PART ONETheTurning WheelEnd of PART ONE1Tears and SmokeTiamak found the empty treelessness of the High Thrithing oppressive. Kwanitupul was strange, too, but he had been visiting that place since childhood, and its tumbledown buildings and ubiquitous waterways at least reminded him a little of his marshy home. Even Perdruin, where he had spent time in lonely exile, was so filled with close-leaning walls and narrow pathways, so riddled with shadowy hiding places and blanketed in the salt smell of the sea, that Tiamak had been able to live with his homesickness. But here on the grasslands he felt tremendously exposed and utterly out of place. It was not a forting feeling....　

A MATTER OF MILLIONS　　THE Clipper smacked the blue of Biscayne Bay and settled into a lazy squat, from which it taxied toward a landing. An audible sigh of relief came from the roped-off crowd that lined the shore of Dinner Key. Little wonder that the sigh was heard, for the throng was immense.　　Seldom did the population of Miami, citizen and tourist, assemble en masse at the Marine Airways Base to witness the arrival of a Clipper plane. But the winged ship just in from the Caribbean was worthy of a huge turnout. Not only because its passengers were something of celebrities, but because of the cargo that they brought.　　The plane was in from Centralba, a Caribbean republic long establishe　

　I found what follows lying on my desk one morning.　As you will see, it appears to be the first-person story of a young woman, evidently beautiful and not unskilled in the arts of love.　According to her story, she appears to have been involved, both perilously and romantically, with the same James Bond whose secret-service exploits I myself have written from time to time.　With the manuscript was a note signed "Vivienne Michel," assuring me that what she had written was purest truth and from the depths of her heart.　I was much interested in this view of James Bond, through the wrong end of the telescope, so to speak, and, after obtaining clearance for certain minor infringements of the Offic　

　To　my gentle Reader　William Plomer　　PART ONE: HAPPENSTANCE　　CHAPTER ONE　　REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON　　JAMES BOND, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.　It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix - the licence to kill in the Secret Service - it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional - worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul.　And yet there had been something curiously impres　

　A heavy rain in Scotland had swollen the streams. As one of them subsided, a small bundle was left by the receding waters.　This bundle contained human flesh.　A search revealed more bundles. Some of them were found days apart. Apparently, many of them had been thrown from a bridge into the turbulent flood waters.　Nearly a month after the first discoveries, a left foot was found on the roadside some distance from the stream bed. Nearly a week later, a right forearm with hand was discovered.　All of the recoveries were, of course, in a state of advanced deposition.　When the pieces were assembled, it was found there were two heads which had been mutilated by removal of eyes, ears, nose, lips an　

　A RED-HAIRED GIRL　　THE residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or while enjoying ten cents worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus, it jumps out and bites at you. Architects, confronted with it, reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the lay observer has a sense of shock. The place resembles in almost equal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and a Chinese pagoda. Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the placent animals which guar　

　Now, six months have passed since Anita has seen either Jean-Claude or Richard. Six months of celibacy. Six months of indecision. Six months of danger. For her body carries the marks of both vampire and werewolf, and until the triumvirate is consummated, all three remain vulnerable.　But when a kidnapper targets innocents that Anita has sworn to protect, she needs all the help she can get. In an earth-shattering union, Anita, Jean-Claude, and Richard merge the marks and melt into one another. Suddenly, Anita can harness both their powers. She can feel their hearts ... hear their thoughts ... know their hungers ....　Nothing can save Anita from a twist of fate that draws her ever closer to t　

　　It was hot. The shallow place where I lay atop the desert ridge was like an oven, the rocks like burning coals. Out on the flat below, where the Apaches waited, the heat waves shimmered and danced. Only the far-off mountains looked cool.　When I tried to push out my tongue to touch my cracked lips it was like a dry stick in my mouth, and the dark splashes on the rock were blood ... my blood.　The round thing lying yonder with a bullet hole in it was my canteen, but there might be a smidgen of water left in the bottom - enough to keep me alive if I could get to it.　Down on the flat lay my sorrel horse, who had run himself to death trying to save my hide, and him with a bullet hole in his bel　

　　Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock on the bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it was exactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving her head on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up in bed. She always woke at eight precisely.　Was this Mrs. Hignett the Mrs. Hignett, the world　

　On the fine, bright morning in early May when the whole sensational affair of the Gwytherin relics may properly be considered to have begun, Brother Cadfael had been up long before Prime, pricking out cabbage seedlings before the day was aired, and his thoughts were all on birth, growth and fertility, not at all on graves and reliquaries and violent deaths, whether of saints, sinners or ordinary decent, fallible men like himself. Nothing troubled his peace but the necessity to take himself indoors for Mass, and the succeeding half-hour of chapter, which was always liable to stray over by an extra ten minutes. He grudged the time from his more congenial labours out here among the vegetables　

　 The Danger in Dreams　　 Thomas Covenant was talking in his sleep. At times he knew what he was doing; the broken pieces of his voice penetrated his stupor dimly, like flickers of innocence. But he could not rouse himself-the weight of his exhaustion was too great. He babbled like millions of people before him, whole or ill, true or false. But in his case there was no one to hear. He would not have been more alone if he had been the last dreamer left alive.　 When the shrill demand of the phone cut through him, he woke up wailing.　 For a moment after he threw himself upright in bed, he could not distinguish between the phone and his own flat terror; both echoed like torment through the　

　　IWORMALLY there are only two types of marine machines concerned with the discovery and recovery of oil from under the ocean floor. The first, mainly engaged in the discovery of oil, is a self-propelled vessel, sometimes of very considerable size. Apart from its towering drilling derrick, it is indistinguishable from any oceangoing cargo vessel; its purpose is to drill boreholes in areas where seismological and geological studies suggest oil may exist. The technical operation of this activity is highly plex, yet these vessels have achieved a remarkable level of success. However, they suffer from two major drawbacks. Although they are equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated naviga