Where the Cross Turns Over

Old-time Australian drovers, walking cattle thousands of miles to market, are said to have planned their night-watches by the stars. "Call me when the Cross turns over," they would say, "or when the Pointers are clear." These stories happen where the Cross turns over: a regional urban Australian backyard, a regional suburban housing development; a state capital, over a century ago; an Outback waterhole. Another regional townscape, whose characters end off-Earth; a future planet whose fauna are, at the least, unusual. But even the Outback can prove ... weird, here.