'For gods' sake, man, can't you steer?'
'Not with you throwing your weight about, Archchancellor!'
'Where the hell are we? Can't see a thing in this fog!'
'I'll just see if I can point it - don't lean over like that! Don't lean over like that! I said don't lean-!'
The farmers dived sideways as the broomstick corkscrewed through the open doorway and disappeared among the ranks of cabbage. There was a distant, brassica'd squelch.
s trying to hold itself together against the forces roaring around inside its body. It skewed wildly across the stone, making odd little mewling noises, and then, with one good eye glaring balefully at Victor, stepped off into space.
Victor pushed himself up on his hands and knees and dragged himself to the edge.
Even on the way down the Thing wasn't giving up. It was trying frantic evolutions of feather and hide and membranes in an attempt to find something that would survive the fall -
Time slowed. The air took on a purple haze. Death swung his scythe.
YOU BELONG DEAD, he said.
- and then there was a sound like wet laundry hitting a wall and, it turned out, the only thing that could survive the fall was a corpse.
The crowd moved closer in the pouring rain.
Now that all the control was gone the Thing was dissolving into its component molecules, that were washing into the gutters and down to the river and out into the cold depths of the sea.
'It's deliquescing,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Is it?' said the Chair. 'I thought that it was some kind of shop.'
He prodded it with his foot.
'Careful,' said the Dean. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie.'
The Chair studied it.
'It looks bloody dead to me,' he said. 'Hang on - there's something moving-'
One of the outflung tentacles slumped aside.
'Did it land on someone?' said the Dean.
It did. They pulled out the twitching body of Ponder Stibbons, and prodded and patted him in a well-meant way until he opened his eyes.
'What happened?' he said.
'A fifty-foot monster fell on you,' said the Dean, simply. 'Are you, er, all right?'
'I only wanted one drink,' Ponder muttered. 'I'd have come straight back, honest.'
'What are you talking about, lad?'
Ponder ignored him. He got up, swaying a bit, and staggered off towards the Great Hall, and never, ever, went out again.
'Funny chap,' said the Chair. They looked back down at the Thing, which had nearly dissolved.
' 'Twas beauty killed the beast,' said the Dean, who liked to say things like that.
'No it wasn't,' said the Chair. 'It was it splatting into the ground like that.'