a garage door and stands on three stilts. A bicycle track runs down the
dune northwest, and footsteps in the sand trail away east to the beach, but the
hangar really faces the rails to the west. A signal flag is flying."
S392: "A Richard's anemometer lies among coffee mugs on a table on the "porch"
of the hangar."
S393: "A lump of corn bread is all that remains of breakfast."
S394: "Inside, the hangar is the machine shop of two highly competent amateur
engineers, tidily kept but stacked with all manner of provisions: timber,
canvas, saws and rasps, cement, small engine parts, chain, ropes. The walls are
lined with pinned-up designs and calculations on the back of old brown wrapping
paper. There's a small kitchen area east, and a ladder leads up to a small
loft."
S395: "A mandolin depends from a nail."
S396: "On the back of this rather fine American guitar, the initial O. is
inlaid."
S397: "A fire burns in the improvised heater here, made from an old carbide
can, so it's actually quite pleasantly warm in here."
S398: "To the brothers' own ingenious design. The heater has air holes for
ventilation, stove pipes and metal legs, with a square off-white metal lid on
top. Inside, a fire burns away."
S399: "The air holes are hand-drilled, and only about a half-inch in diameter."
S400: "plugging the heater"
S401: "The neatness extends to this very well-equipped kitchen area, where pans
of all sizes hang from hooks, the whole wall shelved with long lines of cans
and packets in perfect order. The hut runs west and then out onto the cold
daylight."
S402: "A mouse stops for a moment, inspecting the mousetrap."
S403: "There's a crude second floor rigged up in the eaves of the hut, where a
couple of camp-beds are laid out. A ladder runs back down."
S404: "Who would guess these would become a fashionable craze across the World
in just ten years' time?"
S405: "A flat green cap hangs up among some boxes by the roof."
S406: "A shakeable box of mosquito powder sits on the shelf."
S407: "Bedtime reading for one of the inhabitants is a book called "Place Names
of Carolina"."
S408: "The book opens naturally at the local pages, which tell that Kitty Hawk
is a corruption by the early English settlers (one colony was founded as early
as Sir Walter Raleigh, later died out) of "Killy Honk", the coastal Indians'
seasonal killing of geese, which happens nearby. "Kill Devil Hills" is after a
shipwreck in the early 1800s, when a guard rushed into town saying he'd "killed
the devil" after a pillager tried to raid the wreck."
S409: "A vile smell lingers here."
S410: "The pilot cabin of a B-29 Superfortress, deserted!  A frantic glance
round - the hatchway below, the crawlway southwest, the navigator's chair -
gives no indication of what happened to the crew, ten men at least."
S411: "landing a B-29"
S412: "(despite having one engine on fire)"
S413: "(without using the reserve fuel)"
S414: "By pushing or pulling on the throttle, the plane is accelerated or
decelerated."
S415: "putting out the engine fire"
S416: "A little alcove in the crew cabin, cowled and windowless: where you sit,
resting your arms on the chart table. The charts have been hurriedly torn away,
leaving only a rough edge with most of the word "SECRET" on it."
S417: "A cramped, but at least still pressurized, glass cage projecting out of
the hull of the B-29. You feel exposed, to put it mildly. The hatchway leads
back up."
S418: "Taped up out of the way, a good-luck charm, is a pinup of Deanna
Durbin."
S419: "Signed by Ms Durbin herself - "Kisses to all the boys out there!" And
there's a generous ration of crosses. There's something faintly odd about the
printing technique, you can't help thinking."
S420: "Beneath Ms Durbin's picture is a message... "Soviet nuclear test
detected at distance approx 2700, stay clear"."
S421: "the"
S422: "the"
S423: "The waste land spreads out below the plane."
S424: "The crawlway crawls northeast or southwest."
S425: "You detect an acrid smell of smoke in the air."
S426: "This, according to white stencilled letters painted on one metal wall,
is the Fuselage Ring. A crawlway snakes off north. Hydraulics and cables hang
from the irregular walls, and cramped openings lead east and west."
S427: "A war-time issue Geiger counter has been carelessly dropped on the deck.
Not the most welcome of sights."
S428: "An early-model Geiger counter, which clicks and flashes a neon bulb lamp
in the presence of radioactivity."
S429: "The heavy equipment locker's door hangs open."
S430: "There's a (securely locked) safe stamped USAF here. Another stencilled
message is vehement that it shouldn't fall into enemy hands. Yours, perhaps."
S431: "The beige folder is a CIA dossier on double agent Pluto, who's been
sending subtly untrustworthy atomic secrets to the Russians since the 1930s,
right through the Manhattan Project. But Pluto defected to them last week, by
fishing boat out of Japan. All entertaining enough, in a theoretical way, until
you reach three pasted-in photographs of Pluto: always in the background, head
ringed in white.

Pluto is standing behind Niels Bohr at the famous Copenhagen Conference;
passing something to Enrico Fermi in a tense moment watching meters attached to
the Chicago pile; chalking some symbol on the side of a packing case amongst a
group of military policemen in New Mexico.

And Pluto's face is Black's."
S432: "the"
S433: "A bomb bay the size of a carpet warehouse: and empty, the hatches
battened up."
S434: "Some explosive, maybe a grenade, must have gone off in one awkward
crevice here - a hole exposes a sparking mass of wires, crackling with
electricity."
S435: "Behind the sparking mass of wires is the RES/F button."
S436: "emergency refuelling"
S437: "One side-face of an enormous jet engine makes up the far wall."
S438: "A 2200hp Wright R-3350-23 Duplex Cyclone 18-cylinder radial with double
exhaust turbocharger. At a guess."
S439: "An immense bomb bay, enough for ten thousand pounds of bombs to be
dumped on the civilian population of your choice."
S440: "A primitive airfield out in frosty wastelands, where the B-29 has
wrenched to a halt. The undercarriage has torn deep scars through the greenish
glassy sand. You stand shivering beneath the enormous jet, at the foot of a
kind of metal rope-ladder up into the crew cabin. Some way off to southeast is
a control tower; otherwise, a burnt forest surrounds you, with only a small gap
to the east."
S441: "Beautifully painted below the crew cabin window is the B-29's name,
"Wichita Falls"."
S442: "This old duckboard tower can't ever have controlled much. As it is, it
looks scarred and burned in a recent fire. Actually, now you look around from
the safety of the ground, the plain is clear in a broad circle out to the
trees, and there's no particular "runway". In fact the only thing about it
suggesting an airfield is the B-29 Superfortress parked off to northwest."
S443: "There's really nowhere to go: just back to the B-29."
S444: "The air is leaden with damp, old ash, the trees are carbonised and
brittle, shattering to soot at your every move. You cough, sneeze and blink
accordingly. Through a narrow gap west, you can see the airfield, but otherwise
the forest is dense and unwelcoming."
S445: "an"
S446: "A torn parachute hangs from one of the trees, its occupant (long gone)
having crashed a zig-zag path down through the branches."
S447: "finding RZ-ROV"
S448: "The gadget, inscribed RZ-ROV, is quite mysterious, but so clearly of
late 1990s manufacture that you have a pretty shrewd idea whose parachute it
came from. There's a magnet on one side."
S449: "The choice of direction is, shall we say, restricted."
S450: "the"
S451: "Black is looking much the worse for wear: not actually bruised, but with
many little hypodermic marks on the wrists."
S452: "Black looks ghostly in this light: a slumped, drugged-unconscious
ghost."
S453: "rescuing Black"
S454: "The corridor ends here, at the doorway south into your cell. The west
end of the corridor is most notable for guards playing some kind of poker, and
fortunately not watching your (guaranteed escape-proof) cell."
S455: "The corridor ends here."
S456: "That would mean certain recapture, and the Gulag!"
S457: "There's a pine table just behind your cell door."
S458: "An absolutely white place, bright but not glaring, like a negative of
the black ball.

It seems oddly normal for Black to be here - but with such a stricken look?

"Something we've done... I swear, it can't have been me, I haven't even been
there... There's going to be an accident, I think, I can't see ahead... can
you...?""
S459: "A shallow hillside cleared of trees. The wind whips up the snow into
your eyes, and visibility is low into the grey twilight. The hill descends to a
basin from here."
S460: "the"
S461: "brushing through"
S462: "A rare, perhaps unique sighting of this beautiful animal. (So rare that
you're not really sure what it is: a cougar?  But "snow leopard" will do.)
Careful, though: nature, as Tennyson so wisely put it, is red in tooth and
claw."
S463: "A beautiful snow leopard purrs as she prowls around you."
S464: "A beautifully evolved creature. To be absolutely honest you aren't quite
sure what species it is, so we shall call it a snow goose."
S465: "A snow goose hisses and croaks as it stalks the frozen earth."
S466: "The edge of a very thick copse of tall green fir trees, which surround
on almost every side. To the southwest is an open doorway into a wood-slatted
shed, ancient and decrepit."
S467: "Absolutely unclimbable."
S468: "A mighty fir tree stands out from the dense copse, its branches hung
with snow."
S469: "Fashioned of a curious white board base, and a dense weave of twigs."
S470: "Shabby, rundown, ramshackle: these are just three of the adjectives
appropriate to this uninteresting shed, whose chief virtue is that the wind
doesn't blow inside it."
S471: "The door, ahem, hole in the wall is to the northeast."
S472: "Propped up on one wall is a wooden broom."
S473: "A handful of seed is scattered on the ground."
S474: "The crags on top of the hill are rough outcrops of granite, surrounded
by dangerous drops on most sides. The snow beats against your face and you
crouch low to hide from the wind. The landscape is like Siberian tundra, but
even Siberia goes through the motions: nature and life surround you."
S475: "The only safe course is to slither back down."
S476: "Old but unrusted in its plastic insulation."
S477: "An old coil of cable hangs over one of the crags."
S478: "Old but unrusted in its plastic insulation."
S479: "The snowy basin of the hillside, almost unnaturally flat in these
sculpted, rocky hills. A tricky path across the permafrost climbs uphill."
S480: "The trees are too dense here."
S481: "The disc and ring are cast in one piece, and are inseparable. The centre
of the disc houses a ten-foot wide shaft."
S482: "The metal disc which surrounds the shaft has a ring embedded within it."
S483: "A small ring projects from one side of the disc, and the length of cable
hangs down into the shaft from it."
S484: "The disc has sealed up now that the missile has fired."
S485: "A sleek metal installation drilled into the hillside."
S486: "In the centre of the basin, where the snow has been cleared, is an open
metal shaft, about ten feet in radius, within which is darkness."
S487: "Out of the wind, but still bitterly cold, this is a cylindrical shaft
lined with metal. A just-climbable cable leads upward to a tiny circle of light
through which grey-white sky can be seen."
S488: "Old but unrusted in its plastic insulation."
S489: "You do pick the safest places to go: this time, a cramped compartment
inside the nuclear missile, whose only (but very inviting) exit is to west."
S490: "Would you believe it, there seems to be an access hatch on the side,
made of some grey metal."
S491: "A huge silvery missile, with a United States flag painted on the side
and the serial code WDID-51, lurks in this silo, pointed at the sky. Perhaps
this isn't Siberia after all."
S492: "The grey access hatch to the silvery missile hangs open."
S493: "A piece of the hatch has come away, and the rest stands open."
S494: "And wouldn't you know it, there are three conspicuous buttons here: red,
green and blue."
S495: "A letter marked "Secret and Confidential - Deliver via courier" and
sealed up with wax for good measure, addressed to the U.S. Secretary of State."
S496: "the"
S497: "the"
S498: "the"
S499: "the"
S500: "This is a wood-panelled room, luxuriant with book-cases, newspapers and
journals. Side by side are cartoons of Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. Along
the north front are windows onto the black night; a single swing-door leads
southwest."
S501: "The"
S502: "The (London) Times for Wednesday 10th April, 1912. It is well-thumbed
and a few days old, though the style is pedestrian by today's standards and
most of the reportage concerns the passage of the Irish Home Rule bill, and a
speech by Mr A. J. Balfour."
S503: "A copy of The Times lies discarded on an armchair."
S504: "It is written on White Star Line notepaper.

"My dear White," it begins promisingly enough, "I've already fixed this one, so
if you want to catch the time window just hang around a while. See you later
and earlier! -- Yr friend, Black.

PS - Forgot to mention this, but do take care never to stray too far away from
the temporal nexus, you might get stranded beyond recall!""
S505: "Pinned to a green baize messages-board is a folded note, simply
addressed to "White"."
S506: "A comfortable lounge with a rich green carpet, in the style of the
Palace of Versailles, where drinks are served and ladies take tea in their
great bamboo cushioned chairs, attended by Stewards. Paintings, engravings and
notices such as "Deck Quoits", "Squash Court - professional coaching, two
shillings per half-hour" line the wallpaper. Doors lead out to the Promenade,
north and south; a swing-door leads northeast; and a long corridor runs east
from here."
S507: "The deck is scattered about with broken ice."
S508: "Crowds have gathered up on the boat deck, where the ship's officers are
putting the women and children into the lifeboats and lowering them into the
water, which is rising fast."
S509: "A carpeted staircase rises from here to the Boat Deck, if the signs are
to be believed. It adjoins the Smoke Room to the west, and pipe smoke can be
made out even here. Doorways lead back to the cold air of the Promenade deck.
There are also stairs descending to the Turkish Baths and the swimming pool,
but they're closed up for the night."
S510: "There is a first-aid box up on the wall, painted white with a red
cross."
S511: "a bottle of"
S512: ""One application only. Settles stomachs in minutes."  It seems nobody
has touched the first-aid box for days, so the voyage must have been very calm.
Or perhaps the syrup is even worse than sea-sickness."
S513: "The topmost deck of the liner, a sixth of a mile long, with a
magnificent view of the two masts, the rigging, the eighteen oar-drawn
lifeboats and the four great funnels sloping slightly back. Stairs lead back
down to the warmth. Very few passengers are out tonight: the night is bitterly
cold, though there is no wind. You gaze at the stars, bright in the clear sky."
S514: "the 1911"
S515: "A fascinating book from the nurseries of the Empire. There are many
helpful passages on semaphore, naval flags and so on, together with details of
the brand-new Marconi wireless signals: one of them, the distress signal CQD
(CQ for "all vessels", D for "distress") has been underlined in black ink."
S516: "Discarded on a deckchair is the "Boy's Book of the Sea" for 1911."
S517: "On the deck is an elegant key, perhaps for an elegant door."
S518: "some"
S519: "A notice somewhere reads "Hire: Four shillings the whole voyage"."
S520: "A great mass of deckchairs crowd one end of the boat deck. On the far
side you can make out one with the name Black affixed to the back, but the
others are in the way."
S521: "rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic"
S522: "An opulent entrance hallway, twenty yards square and more at home in a
country house than a passenger liner. The grand sweeping staircase curls
upward, supported by pillars from the marble-tiled deck. The ceiling is painted
and well-lit; the wooden panelling is interrupted by arched windows onto the
night. A long staircase runs west and the first-class cabins lie to the east."
S523: "sweep the foc'sle"
S524: "scrub the quarterdeck"
S525: "polish the boilerplate"
S526: "hoist the Ensign"
S527: "Here the first-class deck breaks up into cabins and corridors:
passengers come and go from time to time. There's no way further forward, in
any event, except via the cabin doors."
S528: "Black's"
S529: "One of the cabin doors is addressed "BLACK"."
S530: "Black's cabin door stands open."
S531: "There are many cabin doors adjoining to the east, with surnames on and
apparently locked."
S532: "The Commodore of the line, and captain of the liner."
S533: "Captain Smith, a rugged British commander of the old school, paces the
deck here, reassuring the passengers that all is well."
S534: "A pretty, vacant slip of a girl, wearing a demure maid's uniform."
S535: "The Stewardess is doing the rounds of the first-class passengers,
tapping on cabin doors and picking up laundry."
S536: "the"
S537: "a White Star Line"
S538: "Black's ridiculously spacious and decorative cabin (in Old Dutch style)
looks hardly used, not surprisingly as it must have been vacant for most of the
voyage. There's a single bed (four feet wide!), a writing table, an
open-curtained porthole and a tall wardrobe, but all quite plain and
predictable."
S539: "It's too dark to see much. At least the cold air isn't getting in."
S540: "On the writing table sits a key with a long barrel."
S541: "The tall-legged wardrobe, copied from the Amsterdam school, rises right
to the ceiling and is anchored in place against any storm."
S542: ""My spare KD - be careful with it!  Sorry I've got the time machine and
you're still trailing after those jigsaw pieces, but this might help - it
detects whether pieces are still hidden in your time zone. Don't get your feet
wet, Black.""
S543: "A polished wood-floored room, surrounded by windows from which no light
enters. And a thoroughly modern gymnasium too: there are rings and ropes, of
course, but also a rowing machine and mechanical horses.

Stewards, allowed to use the gym at this late hour, are riding around in
circles on bicycles."
S544: "A dark-cloth blazer jacket, with silver buttons, a double lapel and (not
very much) braid on the sleeves: this is the Sixth Officer's everyday uniform
jacket."
S545: "Hanging on a peg by the door is a jacket."
S546: "The top of the grand flourishing staircase, high up in the
superstructure of the liner. The lounge continues west with, extraordinarily, a
Gymnasium."
S547: "The band, a suave-looking octet of musicians in leisurely evening dress,
jive away with hot ragtime numbers."
S548: ""Wireless Marconigrams to the United States, via Cape Cod, 8s 4d for ten
words, extra words sixpence each, address and signature free. Apply to the
Purser by 5 pm.""
S549: "The Wireless Room door, to the east, stands open."
S550: "The Wireless Room door, to the east, bears a notice in small print."
S551: "Inside the spartan wireless room. Cables from this primitive radio
equipment run up to the forward mast. The only decorations (a few charts)
contrast with the opulence just outside the door."
S552: "International Morse Code

  A .-    B -... C -.-. D -..  E .    F ..-.
  G --.  H .... I ..   J .---  K -.-   L .-..
  M --    N -.   O ---   P .--. Q --.-
  R .-.  S ...  T -     U ..-   V ...-
  W .--   X -..-  Y -.--  Z --..

As approved by the 1851 Convention on Telegraphy."
S553: "The Morse key looks simple enough to operate. [You could chance your arm
with a "dit" or a "dah" to see.]"
S554: "There are two wireless sets here. The vacant one is primitive, with only
a simple Morse key to tap."
S555: "He's been on duty too long and is none too awake. Still he listens
keenly."
S556: "The wireless operator sits on a listening watch, headphones clamped over
his ears, staring into space with blank concentration."
S557: "sending a distress signal"
S558: "ensuring safe passage of the letter"
S559: "This is very much a gentleman's lounge even if ladies are in principle
welcome, and a few American heiresses hold fashionable cigarettes in holders.
If Noel Coward were on board, this is where he'd be sitting, writing a musical
about all the awful rich men lazing in the other chairs. The more feminine
Verandah lies aft to the west."
S560: "Rumoured to be possessed of a fortune exceeding twenty millions."
S561: "Benjamin Guggenheim, the rich American gentleman, sits here, playing
cards with a poker school."
S562: "A pleasant verandah to one side of the great trunk of the liner's aft
mast, this "Palm Court" is decked out like a belle-epoque Parisian cafe, with
Louis XVI treillage (trellis plants) thrown in for good measure. On a moonlit
evening, there would be a magnificent view of the waves lapping around the
wake, but the night is coal-black."
S563: "The ship goes no further aft: from here you can only go back forward."
S564: "One of the most beautiful women in Europe."
S565: "The rich and beautiful heiress Miss Shutes stands here, striking an
elegant pose as she and her ladies at court conduct some kind of seance over a
ouija board.

They have politely ceased communicating with the underworld while you're here,
and are now making small talk."
S566: "passing on a secret diplomatic letter"
S567: "A grey square ouija board, to which the ladies' eyes continually stray."
S568: "A second-floor flat, dilapidated and primitive but with a certain charm
about it, decorated with faded Viennese prints. Through the open window you
look down on a cafe across the arched, cobbled city street. It is early
summer."
S569: "The only door is locked, and the window's too high to jump from."
S570: "To one side is a cheap dresser with a mirror and a single drawer."
S571: "A cheap, sturdy dresser."
S572: "The kind of just-adequate cafe students hang out in, to argue about
Wagner, politics and philosophy."
S573: "various"
S574: "Just looking again (coyly, in the mirror) reminds you how glad you are
you came to the party."
S575: "Black stands here, as tantalising as ever, even if no longer a
stranger."
S576: "meeting Black"
S577: "The Archduke Ferdinand, a ridiculous figure in full military uniform and
feathered hat."
S578: "Outside the window, the Archduke sits in his waiting carriage, next to
his wife, the Duchess, who is wearing a dress even more absurd than his
uniform."
S579: "He can't be a day over seventeen, and has a wild-looking moustache."
S580: "Down in the cafe, a scruffy student sits drinking coffee."
S581: "The Duchess is festooned with frills and pearls."
S582: "the"
S583: "A triumph of twentieth century engineering over twentieth century
morality, the kind of gun 10-year old boys think is the best thing ever
invented. There is one concession to common sense, though: a safety catch."
S584: "triggering off World War One"
S585: "This is an old steam train, which must have been in service right back
since the coming of the railways to the Russian steppe."
S586: "Pravda lies crumpled on the floor."
S587: "This is the April 15th, 1917, edition of the Bolshevik newspaper
"Pravda".

Although the editors, chief among them Stalin, are full of historic language
about events since the Army mutiny and the Tsar's abdication last month, they
come down on the side of Alexander Kerensky's moderate Provisional Government.
If only all men are reasonable, then Socialism will advance peacefully."
S588: "About thirty people travel in this carriage, grouped into fours. Most of
them stare out at the icy Baltic wastes, nostalgic for their homeland, or sing
the Internationale softly to themselves.

At the north end, there are two passageways, northeast and northwest."
S589: "Northeast or northwest?"
S590: "They are mesmerised by their homeland, and carrying blankets and
provisions the way one had to do on old, hardly-heated steam trains."
S591: "Familiar from old USSR postage stamps and bronze statues."
S592: "The Bolsheviks' leader is clearly the short man, proudly wearing a
worker's cap, who sits making notes and hardly glances at the windows: Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin as he will some day be known."
S593: "Just a piece of paper bearing V. I. Ulyanov's signature."
S594: "An empty, rattling cage of a compartment: the guard's van. To the north
is a door leading out to the train's rear end, to south are the carriages."
S595: "A little boy, with Dmitri embroidered on his jump-suit, sits playing
here."
S596: "Presumably, he's the young son of one of the Bolsheviks: whose, you
couldn't say, though a tag on his jumpsuit reads DSCH. He sings softly, and you
can hardly make out the words."
S597: "You stand on a kind of wrought iron balcony on the back of the train, in
the open Baltic air, white wind rushing past, the silvery rails disappearing
among drifts of snow in the distance. It is breath-taking, and fearfully cold."
S598: "disposing of the bomb"
S599: "You stand in a long, patient queue to one corner of the carriage. The
passengers stand clutching slips of paper signed by Lenin."
S600: "But the English never jump queues."
S601: "The passengers are quite patient as they wait, clutching their signed
slips."
S602: "Your eyes swim in this fog of cigarette smoke. The last tiny berth of
the train has been converted into a smoking car, but there's only room for one
at a time, half-sitting on the bunk."
S603: "Ash is heaped up in an old grey ash-tray."
S604: "The ash tray is wide, square and grey."
S605: "How glad you are not to have to sleep in here."
S606: "It can be slid open or shut."
S607: "Underneath the bunk is an open ventilation grille, through which colder
air seeps."
S608: "Underneath the bunk is an old-style ventilation grille, currently shut."
S609: "A small metal explosive device, with a big frivolous letter B painted on
one side. Too small, in fact, to actually harm anyone, though it might well
strand the train out here for days.

You have no idea how it works or when it might detonate."
S610: "A small metal bomb has apparently rolled from the undercarriage onto
this balcony."
S611: "This shabby old third-class carriage, at the front of the old steam
train, is packed with soldiers of the Russian Empire."
S612: "the"
S613: "The soldiers are tired out and slumped lazily over their packs, but
they're used to billeting wherever they can."
S614: "A left-over wedge of paskha, the cheesecake traditionally eaten in
Russia on Easter Sunday, which was yesterday."
S615: "One of the soldiers has left a piece of paskha, or cheesecake, on one
side."
S616: "The compartment of an English gentleman, incongruously enough. There is
no sign of the gentleman, though."
S617: "The corridor is back west."
S618: "An Army uniform is laid out on the narrow bed."
S619: "A beige daily uniform, it bears a captain's pips."
S620: "impersonating an officer"
S621: "A small black metal trunk."
S622: "There's a heavy black Army trunk in one corner."
S623: "A little stick of a key."
S624: "A third-class ticket and some kind of visa:

 "Depart Bern, 1100  8 Apr
       Zurich, 1510  9 Apr
  Halle -- Berlin --
  (passengers must not leave car)
  Sassnitz--Trelleborg overnight ferry
  Stockholm 2100  14 Apr
  (cross River Torniojoki by sledge to Finland)
  Depart Tornio for Byelo-Ostrov border post
  Arrive Petrograd, 2310  16 Apr"

These details are counter-signed by the German minister Count Ulrich von und zu
Brockdorff-Rantzau."
S625: "An old-fashioned, tight, enamelled bathroom, consisting little more than
a sink and a mirror."
S626: "A man is bound and gagged, wriggling on the floor. He looks extremely
angry at the sight of you."
S627: "Tanned, British, angry, helpless."
S628: "An early space capsule like the cockpit of a plane, bolted with banks of
dials and analogue readouts like car milometers. A computer displays crude
green digits; not far away is a sextant. Mass is so critical that there's no
panelling over the maze of wires and pipes, and the hull is eggshell-thin.

Two astronauts can just about comfortably stand by the control panel, either
side of which is a triangular window. In the white ceiling, at the rear, is a
hatch, shut tight; and down at knee-level, the entrance to an airlock."
S629: "You can't go anywhere here except down through the airlock. It really is
tiny, like two phone boxes side by side."
S630: "This is a DSKY computer, processing radar data, just like the one which
failed on Apollo 11's descent, leaving Neil Armstrong to land by eye just
before his fuel ran out."
S631: "Used for navigational fixes, sighting against the stars, the way
travellers have for four thousand years. Through it you can see only lunar
surface."
S632: "Rukl's"
S633: "A modern-looking book, Rukl's "Atlas of the Moon", sits incongruously
beside a kind of hammock."
S634: "There are entries on every named feature of the moon, and well-drawn
maps. It's really intended for astronomers rather than tourists, though it
includes quite detailed features of the Apollo landing sites."
S635: "You are wrapped like an Egyptian mummy in a bulky EVA or space suit,
whose chest and backpack is filled with machinery and oxygen tanks. Your centre
of gravity, awkwardly, is a little way behind you. The front of your helmet is
protected by a perfectly shiny visor which gives you a remarkably wide field of
view."
S636: "Black is poised over the controls, wearing not a space-suit but casual
clothes: black jeans and a T-shirt from the height of the Vietnam war protests,
with a picture of men on the moon and the slogan "So What?" written
underneath."
S637: "The blue crescent of Earth hangs in the starless and Bible black sky,
over the South Massif (you can't make out stars in the bright sunlight). The
Sun is at 40 degrees and it's mid-morning."
S638: "As Buzz Aldrin put it. A ridged, furrowed plain of unraked powdery soil,
dotted with pebbles and boulders of subdued grey and brown which gleam here and
there with splashes of glass. Mountains rise like sand dunes from the
overcurved horizon.

You have landed in the southeast corner of the Taurus-Littrow Valley, an
embayment between two-kilometer high Massifs to north and south, which runs
eight kilometers wide to the west until it climbs foothills bordering the Mare
Serenitas. The valley floor ends suddenly with Bear Mountain to the southeast."
S639: "You might head north into the valley, or climb the slopes a little to
southeast."
S640: "Kaldecki's"
S641: "A ladder rises through the shade into the airlock of the squat and
beautiful Lunar Module "Othello"."
S642: "A four-legged platform supporting a mis-shapen, four-meter diameter golf
ball. The upper half looks like a box of mirrors bolted together along the
edges.

You can't help noticing a Cyrillic letter K where the American flag ought to
be."
S643: "The Lunar Rover, a stripped-down jeep, rests neatly here."
S644: "There are two webbed seats, a great gossamer-thin dish antenna, a
joystick to steer with, an electric motor mounted on the back and four big
black rubber tyres."
S645: "A joystick on the steering column can be controlled by either passenger
(if either one of them knows how)."
S646: "There's a switch on the joystick."
S647: "The mountains are deceptive: no smooth and rolling foothill this, for
Bear Mountain suddenly rises at a thirty-degree angle, littered with jagged
landslide debris fit to puncture the suit of a careless astronaut.

This is the farthermost finger of the Vitruvius mountain."
S648: "The ground is too dangerously uneven: the Lunar Module stands to the
northwest."
S649: "A geologists' gnomon, an accurately-made tripod of measuring rods used
to provide colour and length scales for photographs."
S650: "A gnomon stands upright here, beside a boulder."
S651: "One of the dozen or so big impact craters in the valley, five hundred
meters wide and too steep to comfortably descend. The regolith is scattered
with flat boulders like stepping stones. Everywhere is crater upon crater, the
piled debris of one meteor strike after another, uneroded by wind or water. In
the centre of the brightest craters are little glass-lined pits."
S652: "the"
S653: "A paperweight-sized rock of emerald green, shot through with
calcium-rich spherules of glass. A beautiful find for any geologist."
S654: "The Green Clod, a fine paperweight-sized rock, nestles beside a boulder
here."
S655: "Just about the exact centre of the Taurus-Littrow plain, ringed about
chaotically with footprints and Lunar Rover tracks which will, perhaps, remain
for millions of years. Some way off to the west, scientific instruments gleam."
S656: "the"
S657: "A sun-white ladder rises to the airlock of the lion-faced Lunar Module
"Challenger", which is over three times your height. It has one leg in a small
crater, and is tilting gently backwards. On another leg is a ceremonial
plaque."
S658: "The landing craft of the largest and most complex machine ever built,
over 100 meters tall and with 12 million working parts: the Saturn V rocket. On
Earth it was the second loudest work of man, after the atomic bomb, but here
it's silent, wrapped in absolutely still gold foil."
S659: "The American flag stands here, held out by a wire frame."
S660: "The same $5 flag which flew in Mission Control throughout the Apollo
years."
S661: ""Here man completed his first explorations of the moon December 1972,
AD. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all
mankind."

It is signed by the Apollo 17 astronauts, Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and
Ronald Evans, and by President Richard Nixon."
S662: "A clear patch of regolith, two hundred meters west of the "Challenger".
To the north is an extraordinary view: dead flat plain, then the North Massif
rising like a cliff. The trails of rover prints lead roughly southwest."
S663: "the"
S664: "It is home to the ALSEP scientific station, five weird-shaped
instruments laid out on the lunar soil and cabled together to a nuclear reactor
and a skyward antenna."
S665: "activating the ALSEP"
S666: "The ALSEP is now safely activated: a disaster averted, thanks to you
(for a change)."
S667: "Perhaps thrown by a moonquake, perhaps by long-extinct volcanic action,
perhaps even smashed by meteorite strikes: boulders have tumbled down the
slopes of the North Massif and left spectacular tracks down the dusty soil. The
big one to the east, for instance, could have fallen and shattered any time
from yesterday to four billion years ago."
S668: "the"
S669: "The sunshade experiment, a strip of gold foil a foot or so long, is
deployed here."
S670: "The gold foil is meant to stop the solar radiation, and so provide a
sample of the solar wind for scientists back on Earth to analyse."
S671: "This boulder, the size of a house, is sliced into five like an
irregularly-cut farmhouse loaf. There's nothing like it across the whole plain.
The North Massif, Wessex Cleft and the Sculptured Hills lie across the
magnificent north panorama, but the slopes are far too gruelling for any
rover."
S672: "Really, there's no way further north without a one-man flyer (which the
Apollo designers reluctantly abandoned work on)."
S673: "The house-sized boulder is sliced into five like an irregularly-cut
farmhouse loaf. You feel quite dwarfed by it. Actually, you're the first to see
it: the only rover tracks here are your own. But the astronauts are bound to
come and take a look at something like this."
S674: "The broad, flat plain runs all around the rock, of course, and back
southwest to its approaches."
S675: "An extremely modern, not to say futuristic-looking, cargo pod sits here
where it softlanded (perilously close to the Rock, but saved perhaps by its
radar)."
S676: "This isn't 70s technology at all: it looks new even to you, and military
at that, but bears no flag or insignia. Unmanned, of course (since it's only a
two-foot barrel) it must be designed for storage of some kind."
S677: "The recessed buttons are indistinguishable, and about a foot apart."
S678: "opening the cargo pod"
S679: "the"
S680: "This Waldo is a robot designed for exploring such hostile environments
as the Moon with minimum risk to the lives of human scientists. Unfortunately,
it's very clumsy and not very clever. Waldo has one great big pink hexagonal
button on its "head", a swivelling socket mounting and a rather neat little
keyboard and LCD screen arrangement below (though the keys are rather small).
Its one manipulator arm looks less than dextrous."
S681: "It reminds you oddly of the power point on your vacuum cleaner at home,
which is designed to swivel so you can't tangle up the cable."
S682: "programming Waldo"
S683: "trundles forward."
S684: "trundles out of the safety of the crater rim, and into view of the
astronauts, who capture it at once and stow it in the LRV, exchanging amazed
communications with Houston!"
S685: "trundles along the crater rim, sheltered from the astronauts' view."
S686: "rotates 45 degrees left."
S687: "rotates 45 degrees right."
S688: "takes the fender off their LRV."
S689: "picks up the green clod."
S690: "takes a sample of lunar soil."
S691: "is unable to sample, as its manipulator is already holding something."
S692: "rotates 45 degrees left, the socket turning too to keep the cable from
buckling."
S693: "rotates 45 degrees right, the socket turning too to keep the cable from
buckling."
S694: "trundles forward, taking up the slack in the cable."
S695: "trundles forward, and the taut cable pulls open the ALSEP reactor door."
S696: "is unable to pull any further: the cable is taut and the door open."
S697: "trundles around at the end of the cable."
S698: "trundles back, leaving the cable slack."
S699: "trundles back, and the ALSEP reactor door closes."
S700: "trundles back to you."
S701: "An embossed-plastic checklist strip of instructions for Waldo, published
by FMWC Inc:

Type "comm cycles"
Comms FORWARD, RTURN, LTURN, SAMPLE
64 bit, 8 line technology TM"
S702: "The valley is getting smoother as you head roughly west from the
"Challenger". Boulders mark the rims of the craters either side, and the soil
is deep and clinging, fresh soil that's been thrown up by the wire-rimmed
wheels of a Rover."
S703: "A dark-rimmed minor crater the size of a football field, whose inner
wall and central mound is scattered with blocks. Lunar Rover tracks turn from
southwest to east, and footprints are stamped about, scuffing the soil to
reveal vivid, bright orange earth, the most spectacular colour-burst you have
seen on the Moon."
S704: "The Tortilla Flat (these names, you will have gathered by now, were not
the work of the International Astronomical Union, who got more and more
pompously annoyed with NASA as Apollo went on) is a long swathe northeast to
southwest, rising towards the South Massif. Travel west is balked by a rill."
S705: "You can't go that way, for fear of the astronauts noticing you. The
crater rim is really very low."
S706: "The real Apollo 17 astronauts are examining the green clod, but still
far too close to risk approaching their LRV."
S707: "the"
S708: "You're about at the northeast corner of the small, squarish Lara crater,
crouched behind its low rim. The crouch is because the real Apollo 17
astronauts are raking a detailed geological sample at the far corner, beside
their repaired lunar rover, and you don't think it wise to be seen by them. Not
wise at all."
S709: "Black stands about, despondent."
S710: "landing on the Moon"
S711: "You stand in a crowd of English revellers in late Victorian dress, who
are thronging through the wrought-iron gates (to the north) of a poplar-lined
park. The darkness is illuminated partly by the amazing new electric lamps
within the railings."
S712: "The gatekeeper gazes around, as if revisiting a once-familiar town of
his youth. His top hat and cane are gone."
S713: "But where would you go, in Victorian London at night?  No, the answer
lies within the park, you feel strangely sure."
S714: "The gatekeeper is an ancient, wiry, white-bearded man. He looks
resilient, watchful and faintly familiar, though you can't possibly have met
anywhere else."
S715: "An old gatekeeper, in top hat and tails, wearing a curious lead amulet
and carrying a music-hall cane, is welcoming the crowd in."
S716: "The dull lead amulet is inscribed "The Wealth of Plato"."
S717: "cube"
S718: "dodecahedron"
S719: "icosahedron"
S720: "octahedron"
S721: "You're standing in a convoluted tangle of clockwork, of cogs and rails,
runners and ratchets, cast perfectly on a giant scale from untarnished bronze.
Through gaps in the workings, you can see blackness, the perfect ink-black of
the Ball.

On a grander scale, this delicate machinery lies along the hinge of a giant V.
Rising up to the west the path splits into a dizzying array of vast, greyish
loops, bunched together here like coils of wire around a transformer.

Angled up on the eastern wedge of the hinge is the ghost-image of a great plain
of tesselating squares, divided like farmers' fields. The path runs up to the
central, most radiant square, and you can faintly hear birdsong."
S722: "You cling to a precarious eyrie in this black emptiness. Only the two
ways seem safe."
S723: "But which way?"
S724: "This is the way you came, all right, but... which loop was the one
you're from?  They all look the same, bunched so tightly here."
S725: "At one side of the great Park, on a gravel path which runs west to
northeast beside poplar trees. Crowds of celebrants are enjoying themselves to
the north, having abandoned the canvas marquee east, for today is January 1st,
1900. A table is set up northwest, surrounded by children in Victorian dress."
S726: "Stick to the path for now. The party doesn't seem all that enticing, and
besides you've seen it all before."
S727: "There's nothing behind the tent, this time."
S728: "You are among children in the Victorian dress you remember from
illustrations of all the great children's books you read as a child. They're
chattering, exchanging sketches, making daisy-chains and gazing at you with
amused curiosity."
S729: "It would be rude to push through the children that way."
S730: "The Reverend Toby, a genial man with a full white beard and side-burns,
stands behind the table, offering encouragement and advice to the children, and
marking the drawing competition."
S731: "You instinctively feel that he is exactly what he seems."
S732: "This morning, it was a popular exhibition; but now the visitors have
dwindled, leaving just canvas walls and glass cases (all carefully padlocked)."
S733: "The heavy canvas is in the way and you can only go back west."
S734: "It's a display left over from the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, with exhibits
from all over the Empire, but especially Australia (soon to be officially
proclaimed a nation). There's nothing from South Africa (presumably since the
war there is dragging on). One bank of cases depicts the wonders we can expect
from the great twentieth century ahead: cities under the sea, sparking electric
machines to cure all disease. H. G. Wells and Jules Verne would love it."
S735: "A neatly fenced and walled-off churchyard, whose well-kept graves are
serene and dappled with the rich, variegated greens of the grass and hedges.
The red-brick chapel (to the east) is still under construction."
S736: "The chapel isn't open for business yet."
S737: "The chapel isn't open for business yet."
S738: "A corner of the Park, beside copses of trees and some fencing. Standing
about here is the outdoor equivalent to always serving the lemonade at dances."
S739: "This is the corner of the park. A path runs back east."
S740: "The tree is unclimbable."
S741: "The blasted remains of a great oak tree stands here, still faintly
smoking. It must have been hit by a lightning strike in the night."
S742: "A brand new fashion of toy for children, a stuffed brown bear, named
Teddy after Theodore Roosevelt, the famous American hunter (who's even now
running for the Presidency)."
S743: "Black is looking rather fed up with the world, and most particularly
you."
S744: "Black sits here, aimlessly looking across the Park, obviously tired and
depressed."
S745: "Russell Square, reads the plaque a few inches from your eyes, which
makes this London. These railings surround a green, tree-lined square, and are
themselves surrounded by genteel houses; the municipal gas-lamps are lit."
S746: "The bobbies won't let anyone through their loose cordon, so you can only
slip in to the gardens."
S747: "These bobbies (named for Sir Robert Peel, of course) are surrounding but
keeping a wary distance from the suffragettes. They don't want a scene."
S748: "A gaggle of bobbies rings the square on almost every side."
S749: "These suffragettes, who would be called suffragists in a less sexist
age, are extremists whom even the rest of the W.S.P.U. disapproves of, and who
have inflamed liberal opinion against their cause up and down the country. The
standard tactic is to break some windows, get arrested, go on hunger-strike and
be force-fed."
S750: "Militant suffragettes are gathered in the Square, and there's an uneasy
stand-off between the opposing forces, which seems to have lasted some time."
S751: "The grass is slightly sunken, and the bordering trees cast dense
shadows, so the interior of the square is quite well-concealed from the distant
policemen. A paved path runs southeast."
S752: "This may be an underground movement, but not literally."
S753: "A poster (the kind which tends to roll up) rolls about."
S754: "To look on is the usual mixture of irritation and desire."
S755: "Apparently oblivious to goings-on around, Black is sitting crouched over
what looks alarmingly like a large petrol bomb."
S756: "In a few years' time, it would be called a Molotov cocktail. For now,
"dirty great petrol bomb" will have to do."
S757: "The water to the fountain appears to have been turned off, but a cherub
still gasps upward at the night sky. The square-crossing path runs southeast
and northwest."
S758: "The grass looks a little muddy, and there's a perfectly good path."
S759: "It's nowhere near large enough."
S760: "Little more than an open bowl without its water."
S761: "A crumpled-up newspaper half hangs out of the fountain."
S762: "Saturday 13th April, 1912, and still full of the big story of the week:
the sinking of the Titanic. (The details are all wrong, though.)"
S763: "The far end of the Square, which is especially shady owing to the
irregular placing of the gas-lamps; a paved path runs northwest."
S764: "The railings around the square have no convenient gate here."
S765: "Moonlight gleams from his silver epaulettes, and the pair of handcuffs
hanging loosely from his back pocket."
S766: "On the other side of the railings, a lone policeman stands guard with
his back to you, whistling off-key."
S767: "a pair of"
S768: "They hang, tantalisingly loosely, from the bobby's back pocket."
S769: "Captivating."
S770: "handcuffing Black to the railings"
S771: "an"
S772: "An Enigma machine, captured from a weather-boat off Greenland, sits on
the table."
S773: "using the Enigma machine"
S774: "decoding Black's message"
S775: "A brightly overcast day of clouds and light rain, the cabbage crops
luridly green in the broad loam fields. On the horizon there's nothing but some
grey trucks some way to the north; nearer to hand, to east, is some sort of
barn, guarded by rather bored soldiers in German army uniform."
S776: "You walk for some distance through the fields, but somehow never get
anywhere. On the bright side, nor do your feet get bogged down in the mud, as
they logically ought."
S777: "You approach the grey trucks, almost bouncing on the springy loam. It's
a military convoy going nowhere in particular, but you're captivated by the
curiously beautiful but distant sound of the drivers sitting about under a
tarpaulin tent, singing the "Wacht am Rhein". And yet you drift backward again,
and have gone nowhere."
S778: "For a barn this is a solid building, with a tiled floor, spear-thick
walls and a high, decently water-tight roof. Benches are covered with paper,
black and white maps and boxes of electrical gear."
S779: "There's only one door to the barn, back out west."
S780: "  House  "
S781: "a Victorian country house"
S782: "An exceedingly tall wardrobe reaches up almost to the ceiling."
S783: "Black is dressed in a cypher clerk's uniform, and looks keen. Although
Black seems slightly more substantial to you than everything else, there's
still no sign of recognition."
S784: "Black, dressed in uniform, is sat at a bench in front of a weird
typewriter."
S785: "It bears the legend "Enigma", but you can see almost nothing of it
because Black is so intently hunched over the keys. There are three odd wires,
the kind used for joining two terminals together, thrown to one side."
S786: "A slip of paper, bearing the Wehrmacht stamp, has fallen from Black's
pocket."
S787: "Dusk on an overcast day of clouds and light rain, in which the Victorian
awfulness of Bletchley Park country house seems especially dismal. It is
surrounded by crude war-time huts all over the grounds, the nearest some way to
the north.

You crouch in an old birdwatchers' hide by the lake, while disconcertingly
alert military police patrol up and down. The hide extends a little east."
S788: "The grounds are patrolled by military policemen, and there are few
places to avoid them. Perhaps north might be the best opportunity, though it
doesn't look promising."
S789: "The lake is in the way."
S790: "Among some lead shot scattered over the mud is a spent cartridge."
S791: "Fired from a shotgun, perhaps."
S792: "The hide is, indeed, sheltered from the elements, about two meters on a
side and unbroken but for a slit window and the muddy climb out to the west."
S793: "An old flat cloth cap hangs on a nail."
S794: "Too distant to be of any help."
S795: "Two burly young men have you pinioned immobile, in the middle of the
lawn halfway between the hide and the hut. A third, who has a corporal's
stripes, wants answers, and wants them quickly."
S796: "the"
S797: "One of the impromptu huts disfiguring the grounds of Bletchley, this
crudely heated asbestos and corrigated iron shelter offers little comfort. It
has no very obvious function."
S798: "Not only is the hut securely locked, it's guarded outside."
S799: "an"
S800: "An intercept, a thin yellow strip of paper, is pinned up on the wall."
S801: ""Danger!  Do Not Open!  Danger!"  And a skull and crossbones."
S802: "The once-sealed crate rests here."
S803: "A heavy-looking crate occupies one corner, with a War Office seal across
the top and very stern instructions upon it."
S804: "The cell to end all cells, this one is remarkably bleak and secure. One
can only pray for some supernatural escape."
S805: "You can't go that, or indeed any, way."
S806: "A sweaty, mouldering hotel room in a third-rate establishment. A
three-bladed fan lazily pushes the air about, to little effect. Cockroaches
crawl along the edges of the floor, but at least shutters are provided to keep
out the mosquitos. There's a door in the northern wall."
S807: "There's nowhere to go, unless you count the door."
S808: "an issue of the"
S809: "The management have done their best to provide you with the English
papers, in as much as the latest edition of the "Eagle" comic is laid out on
the dresser."
S810: "The "Eagle" comic for October 19th, 1956, read by every boy in the
British Empire. "Dan Dare, Pilot Of The Future", accompanied of course by
Digby, Lex and Flamer, is crashing through the atmosphere of the planet Cryptos
after a tense dog-fight with the drugged and deceived forces who serve the evil
Phants. Fear not - Dan and Co. will bring truth and freedom to the natives, as
is their duty. Good stuff."
S811: "a pair of"
S812: "The shutters are open onto a beautiful, slow red sunset."
S813: "The shutters are closed again."
S814: "The door stands open."
S815: "A rope hangs out of the window on a grappling iron."
S816: "The hotel landing was designed to resemble an opulent Parisian staircase
of the 1870s, but time, neglect, misunderstanding and poor taste have made the
result more like a brothel. At least the bathroom door (northeast) is slightly
concealed."
S817: "The Egyptian soldiers do not look like pleasant company this evening.
Are you perhaps under house arrest?"
S818: "The other bedrooms really are locked."
S819: "Right where the portrait of the Empress Eugenie ought logically to be,
there instead hangs a framed photograph of a handsome young Arab."
S820: ""President Gamal A. Nasser", it would appear."
S821: "a half-dozen"
S822: "At the foot of the off-red stairs, a half-dozen Egyptian soldiers in not
much of a uniform are standing around, gesticulating and chattering to each
other. There's enough hostility to make your presence seem ill-advised."
S823: "The words "testosterone" and "pride" come to mind. So does "armed"."
S824: "You can't get a close look at it."
S825: "An irritating mosquito is zig-zagging around the room."
S826: "(No, really.)"
S827: "The only way out, and it's a welcome sight, is southwest."
S828: "a bar of"
S829: "A portion of rancid soap, like horrid yellow butter-fat, rests in
something... best not described."
S830: "Don't."
S831: "You're on a quayside alley, running between the Canal bank and the side
of the hotel. The rope hanging from your window tails off eight or nine feet
above ground, and it wasn't a happy descent."
S832: "The quayside is busy, even in the early evening, and you don't want to
attract attention."
S833: "Dan Dare could climb up that rope. Even a moderately trained athlete
could. Enough said."
S834: "escaping the Hotel"
S835: "An inviting means of escape."
S836: "A small tarpaulin-roofed barge is moored alongside you, in which a short
flight of wooden steps leads below deck."
S837: "The tarpaulin-laid interior of the barge, lit by candles, the deck
strewn with old blankets and cans of "essence". A short flight of steps leads
steeply up into the evening."
S838: "There's only the one little room."
S839: "It seems that the barge cut loose when Black pounced on you, for it's
now drifting downstream in the centre of the canal."
S840: "Water, perhaps. Hard to say."
S841: "re-fusing the Suez crisis"
S842: "Black looks scared and weary."
S843: "Black sits here, facing the wooden steps, shivering (though it isn't
cold)."
S844: "It seems to be some kind of signed preliminary agreement to a steady
handover of shares in the Suez Canal Company, with limited compensation, in
exchange for a slightly longer lease period. Dull legality."
S845: "It has rounded edges, is made of a thick grey metal and is about one
foot by half by half. Not all that heavy."
S846: "An old black board-bound British passport. While it is, naturally,
Property of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and is to be returned to
her Secretary of State at the earliest opportunity, it is more specifically the
passport of Mr and Mrs J. P. Swithin. Mr Swithin gives his occupation as
"engineer".

The photographs are very poor indeed, but bear a passing resemblance to Black
and yourself."
S847: "Congratulations on your honeymoon, by the way. That appears to be the
reason for your Suez barge adventure. The two-deck barge, stamped "no cargo",
with no duties to pay, is heading down from Port Faid and aiming, rather
ambitiously, for Suez itself."
S848: "Black looks refreshed and wary."
S849: "Black sits here, looking warily at you. The two of you seem to be having
one of those "don't mention the previous evening" kind of mornings."
S850: "On deck, you find that the barge is drifting aimlessly through Little
Bitter Lake. The sun is already high in the East. But there is a distant sound
of gunfire, and you duck back under cover."
S851: "The tarpaulin-laid interior of the barge looks rather scruffy in the
fresh morning light, and not at all cosy. A short flight of steep wooden steps
leads up, as you probably remember."
S852: "Centurion."
S853: "Grandmaster Puzzler."
S854: "Master Puzzler."
S855: "Expert Joiner."
S856: "Arranger of Pieces."
S857: "Puzzler."
S858: "Boardwalker."
S859: "Piecefinder."
S860: "Investigator."
S861: "Prowler."
S862: "Partygoer."
S863: "wet blanket."
S864: "Fool."
S865: "entering the time vortex"
S866: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?  Think now"
S867: "History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors"
S868: "And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,"
S869: "Guides us by vanities."
S870: "                      -- T. S. Eliot, Gerontion (1920)"
S871: "In every case where the mould was thick and"
S872: "coherent the Bacteria died, or became dormant,"
S873: "and fell to the bottom of the sediment."
S874: "-- John Tyndall, natural philosopher (1876)"
S875: "The Magical Mystery Tour"
S876: "Is waiting to take you away..."
S877: "-- John Lennon and Paul McCartney (1968)"
S878: "I write these words in Berlin and, like Berlin,"
S879: "I smell of old cartridge cases,"
S880: "of the East, of sulphur, of disinfectant."
S881: "-- Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1976),"
S882: "   "The Sinking of the Titanic", Third Canto"
S883: "...it seemed to me that quite soon now I might"
S884: "be too weak to maintain my hold upon a past which"
S885: "already went down so far..."
S886: "-- Marcel Proust, "Le Temps Retrouve" (1927)"
S887: "That Wilbur Wright is in possession of a power"
S888: "which controls the fate of nations, is beyond dispute."
S889: "-- Major B.F.S. Baden-Powell (1909)"
S890: "World is crazier and more of it than we think,"
S891: "Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion"
S892: "A tangerine and spit the pips and feel"
S893: "The drunkenness of things being various."
S894: "-- Louis MacNeice, "Snow" (1935)"
S895: "All the generals were on holiday."
S896: "-- A.J.P. Taylor, "How Wars Begin" (1977)"
S897: "Vladimir is convinced there are agents watching..."
S898: "The British are amongst the most determined,"
S899: "although the least competent."
S900: "-- Tom Stoppard, "Travesties" (1974)"
S901: "We walk on the earth, but we live in the sky"
S902: "-- Pueblo Indian saying, quoted by"
S903: "Dr H. H. "Jack" Schmitt (Apollo 17 astronaut)"
S904: "And we are here as on a darkling plain"
S905: "Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,"
S906: "Where ignorant armies clash by night."
S907: "-- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" (1867)"
S908: "I sometimes wonder, especially during the night,"
S909: "how many sailors I drowned. But a la guerre"
S910: "comme a la guerre."
S911: "-- William Millward, in Hinsley and Stripp (1992),"
S912: ""Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park""
S913: "The khamsin, the hot wind that blew in off the"
S914: "desert every spring, was bad in 1956... There were"
S915: "sudden storms and during one of these, as I watched,"
S916: "the eucalyptus suddenly turned blue. The lightning"
S917: "scored a black stripe down the bark."
S918: "-- Christopher Hampton, "White Chameleon" (1991)"
S919: "A blue-behinded ape, I skip"
S920: "Upon the trees of Paradise."
S921: "-- Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Portrait""
S922: "Gnomon is an island."
S923: "-- Astronaut Jack Schmitt"
S924: "   (on every possible occasion)"
S925: "We shall not cease from exploration"
S926: "And the end of our exploring"
S927: "Will be to arrive where we started"
S928: "And know the place for the first time."
S929: "-- T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" (1942)"

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