Lost Sci-Fi

Captain Hannah has seen plenty of strange things while hauling cargo between the stars, but the Monahan boys are something else entirely. They can swim through empty space, pass through solid glass, communicate without speaking, and treat impossible feats as casually as skipping school. Hannah needs help finding his way home, and the boys are delighted to provide it.

Then their fifteen-year-old brother Jim arrives. Jim is an accomplished “narker” and a pretty good “giffler,” two psionic talents Hannah doesn’t begin to understand. What he does understand is that Jim may be able to solve a problem that has been tormenting him: how to transport an adult blue whale aboard the Delta Crucis. Unfortunately, enormous power doesn’t give a teenager any more common sense. Jim’s solution quickly leaves Hannah wondering whether he was safer when he was simply lost.

When You Giffle… first appeared in the December 1963 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, where it was published under Joseph Wesley’s pseudonym, L. J. Stecher Jr. Wesley used that name for a run of science fiction appearing in Galaxy Science Fiction and Worlds of Tomorrow. His stories included Man in a Sewing Machine, Garth and the Visitor, Perfect Answer, Man in a Quandary, Upstarts, An Elephant for the Prinkip, and Cakewalk to Gloryanna. He also published A Matter of Taste in If under his own name, Joseph Wesley.

When You Giffle… brings back Captain Hannah and the Delta Crucis from An Elephant for the Prinkip. Wesley once again surrounds his battered space trader with outrageous problems, then lets Hannah discover that the people offering assistance may be considerably more dangerous than the problem itself.