3.1

Chapter 3 [because quality authors use cliffhangers between chapters] [side note, I am now tagging these for efficiency's sake as sherlock posts]

Watson's claws scrabbled on the cold, smooth walls of the strange shell, his only protection now. He could see warped images of the edges of the universe rotating lazily by. Before he knew it, he had reentered habitable spaces and quickly squirted out of the shell.

"Well, what did you see? Are you alive? How many fingers am I holding up?" Sherlock questioned.

In response, Watson viciously attacked, trying to claw Sherlock's eyes off. "I could have died, or been vaporized, or worse, Sherlock!"
"Not dead," said Sherlock. "Check. Now it's time for an unshielded test."

Watson paused, unsure of if he should sink or swim or nip, so he just sucked his eyestalks into his shell. Sherlock lifted his long arm towards the meeting seam between worlds.

Chapter 4

Sherlock's eyes grew to the size of watermelons.

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

For Watson, time seemed to slow indefinitely. Nothing happened for far too long a time, until suddenly, from out of nowhere, deep below, a voice called out "You idiots!"

Sherlock laughed a big, booming laugh. "What is it, Mrs. Hudson?"

"You let that stupid shell thing fall and it crushed the front reef! What will the neighbors think?"

This was all very unceremonious for Watson, who was in a dreadful fright over whether or not Sherlock's hand had shriveled and fallen off for good, and was in no mood to wait for an answer.

"I'm sure they'll think 'My what an oddity! Mrs. Hudson has chosen to decorate art neuveau this season."

"STOP STALLING AND TELL ME IF YOUR HAND FEELS FUNNY," yelled Watson.

"Well there's not all that fuss to be made about it. It feels fine!" said Sherlock, drawing his arm back under the edge. "If I had known you would make a row, I would have done the arm first! I'll explain. That large thing? The thing we found? It's much like a man-bubble, yeah?"

"I suppose so."

"Except flat on top."

"Decidedly."

Sherlock sighed. "Still aren't following? Man-bubbles are never flat on top, but round all the way over. So if it's flat, it must not go where man-bubbles go, but rather above them, in a different kind of water. And the men we see in the man-bubbles or in their masked state are not built for swimming."

"That much is obvious from their speed. I can move faster and I'm built like an anemone."

"Precisely. Haven't I always said they must be from a different place? Well, in their place, they don't need to move quickly, because the water is much thinner. And thus they can have flat surfaces. So, we can quickly assume that an object that is round on one side and flat on the other is made for traversing the 'edge between worlds' as you call it."

"So they live outside the bounds of the universe."

"I suppose, if you want it that way."

Watson sank another three feet while he thought about it. Finally, he answered. "So you mean to tell me that you have deduced an entirely new race simply from the existence of a flat surface?"
"Fantastic, isn't it?"

"Fantastical, I would say. But, barring the impossibility of such a notion, how did the flat surface come to be in our world?"

"Well, Watson! You are now asking the right sort of questions. That precisely is the next phase of our investigation."

Watson sighed. "Oh, goody."

Sherlock sped away, leaving a disgusted and tired crab behind him.