Part 6: The Pool Of Tears
"Oh, those aren’t the words I’m sure!” sighed Nyssa. “And I’m awfully certain the rules of gravity don’t work like that either!” She was still looking through the eyes of the mask, and suddenly realising that she had put it on. “How can I have done that?” she thought, “I must be growing small again.” She went to the console table to measure herself against it, and realised that she was rapidly shrinking. The mask was now almost as big as she was, and rapidly becoming very much larger, so that she could almost squeeze through an eyehole. She let go of it very quickly, before she shrank to nothing, and suddenly
Splish!
Splosh!
Splash!
she was up to her chin in salt water. She realised that she had fallen into the pool of tears that she had wept when she was so much larger.
“I shouldn’t have cried so much!” said Nyssa as she splashed about. “I shall be drowned in my own tears now! What a strange way to go! However, everything is strange today. Stranger than usual.”
Just then, she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and swam nearer to see what it was. At first she thought it must be a panda, but that was nonsense, for it was very small, and Nyssa knew pandas were rather larger, but then she realised it was indeed a small stuffed toy panda that had slipped in like herself.
“Oh, Panda, do you know how we can get out of this pool?” she said, reasoning that it would do no harm to try speaking to it. “I am so tired of swimming around!” The Panda stared at her rather quizzically, and seemed to wink with one glass eye, but said nothing.
“I…” Nyssa began, and suddenly the Panda pricked an ear. “Are you a Mechanoid?” it demanded, in a rather whispery, woolly way. “I do not like Mechanoids!”
“We don’t have to talk about Mechanoids if you’d rather not” replied Nyssa.
“We indeed!” cried the Panda, who was bristling all over. “As if I would talk about such creatures! I always hated them, nasty, soulless, geodesic things! Don’t let me hear the name again!”
“I won’t!” protested Nyssa, who was not certain what Mechanoids were, and decided to change the subject. “Do you - do you know Daleks?”
The Panda started swimming away from her as hard as it could go, making quite a commotion in the pool as it went. Nyssa called softly after it “Oh, Panda! Do come back again, and we won’t talk about Mechanoids, or Daleks either, if you don’t like them!” When the Panda heard this, it swam back to her and said in a low, snappish voice, “Let us get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you why I hate Mechanoids and Daleks.”
It was high time to go because the pool was getting quite crowded with people who had fallen into it. There was a Vicki and a Dodo, a Pretty Polly and a Shrieky Susan, and several other curious ladies, all in exceedingly fab gear.