06/30/2025 Snippet, CALL OF THE MOON-BEASTS.

Now we’re on the dream sequences!

…

“This is nice.”

Tobias whirled around at the sound, to see… more oblongs. One of them that was taller and light-colored shimmied a moment, and then words came out of it. “I wonder why it’s you.”

“It’s me what?” asked Tobias.

“I don’t know. What have you got?”

Tobias rubbed his face. There was something nagging about the oblong’s voice, like it didn’t fit the rest of this. He wondered if it could be helpful. “The door won’t open. How did you get in?”

The oblong shimmied again. “I didn’t. You did. How did you get in?”

“I don’t know. What have you got?” Tobias and the oblong laughed for half a minute about that. “Sorry. This isn’t loony.”

“Oh, everything’s loony on the moon,” the oblong replied. “That’s how you know.”

Tobias almost asked, “Know what?” The only reason he didn’t was because it had kind of hurt to laugh that hard. He went with, “Are you sure we’re on the moon?”
The oblong shimmied very, very hard, in the general direction of the shutters. “See for yourself. Don’t hold your breath.”

“Why not?” asked Tobias, as he flung the shutters open. And they did open!

…To reveal a lunar landscape behind the thin glass window. It was all horrible sharp shadows and pitiless glare, the kind you didn’t see if you could help it. The roiling Earth loomed above him, impossibly large in the lunar sky. And there was a whistle. The bad whistle, the one that came when a pinhole leak has formed and wants to get larger.

“Because it’s over faster when you keep your lungs empty,” the oblong explained calmly as the glass window shattered in a roar of escaping air —

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