The Directory-ship Tethys made the first landing on the planet, L21612. It was a goodly world, with an ample atmosphere and many seas, which the nearby sun warmed so lavishly that a perpetual cloud-bank hid them and all the solid ground from view. It had mountains and islands and high plateaus. It had day and night and rain. It had an equable climate, rather on the tropical side. But it possessed no life...
The son of one of the first Ashtear and a sidhe queen clone hunts ancient realm gates. When he finds one lost and forgotten he opens a gate. The realm holds dark sidhe and he scouts it until he feels a need to act and help a female slave. After that he discovers their plan to open a gate onto his world to attack.
The robots were built to serve Man; to do his work, see to his comforts, make smooth his way. Then the robots figured out an additional service--putting Man out of his misery.
There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is.
A man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world.
A man can be killed by a toy gun--he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete--a thing or an idea?
