Chapter 7 – Agraricide
Master Senzon shifted to a world called Iceheart and a frozen town called Johnson's Outpost. It was overcast and snowing. It was the middle of the day, but it looked more like dusk. There was electricity, as evidenced by the lights in the windows, and there were other signs of rudimentary industry, but nothing fancier than that. No spaceport or Chevenite-powered vehicles. The vehicles in sight all had wheels and were big, slow, clunky things that ran on wood-powered steam engines. Their exhaust stacks produced impressive clouds of smoke in the freezing air. There were sleds, too, pulled down the snowy streets by teams of shaggy oxen, or whatever the native beasts of burden were called.
Senzon wracked his brain, trying to figure out why, of all the places in the Whe
