Genre - Science Fiction. You are on the page - 14

y) allthat discontent and trouble seemed to slip off him.It was a beautiful night of early winter, the air just sharp enoughto be refreshing after the hot room and the stinking railwaycarriage. The wind, which had lately turned a point or two north ofwest, had blown the sky clear of all cloud save a light fleck or twowhich went swiftly down the heavens. There was a young moon halfwayup the sky, and as the home-farer caught sight of it, tangled in thebranches of a tall old elm, he could scarce

e evolution of warfare made a successful fighting machine something elaborate, expensive, and maintainable by professionals only. Like in the Roman Empire. It took years to train a legionnaire and a lot of money to equip an army and keep it in the field. So Rome became autarchic. However, it was not so expensive a proposition that a rebellious general couldn't put some troops up for a while--or he could pay them with plunder. So you did get civil wars. Later, when the Empire had broken up and

ensor and You.### Craphound ========= Craphound had wicked yard-sale karma, for a rotten, filthy alien bastard. He was too good at panning out the single grain of gold in a raging river of uselessness for me not to like him -- respect him, anyway. But then he found the cowboy trunk. It was two months' rent to me and nothing but some squirrelly alien kitsch-fetish to Craphound. So I did the unthinkable. I violated the Code. I got into a bidding war with a buddy. Never let them tell you that

naudibly to himself, lifting the page a little at a time and sliding one of the transparent plastic sheets under it, working with minute delicacy. Not the delicacy of the Japanese girl's small hands, moving like the paws of a cat washing her face, but like a steam-hammer cracking a peanut. Field archaeology requires a certain delicacy of touch, too, but Martha watched the pair of them with envious admiration. Then she turned back to her own work, finishing the table of contents.The next page

d bobtail of insignificant satellites, wefloat under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end,some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimateconfines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara ordashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here forthe shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr.James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch witha very close and interested attention every indication of changein those cosmic

bush. And again and again, the same thing had happened. So she ought to trust him to pick up on Jayne's oddity, and, not just pick up on it, but figure out what it meant. Which was more than she could do.Except that the Captain just wasn't himself these days, and that was cause for worry. The "town" of Yuva began abruptly as the road split into two main streets, which ran parallel for about a mile before the southernmost ("South Street," said a sign) left you at the top of a