[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction March 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX...

They brought him into one of the basement rooms. He moved slowly and with a kind of painful dignity, as a man moves on his way to the firing squad. A rumpled shock of black hair pointed up the extreme pallor of a gaunt face, empty at the moment of all expression. Harsh light from an overhead fixture winked back from tiny beads of perspiration dotting the waxen skin of his forehead. The three men with him watched him out of faces as expressionless as his own. They were ordinary men who wore ordin

"Then what?" "Well, like I said yesterday, I suppose I just naturally came out of it. I'm all spread out on the floor with the damndest headache you ever saw. Over by the window is the Prof and—" he wet his lips—"and Juanita. They're dead, Lieutenant; just kind of all piled up over there ... dead, their heads busted in and the—the—the—" He sat there, his mouth working but no sound coming out, his eyes staring straight into the blazing light, the cigarette smouldering, forgotten, between the firs

Paul Cordell, 29, was today doomed by Criminal Court Justice Edwin P. Reed to death by electrocution the morning of January 11, for the murders of his wife, Juanita, 29, and her employer, world-famous nuclear scientist Gregory Gilmore. A jury last week found Cordell guilty of the brutal slayings despite his testimony that it was a mysterious blonde woman, floating in a "ball of blue fire," who had blasted the victims with a "ray gun" on that October afternoon. Ignoring the "girl from Mars" angle

"I don't give a triple-distilled damn what you say!" Troy snarled. "Nobody's got enough money to make that kind of payoff. Five men, Lieutenant—five men and five locked doors stood between that girl and the street. And you sit there and try to tell me somebody bought all five of 'em off!" "Then," Kirk said heatedly, "what's your explanation?" It had been going on this way for over an hour. The morning sun came in weakly at the window behind Troy's huge polished mahogany desk, picking up random r

Lieutenant Martin Kirk shoved the pile of mimeographed pages aside. Three hours spent in going through the complete transcript of the Cordell trial and nothing to show for it but stiff muscles and an aching head. Give it up, a small voice in the back of his mind urged. You haven't got a leg to stand on as far as getting any action out of the authorities. Troy and his gang put the fear of God in that purple-eyed dame and shipped her out of the State. You lose, brother—and so does that poor devil

The address for Alma Dakin turned out to be a small three-story walk-up apartment building on a quiet residential street near the outskirts of town. At two in the afternoon hardly anyone was visible on the sidewalks and only an occasional automobile passed. Kirk parked his car half a block further on down and got out into the chill November air. He entered the building foyer and looked at the name plates above the twin rows of buttons. The one for Alma Dakin told him the number of her apartment

Then his stubborn, inherent fatalism came to his aid. He grinned without humor. The hell with it. Whatever came up—a screwball flying saucer or a berserk psycho waving a gun. You played it the same; according to your own rules. This thing, whatever it was, bridged the gap to a killer. And when you found such a bridge, you crossed it. Martin Kirk, his gun clutched tightly, moved like a casual shadow, eased his way along the hull of ship and slipped inside. He had never seen anything like this. Th

Martin Kirk stepped out into a circle of lush vegetation. And in doing so, he learned something. He learned that the human mind is a far more adaptable mechanism than most people imagine; that they can pelt you with goof balls and you get sweat on your lip and have to talk to yourself to keep from sliding off your rocker, but after a while when your mind seems half-way over the edge, it straightens up suddenly and starts going along. A defense mechanism against insanity? He didn't know. He only

Kirk came to with the feeling that his period of unconsciousness had been momentary. Naia was standing as she had stood before, just beyond the inner doorway. The mocking smile was still on her face. "Did you trip?" Kirk got groggily to his feet. "No, angel. That's the way I always cross a room." As he came upright his hand reached toward the bulge made by his shoulder holster. But it didn't get that far. He had not seen from whence the first blow came but that was not true with the second. From

The soft silvery radiance which this planet seemed to feature, bathed the metal hallway as Kirk marched stolidly toward the slim arcing stairway that led toward Naia's floor. This was certainly a strange building, he thought. The architects of Mythox knew how to use curves. They utilized them for utility and beauty to a point where a straight line was something to be surprised at. Pretty smart people, the Mythoxians—in more ways than one. And Kirk, for no apparent reason, thought of a phrase com