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little kid, he turned into a mermaid, sort of thing, and he lived down the bottom of the sea—”
    “—the oggin—”
    “Right, and it was all nice talking fishes and pink seashells and stuff, and then I went on my holidays to Quirm and I saw the sea, and I thought: here goes, and if our ma hadn’t been quick on her feet I don’t know what would have happened. I mean, the kid in the book could breathe under the sea, so how was I to know? It’s all bloody lies about the sea. It’s just all yuk with lobsters in it.”
    “My mum’s uncle was a sailor,” said Nobby. “But after the big plague he got press-ganged. Bunch of farmers got him drunk, he woke up next morning tied to a plough.”
    They lounged some more.
    “Looks like we’re going to be in a fight, sarge,” said Nobby, as the painter very carefully started on the final “k.”
    “Won’t last long. Lot of cowards, the Klatchians,” said Colon. “The moment they taste a bit of cold steel they’re legging it away over the sand.”
    Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
    “Shouldn’t be any trouble to sort out, then?” said Nobby.
    “And o’course, they’re not the same color as what we are,” said Colon. “Well…as me, anyway,” he added, in view of the various hues of Corporal Nobbs. There was probably no one alive who was the same color as Corporal Nobbs.
    “Constable Visit’s pretty brown,” said Nobby. “I never seen him run away. If there’s a chance of giving someone a religious pamphlet ole Washpot’s after them like a terrier.”
    “Ah, but Omnians are more like us,” said Colon. “Bit weird but, basic’ly, just the same as us underneath. No, the way you can tell a Klatchian is, you look an’ see if he uses a lot of words beginning with ‘al,’ right? ’Cos that’s a dead giveaway. They invented all the words starting with ‘al.’ That’s how you can tell they’re Klatchian. Like al-cohol, see?”
    “They invented beer?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s clever.”
    “I wouldn’t call it clever ,” said Sergeant Colon, realizing too late that he’d made a tactical error. “More, luck, I’d say.”
    “What else did they do?”
    “Well, there’s…” Colon racked his brains. “There’s al-gebra. That’s like sums with letters. For…for people whose brains aren’t clever enough for numbers, see?”
    “Is that a fact?”
    “Right,” said Colon. “In fact,” he went on, a little more assertively now he could see a way ahead, “I heard this wizard down the University say that the Klatchians invented nothing. That was their great contribution to maffs, he said. I said ‘What?’an’ he said, they come up with zero.”
    “Dun’t sound that clever to me,” said Nobby. “Anyone could invent nothing. I ain’t invented anything.”
    “My point exactly,” said Colon. “I told him, it was people who invented numbers like four and, and—”
    “—seven—”
    “—right, who were the geniuses. Nothing didn’t need inventing. It was just there. They probably just found it.”
    “It’s having all that desert,” said Nobby.
    “Right! Good point. Desert. Which, as everyone knows, is basically nothing. Nothing’s a natural resource to them. It stands to reason. Whereas we’re more civilized, see, and we got a lot more stuff around to count, so we invented numbers. It’s like…well, they say the Klatchians invented astronomy—”
    “Al-tronomy,” said Nobby helpfully.
    “No, no…no, Nobby, I reckon they’d discovered esses by then, probably nicked ’em off’f us…anyway, they were bound to invent astronomy, ’cos there’s bugger all else for them to look at but the sky. Anyone can look at the stars and give ’em names. ’s going it a bit to call it inventing , in any case. We don’t go around saying we’ve