Notes
The Mating Web, a Krek short story by Robert E. Vardeman, can be found on pages 163-181.

The story was subsequently incorporated into chapters 5 and 6 of Centotaph Road (Ace, 1983).

Publisher’s Blurb – Lower Cover
"TO YOUR ETERNAL KEEPING YOU MAY HAVE MY LIFE – OR A SWORD AGAINST WHICH NOTHING MAY STAND!"

So said the child who was the Moon in the Morning. "l must leave you now, but this is a golden passage, and you must make one of the two choices I have given you, Crosnya, if you are to defeat the monster Girthon–" "I have need of the sword now, child," Crosnya said as they rounded the boulder and were set upon by the fearful monster who was sent by the vestal maiden Vrimidal to protect the temple.

Girthon, close now, struck out with his claws, and with one swipe scored Crosnya from shoulder to hip. But Crosnya lunged with the sword of the child of the Moon in the Morning, and Girthon's white-hot blood spilled down the blade and splattered on Crosnya's arms and chest, making blisters appear. Where the white blood spilled on the stairs the marble crumbled to dust.

Hauntingly, the voice of the child came back to Crosnya.

"YOU HAVE FORFEITED MY LIFE . . . AND NOW YOU MUST STAND AGAINST THE MONSTER ALONE!"

Introductory Blurb
In the corny and frequently cutesy-poo oletime sf talk that made Robert Silverberg "Silverbob" and "Bob AGberg", Robert E. Vardeman has been called Vardebob. (It can be worse. Forrest J. Ackerman, Forry who calls himself 4e and invented the awful phrase "sci fi" which will surely result in his return, next life, as a doormat – calls me "&e". Oh lord.)

Vardeman is a young New Mexican with a straight job having nothing to do with writing or academe, yet he writes a great deal. Tall and slim and shy, he has a brilliant wit that too few people know anything about. There are rather too many fanzines about; Bob Vardeman's "Sandworm", though, I miss. It was funny, and how we do need humor! I hope I didn’t have aught to do with the fact that we haven’t seen it for a long while; . . . was I, as president, who asked Vardeman to take over as editor of the Forum of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

I like Bob Vardeman as a man; I appreciate his quiet gentlemanliness (gods know how he maintains it, on all those Doctor Peppers) (Doctors Pepper?); I like his clear, clean, professional way of writing uncluttered prose. I wanted to see how that worked in hf, and so surprised him by asking him to write a story for this anthology. It works. Read it and see. There’s a swell character in it, though he doesn’t happen to be of the human persuasion, as his creator most definitely is.