Cover by Rocky Kelley

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of Rayguns Over Texas at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.

Today’s selection comes from Sanford Allen‘s “Pet Rock.”

The crew of the Carpathia transport a strange rock, whose secret rattles even the most experienced space travelers.

A crash, metal on metal, jarred Noor awake. She pulled on her jumpsuit and stumbled into the hall.

Kirby and the captain stood in their open cabin doors.

“Science bay?” Kirby, shirtless, blinked his eyes, adjusting to the hall lights. “That where it came from?”

“Sounded closer,” Xiu said. “This deck, I think.”

The captain pounded on Palacios’ door. “You in there?”

No response.

“You think she went down to the lab?” Noor asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She took a few steps toward the ladder well to the lower deck.

“At 3 a.m.?” Xiu pounded the door again and got no response.

The captain slid his entry card into the panel. The door hissed open and he stumbled back, jaw hanging like someone had punched him in the stomach.

“Jesus,” Kirby said.

Noor jogged toward them. Xiu extended an arm to keep her away.

“You don’t want to see,” he said.

She pushed past.

He’d been right. Palacios’ severed head lay on the floor beside her desk in a spreading pool of blood.

Her decapitated body slumped in the chair, a pen-sized soldering torch still clutched in one hand. Strips of silver mesh — the unfinished Faraday cage — scattered the desktop.

The steel panel from the room’s air-conditioning duct lay detached behind the corpse, a makeshift but perfectly lethal guillotine.

Excerpt from “Pet Rock” © 2013 by Sanford Allen.