Publisher's Synopsis
Screaming Ghost Lake.
Violet and crystalline, stone stacks spread from horizon to horizon, jutting out from the slopes of the hillsides and the waters of Screaming Ghost Lake like ancient sentinels. Two small green evening moons accented the reflective surface, confusing the mirror-smooth sheen of the loch, making it seem the very sky itself. It appeared to Vince Phalen his speedboat ran across a mirror of the heavens. He could see mossy objects beneath the surface; they made the waters particularly treacherous if one did not know where the shallows hid the submerged stacks. Lumbering mega-koi fish twirled slowly beneath the perfect surface of the water, swimming in the reflections of the stars. From an ornate leather case, he pulled brass binoculars and ran a search over the waters and hillside.
No sign of the coast guard.
Vince set his binoculars down on the speedboat's elaborate fern-wood and bronze dash and wiped sweat from his eyes. It wasn't that hot. "Nerves," he said. That was all. Maybe merely the heat from the idling engine? He bit his lip and cursed himself for letting Andrew talk him into these "deliveries". He wiped sweat and a stray strand of his long red hair from his face. Yet Charon and he had recently wed and winter was coming; he needed the money. If the coast guard caught him, he would be a decade in the stasis block.
The Tunis mushrooms in the hold were illegal.
He picked up the binoculars again and scanned the horizon. It was then that he saw what everyone else had missed since the first fall. A long straight streak on the side of a distant hill.
"The crash trail of a starship?" he whispered to himself. It was slashing the landscape, overgrown, but there.
