August/September 2011

In Which Stargazing Becomes A Spectator Sport – Royal Correspondence – A Hat – A Telescope – A Violin Siphonaptera jumped on to the flat roof, hidden by his tiny size and darkness of the still night. Though the stars peppered the skies with diamond dust, their light would no more have illuminated the predator than using a candle to see from one end of a particularly dank, gloomy tunnel. He paused on his long hind legs, lifted his head and fixed a beady eye on his prey. Three warm bodies for him to gorge on. If his front...

Read more »

One  New York City   1889 “Shall we?”  Evan Halford grabbed one brass wheel with both hands.  His partner, Samuel, grabbed the other. Together they turned the wheels to open the Receptor’s valves.  It woke with a pumping hiss. Evan stepped back, grabbed the gloved hand of his wife, and murmured a prayer. At his “amen” there came a tiny flicker of light. Grace Halford stared at the Receptor’s vast screen and her breath seized as though someone had drawn her corset strings too tight. The Receptor took up half the attic wall of their brownstone, surrounded by metal tubes...

Read more »

“Science is the best tool we have for solving crimes. “It can also be useful in locating missing cufflinks.” ~Huxley Grave I Gideon Huxley Grave, in which we learn something about the younger Grave’s upbringing among the scholars of Laputa, and his discovery of a peculiar Device To say that Huxley Grave had little experience with women was as much an understatement as it would have been to say that Sir Gideon Grave had considerable experience with women. It is, in fact, the same sort of understatement, as, say, “a bloodhound’s got an all right sense on smell.” It...

Read more »

Liza didn’t wake up the next morning, as much as resign herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon.  There was no need to get dressed for the day, she’d never gotten ready for bed.  She took the stairs three at a time to the kitchen, a full hour before Miss Elsie was to begin preparing breakfast, and started making pancakes and bacon.  Before she added the batter to the steamsteel frying pan, she held it up and smiled.  “I’d rather have you than gold any day,” she laughed, and cooked breakfast. Miss...

Read more »