This is from an old notebook I’m in the middle of transcribing. In Nother, an astrode is a device similar to an orrery which allows for teleportation based on astrological principles.

Moriarty ascended the stairs of the ruined apartment. The thick air did nothing to obscure the golden light blazing from the attic room. He shaded his eyes as the room entered his view, and there as he had dreaded, stood the broken astrode.

—”How’m I sposta fix this?”

That doesn’t work.

I could barely see for the brightness, and my footpaws were damp and sticky from the pool of sunshine I was standing in.

How ’bout I start with this—

I ran back downstairs to find a pitcher. My footprints glowed in the dust. “Frotz,” I said.

I came back up and scooped up the most part of the sunshine. It was sticky and puddled together on its own, like mercury. The pitcher was about half-full when I was done.

I set it on the stand at the angle left by the tracks in the floor.

The band of planetary signs along the wall lit up.

“Oh crap,” I said.

I didn’t recognize any of the signs.

There were only five, laid out thus:

I set up the stand with the moon that had fallen over, and crossed my fingers. Only one way out, and that by trying… I pulled the dusty globe and it began to reflect the beam directed from the pitcher of sunshine. The other moon had quite shattered, and I was thus left with three choices. , I thought, bad sign. The was too complex to— could be a distorted Mars…