"There…" She pointed and Slide saw. A Howdy Hole surrounded by cute little flowers.
"How the fuck did that get there?"
Rosa spread her gloved hands. "Don't ask me. I discovered it in my wanderings before you arrived."
"And brought all the trouble with me?"
"I didn't say that."
"I sensed you think it."
Rosa Coote said nothing, but Slide still had a momentary need to explain. "I usually control the flow."
"Like, you run the action, Yancey?"
"You know it."
"But you've time looped and the actions running you?"
"You got it."
Rosa Coote smiled with a surprising sadness."That's the worst part of being on the run." She seemed about to say more but an deafening and protracted shriek vibrated their helmets. The noise was so intense that Slide ducked, feeling as though he on the inside of some tortured, galaxy spanning nerve. "Damn! The ship is doing something double plus ungood." The shriek was repeated. Rosa stepped briskly to the Howdy Hole. Even with the helmet radio, she had to shout to be heard above the ululating biocraft. "I think that's our exit line." But Slide suddenly didn't want to be on his own in limbo again. "Rosa…
Rosa laid the fingertips of a glove quickly to his lucite. "No tender goodbyes, Yancey Slide. We need to be out of here." And with that she had dropped from sight. Slide took a deep breath of canned, space armor air, and followed her. The reality of the Eloi biocraft winked out, but Slide found himself in a place that was no better, and perhaps actually worse. He was immediately assailed by machine gun and rapid cannon fire. He was in a burning, spinning flying machine of a kind he did not recognize. Someone was screaming in Hebrew that he should bail out. He knew it was only a first-shock Gantenbrink hallucination conjured by the sub-atomic foam, and that Howdy Holes were like that, but he still hurled himself through an open hatch and spun into thin air. He counted to ten and pulled the ripcord on his C20 style parachute, but at the first jerk of the opening chute the hallucination vanished and he was assaulted by disembodied, abstract, and wholly meaningless words.
CONSEQUENTIAL MANGLE OEDIPUS DIGRAM DIFFRACTOMETER REPENT ARIZONA PERVERSION TV FORGIVEN LIABLE GRIFFIN COMPETITION MONADIC CHAMFER CHLORINATE CONCEPTUAL ALEXANDER PEAL SEISMOGRAPHY SPATE ELITE CONVERSE LETHARGY PREFERENCE ANA FLASH COCO EUCRE BANBURY TIMON ESTES RADIUM PUNDIT SENT BRENDAN CLARET CHICKEN VENGEFUL AMERADA CERAMIC CLEANUP!
"What the fuck is this?"
"What did you expect? A vision of the Rapture?"
CLIMATOLOGY BEECHAM ABSTAIN KETOSIS SNARE ALTOGETHER COINCIDE TWICE ALEXIS IMPEACH DIVERT PLUMP BLOCKADE PLUTONIUM SLOPE BENNETT COS THREE DUTCHMAN INERTANCE CONSPICUOUS MILITATE KAZOO CAVEMAN AVOCET KRUSE WHITCOMB NEWBOLD ADULATE ANGSTROM COURAGE CHURCHWOMEN DETACH PYONGYANG ATAVISM DESIDERATA COOLHEADED UNIPROCESSOR MANOR THERE'LL ANONYMITY DISCOMFIT!
"Out, out, I want out. I had enough of the unintelligible."
CLEAVAGE AUTOMATA ALGORITHM ANGLOPHOBIA FISCHER MUSSEL ARID TACK TWINE ILLUSIVE SNAKELIKE SKYLIGHT FIREHOUSE REVOCABLE BEDEVIL GENTRY BITT KNURL HESPERUS BEREA ANGULAR BUCHANAN CROWBERRY BEGINNER ATTACHE AMBASSADOR OFTEN HARROW BMW MAYA CHENEY FETE SHATTERPROOF MULLEN CRAVAT DOMINGO ARMOUR ECONOMIC RESULT CURTAIN WORKMANLIKE TEAMSTER CRYPTANALYST EMPLACE FANG BOOKSHELVES COLA AMPERSAND AMESLAN APPREHENSIVE FRIEDMAN CINEMA UMBRA EXCAVATE ARK CURDLE CONCILIATORY DOSSIER CRANKCASE!
And no sooner had he asked than he was out. The Howdy Hole appeared obliging, but then revealed itself as ferociously tricky, because the first thing Slide discovered was that he was no longer human. He had massive muscular hind legs, and tiny hands and arms, with disproportionately large claws. His enormous mouth was full of sharp-pointed reptilian teeth, and his breath reeked of old blood and rotting flesh.
"I'm in the fucking Jurassic and, if I read the polish on the claws correctly, I'm in the body of a goddamned velociraptor."
He wanted to yell. "Fuck this prehistoric shit!"
But it just came out as thunderous lizard bellow.
