World's End

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dW

e've begun our journey at last, for better or

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worse. We've been traveling upriver into

World's End for nearly four days now.

Ang wasn't able to beg, borrow, or steal the grid I

needed to get the rover's antigrav unit working, despite his assurances. That would have made everything a damn sight easier . . . but why should anything be easy when it all depends on the Company? In the end, Ang just seemed to run out of patience--as if he had to begin, as if he had to get back into the wilderness, no matter how he had to travel.

We've made the first part of the journey by water, our only other alternative. At least I was able to make sure this derelict is watertight. Thank the gods it held together

--I was in no mood for bailing, let alone taking a swim in that foul yellow fluid. The stench was nauseating:

The air purifier still needs overhauling. Spadrin actually got sick to his stomach from the smell and the motion of the water. Nothing seemed to bother Ang-- not even the jungle pressing down to the shore on either bank, spilling into the river with a kind of frenzy, as if it were trying to reach us. It floats on the water surface, rotting and stinking and gray, like the flesh of corpses.

Last night I dreamed about wanting to die, and not being able to ... an old, old dream. I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

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When I sleep tonight I suppose I'll dream about

ay 37.

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WORLD S END

pumps. We reached the refinery today--the last outpost of the Company, and the last sign of

"civilization" we'll see. Armed guards greeted us at the dock when we arrived.

Fortunately Ang knew the password, or whatever it took for them to let us ashore. I never thought I'd be happy to be on Company ground again; but after four days on the river . . .

The sound of pumps is everywhere throughout the complex; there's no escape from it. This station sits-- floats--in a vast, tarry swamp of petroleum ooze.

Not even the jungle wants this stretch of ground. But the Company does. According to Ang they couldn't resist such a cheap source of hydrocarbons, so they built a

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