On the whole, small creatures don't live for a long time. But perhaps they do live fast.

Let me explain.

One of the shortest-lived creatures on the planet Earth is the adult common mayfly. It lasts for one day. The longest-living things are bristlecone pine trees, at 4,700 years and still counting.

This may seem tough on mayflies. But the important thing is not how long your life is, but how long it seems.

To a mayfly, a single hour May last as long as a century. Perhaps old mayflies sit around complaining about how life this minute isn't a patch on the good old. minutes of long ago, when the world was young and the sun seemed so much brighter and larvae showed you a bit of respect. Whereas the trees, which are not famous for their quick reactions, may just have time to notice the way the sky keeps flickering before the dry rot and woodworm set in.

It's all a sort of relativity. The faster you live, the more time stretches out. To a nome, a year lasts as long as ten years does to a human Remember it Don't let it concern you They don't. They don't even know.

In the beginning...

i. There was the Site.

ii. And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) Moved upon the face of the Site, and Saw that it had Potential.

iii. For it was In the High Street.

iv. Yea, it was also Handy for the Buses.

v. And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) said, Let there be a Store, And Let it be a Store such as the World has not Seen hitherto;

vi. Let the length of it be from Palmer Street even unto the Fish Market, and the Width of It, from the High Street right back to Disraeli Road;

vii. Let it be High even Unto Five Storeys plus Basement, And bright with Lifts; let there be the Eter­nal Fires of the Boiler-Room in the sub-basement and, above all other floors, let there be Customer Accounts to Order All Things;

viii. For this must be what all shall Know of Arnold Bros (est. 1905): All Things Under One Roof. And it shall be called: the Store of Arnold Bros (est. 1905).

ix. And Thus it Was.

x. And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) divided the Store into Departments, of Ironmongery, Corsetry, Modes and others After their Kind, and Created Humans to fill them with All Things saying, Yea, All Things Are Here. And Arnold Bros (est. 1905) said, Let there be Lorries, and Let their Colours be Red and Gold, and Let them. Go Forth so that All May Know Arnold Bros (est. 1905), By Appointment, delivers All Things; xi. Let there be Santa's Grottoes and Winter Sales and Summer Bargains and Back to School Week and AU Commodities in their Season; xii. And into the Store came the Nomes, that it would be their Place, for Ever and Ever.

From The Book of Nome, Basements VI-XII

This is the story of the Going Home. This is the story of the Critical Path.

This is the story of the lorry roaring through the sleeping city and out into the country lanes, smashing through street lamps and swinging from side to side and shattering shop windows and roll­ing to a halt when the police chased it. And when the baffled men went back to their car to report Listen, will you, listen? There isn't anyone driving it!, it became the story of the lorry that started up again, rolled away from the astonished men, and vanished into the night.

But the story didn't end there.

It didn't start there, either.

The sky rained dismal. It rained humdrum. It rained the kind of rain that is so much wetter than normal rain, the kind of rain that comes down in big drops and splats, the kind of rain that is merely an upright sea with slots in it.

It rained a tattoo on the old hamburger boxes and chip papers in the wire basket that was giving Masklin a temporary hiding place.

Look at him. Wet. Cold. Extremely worried. And four inches high.

The waste-bin was usually a good hunting ground, even in winter. There were often a few cold chips in their wrapping, sometimes even a chicken bone. Once or twice there had been a rat, too. It had been a really good day when there had last been a rat - it had kept them going for a week. The trouble was that you could get pretty fed up with rat by the third day. By the third mouthful, come to that.

Masklin scanned the lorry park.

And here it came, right on time, crashing through the puddles and pulling up with a hiss of brakes.

He'd watched this lorry arrive every Tuesday and Thursday morning for the last four weeks. He timed the driver's stop carefully.

They had exactly three minutes. To someone the size of a nome, that's more than half an hour.

He scrambled down through the greasy paper, dropped out of the bottom of the bin, and ran for the bushes at the edge of the park where Grimma and the old folk were waiting.

'It's here!' he said. 'Come on!' They got to their feet, groaning and grumbling. He'd taken them through this dozens of times. He knew it wasn't any good shouting. They just got upset and confused, and then they'd grumble some more. They grumbled about cold chips, even when Grimma warmed them up. They moaned about rat. He'd seriously thought about leaving alone, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. They needed him. They needed someone to grumble at.

But they were too slow. He felt like bursting into tears.

He turned to Grimma instead.

'Come on,' he said. 'Give them a prod, or some­thing. They'll never get moving!' She patted his hand.

'They're frightened,' she said. 'You go on. I'll bring them out.' There wasn't time to argue. Masklin ran back across the soaking mud of the park, unslinging the rope and grapnel. It had taken him a week to make the hook, out of a bit of wire teased off a fence, and he'd spent days practicing; he was already swinging it around his head as he reached the lorry's wheel.

The hook caught the tarpaulin high above him at the second try. He tested it once or twice and then, his feet scrabbling for a grip on the tire, pulled himself up.

He'd done it before. Oh, he'd done it three or four times. He scrambled under the heavy tarpaulin and into the darkness beyond, pulling out more line and tying it as tightly as possible around one of the ropes that were as thick as his arm.

Then he slid back to the edge and, thank good­ness, Grimma was herding the old people across the gravel. He could hear them complaining about the puddles.

Masklin jumped up and down with impatience. It seemed to take hours. He explained it to them millions of times, but people hadn't been pulled up on to the backs of lorries when they were children and they didn't see why they should start now. Old Granny Morkie insisted that all the men look the other way so that they wouldn't see up her skirts, for example, and old Torrit whimpered so much that Masklin had to lower him again so that Grimma could blindfold him. It wasn't so bad after he'd hauled the first few up, because they were able to help on the rope, but time still stretched out.

He pulled Grimma up last. She was light. They were all light, if it came to that. You didn't get rat every day.

It was amazing. They were all on board. He'd worked with an ear cocked for the sound of foot­steps on gravel and the slamming of the driver's door, and it hadn't happened.

'Right,' he said, shaking with the effort. 'That's it, then. Now if we just go-' 'I dropped the Thing,' said old Torrit. 'The Thing. I dropped It, d'you see? I dropped it down by the wheel when she was blindfoldin' me. You go and get it, boy.' Masklin looked at him in horror. Then he poked his head out from under the tarpaulin and, yes, there it was, far below. A tiny black cube on the ground.