Graveyard of Dreams

by H. Beam Piper

Genres: Science Fiction; Alternative History sci-fi; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

Conn, the son of a melon planter on the planet Poictesme, returns home after five years on Earth, studying. And spying. The planet had been used as a military staging point during the last interstellar war between the Federation and the System States Alliance, and somewhere among the leftover war debris on the planet is rumored to be the supercomputer that won the war. Many believe that this supercomputer can provide the answers to lift Poictesme out of economic stagnation and make it a prosperous place again. Conn has been gathering information just for this purpose - the search is on...

Release date: November 26, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 34

Sample

Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watching the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped the metal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back the airship by force. Thirty minutes—twenty-six and a fraction of the Terran minutes he had become accustomed to—until he’d have to face it.

Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as “sir,” he turned.

“I beg your pardon?”

It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform of forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sort of thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he was noticing it everywhere.

“Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir,” the ship’s officer repeated. “You’ll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you.”

The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. “Would you mind checking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list.”

“Certainly.” He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen and twenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two; microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a little flicker of anger in him, not at any person, even himself, but at the situation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing.

“Yes, that’s everything. I have no hand-luggage, just this stuff.”

He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip; the other papers were all freight and express manifests. “Not many passengers left aboard, are there?”

“You’re the only one in first-class, sir,” the mate replied. “About forty farm-laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at the other stops. Litchfield’s the end of the run. You know anything about the place?”

“I was born there. I’ve been away at school for the last five years.”

“On Baldur?”

“Terra. University of Montevideo.” Once Conn would have said it almost boastfully.

The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned and nodded. “Of course; I should have known. You’re Rodney Maxwell’s son, aren’t you? Your father’s one of our regular freight shippers. Been sending out a lot of stuff lately.” He looked as though he would hav. . .