ed
to his friends, Edward Smith fell into his multi-coloured deck-chair
which fell onto his multi-coloured deck of his...what sort of boat was
it?
Ned neither knew
nor cared. It did remind him of something he had seen in Laurel and
Hardy film. To tell you the truth, I am not altogether certain where all
this is taking place. Would, 'just off a sandy-beech on the Californian coast' do? It would for Ned.
For him the
world was a nice place, but you might as well enjoy yourself with a
little innocent fun when you were young ( Ned was twenty-five ), when
you could afford to make mistakes. That was what his old Texan
grand-mother used to tell him when he was a child and he always had a
lot of respect for old Granny Cartwheel.
He did not want to put anybody down - he was too busy singing and playing.
He lay
uncomfortably embraced by the collapsed deck-chair and did not care. The
hazy, salty air made him giggle, like bathing in ether, thou I've never
tried it. He could here his friends playing ball on the beach, the
sounds as if in radio-signals drifting across the stretch of sea or
messages from another planet.
He gazed into the dome above him. The circle sky; dark in the centre and pale towards the circumference. It was wonderful.
Sure, the sky was just another sea and from this 'sea' Edward Smith had received a message, a gift, a magical gift.
A magical gift
had fallen from the sky into the sea yesterday. It was a small and
beautiful thingamajig, a...he no longer cared for specification.
Perhaps it had
come from a moon-rocket or didn't a satellite crash in the gulf of
Mexico in mysterious circumstances last week? It could be from that! A
message from the sky...maybe there were people beyond the sky, the other
'sea', playing space-ball on a multi-coloured beach, dallying in the
innocence of life, just trying to be friendly not putting anybody down.
What would he do
with his little gift? It sure was a curious article. A funny little
golden tube thing. Maybe he ought to give it to someone, they could be
looking for it. No. He figured that whoever it belonged to would have
plenty of the thingamajigs and anyway, who on Earth knew it was on Ned's
boat?
Perhaps he would
give it to Valerie. He was awfully fond of Valerie. He just went all
silly when he was with Valerie. She just maybe the one but, golly-gee,
she wouldn't want him with his long hair, side-burns and silly pom-pom
hat, would she? He was awfully fond of Valerie.
he
Doctor rubbed his tired eyes and scratched his unshaven face.
Materialisation was a dangerous process and the Doctor was in no mood
for concentrating on the flashing lights and buzzing noises all around
the control room. He wanted to go back to bed. It had been a long night,
if there was such a thing as 'night' a board the TARDIS. Still, a
landing might mean fresh air. The ship had been adrift in the
nothingness of nothingness of which everything is something for a
fortnight. Their last landing had not been a happy one.
