Short Fiction

Kane Lanark

Lanark enlisted only after Quantrill's men robbed him on the Kansas border, and he rose from elected sergeant to lieutenant by rallying a panicked patrol his commander abandoned. He carries Confederate sympathies into a Union uniform, a contradiction he never quite resolves, and his hunger to saber Quantrill personally drives him past caution. When General Curtis hands him twenty picked riders, that private vendetta becomes the story's engine, steering the patrol toward the trough-like valley where the raider waits.

David Planter

Planter shares a gravityless cabin with Disbro, chewing ration bars and rationing water while the Foundation watches through telescopes, expecting a crash and a triumphant flare. He has killed a husband and been sworn away by Gwen, so death has felt abstract until Disbro proposes tinkering with the controls to land at Venus's coolest pole. His sudden appetite for survival, and his willingness to gamble on Disbro's scheme, turns a suicide mission into the book's central question of whether the two men can outwit the men who sent them.

Keith Pursuivant

Pursuivant sits by the fire with Constable O'Bryant, Dr. Zoberg, and a young woman convinced her own sleeping body murdered her father, and he refuses to let her carry that guilt. He cites John Silence and the Arabic-speaking materialized entity to argue that a spirit may come from without, showing a mind that treats the supernatural as evidence rather than sensation. His suggestion to search the damp woods for footprints, and his insistence on lanterns as the best weapon, make him the story's steadying intelligence as the case tightens around Susan Gird.

Varduk

Varduk leases a defunct sporting lodge at Lake Jozgid, knocks out its partitions, and gathers Sigrid Holgar and a small company around a script whose last speech is mysteriously missing from every copy. He is superstitious for all his apparent wisdom and culture, warning that the final line must never be spoken in rehearsal, and he deflects questions about the virgin timber and the property's history with a smooth change of subject. His heavy gaze and habit of command unsettle the narrator, making him the quiet pressure behind the production's growing unease.

Fitzhugh Parr

Parr is booted onto the asteroid ten minutes before a mob of hairy, snarling exiles makes him their chief simply because he is newest and therefore healthiest. Sadau, a convicted thief, explains the catch: living creatures degenerate here, men becoming apes, apes becoming lower things still, a Martian alternative to execution that makes death trivial by comparison. Parr accepts command only after demanding information, and his refusal to be flattered into the role sets up the story's grim arithmetic, that his authority will last exactly until the next arrival.

Jake Switz

Jake travels with Sigrid as her constant companion, helping Davidson buy the car that lets them slip out of New York ahead of her souvenir-demanding public. At the lodge he cooks the company's first meal, eating heartily while Varduk only picks at his food, and he later passes Varduk's remarks on to Judge Pursuivant and the narrator. His quiet observation of Sigrid's frigid silence after Varduk's arbitrary lantern command makes him the story's attentive witness to the tensions gathering around the production.