David Selby was born and grew up in Berkeley, California. He taught elementary school in California, Mexico, and New Mexico for thirty-six years. He and his wife live in Northwest New Mexico.  He has written many short stories including the Joe the Man with Gills series. Mica is his first novel.

Mica, an expert navigator, uses the currents of the Darkstream to pilot his ship across the galaxy to join his love, Olivine. On the way, he befriends Ronnie, a stowaway who can look like a coat or a first aid kit, the mysterious Vuud, and the translucent “Slight People”. They experience the savage planet of Carnage and the whirling destruction of the Moon of 10,000 Drones before they even reach Olivine in the brand-new city of Garner in the midst of an unknown world.


Mica

Vuud and I considered this. "It seems to me that you might have come out after the war ended, at least after some years after."


"You would certainly think so, and I'm sure we would have. But after they came down and watched and listened for the last of the sounds of the incredible bio-, chemical, and fission blasts, suddenly a great flood of water gushed down the entrance hole, carrying away a number of those souls. We assume that some of the last explosions altered a water course and turned what had been our gentle creek into this river. It pours water, fish, nutrients, life down to us, but has kept us bottled up with that ragingwaterfall that you experienced.


"Why can't you just follow the river out-go along with it downstream?" I asked. 


"Hmm, and I'm Frieda deYapp, and this-"


Chapter 45: Entombed, Part 2