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24 Vol 4 Num 6 April 2010
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Tiny Elephants
Wed, Dec 16, 2009
As we slammed into the Arctic whitecaps, spraying cold salt water into our Zodiac, Sven shouted, “There’s the island. I’ll run up the white flag.”
Things Undone
Tue, Nov 3, 2009
With two contracts last spring, both successful, Year of Grace 2014 had already been lucrative by early December; better still, with just over three months left in the year, we had yet another contract.
If the Frame Fits: A Jake Masters Story
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
There are probably less appetizing ways to spend an afternoon than having lunch with Baro the Grub, but offhand I couldn’t think of any.
Gorilla My Dreams
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
How strange that such an insignificant little world should matter so much.
Leopard
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
Under cover of darkness, Mattie crawled among the grape arbors lining the path across from his parents' cabin.
A Thousand Worlds, A Million Adventures
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
Morry Jansen loved receiving awards, a highlight of his job as manager and co-owner of Trans Galaxy Holidays.
Ganny Knits a Spaceship
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
“Why do we need a spaceship?” asked Ganny. The question wasn’t rhetorical.
Canaan
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
Eric Baines lost his virginity that night to the mystery girl, in the rear of the SUV that his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday.
Shuffle Up and Deal
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
I'm tired of hearing my good name slammed on national television, so let's get one thing clear up front: the panic wasn't a hoax, all right?
The Hunt
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
Hamadar the merchant crouched against the doorpost of the Two Roosters, twisting the beaded fringe on his sash as he scanned the tavern’s customers.
Afterimage
Sun, Feb 8, 2009
Losing a math coprocessor implant might be an annoyance, but losing a heart regulator was a different thing altogether.
Some Events At the Templar Radiant
Thu, Nov 20, 2008
All his years of past work, his entire future too, hung balanced on this moment.
Astralis
Mon, Jul 28, 2008
In the muted light that occurs once a century when the Three Sisters all shine full upon the Great Plaza of Astralis, a man stands within a tall and graceful tower and before a mirror of silver eternaglass nearly as old as the fabled walls of Astralis itself, those ramparts of gray granite bleached almost as white as marble over the long generations under the unforgiving glare of Soleilgrand.
Article of Faith
Mon, Jul 28, 2008
The first time I saw him, he was sweeping the floor at the back of the darkened church, standing in a beam of light that came streaming down from the window above him, glistening off his metal skin.
Tribute
Fri, Jun 13, 2008
Annogi floated in Observation Room Four staring blindly out of the viewport to the blue Earth below.
Food for Thought
Tue, Apr 15, 2008
Hypnotized by the motion, Mergoyn watched as the array of vibroneedles traveled inexorably toward Wosbel's skull.
Moon Race
Tue, Apr 15, 2008
Usually, gazing out across the crater floor to the weary old ring-wall mountains with the big, blue, beautiful Earth hanging in the black sky above—usually it fills my heart with peace and calm.
Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story
Fri, Mar 21, 2008
Nichols tried to light a cigarette, one of those fucking Paki horseturds.
The Rings of Ragnaran
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
"We bring peace!" Saerr of Vok bellowed, his scales reflecting a million angry lights.
Loki's Net
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
It was easy to forget that she was just one woman, when she was on the set alone.
Primrose and Thorn
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
"Why did I ever listen to you about THIS race? I already spend a bunch right here on Earth," protested Jerome Blacker, president of JBI. "I've been having second thoughts about this Jupiter race."
Primrose Rescue
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
“Let her have her head! Stop fighting her,” Rams raged at the big woman as she struggled with the wheel. He lifted himself on one elbow on the low bunk.
Maker of Worlds
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
An inviting green and blue planet, fleeced with slowly swirling whirlwinds of cloud, rolls majestically through the starry firmament, palpably a thing alive.
The Lordly Loofah
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
I wonder how many of us, as we lie luxuriating in our bathtubs, think about the romance and mystery of the loofah?
The Super
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
Sailors call everything below fifty degrees, south latitude, the Southern Ocean, even though technically, that name only applies to the water around Antarctica.
A Date With Patti Pleezmi
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
"Now," I said, very sweetly, as I pressed the taser into Quinlan's side, "what was it you called me?"
First Rites
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
She sat rigid on the narrow seat of the plane, as if her slightest movement might bring the Boeing 777 down over the Pacific.
Why There Are No Type-C Civilizations
Sat, Oct 13, 2007
On the scale of hypergalactic events, names are unnecessary.
An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away
Tue, Jul 10, 2007
Thorby had kept up his resistance training, but he'd been on Boreas for most of a year so he'd worried about agravitic muscular dystrophy.
Misfits
Fri, Jul 6, 2007
It was a pellucid, temperate morning. The humidity levels were just a point lower than the theoretical "perfect comfort" zone; the sky was an arcing blue-green bowl marred by neither cloud nor threat of rain. It was, in fact, a fine day for gardening.
Honorable Enemies: A Jake Masters Mystery
Mon, Jun 25, 2007
When I got to the office, I found the message waiting for me. I clicked it on, and the image of an animated beachball popped into existence right in front of me.
One Small Step
Fri, Jun 22, 2007
“It’s just a footprint,” Liz Borra said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom.
Manumission
Fri, Jun 22, 2007
This morning, when you wake up and look at your rippled reflection in the basin of water near the concrete wall of your cell, you only have one true personal memory left.
Tweak
Thu, Jun 7, 2007
Civilizations, if they survive their nuclear age, seem always to follow the same path. “It is inevitable,” said the ship.
Laws of Survival
Wed, Apr 18, 2007
My name is Jill. I am somewhere you can't imagine, going somewhere even more unimaginable. If you think I like what I did to get here, you're crazy.
Premature Emergence
Sun, Mar 11, 2007
During a hyperspace slide, cargo haulers like the KMC-85 did not need a human pilot on board.
Waking Ophelia
Sun, Mar 11, 2007
I came out of stasis-sleep to the tap-tap-tap of Bel's thin, metallic fingers on my cheek.
The Smartest Mob . . . (a parable about times soon to come)
Wed, Mar 7, 2007
Washington was like a geezer—
Quasi
Sun, Mar 4, 2007
We didn't want to waste any charges, so we set fire to the stand of trees to get the simians out.
Darwin's Suitcase
Sun, Mar 4, 2007
"Our English sphinx moths have proboscides as long as their bodies, but in Madagascar, there must be moths with proboscides capable of extension to a length of between 10 and 11 inches."
Charles Darwin, 1862,
Virtually, A Cat
Sat, Mar 3, 2007
The burly male technician loomed over the smaller man in engineer's orange coveralls as if by sheer size he would drive home his message.
Double-Secret Weapon
Sat, Feb 10, 2007
So I'm sitting in the food court, stomach growling as the smells of corn dogs and gyros swirl around me.
Dreamtime
Fri, Feb 9, 2007
The silvered airship shimmered, mirage-like, on the horizon. It seemed an insubstantial yet ominous portent of the sultry air.
The Necromancer in Love
Fri, Feb 9, 2007
The young necromancer is a blight on the social landscape, because when his sweetheart meets with an untimely interruption of service (don't they all? don't they always?), he's bound to do something the rest of us regret.
Concentration of Dogs
Mon, Feb 5, 2007
"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog." - Edward Hoagland
Crawlspace
Sat, Feb 3, 2007
In the narrow tunnels deep inside a nineteen by five mile asteroid, long pipes snaked endlessly into the blackness.
Running Water for L.A.
Mon, Nov 27, 2006
Most days, Ron liked everything about the run towing cargo bags full of glacial pure water from Juneau to Los Angeles.
Marklord Pete
Fri, Sep 8, 2006
Take away their freedom? Gawd, man, when have people ever been free? We're not even taking their money, because ultimately that comes from the trademark holders anyway. But people go to work every day, right? And somebody's got to own the result. Administrative law is just a fancy word for not letting it all go to waste.
—
At the Watering Hole
Fri, Sep 8, 2006
Resplendent in a spatter-pattern robe, K'reediscranth turned two eyes and four ears heavenward.
Every Hole is Outlined
Fri, Jul 28, 2006
The ship was at least fourteen thousand years old in slowtime and more than two thousand in eintime, but there were holes in its records and the oldest ones were in no-longer-accessible formats, so the ship estimated that it was more like eighteen thousand slowtime, three and a half thousand eintime. It had borne many names. Currently it was 9743, a name that translated easily for Approach Control no matter where the ship went in human space.
The Power of Illusion
Wed, Jun 14, 2006
Colonel Valentine Sanders of the Interstellar Patrol passed a hand over his close-cropped iron-grey hair, leaned forward at his desk, and did his best to speak politely and persuasively:
Tesseract
Wed, Jun 14, 2006
Anna came in too fast, too low.
There was a screech of tearing metal as Stheno's carbon trees gouged the hull and the flyer tilted fifty degrees. Anna's body slammed forward in her rigid suit.
All the Things You Are
Wed, Jun 14, 2006
You wouldn't think they'd be so dumb. Here they were, in the biggest spaceport in the country, with hundreds of holo cameras covering every inch of the place, and these three jerks actually think they're going to get away with robbing the currency exchange.
Olaf and the Merchandisers
Wed, Jun 14, 2006
Olaf imagines better times while he watches sports action rumble, commercials and promos tumble.
Dinosaur Egg $6
Tue, May 23, 2006
Seeing the handwritten sign "Dinosaur Egg $6," Ted Albright made a hard left and cut across the southbound traffic of Route 89. He parked his Mustang on the broad shoulder of the overlook. Navajos sat behind tables and sold jewelry and pots. Behind them the Colorado River meandered in the distance, a thin, dark streak on an endless plain.
The Old Woman In the Young Woman
Sun, Apr 23, 2006
He had been walking all day. Twice the wandering trails he followed had led him into ruined towns; in each case he had halted and spent an hour or so poking through such rubbish as nature had not yet buried.
The Ten Thousand Things
Wed, Apr 12, 2006
Yukio stared at the image of Matsushima Bay in the window that was one wall of his father's office. Whitecaps freckled the nearer water. Pine-covered islands filled the distance, the trees gray in the dying light. The sounds of whistling wind carried off the occasional beep of the heart monitor as it tracked the death passage of his father.
Chance of Storms
Sat, Mar 18, 2006
My cabin, its lapped wood siding faded to a pale gray, was the only human structure in sight.
Weredragons of Mars
Sat, Mar 18, 2006
In a small, out of the way cabin of the generational ship Trans Global Hope, three students sat around a table planning mayhem.
Pimpf
Mon, Feb 20, 2006
It’s a rainy Monday morning and I’m late in to work at the Laundry because of a technical fault on the Tube. When I get to my desk, the first thing I find is a note from Human Resources that says one of their management team wants to talk to me, soonest, about playing computer games at work.
The Big Ice
Sat, Feb 18, 2006
"Governor‑General's dead."
I glanced up from the disassembled comm‑comp I'd been trying to Frankenstein together. The G‑G was Core. Unkillable. But Mox didn't look like he was kidding.
"How?"
Murphy's Law
Sat, Feb 11, 2006
Dex hadn't planned to save the entire human race. Mostly, he'd been trying not to die, while still keeping his job in the process—
Demonstration Day
Sat, Feb 11, 2006
"Roll up, roll up! Get your antimatter here! Gravitons, superstrings, Higgs bosons—
I Could've Done Better
Sat, Feb 11, 2006
They didn't have to do this to me. Dump me in this place, with no chance of going home.
Newts
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
During what should have been the ring colony's Independence Day celebration, the mood in the family habitat was somber. Rex Hollings stared through the viewing window toward the pastel clouds of Saturn.
A Stranger in Paradise
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
Row upon row of blue-and-green-and-white globes mock me.
The world below reflects from tumblers and goblets and snifters and flutes, from more types of antique glassware than I can name.
Little Sips
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
The little boy sat on the examination table, swinging his bare feet. His mother played with his downy hair as she spoke to the doctor. "I can't think of anything we've done differently."
Thin Ice
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
"ARI, it's not going away. I'm stuck on a ledge on this crater-wall, like a fly in a closed pantry window. In about two hours the sunlight is going to come over that edge, and I'm going to fry. If my air holds out that long."
The Man Who Wasn't There
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
The security 'bots zoomed around the looming mosque like supersonic butterflies in the cold air. Jean watched them with his infrared eyes as their tiny plumes darted over the bare zone, blazing high tech fireflies.
The Ruby Dice
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
The night mourned with silence, as if it were a concert with no musicians left to play the notes. Kelric sat on the bed, in the dim light, and watched the woman sleep. White hair curled around her face. Her skin was smooth, with only a few wrinkles, but it had a translucent quality. Her torso barely rose and fell with her shallow breaths. The crook of her nose, broken decades ago, shadowed her cheek. She had never wanted it fixed, though Kelric could have given her anything, anything at all, any riches or wealth or lands or gifts.
Anything except her life.
Treasure in the Sand
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
"When the last worm dies and the last melange is harvested upon our sands, these deep treasures will spring up throughout our universe. As the power of the spice monopoly fades and the hidden stockpiles make their mark, new powers will appear throughout our realm."
—
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
When Felix's special phone rang at two in the morning, Kelly rolled over and punched him in the shoulder and hissed, "Why didn't you turn that fucking thing off before bed?"
Alone
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
The smooth silver rockets stood against the sky, silent sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside of Mud Creek.
Bob's Yeti Problem
Fri, Feb 10, 2006
One morning Bob Krusden stepped outside his cabin to discover three yeti carcasses embedded in his front yard.
He was pretty sure they were yeti rather than bigfeet, as their pelts were a handsome silver-white rather than brown.
What Would Sam Spade Do?
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
It was shaping up to be a quiet day when Officer Murtagh and Officer Garcia came knocking on my door. The PI business isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially not in Philly and especially not this week.
The Darkness
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
"Hi, Lieutenant," someone said as he walked into Ruthven's room. "Good to see you up and around. I gotta do a few tests with you back in the bed, though."
Slanted Jack
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
Nothing should have been able to ruin my lunch.
Joaquin Choy, the best chef on any planet within three jumps, had erected his restaurant, Falls, just outside Eddy, the only city on the still-developing planet Mund. He'd chosen the site because of the intense flavors of the native vegetables, the high quality of the locally raised livestock, and a setting that whipped your head around and widened your eyes.
Dog Soldier
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
"The seven rings of Syrene shine
Like glowing disks in a nazdra mine
Burning brighter than fusion fire . . ."
"How long is this bullshit going to last?" Assault Sergeant Gillies whispered to his neighbour, Base Sergeant Major Traut.
"Long as it wants to," Traut muttered back. "It"s the CG's poem. Lukas is just reading it."
Brieanna's Constant
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
He redlined his black Camry into the parking lot of the Leeman building, a four-story redbrick full of software engineers and psychologists. Dr. Alan Dickson considered parking directly in front of the main entrance in Brieanna's space—
A Time to Kill
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
Marine Lieutenant David Abrams was a sniper with the 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company. He had the highest operational success rate of any U.S. soldier in the Iranian theatre, and coalition-wide there was only a single Scotsman with the SAS who had a better record.
Candy-Blossom
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
I was going to run. As soon as he . . . it . . . the THING stopped looking at me. Staring a hole through my stupid head with its four eyes. I was going to run like the wind. I shouldn't have come here. Never. I swore to God . . . if I ever got out of here . . .
Chilling
Thu, Feb 9, 2006
“You stupid idiot, you’ve killed us!”
Arik looked over at his new wife. “I love you too.”
