The healing plant, yes, yes, the ancient machine said. We had a different name for it, and in our minds it took a different shape. I had smelled of the flower, stranger. In my youth I had undertaken the long and perilous journey to the Mountains of Darkness, to seek that rarest of blooms. And I alone remain, here, in this desolation, with my people all about me as still and cold and lifeless as the ice-moon of Amarok. Is this what you wish for?

Tears strangled the Stranger’s throat. No, he whispered, in that place of null-sound. Only a moment, a single breath, for the boy, for the boy to live.

The old machine was silent then, for a long while. Then it sighed, a single, drawn-out exhalation, of cosmic ice, and dust, and X-rays. Then it closed its eyes, and it was still. The current caught the Stranger and lifted him up and tossed him away. He fled towards a small red sun. It opened and he plunged towards it, and once again he fell into the hole.

He emerged out of a tunnel mouth. He was inside the giant crater. He heard a shout overhead and saw one of the carnie guards take aim at him from the rim. The Stranger drew his pistol and fired, and the carnie’s head exploded and he toppled over the rim and rolled down into the crater.

A hail of bullets rained down on the Stranger from on high and he ran, found shelter behind a storage shed. Shackled clowns ambled around him, oblivious. He held his fire. There had to be a way out of this hole. He risked a look out.

For just a moment, he thought he saw the flash of white gloves, a silent gesture. A carnie fired and hit a clown. The clown fell and lay on the ground, close by the Stranger’s hideout. He stared at the clown and the clown stared back, and the Stranger felt a terrible, burning anger as the clown died. This could not go on, he thought. He rose from his hideout then, oblivious of the danger. His guns were in his hands and he ran, and as he ran he fired back at his attackers, sending carnies toppling down.