You are listening to a Clarks World Magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Welcome to the fourth story for the month of February 2024, issue 2009.

I hope that these podcasts have been keeping you well.

I hope the New Year has been kind.

We have more stories left for you for this month,

and many more yet to come,

and that is thanks to your support.

Please go to patreon.com for slash Clark'sworld

to see how you can donate a few bucks our way to make up for the difference that Amazon, well being Amazon did to us.

Our story is titled Cardesheves Palimpsest and is by David Goodman.

David Goodman is a novelist and short story writer based in East Lothian, Scotland,

writing in a range of genres from spy novels to space operas. He has been published in Clark's World in

Animoc. David is an enthusiastic member of Edinburgh SFF and the Codex Writers Group. Like everyone else, he's

on most of the socials, but you can always find him at David Goodman.net.

He is represented by Harry Ellingworth of D.H. Literary.

So my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back relax and let me tell you a story. There is a thought that the seeker cannot complete.

The caravan orbits what was once a white dwarf star, the lonely beacon in the darkness that drew the seeker and their cousins of the caravan,

survivors of the 50,000 worlds. 19 million years they have lingered here as the star crystallized, its light fading.

There is no light at all in the visible spectrum of any organic species, if there were any left

to see.

Only a little heat radiating into the blackness.

If there were anyone watching, they would perceive a tight formation of dark metallic ovoid

...