It's springtime here on the planet Earth, and another issue of the Intergalactic Medicine Show comes rattling into your atmosphere, bringing lies and fancies, dangers and appeasements.

E. Catherine Tobler is hawking the tale of a bone found on a barren Martian plain, captured (protected?) by a dilapidated rover. A bit of unknown, unexpected Martian history, washed into being by wind and scouring sand. In "Murmuration," Tobler teases a mystery out of the red sands as subtly as an archeologist extracting miracles from a rock.

A miracle is at the heart of Shweta Sundararajan's "The Warrior and the Sage." Or maybe it's a disaster: The mountain near Soujanya's village has disappeared, and with it, her playmate, Ashraf. Soujanya defies her elders, the gods, and the mountain itself to find her friend and return him home.

Darron returns home from war in Brian Trent's "Shadows and Shore Leave," and finds, predictably, that not everything is as he left it. His little sister's new style, new attitude, and new friends drive a wedge between them, as do her views on the war to protect their colony from the alien krolort.

In Steven R. Stewart's "The God in the Window," Olivetta's sister, Mallory, has a new attitude, too--brought on by a failed throat surgery. Perhaps. Olivetta suspects that something darker, something deeper is tainting her sister's life. While Mother carries on her dreams of her singing career, while Father is stoically oblivious, Olivetta searches for meaning in her sister's obsession with an old book of poetry.

Spring is a time for regrowth and rebirth here in the northern hemisphere, which leads us appropriately to Matthew Shean's "Super Action Excite Team Go!" It's a story about the regrowth of a limb; and also about the growth of a kid in the middle of a dissolving family situation.

Ship, in Daniel Rosen's "The Ship That Forgot Itself," has a whole world of family to care for. Humans, fish, plants--a driftcolony that relies on her to provide safe passage to their new home in the stars. But all things deteriorate, all things decay. . . and Ship fights to preserve the world within her even as she loses touch with those who depend on her.

And don't miss our Intergalactic interview with Sharon Lee and Steve Miller! They've graciously given us permission to reprint their short story, "A Choice of Weapons," and we've also got a selection from their new novel, "The Gathering Edge."

Happy Spring!

Scott M. Roberts
Editor
Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show