The Search for Zei

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Dirk Barnevelt hunched his mooselike form over his typewriter and wrote:

Twenty-five degrees north of the equator on the planet Krishna lies the Banjao Sea, the largest body of water on this planet. And in this Sea is found the Sunqar, home of legend and mystery.

Here under the scorching rays of the hot high sun, the beaked galleys of Dur and the tubby roundships of Jaz-murian slowly rot in the unbreakable grip of a vast floating continent of the terpahla sea vine. Even the violent storms of the Krishnan sub-tropics no more than ruffle the surface of this immense floating swamp— which, however, sometimes heaves and bubbles with the terrible sea life of the planet, such as the gvam or harpooner.

Barnevelt sat back to wonder: For a couple of years he'd been writing about the places that Igor Shtain explored; would he ever see any of them? If his mother died… But that was unlikely. With modern geriatrics she'd be good for another century. He still had a great-great-grandfather alive in the Netherlands. Besides, he thought guiltily, that was no way to think about one's mother. He resumed:

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