The Dark Goddess

Deep beneath a dying ice world, Alfreya, a majestic mer-woman and sorrowful guardian of an ancient cavern civilization, watches her people prepare to abandon the home she has protected for ages. Their planet is drifting toward a new sun whose deadly radiation will force them into space, and as the evacuation begins, she chooses to remain behind, carrying a loneliness and weariness that seem older than the crisis itself. The world above changes from frozen ruin to a warm, wild planet under a red sun, while Alfreya drifts through sleep, memory, and solitude, oddly at once saddened by humanity and relieved to be free of it. Then a desperate human pilot, Peter McCarthy, crashes into this hidden realm, expecting death and finding instead a secret world beneath the surface. Exhausted and half-resigned, he follows a subterranean river into the unknown, where rough humor and bitter luck give way to the promise of a strange encounter. Blending science fiction wonder, haunting isolation, and eerie adventure, the story builds toward the meeting of a weary survivor and the mysterious Dark Goddess. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.