Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss Page B

moment. He was lying on his back in semi-darkness. A grey roof of some kind was only a few inches above his head. It was flowing backwards, or he was moving forwards: he could not tell which, and closed his eyes again. A steady increase in bodily sensation told him his ankles and wrists were lashed together.
    His head ached, and a foul smell pervaded his lungs, making breathing an agony. He realized the Giant had shot him with some kind of gas pellet, instantly effective but ultimately, perhaps, innocuous.
    Again he opened his eyes. The roof still seemed to be travelling backwards, but he felt a steady tremor through his body, telling him he was on some kind of moving vehicle.Even as he looked, the movement stopped. He saw a Giant loom beside him, presumably the one who had shot and captured him. Through half-closed eyes, Complain saw the immense creature was on hands and knees in this low place. Feeling on the roof, he now knuckled some kind of switch, and a section of the roof swung upwards.
    From above came light and the sound of deep voices. Complain was later to recognize this slow, heavy tone as the typical manner of speech of the Giants. Before he had time to prepare for it, he was seized and dragged off the conveyance and passed effortlessly up through the opening. Large hands took hold of him and dumped him not ungently against the wall of a room.
    ‘He’s coming round,’ a voice commented, in a curious accent Complain hardly understood.
    This observation worried him a great deal; partly because he thought he had given no indication he was recovering, partly because the remark suggested they might now gas him again.
    Another body was handed up through the opening, the original Giant climbing up after it. A muttered conversation took place. From the little Complain could hear, he gathered that the body was that of the Giant Roffery had killed. The other Giant was explaining what had happened. It soon became apparent he was talking to two others, although Complain, from where he lay, could see only wall.
    He slumped back into a mindless state, trying to breathe the dirty odour out of his lungs.
    Another Giant entered from a side room and began talking in a peremptory tone suggestive of command. Complain’s captor began to explain the situation over again, but was cut short.
    ‘Did you deal with the flooding?’ the newcomer asked.
    ‘Yes, Mr Curtis. We fitted a new stopcock in place of the rusted one and switched the water off. We also unblocked the drainage and fitted a length of new piping there. We were justfinishing off when Sleepy Head here turned up. The pool should be empty by now.’
    ‘All right, Randall,’ the peremptory voice addressed as Curtis said. ‘Now tell me why you started chasing these two dizzies.’
    There was a pause, then the other said apologetically, ‘We didn’t know how many of them there were. For all we knew, we might have been ambushed in the inspection pit. We had to get out and see. I suppose that if we had realized to begin with that there were only two of them, we should have let them go without interfering.’
    The Giants spoke so sluggishly that Complain had no difficulty in understanding most of this, despite the strange accent. Of its general intention he could make nothing. He was almost beginning to lose interest when he became the topic of conversation, and his interest abruptly revived.
    ‘You realize you are in trouble, Randall,’ the stern voice said. ‘You know the rules: it means a court martial. You will have difficulty in proving self-defence, to my mind. Especially as the other dizzy was drowned.’
    ‘He wasn’t drowned. I fished him out of the water and put him on the closed inspection hatch to recover in his own time.’ Randall sounded surly.
    ‘Leaving that question aside – what do you propose doing with this specimen you’ve brought here?’ Curtis demanded.
    ‘He’d have drowned if I had left him there.’
    ‘Why bring him