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Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium by Thoraiya Dyer

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Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium by Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld #219, December 2024)1 opens with Izzy (the main character) with her wife Lucie at their house in France:

Izzy simultaneously adores the French farming village, because stepping into her stone-lined cellar feels like stepping back four hundred years, and loathes the village, because her neighbors’ social attitudes feel like stepping back four hundred years.

This chippiness (first seen in an encounter with the estate agent) is most often manifested in the comments about their neighbour Gaston, an old man who runs a nearby vineyard, but Izzy’s concern about this recidivism is dwarfed by other events that are ongoing in Europe:

Both women’s phones had pinged, and they’d pulled out their devices, to see that the yellow nuclear strike threat warning level had been raised to amber alert. Amber was the second highest level. It meant there was credible information to suggest an imminent attack within a certain radius of their location.
Red alert would have meant duck and cover. Dropping face down, putting her hands under her body, and closing her eyes, until the blast wave passed and debris stopped falling. Izzy had waited, as she always did, heart pounding, to see if missiles had actually been launched.

We learn that both of the women work in the field of nuclear science: Izzy works at a new research reactor nearby, making medical radioisotopes, and Lucie works at ESA with neutron tomagraphs. These nuclear occupations will eventually drive the events at the end of the story but, before then, it is mostly a family soap opera where they settle into their new lives in France and an engineer friend called Miron become a sperm donor for the couple’s first child. While this all this is happening a number of other things occur: a colleague struggles to launch thousands of tiny telescopes to create an orbital array; Izzy finds out that most of Lucie’s extended family died of nuclear test radiation poisoning in Tahiti; Lucie discovers an new mineral that may be able to absorb neutrons to form stable superheavy elements; they receive an allocation of Finnish and Polish war refugees as the war worsens; and Lucie’s baby is later born during an amber alert—a traumatising event for both of the women. Their relationship then deteriorates under the stress of having a young baby to look after and another two tactical nukes being dropped five hundred miles away.
The final section sees Miron arrive unexpectedly. He sees the child for the first time (prompting some defensiveness from Lucie), solves Lucie’s colleague’s launch problem by using the cyclotron in an MRI machine, and then, while talking to Lucie about her work, prompts her to reveal her plan to make anti-nuclear bombs using the new mineral she has been researching and superheavy elements she intends to manufacture in Izzy’s reactor.
Subsequently (spoiler), they launch a test vehicle (based on a drone stolen from Gaston); Lucie manufacturers the neutron absorbing element 124; and, finally, they then decide they need someone else to test the device, handing it over to a secretive third party (while making plans to publicise the discovery). This third party turns out to be the Chinese, who televise a demonstration missile launch which is neutralised by the new weapon. The war winds down, at least on a nuclear level, and the refugees leave. The couple’s lives return, more or less, to normal, and Luc goes to school.
As you can probably tell from the synopsis, there are a lot of moving parts in this story, but, for all that, it unfurls in a relatively organic way—if anything, too organically at the beginning: at times it drags and threatens to devolve into a rustic family soap opera. The other weaknesses I thought it had were the hand-wavium science explanations, the unlikely gadgets that are cobbled together, and the Chinese being the ones who receive the device (under the noses of wartime allied intelligence agencies?) Overall though, it works, and it was a pleasant change to read something that develops organically, has an interesting theme (the anti-nuclear weapon), and sounds like it was written in a British voice rather than an American one (I realise the author is Australian, but still). Awful title.
*** (Good). 10,050 words. Story link.

1. This is one of the 2025 Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll novelette/novella finalists.

Swarm X1048 – Ethological FieldReport: Canis Lupus Familiaris, “6” by F. E. Choe

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Swarm X1048 – Ethological FieldReport: Canis Lupus Familiaris, “6” by F. E. Choe (Clarkesworld #210, March 2024)1 opens with a puppy being born “not long after the disaster”:

Your mother huffs the air around you. She licks at your face, your belly, your tiny paws.
And we watch, transfixed though we have watched countless births on this planet by now, your pinhead-sized nostrils, the soft pinches of flesh around your eyes, the line of your mouth. We watch and wait for your forehead to furrow by the slightest millimeter. Anything.
Our bodies thrum with anticipation. Move, little one. Move.
Do anything but lie there so stiff and still as you are.
Your mother whines. She pants. Labor pains wrack her ribcage, your siblings impatient to arrive. You are running out of time to begin.
Move, little one. We jostle against one another, flash with anxiety.
Some of the more heedless among us separate from our luminous cluster and sink down through the air to hover closer to you, small bodies of light which pulse with distress.
And finally, you move. A small twitch, a tremor at the base of your tail.
Life kicks across your spine, and an electric relief washes through us.
It ripples through the synched network of our bodies, a burst of ultraviolet light.
We name you 6, and you are the most beautiful creature we have ever seen.

The observers are aliens, a swarm of energy beings which are on a dying Earth to record as much of the planet and its life before it meets its end. The rest of the story sees some lovely detail about this, such as them learning the communication choreography of bees, but a large amount of their time is absorbed by their observations and interactions with the dog. This sees, among other things, the dog’s first encounter with a coyote, and human “cleaners” finding the dog’s mother and littermates and shooting them.
Towards the end of the story (spoiler) the aliens learn the planet is deteriorating faster than they thought and that they only have sixteen months left to complete their task. When they realise they are not going to be able to collect all the data they wanted to there are recriminations about the amount of time they spent with the dog.
When, finally, the dog reappears after having been missing for a time, it tragically dies of cancer several weeks later. The swarm looks on helplessly as it dies, and afterwards blanket it and record everything they can in a final act of remembrance.
This is a short but very effective piece that successfully manages to combine a number of aspects—the dog, the alien swarm, the natural world, a dying Earth, etc.—and caps it off with a very emotional ending (especially if you have ever lost a family pet).
One for the Best of the Year anthologies.
**** (Very Good). 2850 words. Story link.

1. This is one of the 2025 Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll short story finalists, and also appears on the 2025 Locus list.

An Intergalactic Smugglers Guide to Homecoming by Tia Tashiro

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An Intergalactic Smugglers Guide to Homecoming by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld #211, April 2024)1 opens with Miko going through customs at a starport orbiting Terra Three:

There are seven hundred aliens hidden in Miko’s backpack, and the Galactic Security Agent currently studying her passport (hopefully) has no clue. The agent is an alien themselves, some tentacular species with assistive devices hooked into its uniform to mist its soft skin every few seconds. A puff of evaporated solution exits from one of the devices by its neck as it draws her passport closer to its pitted eyes.
[. . .]
The GSA agent already swiped a scanner over her prosthetic hand and asked her if she had any prohibited or restricted items to declare, including but not limited to organic life, non-prescribed drugs, proprietary starship blueprints, unregistered AI systems, radioactive material, and fresh fruit. Miko, eyes wide, relinquished a cloverfruit from the X10 systems, apologizing profusely for not realizing it was classed as prohibited. She tripped over herself to explain that she “just wanted a snack on the ship!”
Let them get you for something small, and they don’t think you’d dare with something big. Rina taught her that.

It materialises that (a) Miko is a particularly successful smuggler (although she has had one or two lucky escapes in the past) and (b) Rina is Miko’s estranged sister, who she hasn’t seen in years. (Miko wanted to get off Terra Three and travel the worlds but Rina refused to join her, staying on-planet for a career in computing).
Miko subsequently spends the night in a hotel pod on Terra Three before going to deliver jellyfish-like aliens to Sting, her boss, and she spends some of her time talking to the Xellian refugees. They express their profound gratitude to her—even though they have paid handsomely—for their rescue from an intraspecies war on their planet.
Then, the next day at the handover, Miko realises that Sting is going to give the aliens to a waiting third party who intends to make them into psychoactive drugs. After getting her money (spoiler), she punches Sting in the face with her prosthetic hand and goes on the run with the Xellians.
The rest of the story sees her attempt to make her way off-planet, during which she is almost discovered in a transport shuttle crate by one of Sting’s henchmen. However, his scanner reboots and then shows nothing but dead fish. We subsequently learn that Miko’s sister Rina has tampered with the device and, furthermore, has been acting as Miko’s guardian angel for years (explaining Miko’s escape from her earlier close shaves). Rina then fakes Miko’s death so she is no longer pursued by Sting.
This deus ex machina development is perhaps predictable (it’s foreshadowed a little previously) and somewhat collapses this light SF adventure into a family soap opera. That said, it’s a pleasant and readable enough piece of (perhaps YA) fiction.
**+ (Average to Good). 7,050 words. Story link.

1. This is one of 2025 Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll short story finalists.

A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Thing of Beauty by Norman Spinrad (Analog, January 1973) opens with a very wealthy Japanese businessman called Mr Ito arriving in the office of Mr Harris, an American antiquities dealer in a near future USA. We find out in their subsequent conversation, after Mr Ito has gifted Harris a priceless and antique Grateful Dead poster, that Mr Ito is looking to purchase a “major American artefact” for his Kyoto estate (this is to impress his culturally superior and snobbish in-laws). Harris’s eyes light up (“This was the dream of a lifetime! A sucker with a bottomless bank account placing himself trustingly in my tender hands!”), and they are soon in a jumper touring New York.
The first exhibit that Harris shows Mr Ito confirms earlier hints about this future America’s decline:

I took her down to three hundred and brought her in toward the Statue of Liberty at a slow drift, losing altitude imperceptibly as we crept up on the Headless Lady, so that by the time we were just off shore, we were right down on the deck. It was a nice touch to make the goods look more impressive—manipulating the perspectives so that the huge, green, headless statue, with its patina of firebomb soot, seemed to rise up out of the bay like a ruined colossus as we floated toward it.
Mr. Ito betrayed no sign of emotion. He stared straight ahead out the bubble without so much as a word or a flicker of gesture.
“As you are no doubt aware, this is the famous Statue of Liberty,” I said. “Like most such artifacts, it is available to any buyer who will display it with proper dignity. Of course, I would have no trouble convincing the Bureau of National Antiquities that your intentions are exemplary in this regard.”

We learn that insurrectionists are responsible for the damage before Mr Ito declines to purchase it (“The symbolism of this broken statue is quite saddening, representing as it does a decline from your nation’s past greatness.”) Mr Ito concludes that it would be an insult for him to display it at his home.
We see more of this ravaged future America as they fly over a large area razed by bombing en route to their second stop. On reaching their destination (the Yankees stadium, Mr Ito is a keen baseball fan) they go inside:

[I took] the jumper out of its circling pattern and floating it gently up over the lip of the old ballpark, putting it on hover at roof-level over what had once been short center field. Very slowly, I brought the jumper down toward the tangle of tall grass, shrubbery, and occasional stunted trees that covered what had once been the playing field.
It was like descending into some immense, ruined, roofless cathedral. As we dropped, the cavernous triple-decked grandstands—rotten wooden seats rich with moss and fungi, great overhanging rafters concealing flocks of chattering birds in their deep glowering shadows—rose to encircle the jumper in a weird, lost grandeur.
By the time we touched down, Ito seemed to be floating in his seat with rapture. “So beautiful!” he sighed. “Such a sense of history and venerability. Ah, Mr. Harris, what noble deeds were done in this Yankee Stadium in bygone days! May we set foot on this historic playing field?”
“Of course, Mr. Ito.” It was beautiful. I didn’t have to say a word; he was doing a better job of selling the moldy, useless heap of junk to himself than I ever could.

Mr Ito leads Mr Harris on a two hour guided tour of the stadium but, at the end of their time, and much to Harris’s concealed frustration, Ito again declines, this time because his in-laws regard baseball as an imported American barbarity. The pair’s final stop, the now-disused UN building, then goes badly wrong for Harris when a visibly angry Mr Ito tells him bluntly what he thinks of the UN (“I remind you that the United Nations was born as an alliance of the nations which humiliated Japan in a most unfortunate war, etc.”). Mr Ito demands to be taken back to the office but, as Harris is contemplating the loss of a multi-million yen sale on the way back, Mr Ito excitedly sees a dilapidated Brooklyn Bridge below them. With the thought of the old joke about con-men in mind Harris can’t resist asking Mr Ito, “You want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?” When Mr Ito answers in the affirmative, Harris replies, with completely sincerity, “I can think of no one more worthy of that honor than your esteemed self, Mr. Ito”.

The last part of the story, which takes place four months later (spoiler), sees the tables turned on Harris when Mr Ito sends him a video of the relocated bridge:

Before me was a heavily wooded mountain which rose into twin peaks of austere, dark-gray rock. A tall waterfall plunged gracefully down the long gorge between the two pinnacles to a shallow lake at the foot of the mountain, where it smashed onto a table of flat rock, generating perpetual billows of soft mist which turned the landscape into something straight out of a Chinese painting. Spanning the gorge between the two peaks like a spiderweb directly over the great falls, its stone towers anchored to islands of rock on the very lip of the precipice, was the Brooklyn Bridge, its ponderous bulk rendered slim and graceful by the massive scale of the landscape. The stone had been cleaned and glistened with moisture, the cables and roadbed were overgrown with lush green ivy. The holo had been taken just as the sun was setting between the towers of the bridge, outlining it in rich orange fire, turning the rising mists coppery, and sparkling in brilliant sheets off the falling water.
It was very beautiful.

Mr Ito has also sent what Harris thinks is a single gold-painted brick from the bridge—but he soon realises that it isn’t a gold-painted brick but a solid gold one. Harris is left wondering if Mr Ito is trying to tell him something.
This story’s culture clash interactions, cynical observation, and interesting setting makes for an entertaining tale, and the ending makes it more than that. The one weakness the piece has developed with age is its idea of an ascendant Japan—nowadays Mr Ito would probably have to be replaced with a Chinese character. Who knows what the situation will be in another fifty years.
**** (Very Good). 6,150 words. Story link.

Five Fathoms of Pearls by James H. Beard

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Five Fathoms of Pearls by James H. Beard (Unknown, December 1939) opens with Peter Hume staring at a wall in his house as if he can see something there. He subsequently goes out and rides through the wind and rain and dark to an inn, where he finds a cousin of his called Allen Dorn. Hume tells Dorn to return to the house with him, a property that was once owned by a witch, Elsie Dorn, a grandmother to both men.
Inside the house Dorn sees that the wall which Hume was staring at has a window which shows a sundial in the distance illuminated by moonlight—quite a different view from the other window in the room that shows the rain that they have just ridden through. While all this is unfolding we also learn about (a) a ship that the cousins pirated for gold and whose skipper they drowned, (b) a note from Grandmother Elsie about a chest at the foot of a sundial containing a string of pearls five fathoms long, and (c) instructions to look after a relative called Harriet Dorn, or suffer her vengeance (needless to say, neither of the men have done so).
The final part of the story sees the two climb through the window to get the chest but, during their journey, they see two dead girls from the ship pass by on a lane before seeing the cutlass wearing captain. The captain stares at the men but is scared off by the returning girls. By now the men have recovered the pearls and flee when the girls approach and touch them. Dorn falls but Hume makes it to the window. Then (spoiler), Dorn shoots Hume so he won’t be stranded outside the window. When Dorn reaches the window Hume uses his remaining strength to stab him.
There are too many moving parts here for such a short story (the pirating of the ship, the supernatural window, Harriet Dorn, etc.), and the ending is too abrupt. I’d also add that the men’s downfall is down to their own distrust and has little to do with the vengeful dead grandmother.
* (Mediocre). 3,900 words. Story link.

Johnny on the Spot by Frank Belknap Long Jr

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Johnny on the Spot by Frank Belknap Long Jr. (Unknown, December 1939) starts with the hard-boiled narrator describing his involvement with another man in a fatal shooting in an alley. The narrator then hides out in a dance hall where he overhears a ruthless older blonde telling a younger woman she is going to take her boyfriend from her. The man later dances with the blonde, who eventually (spoiler) realises that the man is Death. At this point we realise that his involvement with the death in the alley was his presence (“in the end I meet up with practically everyone”).
A slight, one-shot piece—but effective enough.
** (Average). 1100 words. Story link.

The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt

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The Scalar Intercepts by Michael Cassutt (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024) is a brief bit of ideation more than a story, and one which sees an AI report back to other AIs about the seven hundred or so humans left alive on Earth (there had been a past conflict between the two). The AI then reveals a discovery:

My research shows that, in addition to these kinetic processes, Objects possess a consciousness of their own. Yes, the Sun, other stars, the major planets including our own, and minor planets above a certain mass, are beings as self-aware and intelligent as any we know.
Organics and even Agents like us reside on the short or micro side ofthe lifespan scale. These space-based beings are on the macro side, living millions of years, and their communications take place at such a slow rate—one bit a year, for example—that I have chosen to call them Scalar Sentiences.
My apparently radical discovery, based on extensive analysis and translation of the Scalar intercepts, a process that has consumed energy for the last four hundred and thirty years, confirms that Scalars are hostile to our existence. p. 161

The piece ends with the news (spoiler) that the Scalars have sent asteroid hurtling towards Earth and the AIs will not survive.
* (Mediocre). 1050 words.

The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford

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The Adherence by Jeffrey Ford (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2024)1 begins with an old man called Phil meeting a long lost female acquaintance called Dierdre in “The Crumble”. As they talk we learn that Phil lost his wife because of the effect of ubiquitous cheap products produced by a company called Adherent Corp.:

“She disintegrated.”
“Oh, my god, I’ve heard about that. Did you guys go in for all that cheap stuff?”
“I’m embarrassed to say it, but yeah. We had scads of it. It was just so fuckin cheap,” he said. “Couldn’t see spending top dollar on a bed frame or dresser when you could get either for a couple of bucks. Come on, a five-dollar television. You can’t beat it. We had everything.”
“I read that if you have a lot of the stuff from Adherent Corp., that it can set up a resonance field in your house,” said Dierdre.
“Not only that, but if there’s someone living there who’s suffering from depression, the particular atomic resonance of the victims of that disease can act as a catalyst, weakening the atomic bonds that hold together Adherent’s flimsy crap. The resonance of their merchandise disintegrating in turn affects the atomic bonds of the stricken, like Lily. One afternoon, in early autumn, when a cold breeze lifted the curtain and came through the screen of our bedroom window, I was walking down the hall, and the door was open. Lily was folding damp clothes from the half-assed dryer, and humming the song ‘Three Little Words.’ Just like that, she turned into mist, and that mist kept her form for a moment until the wind rolled through the room and dispersed her.”
“How long until you realized that having all that cheap stuff wasn’t worth it?”
“It took me a few days to wake up to the fact of what happened. I mean, back in the day, when we met, when we got married, who had any clue that someday, if you lived long enough, you might see your spouse vanish like the Easter Ghost. But eventually, yeah, it was clear we’d made our world from whatever tawdry substance went into making all of Adherent’s fine products. In the process it cost Lily her life.” p. 66

After this unlikely dollop of explanium/anti-materialism, the pair go to Deirdre’s house. There she tells him about Ronaldo, her ex, who is part of a religious cult called the Easterners. Apparently the “Easter Ghost” materialises at their services and has been known to reincarnate vanished people.
The last part of the story (spoiler) sees Deirdre arrange to have Ronaldo and the Easter Ghost come to her apartment. After they arrive (the Easter Ghost wears a three-piece suit of green and yellow, holds a stalk of yellow gladiolas, and floats a foot above the floor) Phil agrees to pay a thousand bucks to have his wife brought back. The Easter Ghost whizzes around the kitchen while Phil thinks of her, and then he wakes at a cash machine with Deirdre and Ronaldo. After they shake him down for the money he goes home to find his wife in his apartment. They make love but, after they finish, Phil discovers she is an Adherent Corp. copy.
This is a strange, dream-like story that doesn’t amount to much. Presumably it is making some sort of point about materialism, but what that might be is unclear (other than the obvious observation everyone makes about materialism).
* (Mediocre). 3,600 words.

1. The last sentence doesn’t have a full stop: “She put her arms out to him and tried to say his name, but in the jostling, her speakers had shorted”—I don’t know if this is intentional, poor proofing, or whether there is missing text.

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson

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The Man Who Came Early1 by Poul Anderson (F&SF, June 1956) opens with the narrator, a late 10th Century Icelander/Viking called Ospak Ulfsson, telling a visiting Christian priest about a strange man he once came across. He tells how he and his clansmen found the strangely dressed man on the beach and how, after questioning him, they discovered that the man was Sergeant Gerald Roberts, an MP in the United States Army who had slipped through time:

“I was crossing the street, it was a storm, and there was a crash and then I stood on the beach and the city was gone!”
“He’s mad,” said Sigurd, backing away. “Be careful . . . if he starts to foam at the mouth, it means he’s going berserk.”
“Who are you?” babbled the stranger. “What are you doing in those clothes? Why the spears?”
“Somehow,” said Helgi, “he does not sound crazed—only frightened and bewildered. Something evil has happened to him.”
“I’m not staying near a man under a curse!” yelped Sigurd, and started to run away.
“Come back!” I bawled. “Stand where you are or I’ll cleave your louse-bitten head!”
That stopped him, for he had no kin who would avenge him; but he would not come closer. Meanwhile the stranger had calmed down to the point where he could at least talk evenly.
“Was it the aitchbomb?” He asked. “Has the war started?”
He used that word often, aitchbomb, so I know it now, though unsure of what it means. It seems to be a kind of Greek fire. As for the war, I knew not which war he meant, and told him so.
“There was a great thunderstorm last night,” I added. “And you say you were out in one too. Perhaps Thor’s hammer knocked you from your place to here.”  p. 6-7

The rest of the story mostly tells of Roberts’ (unsuccessful) attempts to fit into this society, which begin with him helping to sacrifice a horse by shooting it in the head with his service pistol. Ulfsson is not impressed however, “as the beast quivered and dropped with a hole blown through its skull, wasting the brains.” Matters do not improve with Roberts’ subsequent attempts to repair two spearheads (he ruins them and almost sets the forge on fire) or mend a nearby bridge (he cannot master the primitive carpentry tools). Roberts manages to partially redeem himself by winning a wrestling match with one of the warriors by using his Judo skills, but a further suggestion about manufacturing a cannon and gunpowder are rebuffed:

Gerald said something about making a gun like his own. It would have to be bigger, a cannon he called it, and could sink ships and scatter armies. He would need the help of smiths, and also various stuffs. Charcoal was easy, and sulfur could be found in the volcano country, I suppose, but what is this saltpeter?
Also, being suspicious by now, I questioned him closely as to how he would make such a thing. Did he know just how to mix the powder? No, he admitted. What size would the gun have to be? When he told me—at least as long as a man—I laughed and asked him how a piece that size could be cast or bored, even if we could scrape together that much iron. This he did not know either.
“You haven’t the tools to make the tools to make the tools,” he said. I don’t know what he meant by that.
“God help me, I can’t run through a thousand years of history all by myself.”  p. 16

It’s hard not to see the above passage as a direct rebuttal of the premise of L. Sprague de Camp’s novel Lest Darkness Fall—whose can-do narrator produces a constant stream of inventions to prevent the onset of the Dark Ages in sixth century Rome. (And de Camp’s hero also goes back in time during a lightning storm.)
The final part of the story (spoiler) details a fateful boat trip: Roberts is no sailor; his suggestions for a bigger ship with different sails, a keel and cabins are picked apart; and one of the other men’s open contempt for Roberts ends in violence when Roberts challenges the man, Ketill, to a fight. Roberts quickly finds out that they won’t be using fists but swords and shields and then, during the fight, he barely holds his own. After being wounded multiple times, Roberts draws his pistol and shoots Ketill in the head.
The aftermath of this killing provides a fascinating insight into the customs of the time: an allegation of witchcraft is made; payment of weregild to Ketill’s kin is suggested; and Ulfsson’s daughter (who has a crush on Roberts) asks her father to pay it. This then leads Ketill’s father (who is also on the voyage) to ask if Ulfsson’s family stands with Roberts. If so, that will mean a blood feud between the two familes. Ulfsson, fearing his kin’s death (especially his son) in any later fighting, withdraws his protection from Roberts and tells him that the Thing (a Viking council) will decide on the matter at midsummer but he had best leave Iceland before then. Roberts departs into the darkness.
There is a postscript where Ulfsson tells the priest that Roberts was later found at another settlement but, because he did not tell them of the killing, they expel him when Ketill’s kin track him down:

At the end, when they had him trapped, his weapon gave out on him. Then he took up a dead man’s sword and defended himself so valiantly that Ulf Hjalmarsson has limped ever since. It was well done, as even his foes admitted; they are an eldritch race in the United States, but they do not lack manhood.
When he was slain, his body was brought back. For fear of the ghost, he having perhaps been a warlock, it was burned, and all he had owned was laid in the fire with him. That was where I lost the knife he had given me. The barrow stands out on the moor, north of here, and folk shun it though the ghost has not walked. Now, with so much else happening, he is slowly being forgotten.
And that is the tale, priest, as I saw it and heard it. Most men think Gerald Samsson [Roberts] was crazy, but I myself believe he did come from out of time, and that his doom was that no man may ripen a field before harvest season.  p. 23

This is a very good piece, both for its take on a man out of time and also for its impressive authenticity which latter, through the voice of Ospak Ulfsson, firmly puts you not only in the society of that period, but in the head of one of its inhabitants.
**** (Very Good). 10,300 words. Story link.

1. I think A Man Out of Time would have been a better title as it would have worked in three ways: (a) Roberts physically leaves his own time; (b) he is unable to integrate into that society; and (c) he ends up dying prematurely.

Track 12 by J. G. Ballard

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Track 12 by J. G. Ballard (New Worlds #70, April 1958) opens with Maxted listening to a sound Sheringham is playing to him through headphones. When Maxted fails to guess what the sound is—:

‘Time’s up,’ Sheringham cut in. ‘A pin dropping.’ He took the three-inch disc off the player, and angled it into its sleeve. ‘In actual fall, that is, not impact. We used a fifty-foot shaft and eight microphones. I thought you’d get that one.’  p. 63

The men take a break and go outside for a drink. We learn more about this new science of microsonics—very quiet sounds hugely amplified—and, as the story develops, we also discover that Maxted has been having an extra-marital relationship with Sheringham’s wife.
Maxted is waiting for a confrontation about this latter matter but, before one occurs, he starts to feel cold and mentions this to Sheringham. Sheringham tells him to stay where he is and goes to fetch the final recording.
Maxted’s condition continues to deteriorate, and it soon becomes apparent that (spoiler) Sherringham has poisoned him:

He strolled leisurely around the patio, scrutinizing Maxted from several angles. Evidently satisfied, he sat down on the table. He picked up the siphon and swirled the contents about. ‘Chromium cyanate. Inhibits the coenzyme system controlling the body’s fluid balances, floods hydroxyl ions into the bloodstream. In brief, you drown. Really drown, that is, not merely suffocate as you would if you were immersed in an external bath. However, I mustn’t distract you.’
He inclined his head at the speakers. Being fed into the patio was a curiously muffled spongy noise, like elastic waves lapping in a latex sea. The rhythms were huge and ungainly, overlaid by the deep leaden wheezing of a gigantic bellows. Barely audible at first, the sounds rose until they filled the patio and shut out the few traffic noises along the highway.
‘Fantastic, isn’t it?’ Sheringham said. [. . .] ‘These are 30-second repeats, 400 microsones, amplification one thousand. I admit I’ve edited the track a little, but it’s still remarkable how repulsive a beautiful sound can become. You’ll never guess what this was.’  p. 65-66

Sheringham then reveals his knowledge of Maxted’s liason—there are microphones all around the patio, an area that the couple used for one of their liaisons—and he continues to goad Maxted until finally revealing that he is drowning in a kiss.
This story doesn’t really lend itself to a convincing synopsis but Ballard successfully combines the two disparate story elements (the new science of microsonics and a cuckolded husband seeking revenge) with the almost poetic idea of drowning in a kiss. If that latter image/thought doesn’t appeal then I suspect you will not like it as much as I did.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 1,850 words. Story link.