The story has that somewhat condensed feel which many stories which feature a lot of action in relatively few pages - we have the quick set up, and then pell mell into attacks, escapes, dramatic cable car action etc.

A rapid response armed unit, guarding a mining operation, are able to do so with extreme prejudice thanks to the tech and the military hardware that they have at their disposal, and the near superhuman regenerative powers which they have. To my mind, the author goes just a little too far in this repsect!

The nature of their humanity (are they really human?) is investigated through their finding (somewhat unbelievably) an honest-to-goodness dog. Searching their computer archives to find out how to look after such a beast, there are initial glimmers of humanity from them, but sadly not enough for the dog to survive.

The second hindrance was finding that the last story in the issue was evidently in the hard-boiled detective milieu. Somewhat dispirited I kept my eyes on the book, studiously avoiding as best as I could the lame conversational gambits from the young 'lady' sitting opposite me.

In the end I gave up tried to make sense of the story, and waiting until today to read it properly.

The reason why finding the story was of the hard-boiled PI ilk is that as a rule such stories in SF magazines tend towards fairly banal humour and do very little for me. Fortunately, Kelly avoids such a convention, and actually goes to the other extreme, furnishing us with a story with a memorably setting and all-female cast (including the POV character).

Kelly's background is a near-future Earth in which aliens have arrived and got rid of virtually 50% of the human population - the male 50%. A couple of generations on and society is just about the same as it is now, the economy not as good as it was, but with robots supplied by the aliens providing a wide range of support, things could be worse.

PI Fay Hardaway is (with the exception of her gender) straight out of central casting, nursing a Johnnie Walker habit, unlucky in love, and bemoaning the lack of business. However, when one of the aliens, through the services of one of the robots, puts her on a very good retainer to do a bit of missings person detective work, things start to look up.

However, as is obviously going to be the case, Fay finds that things start to get complicated - very complicated. Girlfriends, mothers, priests, cops, pre-alien and post-alien generations, alien 'seeding' pregnancies, suicide cults - Kelly puts in a heap of 'soft' SF in a story that to me feels more like a James Tiptree Jr story than one written by a man (and if your knowledge of SF isn't sufficient to work out the sense of that last sentence then it is you who will have to do some detective work hehehe).

All hell breaks looks in the latter half of the story, with a previously unsuspected alien presence wreaking having on the small scientific colony, not helped by the fact that the aliens have a human on their side. A desperate rearguard action takes place, as the dwindling number of survivors fight to stay alive until a scheduled cargo vessel arrives. There is a (too!) neat ending when having just picked up one survivor the cop sees throught the shuttle window the scientist who sided with the aliens getting her just desserts.

An interesting departure for Cowdrey. The technique of using diary transcripts doesn't quite work, IMHO, as the transcripts are not what you would get in any kind of diary log, but are narrative descriptions. The finding from the court of inquiry, the transcripts of which are evidenced to, provides a sadly believable ending.

Interspersed with a rather juvenile background involving his team thinking of ways to dispose of him, we have an insight into the alien life, by means of their very humanlike scientific debates.

Fortunately there is some justice, as the unpopular braggart chief scientist finds that his stealth suit does not prevent him from the aliens detecting him, and their experimenting on him to discover his exact nature.