Part 8, Chapter 2 - A Pointless Waste of Paper

Y'know, it'd be nice to know what Terl wants. Yes, the book goes on about the gold getting him a mansion on Psychlo (next to the planetwide necropolis housing the dead of a millennia-old pan-galactic empire, no doubt), or being whispered about by onlookers and having "doors opened to him." But what doors are he interested in? Does Terl want to run for Senate? Does he want to get invited to Psychlo Wesley Snipes' next house party? And what does he want to do with his wealth and power, besides just have it? Money is commonly coveted, but not usually for its own sake.

From the sound of it all Terl wants is attention and a nice house. That bastard!

Oh, the chapter? Jonnie and Robert the Fox and Dunneldeen are at The Lode in their wonky aircraft, trying to mine the gold. Dunneldeen holds the aircraft steady while Jonnie is lowered down on a rope, as Foxy talks about how insanely brave Jonnie is being. Over an hour Jonnie blasts out a flattish ledge they'll be able to expand into a proper mining platform using explosive cord. And that's about it.

Seriously. There's a bit when Jonnie wishes for "mittens" to work with so he doesn't scrape his hands, and when he's getting started he brushes aside Foxy's criticism that he's "a bit wild" as proving he's a true Scot. But that's all that happens.

The best part is that next chapter takes place two months later, meaning that all of this could have been easily covered during its narration about the ongoing mining efforts. So these three pages were almost entirely pointless. I mean, we didn't get any characterization, or learn any insights, or see any action. Jonnie just dangled from the stupidcopter and blew up rocks.

Next time, Jonnie will be about to visit Chrissie's cage, but will spend the entire chapter flashing back to cover what happened in the two months between it and this one, only reaching Chrissie in Chapter 4.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three