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'You're not worried about this star thing, then?'
'The star is life, not death,' said Riricewind.
'How's that?'
'How's what?'
'You did it again!' said Twoflower, pointing an accusing finger. 'You say things and then don't know you've said them!'
'I just said we'd better stay,' said Rincewind.
'You said the star was life, not death,' said Twoflower. 'Your voice went all crackly and far away. Didn't it?' He turned to the shopkeeper for confirmation.
'That's true,' said the little man. 'I thought his eyes crossed a bit, too.'
'It's the Spell, then,' said Rincewind. 'It's trying to take me over. It knows what's going to happen, and I think it wants to go to Ankh-Morpork. I want to go too,' he added defiantly. 'Can you get us there?'
'Is that the big city on the Ankh? Sprawling place, smells of cesspits?'
'It has an ancient and honourable history,' said Rincewind, his voice stiff with injured civic pride.
'That's not how you described it to me,' said Twoflower. 'You told me it was the only city that actually started out decadent.'
Rincewind looked embarrassed. Yes, but, well, it's my home, don't you see?'
'No,' said the shopkeeper, 'not really. I always say home is where you hang your hat.'
'Um, no,' said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. 'Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is —'
'I'll just go and see about setting you on your way,' said the shopkeeper hurriedly, as Bethan came in. He scooted past her.
Twoflower followed him.
On the other side of the curtain was a room with a small bed, a rather grubby stove, and a three-legged table. Then the shopkeeper did something to the table, here was a noise like a cork coming reluctantly out of a bottle, and the room contained a wall-to-wall universe.
'Don't be frightened,' said the shopkeeper, as stars streamed past.
'I'm not frightened,' said Twoflower, his eyes sparkling.
'Oh,' said the shopkeeper, slightly annoyed. 'Anyway, it's just imagery generated by the shop, it's not real.'
'And you can go anywhere?'
'Oh no,' said the shopkeeper, deeply shocked. 'There's all kinds of fail-safes built in, after all, there'd be no point in going somewhere with insufficient per capita disposable income. And there's got to be a suitable wall, of course. Ah, here we are, this is your universe. Very bijou, I always think. A sort of universette . . .'
Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything.
A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself.
From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.
But this shape blotting out the sky like the footfall of God isn't a planet.
It is a turtle, ten thousand miles long from its crater-pocked head to its armoured tail.
And Great A'Tuin is huge.
Great flippers rise and fall ponderously, warping space into strange shapes. The Discworld slides across the sky like a royal barge. But even Great A'Tuin is struggling now as it leaves the free depths of space and must fight the tormenting pressures of the solar shallows. Magic is weaker here, on the littoral of light. Many more days of his and the Discworld will be stripped away by the pressures of reality.
