Born on a long lost outpost of humanity, that only recently was reconnected to the wider galaxy, Leonora is at the end the rope. Her body is slowly succumbing to an incurable disease when she is given a chance at... something. A mysterious Traveler is offering her a future but warns that it comes at a risk. Welcome to Circe, an aboriginal world at outskirts of the known galaxy, where strange mists hide something with the power to upend the fragile balance that preserves the civilization.
When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicane's adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a "manned" flight, one man's dream turns into an international space race.
A short story, surrounding questions of rivalry and honesty, to whit: when presented with the full-proof method of securing a key victory dishonestly, what should one do. The moral answer is, of course, clear but the reality of the beguiling nature of temptation is something else entirely.