“Home Again” by Paul M Berger

The last of this issue’s job lot of Altered Fluid stories is the issue’s short-short, and rather more successful than “Spy vs Spy“. A girl, Julia, welcomes her merchant father home; he flies a thought-ship, a faster-than-light vessel whose navigation is dependent on its pilot accurately imagining its destination, to trade between star systems. It’s a neat concept, and a neat character study, and both come together (as they need to) in a stinging closing cadence.