Search Worlds Without End

Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1992. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection (1993), edited by Gardner Dozois, and One Lamp (2003), edited by Gordon Van Gelder. It is included in the collections The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians (1994) and One Day Closer to Death: Eight Stabs at Immortality (1998).

THE HUB IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE - BUT SO ARE ITS CITIZENS.

The Federation of the Hub: thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds with only the subtlest of interstellar governments holding them all together. Stable at last after centuries of war, the Hub is now prime real estate ... making it a merciless arena for the conflicting schemes of criminals, unscrupulous corporations, and invaders from beyond the edges of Federation space.

But the Hub is well-defended, and not only by professional heroes such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. In Hub Space a citizen is expected to stand up for herself, blaster in hand, as needs must; so when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it....

Table of Contents:

• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - short story
• A Nice Day for Screaming - (1965) - short story
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Machmen - (1964) - short story
• The Other Likeness - (1962) - short story
• Attitudes - (1969) - novelette
• Trouble Tide - (1965) - novelette
• The Demon Breed - (1968) - novel
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• Recurring Characters in the Hub Series - essay by Guy Gordon

Stranded in the desert, the last of mankind is kept safe by a large border fence... Until the fence falls.

Squid is a young orphan living under the oppressive rule of his uncle in the outskirts of the Territory. Lynn is a headstrong girl with an influential father who has spent her entire life within the walled city of Alice.

When the border fence is breached, the Territory is invaded by the largest horde of undead ghouls seen in two hundred years. Squid is soon conscripted into the Diggers-the armed forces of the Territory. And after Lynn finds herself at odds with the Territory's powerful church, she too escapes to join the Diggers.

Together Squid and Lynn form an unlikely friendship as they march to battle against the ghouls. Their journey will take them further than they ever imagined, leading them closer to discovering secrets about themselves, their world, and a conspiracy that may spell the end of the Territory as they know it.

The battle was only the beginning; the real danger is beyond the fence...

The Diggers have been destroyed, a horde of ghouls is moving inland and the High Priestess has seized control of the Central Territory. Together with Nim, a Nomad boy seeking vengeance against the ghouls, Squid and Lynn begin their long journey toward the city of Big Smoke, a city that may not even exist.

Pursued by forces that wish to see them fail, facing threats on all sides and conflict from within, Squid, Lynn and Nim search for a weapon against the ghouls. It is a search that will lead them into forbidden lands where long-held beliefs about their world are tested and Squid may finally unravel the truth of his identity.

But even if they survive their journey, the teenagers on whom the fate of the Territory now rests have no idea what dangers await them beyond the fence.