'Are you crazy?' Ginger hissed. 'Holding out like that! We could have lost our chance!'
'I didn't say anything! I thought it was you!' said Victor.
'It was you!' said Ginger.
Their eyes met.
They looked down.
'Bark, bark,' said Gaspode the Wonder Dog.
Dibbler turned round.
'What's that noise?' he said.
'Oh, it's - it's just this dog we found,' said Victor hurriedly. 'He's called Gaspode. After the famous Gaspode, you know.'
'He does tricks,' said Ginger, malevolently.
'A performing dog?' Dibbler reached down and patted Gaspode's bullet head.
'Growl, growl.'
'You'd be amazed, the things he can do,' said Victor.
'Amazed,' echoed Ginger.
'Ugly devil, though,' said Dibbler. He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest. Gaspode could outstare a mirror.
Dibbler seemed to be turning an idea over in his mind. 'Mind you . . . bring him along in the morning. People like a good laugh,' said Dibbler.
'Oh, he's a laugh all right,' said Victor. 'A scream.'
As they walked off Victor heard a quiet voice behind him say, 'I'll get you for that. Anyway, you owe me a dollar.'
'What for?'
'Agent's fee,' said Gaspode the Wonder Dog.
Over Holy Wood, the stars were out. They were huge balls of hydrogen heated to millions of degrees, so hot they could not even burn. Many of them would swell enormously before they died, and then shrink to tiny, resentful dwarfs remembered only by sentimental astronomers. In the meantime, they glowed because of metamorphoses beyond the reach of alchemists, and turned mere boring elements into pure light.
Over Ankh-Morpork, it just rained.
The senior wizards crowded around the elephant vase. It had been put back in the corridor on Ridcully's strict orders.
'I remember Riktor,' said the Dean. 'Skinny man. Bit of a one-track mind. But clever.'
'Heh, heh. I remember his mouse counter,' said Windle Poons, from his ancient wheelchair. 'Used to count mice.'
'The pot itself is quite-' the Bursar began, and then said, 'What d'you mean, count mice? They were fed into it on a little belt or something?'
'Oh, no. You just wound it up, y'see, and it sat there whirring away, counting all the mice in the building, mm, and these little wheels with numbers on them came up.' 'Why?'
'Mm? I s'pose he just wanted to count mice.'
The Bursar shrugged. 'This pot', he said, peering closely, 'is actually quite an old Ming vase.'
He waited expectantly.