The Queen of Air and Darkness

by Poul Anderson

On the frontier colony world, Roland, a distraught mother hires the only private investigator, Eric Sherrinford, to find her missing son who vanished during an expedition in the hinterlands. The local police are little help in spite of the long series of unexplained child disappearances. Though there have been no confirmed sightings of intelligent native life, and the rumors sound suspiciously like Celtic superstitions from old Earth, Sherrinford believes that an unknown intelligent species is the best explanation of the child's disappearance. So he sets off with the mother into the hinterland to investigate.