Story Excerpts

Lemuria 7 Is Missing
by Allen M. Steele

The history of sea and air travel is replete with mysterious disappearances. Since the times when Egyptian galleys and Phoenician trading vessels sailed the Mediterranean, ships have set out upon sun-freckled waters, their captains and crew confident in the belief that nautical skill, favorable winds, and the mercy of the gods would guide and protect them in their travels.

But the sun can vanish behind threatening clouds, the wind can shift directions and become ominously strong, the gods may forsake the most pious seamen, and even an experienced captain can make mistakes that will bring doom upon his vessel and crew. When these things happened, ships didn’t make their scheduled landfalls and it soon became coldly apparent their sails would never again be seen above the horizon, and the cries of wives who’d just become widows were once more heard in seaport towns. READ MORE

 

The Fifteenth Saint
by Ursula Whitcher

Sannali Emenev did two things with his life: he read a book with one page, and he ran a city.

Neither of these was his official role. There were eight judges in Junpalto. Every one of the eight of them got up in the morning, pulled a stretchy cap over their braided hair, placed a flowing wig over the cap, and sat in state to hear the problems of the city. But the first judge was brand new, the second was exhausted, the third was busy looking after his aging father, and the fourth was distracted by bickering among the Companies. So it ran through the list, and the conclusion was that if you needed someone to rearrange a department or reform a school, you spoke to Judge Emenev.

The book was private. Emenev rarely spoke of it, even to his clerk: it was the sort of thing hermits in the canyons or starfarers who had listened to voices in the deep cared about, not rational and responsible city folk. READ MORE