The Naked Truth about The Sand Wytch of Desert Low

The Sand Wytch of Desert Low — Lloyd Harrison Whitling

Introduction

The Sand Wytch of Desert Low, by Lloyd H. Whitling

This World, a chunk left over from a much larger planet that blew itself apart millenniums ago, circles its star in the same path that planet once occupied. Its dimensions measure about eight thousand by four thousand kilometers, and maybe five hundred kilometers in thickness, more than half of the inhabited side being covered by salty water.

Sure, there’s not much air to breathe, the gravity has only a portion of the effect of the original planet, and not much can grow in the deserts which cover the lands. Its inhabitants have no knowledge of that. They have evolved through the thousands of years, since The Great Catastrophe, into what they have now become. Things remain the way they are and have been through the oldest generations still alive. Anything that used to be is now a matter of myth and legend, all of which seem too preposterous for most of our characters to award them much credence.

It appears obvious that, since the distance to the center of This World is much greater from any of its edges than it is from anywhere on the known landed portion, the pull of gravity is correspondingly stronger at the outer reaches of The Sea. Being in a direction toward the center, the pull of gravity also causes sea water to be pulled inward instead of just falling off the edge. Boats striving to reach the edge must overcome gravity pulling them back toward shore, just like rocketships must overcome it to leave the ground on our round world. Boats away out on the ocean begin to float at an angle which increases as they get closer to the edge, according to rumors circulating about on This World.

Such information may be more important to the next story than this one, but knowing such things is always nice, and helps in understanding some of the things that will happen.

This story is not about boats. I have reminded you of such things only so you’ll

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"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to demonstrate that."

— L. H. Whitling in the eBook, Secular Morality —