Winters on Ballybran were generally mild, so the fury of the first spring storms as they howled across the land was ever unexpected. This first one of the new season swept ferociously across the Milekey Ranges, bearing before its westward course the fleeing sleds of crystal singers like so much jetsam. Those laggard singers who had tarried too long at their claims were barely able to hold their bucking sleds on course as they bolted for the safety of the Heptite Guild plex.　Inside the gigantic Hangar, its baffles raised against the mach winds, ordered confusion reigned. Crystal singers lurch　

　　THE SUMERIANS　　　　Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, the first real moves towards civilisation emerged from southern Mesopotamia, around the lower reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Because the land was between two rivers-Sumer-the people there were called Sumerians.　　Their ethnic origins have never been explained.　　This race of people made three important contributions towards our advancement-four if you count the establishment of firmly governed munities.　　The first two were these: The measurement of time in hours, days and months; and astrology, the study of the sta　

　　　On August 23, the day before the hurricane struck, Max and Bonnie Lamb awoke early, made love twice and rode the shuttle bus to Disney World. That evening they returned to the Peabody Hotel, showered separately, switched on the cable news and saw that the storm was heading directly for the southeastern tip of Florida. The TV weatherman warned that it was the fiercest in many years.　　Max Lamb sat at the foot of the bed and gazed at the color radar image-a ragged flame-colored sphere, spinning counterclockwise toward the coast. He said, "Jesus, look at that."　　A hurricane, Bonnie Lamb though　

　CROOKS IN AMBUSH　IT was gala night in the city of Westford. Streets were strung with brilliant lines of colored electric lights. Store fronts were illuminated, throwing their brightness upon festooned posts and displaying the elaborate decorations of their own windows. Tourists, driving through the main streets, gained the impressions that this city of two hundred thousand was engaged in celebration.　As the boosters phrased it, Westford was a "live town" that was definitely "on the map"; the city attracted visitors from every town within a hundred miles. Business was booming in Westford; it 　

THE MARK OF DEATH　　THE MOUNTAIN LIMITED was clicking slowly over the rails that trail through the highest and wildest land in America-the western slope of the Rockies.　　Speed was cut down as the big special labored toward the highest point on its line-nearly seven thousand feet above sea level.　　Midnight had struck.　　Outside, the gloomy mountains hung over the track; seemed about to close in on it, and wipe out the train and all its passengers.　　Within the club car of the train, only a handful of men remained in the fortable chairs.　　All of these were dozing away, with the exception of one　

　　And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,　　And the dry stone no sound of water. Only　　There is shadow under this red rock,　　(e in under the shadow of this red rock),　　And I will show you something different from either　　Your shadow in the morning striding behind you　　Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;　　I will show you fear in a handful of dust.　　-T. S. ELIOT "The Waste Land"　　　　If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk　　Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents　　Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents...　

To Carolyn Conger"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world."ALBERT EINSTEIN"Deep in the chaotic regime, slight changes in structure almost always cause vast changes in behavior. plex controllable behavior seems precluded."STUART KAUFFMAN"Sequelae are inherently unpredictable."IAN MALCOLMIntroduction:"Extinction at the K-T Boundary"The late twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable growth in scientific interest in the subject of extinction.It is hardly a new subject - Baron Georges Cuvier had first demonstrated that species became extinct back in 1　

　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　

　　　　I was following Derry Welfram at a prudent fifty paces when he stumbled, fell face down on the wet tarmac and lay still. I stopped, watching, as nearer hands stretched to help him up, and saw the doubt, the apprehension, the shock flower in the opening mouths of the faces around him. The word that formed in consequence in my own brain was violent, of four letters and unexpressed.　　Derry Welfram lay face down, unmoving, while the fourteen runners for the three-thirty race at York stalked closely past him, the damp jockeys looking down and back with muted curiosity, minds on the business ah　

I stood in line, as patient as the other taxpayers, my filled out forms and my cash gripped body in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned green folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the window. My finger stuck in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling the beard off as well."e, e, pass it over," the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish female official said, hand extended impatiently."On the contrar