The Galileo Effect

Kevin's vacation was supposed to be simple. Fifteen planets, six weeks, no complications.

Then his ship broke down.

Stranded on a primitive world with no way home and a repair crew that may or may not be coming, Kevin finds himself in the one place the tourist briefing told him to avoid. Medieval Europe. A continent in the grip of religious war, where strangers are suspect, questions are dangerous, and the wrong answer at the wrong gate can get you killed before breakfast.

He has everything he needs to survive. A working transporter. A replicator. Technology so far beyond this world that it might as well be magic.

Which is exactly the problem.

Because the people he meets are not what the briefing described. The blacksmith who works alongside him. The monk who asks questions no one in this century should be asking. The woman who sees through every story he tells and asks him only one thing in return.

Are you planning to stay.

He is not supposed to be here. Not supposed to get involved. The rules are clear and the consequences are real and somewhere out there a repair crew is supposedly on its way.

But the days keep passing. The village pulls him deeper. And the most powerful institution in the medieval world has begun asking questions about a very tall foreigner with inexplicable skills and no verifiable history who has been in one small Italian village for far too long.

Kevin came here by accident.

Leaving is turning out to be considerably more complicated than he expected.