Rio Temporal - Spring arrives at Amarillo Falls, a town nested somewhere in the future, and with it a restaurant owner encounters a mysterious young boy who he is loathe to tell his wife about because she desperately wants children. The Pied Piper of Spring - A galactic tinkerer is called to a small settlement on a planet to take care of the rat population, which has exploded. Raymond The Automatic House - A surviving government official after a worldwide upheaval manages to escape a ravaging mob and then stumbles across a self-contained automatic house set in a remote area of woods. The Refugee - A cowboy finds a downed balloon, he thinks, and is shocked when the inhabitant emerges and starts to yell at him in a strange language.