Dancing Unicorn Books

Here's the original short story that first introduced us to Slippery Jim diGriz, better known as the Stainless Steel Rat! diGriz is charming, quick-witted, sophisticated, and a devious criminal mastermind. The Rat has just pulled off a successful and complex criminal operation, but the Special Corps is on his trail. Is this the end for the Stainless Steel Rat or just the beginning? Join Slippery Jim on this rollicking adventure.

From Hugo and Nebula Award Winner Theodore Sturgeon.

Jeremy Jedd stood in the igneous dust of the spaceport margin, staring into the sky and shading his eyes with his arm. Occasionally he checked the time by his ristkron, shaking it to make sure it was wound, craning back toward the hunched Customs House and the great clock. The sign there announced placidly that the Pinnacle had reported, was overdue, and would discharge passengers at Gate Three.

To translate writings, you need a key to the code-and if the last writer of Martian died forty thousand years before the first writer of Earth was born ... how could the Martian be translated...?

An expedition from Earth to Mars discovers a deserted city, the remains of an advanced civilization that died out 50,000 years before. The human scientists recover books and documents left behind, and are puzzled by their contents. Will they be able to translate them . . . is it even possible?