Rapidly darkening skies and the suddenly looming threat of a very heavy
storm caused the picnickers to rush for shelter, grabbing the food and
utensils on the way. Grandpa was far too slow as usual, and the twins had
to help him up and assist him in gaining the shelter.

The heavens opened, and great jagged angry streaks of lightning reached out
to grasp and shake the ridges and peaks of the mountains in the near
distance, thunder rolled and reverberated from the naked rock, like some
mad orchestral cacophony from hell.

Rushing on at incredible speed over the foothills the storm abated somewhat,
the first massive rush of almost solid rain settling in to a steady
downpour. Thunder grumbled and rolled, retiring slowly into the distance,
and the picnickers hunkered down in the shelter and waited.

Timothy and Thomas, known to all as "the terrible twins" were very quickly
bored, and started pestering Grandpa to tell them a story. They never
believed any of his stories, and often made fun of him for relating such
fantastic nonsense, but still kept pestering for more.

"Go on dad, tell them a story" their mother implored, "anything to keep them
quiet for a while, we cant go out in this".

Grandpa sighed, closed his eyes momentarily, and then opened them slowly,
focussing on something distant and apparently obscured by the rain, which
only he could see. The picnickers fell silent, and grandpa started with his
inevitable "When I was a young man.............."

He paused after his standard introduction, obviously mulling over the
possibilities in his mind, and then proceeded to relate one of his fantastic
stories.

"Where we are now sitting there were lots of trees and bushes growing from
the ground which was covered in soil. Insects and worms and all sorts of
other things lived in the soil". The twins looked rather uncomfortable at
this revelation, and fidgeted about on their plastic seats, rubbing the
clean bare rock with their shoes, as if to test the ground for any evidence
of such a wild claim.

"What happened to them all then Grandpa?" asked Timothy, "shssssh" said his
mother" listen to the story", and Grandpa carried on as if he had not
noticed the interruption.

"At the bottom of the hill was a stream, and lots of fish and birds and
animals lived in it and near it , my Grandpa brought me here quite a few
times to catch fish". "What did you want to catch fish for Grandpa?"
Timothy interrupted again. "Oh we did it mainly for fun", said Grandpa,
noticing the question this time, "and sometimes we ate the fish as well,
lovely they were". The twins giggled, and looked disbelieving, and Grandpa
snorted and continued with his story.

"Angling it was called, my Grandpa had a lot of special equipment for
angling, rods for casting and playing the fish, boxes of flies, most of
which he made himself from feathers and fur and other stuff, to imitate the
insects the fish were feeding on, and special clothes to wear while doing
it".

"You told us he walked in the water", Thomas interrupted this time, "yes ,
he did said Grandpa, "and so did I, it was fun". "Oh do be careful what you
tell them dad ", said his daughter, "you will have them trying it and
getting into trouble".

"Well it was fun then", Grandpa rather testily retorted, and his daughter
subsided with a sigh. She was never quite certain whether to believe her
father or not either, he did tell some rather fantastic stories. She had
checked some of the things he said on the universal com link though, and
some of what he said was true at least, although the information she had
received had been very patchy. There had indeed been streams with trees and
insects, this much she had been able to verify, she had even seen one or two
pictures of some things called trees, and a picture of a fly, a nasty
horrible black thing with lots of legs, that the com link said had carried
disease, but as to people walking in water and the like, even with
protective
equipment, when she had asked about this, the com link had gone into a long
dissertation on the possible danger to life limb and general health, and she
had cut it off, not wishing to hear any more.

Grandpa was still rambling on when she looked up with a start from her
reverie. He was telling the twins about squirrels, which apparently were
some sort of small furry creature that lived in trees. She shivered
slightly, turned up the temperature control on her environmental suit, and
regulated the oxygen supply from her belt converter, and started gathering
up the picnic equipment.

This would be the last picnic for a long time, her father had somehow
wangled permission to visit the nature reserve yet again. She did not know
how he had managed it, but was certain that it had been very difficult
indeed. Her father was very old, he was one of the first people to have the
anti-age treatments, and it was said that he was over two hundred years
old, the oldest people she had met apart from her father had been about a
hundred and thirty, and considering applying for child permits. She was
glad that she had decided to do it at an early age, she had only been eighty
three when the permit had come through, and she still remembered the
excitement and anticipation she had felt when she had met her husband for
the first time after the permit had been approved.

She looked proudly at the twins, only three people she knew had been allowed
to have children at all, and nobody she knew had ever heard of anybody
having twins. Her father said it had been quite common then, but perhaps he
was just exaggerating again, the age treatments were reputed to cause some
strange effects with time.

The rain slowly stopped, and the sky cleared quickly, she checked her suit
radiation controls, automatically adjusting the polarising and radiation
filters to block the raw solar radiation now pouring from the sky.

She wondered why her father was so set on a picnic in such an awful place,
it was much more fun to visit the feely-drome on the fifteenth sub-surface
level, and a lot less trouble and expense. Ah well, she loved her father,
and if it made him happy, why not. She wished sometimes though he would not
tell the twins some of the things he told them, he did not even seem to
realise that they usually just laughed in disbelief. Their teachers had
warned her a few times, that such fantastic ideas might get them into
trouble at school and in later life.

"Come on then, we can go out now", just a few isolated drops were falling,
and these could be handled quite easily by the suits, a downpour was another
matter, the com link had warned quite emphatically about prolonged exposure
to unfiltered rainwater, and she was inclined to take the warning seriously.
She wondered if that was another product of her fathers fantasy that he had
walked in the rain without any protection at all as a boy, the rather
terrifying prospect made her shiver again, and she packed the last few
pieces of algae protein and picnic equipment, and helped her husband
dismantle the special shelter. "Come on dad, you can tell the rest of the
story at home", she said, and the picnickers moved off down the slope of
bare blasted and acid etched rock towards the transport bubble and the
journey home.

Tight lines !