And before the great shelled creature could react, the owl-monkey held a strange-looking pistol in its prehensile left foot. The furry animal pressed the trigger, and an enormous cloud of a yellowish gas gushed out. The movement was too sudden and too close; the Tindler’s nostril flaps didn’t close in time.
As the Tindler lost consciousness, two huge shapes detached themselves from the landscape where nothing could be seen before and moved toward them.
The last he heard was the little one yelling to somebody, “Hey! Doc! Get ready! This one’s got a trans-lator!”
Makiem
His name was Antor Trelig and he looked a lot like a giant frog. Nothing much unusual in this; in Makiem, everybody looked like a giant frog.
Trelig’s chest bore the tattoo of the Imperial Household. From his office in the palace he could look out across the great city of Druhon—a lively, medieval center for 250,000 Makiem—to the great lake beyond that reflected the city’s gaslights and the fairyland lighting of the castle. In the lake the land-dwelling Makiem could wet down their bodies as needed, swim underwater for long periods for recreation, and there, for one glorious week a year, the otherwise nonsexual Makiem bred.
Looming like dark shadows on either side of the lake were high mountains that provided an irregular frame for the great starfield mirrored in the lake. The sky of the Well World was spectacular to an unimaginable degree; from the Southern Hemisphere it was dominated by a great globular cluster and clouds of swirling gas, punctuated by an impossibly dense star-field that reflected the Well’s position near a galactic center. Trelig often reclined on his balcony seat, looking out at the vista on clear nights. There was no other sight quite like it.
He heard a noise behind him but didn’t turn away from the view. Only one person could enter his office without challenge or concern.