The Captain's Men The Prayer and her crew have been lost in space for four years. Thomas is lonely and homesick; Zachery is angry and mutinous; Rick is just terrified. And all of them are really in need of some hands-on time with their captain. The only thing holding them together is their captain, whose methods are unconventional but extremely effective. But now the captain has a choice to make: do they continue their fruitless search for a way home or try to start a new life in this strange galaxy? The Captain's Encounter The captain's luck is finally changing. They've found an inhabitable...

There's a corpse in the mushroom patch. Ruth isn't bothered; she collects dead things in jars under her bed. Her best friend, Hermana, is very upset, but only because the mushroom patch the corpse is lying in happens to be theirs, and the woods in which it decided to die happen to be their woods. Growing up shunned by the proper folk who live down in the valley, the two odd young women take a hard view of anyone who invades their quiet, wild world. Their hopes that the problem will take care of itself fade when the corpse doesn't decay. Worse, when they try to bury it they find it's too heavy...